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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jalkain" data-source="post: 315372" data-attributes="member: 2473">2. Magic Items--------------I know it's been said many times before, but magic items also need to be carefully restricted.  If you can buy anything you want then both players and DMs start thinking of optimal combinations of items to defeat their enemies and protect themselves.  Soon you end up with high tech firefights between groups wielding arsenals of magic items, and the more random variables you introduce into a given encounter, the more chance there is of one random die roll will spell death for a PC.The message here is simple: more variables (and hence more randomness) counts against the PCs in the long run. Most monsters will fight the PCs once, but the PCs must keep going and going.  If the PCs get really lucky dice rolls in the first ten encounters, but really unlucky dice rolls in the eleventh, well that might well be the one that kills them all.  And you only need one such encounter.  Critical hits are an example of a random variable that might save the party one day, but might well catch up with them in the long run.It might be argued that by ignoring conventions set out in the core rules, you make it more dificult to judge the difficulty of encounters, how much magic to give to enemy NPCs, etc.  I would counter this by saying: more variables make for more complications, and more randomness, and hence make CR ratings less useful.If both sets of combatants have huge lists of items, spells and special abilities, can you really use the CR system to accurately decide which ones are going to be critical, useful, or even used at all?  Better just to put a tight control on items, so that less are present in any given encounter.  That way, intelligently played PCs have an increased chance of survival, and the reduced availability of resurrection is not felt as strongly.How to restrict magic items, when the core rules seem to indicate that they are easy to get hold of?  There are certain aspects of the core rules which should be very setting dependent, and frequency and cost of magic items are foremost among them.  I'm getting a little tired of people saying that 3rd Edition somehow enforces huge numbers of magic items as standard, and that no party can survive without them.  I would consider the situation described in the core rules as an extreme, only found in rich empires, inhabited or ruled by many powerful wizards.  Closest examples I can think of would be Glantri (Mystara) and Thay (FR).  And even when I ran a campaign in Glantri, the only items that were commonplace were basic rings of protection, some magic weapons etc.To avoid that generic campaign feel (and to also help maintain balance and realism), vary the ease with which your players may acquire magic items.  In some backward regions, you can get magic items only by killing or stealing from the previous owners.  In more civilised advanced cultures, you can visit the wizards guild in any large city and see what they have, or comission an item from them.  Or contact a fence or master thief to see what might be obtained by other means.  Players will value items more this way, as they have gone to a little bit of effort to obtain them, instead of flicking through a catalogue of items at the local magic shop.And yes, despite the fact that the fighter really, desperately wants item X, and getting it will make him the best character ever, and the player can die a happy man after he gets it, he may, just may have to face up to the fact that he might not be able to find it through any of the usual sources.  He may have to go on some kind of extended quest to get it.  Or maybe only the sultan of city Y owns such an item - how badly do you want this item, exactly?I don't think that the above measures are particularly radical or unreasonable, and I think they can add a lot of flavour to the game.  And you might find that your heroic high-level PCs are able to walk the fine line between being powerful to the point of brokeness, and being just plain dead.</blockquote>

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