D&D 5E (2024) Martial Magic Items Thoughts?

[Zardnaar]

This does not comport, to even the smallest degree, with my lived, played experience.

Your experience isn't universal or the default. You dont need a marking mechanic to be good.

You dont need to be a battlemaster to knock stuff prone. Theyre better at it sure.

Maybe dial the hyperbole down when.

A. You're blatantly wrong. Eg your prone post.

B. Not that good at picking spells eg summon dragon or metamagic options.

How you play 5E is up to you. That's half its point you can put in as much or as little magic items as you like. You don't get to tell others that your opinion is the one true way.

You can always boycott as well. Enough people agree with you......

 

[Maxperson]

I agree that damage is not the only currency in the game. Unfortunately, martial characters have almost nothing else to trade in. Because the rules have been "streamlined" to the degree that there's nothing left for martials to do except attack more, in most cases. Because "tanking" for a turn, in most cases, simply means "delaying final resolution", which is usually not a good thing. Because they designed martial classes to be almost entirely damage output (they even explicitly admitted as such with Fighters), while not meaningfully limiting the damage output of partial-to-full spellcasters...at all, as far as I can tell.

They did meaningfully limit caster damage output by balancing the game around the 6-8 encounter adventuring day. The problem is that very few people ever run an adventuring day. When you drop the number of rounds from the balanced 24-32 rounds to 4-8 rounds, you end up allowing casters to cast a greater number of really good spells in each combat. The same goes for caster abilities. Sorcery points spread over 24-32 rounds will have less of an impact than if you concentrate them to 4-8 rounds. Even something is highly limited as Portent has an oversized impact when able to be used over such a small span of rounds.

 

[jmartkdr2]

IIR the goal of "you don't need magic weapons" was more "you don't need any particular magic weapon" rather than "you shouldn't use magic items." Put another way: the game isn't balanced around "there are no magic items" so much as "no specific magic item is required."

I think they were hoping that nonmagic weapon resistance would sometimes matter, but I'm not sure they succeeded. I do know they understood that different tables would play very differently so they tried to make the game robust enough to allow for lots of variation - and they mostly succeeded. The only common variation that flat-out doesn't seem to work is consistently having only one fight per long rest, which does tend to create issues, but for the most part the game does seem to hold up okay under a variety of styles.

The downside of this is that the omni-tool isn't particularly well-designed for any particular task; if you have a style in mind that your whole table prefers there's a better game out there for that specific style.

 

[NotAYakk]

IIR the goal of "you don't need magic weapons" was more "you don't need any particular magic weapon" rather than "you shouldn't use magic items." Put another way: the game isn't balanced around "there are no magic items" so much as "no specific magic item is required."

I think they were hoping that nonmagic weapon resistance would sometimes matter, but I'm not sure they succeeded. I do know they understood that different tables would play very differently so they tried to make the game robust enough to allow for lots of variation - and they mostly succeeded. The only common variation that flat-out doesn't seem to work is consistently having only one fight per long rest, which does tend to create issues, but for the most part the game does seem to hold up okay under a variety of styles.

The downside of this is that the omni-tool isn't particularly well-designed for any particular task; if you have a style in mind that your whole table prefers there's a better game out there for that specific style.

So, the game does not require that players have +(Tier#-1) magic items in order to be able to defeat level appropriate monsters.

You can compare this to 4e, where if you lacked a level appropriate magic weapon, your wiffs would be insane against a level appropriate foe, especially by epic tier. Losing -6 to hit and -6 AC and -6 to -9 on all of your non-AC defences really crippled you.

Now, in 5e, getting those tiers of items is a large upgrade. Like equivalent to multiple levels. But as the accuracy bonus is bounded by +0 to +3 it doesn't break the core combat engine; monster ATK and DEF scaling rate is chosen so that the game works without it. (I mean, CR 35 monsters probably need your players to have +2-3 items).

At level 1 you can expect a +4 to hit and 18 AC.
At level 20 with a belt of 27 strength you can reach +17 to hit and 26 AC.

The lowly CR1/8 Guard has an AC of 16 and an attack of +3 is just barely obsolete if you are capped out that way.

Without those magic items, you hit +11 to hit and 20 AC; you still have a chance to miss a chance to be hit by a town guard.

Similarly, spellcasters and melee characters are not eclipsed by the other without magic items. With magic items, well you can make either eclipse the other.

I've talked about inter-melee class balanced. There is currently an itemization problem in 5e whereby the typical magic weapon in published content benefits the Fighter more than other melee types by a large amount. And I pointed out how I get around it.

 

[Mort]

Then why do they design monsters that are resistant or immune to damage from non-magical weapons? Particularly when such things become near universal at higher levels?

Worth noting that this is no longer a thing in 5.5. There are no monsters that are resistant to nonmagical weapons.

So from the perspective, the designers have shifted to your viewpoint.

 

[ECMO3]

Saying whether the game is easy or not is highly dependent on the level, campaign and the DM. IME if you use strict RAW, the guidelines for encounter difficulty noted in the DMG and allow periodic resting, combat is very easy at level 3 and beyond.

With an experienced group, to make combat it not easy RAW you generally need to run much more difficult encounters with the typical engagement about 50% more XP than the DMG recommends for "high difficulty" or alternatively you need to make it difficult to rest so the party regularly has exhaustion.

Level 1 and level 2 are exceptions to this as bad rolls can kill you very easy at these levels. I would say the game is "easy" from level 3 on, but as you go up in level it goes from easy to almost trivial.

 

[Zardnaar]

Saying whether the game is easy or not is highly dependent on the level, campaign and the DM. IME if you use strict RAW, the guidelines for encounter difficulty noted in the DMG and allow periodic resting, combat is very easy at level 3 and beyond.

With an experienced group, to make combat it not easy RAW you generally need to run much more difficult encounters with the typical engagement about 50% more XP than the DMG recommends for "high difficulty" or alternatively you need to make it difficult to rest so the party regularly has exhaustion.

Level 1 and level 2 are exceptions to this as bad rolls can kill you very easy at these levels. I would say the game is "easy" from level 3 on, but as you go up in level it goes from easy to almost trivial.

I'm finding something similar. The exception is good dice rolls eg 3 or 4 attacs and ones a crit plus decent damage rolks.

You can get dropped lvl 1-13 that way.

3 high encounters can drain them a lot or lowland medium with nasty terrain.

DMG dead magic zones as well used one of them recently.

High encounters can get grindy though. 45-60 minutes irl time required.

 

[ECMO3]

I'm finding something similar. The exception is good dice rolls eg 3 or 4 attacs and ones a crit plus decent damage rolks.

I agree with this, you can still drop a PC with bad luck, but not a party and that PC is usually back in the fight by the end of the next round.

 

[Zardnaar]

I agree with this, you can still drop a PC with bad luck, but not a party and that PC is usually back in the fight by the end of the next round.

Usually rial can be real if multiple PCs drop which happens due to AoEs.

 

[Zardnaar]

I agree with this, you can still drop a PC with bad luck, but not a party and that PC is usually back in the fight by the end of the next round.

Roughly works out like a pyramid. Tier 1 uncommon each, 1 rare or so.

Tier two rare for everyone,1 very rare. Tier 3 everyone has a very rare, 2 rates etc.

The 1 best rarity should probably go to tge weakest PC wg someone picks a rogue or whatever. Or its a fairly mundane item. Eg +3 very rare weapon at lvl 5.

I might drop a legendary or very rare early if it's storyline related.