The problem of keeping magic items scarce...

[Warren Okuma]

Bah. Just use tactics. Giants + Sunder.

 

[blargney the second]

Wisdom of the ages.
-blarg

 

[Slife]

12th???

You are letting them last way too long...

They would be getting way too big for their britches by 7th...maybe 8th...that's when you bring the hammer down !

~ OO

But then you don't get any XP for them.

 

[Hairfoot]

If the PCs are tooled up, then they're going to be targets for anyone or anything with a taste for magic. Have a dragon come in and demand a share of the goods, or, as mentioned before, a heavily-armed group of tax collectors.

They don't have to be certain-death encounters, but draining enough that the party has trouble meeting other goals while having to deal with them. Eventually they may decide it's worth giving up some items in order to stop the harassment.

Alternatively, offer the players something juicy in exchange. Perhaps a temple or entity which consumes magic items in order to provide healing, resurrection, long-distance travel, or vital information.

Or, smack the party with some Mord's Disjunction.

 

[Banshee16]

I might have missed it, but item saving throws are always a good thing...

In my campaigns, I'd be sure to enforce those, and whenever spellcasters or monsters with energy attacks were around, characters would lose items....not the whole enchilada or anything....but a few each time they had one of those fights? It was kind of natural attrition.

Banshee

 

[Nightfall]

Nah what you're dealing with isn't the NPCs having less, it's the fact the PCs keep them too long.

 

[CruelSummerLord]

Use monsters as enemies instead of PCs?

Really, you don't have terribly many good options here. D&D3.5 is meant to be played with continuous magic item acquisition (whether from bad guy equipment or actual loot). Even then, if you only use monsters, you're going to have to make sure that their capabilities match the PCs sans tons of magic gear, reducing the overall party EL.

As someone who's tried this before, basically, you're in a lose-lose situation. Your best bet is to switch to Iron Heroes(IH baddies don't have gear, so they're viable options, BUT their token abilities get out of hand on the DM side) if you want something completely compatible with your 3.5ed stuff. If you want to branch out just a little farther, try True20, where gaining magic items simply isn't a factor in character advancement, unlike D&D3.5.

See, this is what I meant when I asked whether 3E/3.5 dictated a certain style of play.

And most people shouted me down.

Go figure.

 

[Nightfall]

Cruel,

I didn't shout you down but I do think the dictation of play can be attributed different depending on the factors used.

In this instance, where magic items are scare, fighting humaniod NPCs tend to be a little less intriguing if the PCs have all the good items.

It's different when you're fighting a dragon and you have the good items to do so.

 

[Storyteller01]

Replace NPC magic items with equivalent cost in expendable or limited use items. Either they use them in combat, or the PC's hoard them for rainy days. It helps with your problem and fits your campaign setting.

 

[Nightfall]

Another option for NPCs that just occurred to me, have said NPCs have spell-like abilities and/or special personal items that only work for them. It's a tad unfair I know but this way the NPCs don't lose out as badly.