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<blockquote data-quote="FireLance" data-source="post: 5113605" data-attributes="member: 3424">Hmmm, I was always under the impression that &quot;The Christmas Tree&quot; referred to the PC being decked out with magic items in all his slots so that when someone cast detect magic on him, he lit up like a Christmas tree. The fact that most PCs had the same items was a separate point entirely, and those items were called &quot;The Big Six&quot;.Anyhow, I agree with the posters who have mentioned that it's more of a taste issue. Some gamers prefer magic items to be more plentiful while others prefer magic items to be rarer. On the issue of whether magic items are &quot;necessary&quot; - isn't that campaign dependent? Sure, if you want use the default assumptions for determining encounter difficulty for the characters (i.e. CR, monster level or XP budget) then you should follow the default progression guidelines. However, if you don't follow the guidelines, you can still run a good game by adjusting the encounter difficulty accordingly (like we used to do before we had these guidelines). Either that, or run a more sandbox game, so that eyeballing the encounter difficulty becomes the players' problem. It might seem obvious, but if the system expects a level 20 character to have a +5 weapon in order to fight a level 20 monster, then a level 20 character that only has an ordinary weapon will have a harder time taking on that same level 20 monster. However, the character doesn't have to stop adventuing just because fighting level 20 monsters is difficult. Depending on the campaign style, the DM can plan for him to encounter a level 15 or 16 monster, or he can go look for a level 15 or 16 monster to defeat. Not following the default progression guidelines might mean more work, and you might make some mistakes when eyeballing encounter difficulty, but it shouldn't bring your game to a grinding halt.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="FireLance, post: 5113605, member: 3424"] Hmmm, I was always under the impression that "The Christmas Tree" referred to the PC being decked out with magic items in all his slots so that when someone cast [I]detect magic[/I] on him, he lit up like a Christmas tree. The fact that most PCs had the [I]same[/I] items was a separate point entirely, and those items were called "The Big Six". Anyhow, I agree with the posters who have mentioned that it's more of a taste issue. Some gamers prefer magic items to be more plentiful while others prefer magic items to be rarer. On the issue of whether magic items are "necessary" - isn't that campaign dependent? Sure, if you want use the default assumptions for determining encounter difficulty for the characters (i.e. CR, monster level or XP budget) then you should follow the default progression guidelines. However, if you don't follow the guidelines, you can still run a good game by adjusting the encounter difficulty accordingly (like we used to do [I]before[/I] we had these guidelines). Either that, or run a more sandbox game, so that eyeballing the encounter difficulty becomes the [I]players'[/I] problem. It might seem obvious, but if the system expects a level 20 character to have a +5 weapon in order to fight a level 20 monster, then a level 20 character that only has an ordinary weapon will have a harder time taking on that same level 20 monster. However, the character doesn't have to stop adventuing just because fighting level 20 monsters is difficult. Depending on the campaign style, the DM can plan for him to encounter a level 15 or 16 monster, or he can go look for a level 15 or 16 monster to defeat. Not following the default progression guidelines might mean more work, and you might make some mistakes when eyeballing encounter difficulty, but it shouldn't bring your game to a grinding halt. [/QUOTE]

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