D&D 3E/3.5 Playing in a DND3E game with no magic items

[Forrester]

It looks like the 25th level barbarian has a sllight advantage. Haste will help the magic barb quite a bit. Of course, that's with a pretty poor set of magic items for the level 16 barbarian.

The 16th level barbarian can power-attack for 5 and hit Conan as often as Conan hits him . . . if you don't include the Hasted attack.

Meaning Magic Weenie is hitting for around 37 a hit (power attack for 10) while Conan is hitting for 27 a hit (power attack for 5). And Magic Weenie gets a free hit in there -- the Hasted one.

Conan go bye-bye. (Of course, Magic Weenie should have at least a Ring of Protection +3, which makes the contest even more unfair.)

Again, a 25th level barbarian should, going by the CR guidelines (which admittedly tend to break down at higher levels), be an even matchup for a dozen 16th level fighters, minimum.

Poor Conan. Poor magic-poor fighters .

Any updates on how the campaign is progressing?

 

[drnuncheon]

Re: Re: Re: Playing in a DND3E game with no magic items

Re my "magic items make the fighter" quote -- note that in a one-on-one battle, a fully-equipped 16th level fighter would most likely kick your 25th level Conan's ass.

So would the Incredible Hulk. That doesn't mean that non-magic Conan isn't fun to play, it just means that non-magical Conan isn't fun to play in a typical D&D game.

One word: Forsaker.

Any DM that lets someone play a Forsaker in a game where the PCs don't have any magic items deserves everything they get.

"Gee, you mean I have to give up stuff I don't have anyway? Oh, the humanity!"

J

 

[Victim]

Well, it's not quite that uneven. It will probably take the magic barbarian a full attack in order to realize that Conan's AC is so low because he'd be used to fighting characters with much better AC. He also has to turn on his haste. So he'd be a bit slow coming into his full damage potential and Conan's extra 100 HP would help make up for his lower damage. Between these factors, a lucky crit might be the deciding factor.

However, Conan is better at Grapples and has 9 additional levels of skills. If he moves into close quarters, then he could probably win, because the other guy would lose his magic weapon bonus, and AC would be irrelavent.

Both characters are rather inefficient in that I used someone else's magic item choices and feat selections. While the level 16 barb could use some better items, Conan might be using Dire Charge for a nasty first attack. If both characters were completely minmaxed with a barbarian only constraint, however, I'd bet on guy with magic items.

 

[Moleculo]

Re: Re: A use for this prestige class.

Thre word: No. Magic. Items.

Some more words, formed into sentences and all:
Many of the forsakers abilities are only active if he destroys magical items for it. No magical items = no abilities. But you could be right: even without this stuff you're quite powerful compared to other charakters without magic staff, and it could teach the DM in question a lesson (if he allows the forsaker).

It would be a really mean lesson. The only ability you lose out on, when being a forsaker, without magical items, is the ability to penetrate damage reduction, and gain damage reduction yourself. Not to bad when no one has magical items anyway. Plus, in the posters campaign its only no plussed magic items. man that would be a sweet deal!! hahaha

 

[LokiDR]

I run a game that focuses on a lack of magic. Here are some thoughts:

Healing Items: a must have in levels 1-4, depending on how much combat you get into. The APL of the group is now 10, and they burn through wands of cure-light like nothing.

Balance: wizards, sorcerers, clerics, and rogues are very powerful. The rest of the classes are pretty weak. Straight fighters are probably the weakest.

Almost every character wanted to be a caster. Most have taken item creation feats. If you want a low magic, you need to limit the spell casters, and not with world politics. There must be a rule-based reason why spell casters are weaker.

 

[Darklone]

If need arises... I could post some links to discussions about proposals how to include low magic houserules for spellcasters (one common rule is e.g. to force spellcasters to multiclass at least half of their levels with non caster classes).

 

[Hecabus]

Odd Magic Rules

The last four campaigns I have played in suffered with magic item problems.

The first two games suffered from to much magic, if you could think of it you could probably have it. This was especially true of the first game which was Rolemaster with characters that got almost to 60th level. Imagine a 30th level Shamanic Alchemist (Mage)/15th level Nightblade (Assassin)/20th level Archmage with a full boat of magic items including ever-repeating crossbows zipping around on a jetbike. It was insane (fun though).

The third game this guy ran, he figured out that handing out too many magic items made it tough for the DM to handle encounters so he made items impossible to get. Sure he gave lots of gold and there were plenty of mages around in Forgotten Realms to make items, but they always charged double or triple the going rate and it took at least three times as long for them to make the items. It looked like I would have made it to 10th level without anything more powerful than a masterwork dagger and a 3rd level wand of Magic Missles.

The fourth game was run by another gm and at first it was slightly over balanced (my 2e multiclass 8th level Fighter/Wizard had a +4 katanna and a +3 Dagger of the Nosferatu). Now skip ahead many years later and we have the same character as a 3rd edition 4th level Fighter/ 5th level Archmage / 5th level Eldritch Master / 16th level Sorceror fighting a pair of Sirrusk (sp) straight out of the ELH with the same sword and dagger. By the way, Sirrusk have DR 30 / +6 so most attacks I was doing around 5 points of damage. I really only hurt them on a crit.

3E was built to be an open ended game. Unfortunately, it is very well balanced and taking away one thing adversely affects another and most DMs can't handle it.