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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DinoInDisguise" data-source="post: 9355565" data-attributes="member: 7045806">You can essentially just give more, or better items. A level 13 with a +2 weapon, and a level 12 with a +3, as an example.  How big is the difference between these? Is that difference meaningful if the +3 item gave 5 temp hp every short rest? This has the side effect of allowing the DM more granular control over player power levels relative to each other. Essentially, weaker PCs can be given stronger items.Monsters are bit different. You, largely, need to have the items show up on an enemy. When that happens a monster will get those benefits. But the monsters are balanced around a damage per round vs total hp comparison ideally. For example if a party has an average hp of 38 and have four party members, you can largely take the sum of that (38x4=152) and divide it by the number of rounds you want the combat to last plus one. (152/5 = 30.4 dpr). You have your monster damage per round and you just adjust monster hp to suit the player dpr adjusted for desired difficulty. The presence of the item doesn't matter here. You want your players to win slightly before the monsters do.The issue with slowing progression under normal gameplay is one of pacing. A sense of progression is a high beat in pacing and is often needed at regular intervals. Slowing it too much messes up this pacing. You can get around that as powerful items that noticeably influence a player's behavior, has the same effect. They give a sense of progression power wise. I go from 1 to 3 very quickly, and get progressively slower as they level up. I often aim for 10-12 months per campaign, and I often aim for the last level up to be 1-3 weeks before the end.To revisit the question of what kind of items to give. The answer is largely not relevant. I've done wild things like give a scroll of gate to a level 5 party. Or more conservative approaches such as mimicking the stat increases from a level up with item bonuses, as described above with the +3 weapon. The wizard can have a wand of a 7th level spell, but probably not forcecage. You can give players items with their class capstone abilities. The possibilities are endless, but its fully personalized to the players and campaign.I've given feats post-level 12 in leiu of an item, or attached to the item. Both work fine. I hope this helps explain what I mean.EDIT: It's important to remember here that default 5e is balanced for no magic items. The math simply doesn't take them into account. So in a way, every magic item you give moves your towards this goal of replacing a spread of levels with a few magic items.</blockquote>

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