D&D (2024) Wrapping up first 2-20 2024 campaign this week, some of my thoughts

[WanderingMystic]

+1 I have no problems with as non attunement items, to be honest when I run campaigns those are usually fluffed as mastered worked and not magical. I do feel however that +3 should probably just be removed or be legendary where +2 should be very rare.

I had never looked at how they changed the vicious weapon, +1d6 would be more than strong enough as a rare even if it required attunement.

@ECMO3 I love that house rule for going to 0. Right now as a player one of our other players is a grave domain cleric and the whole concept of its better for me to wait until you die to heal you feels ridiculous

 

[TwoSix]

Well here is what I would do:

1. Ban Vicious Weapons and make rings of resistance attunement

2. Play a lot of monsters that are resistant to BPS, this will drive down the effectiveness of martials who use extra attack with weapons and thereby make mastery less effective.

3. Make "Deadly" encounters the norm at level 9+

4. Don't allow buying or crafting magic items except for potions, scrolls and things explicitly allowed as part of class or subclass (i.e. Artificer).

5. Don't allow special facilities in Bastions, make them flavor only.

6. Going to 0 hit points and being revived before dying healing raises exhaustion by one level.

7. Grappling someone moves you into their space (you occupy the same space while grappled so dragging through spike growth damages both of you).

Those things would make it better, I don't know if they would fix it.

Were they any other items that stood out to you as being too strong considering their rarity or lack of attunement? I want to house rule some stuff preemptively for my 20th level game.

 

[ECMO3]

So we are circling a lot around the magic item issue, so lets try and break it down.

1) First question (knowing nothing about the module), is did the DM provide magic items based on the module recommendation or treasure tables, or was this from the standard tables in the DMG....etc etc.

Module recommendations, but also allowed purchased and crafting.

4) Perhaps the OP could provide us more insight into what other magic items the party had. The rings are a nice boost but I don't think they are game altering in the way some people here think, but depending on what else they had access to I could see the concern.

The most game breaking are the Vicious weapons by far. We have a lot of random magic items and I don't know everyone else's, I posted mine above. The Legendary Items we have as a party are:

Hammer of Thunderbolts
Rod of Lordly Might (I have this)
Girdle of Giant Strength
Tailisman of Pure Good

The quest we are on now also provides a Vorpal Weapon as a reward, but we don't have it yet.

 

[ECMO3]

Were they any other items that stood out to you as being too strong considering their rarity or lack of attunement? I want to house rule some stuff preemptively for my 20th level game.

Vicious Weapons and Ring of Resistance are the two standouts to me. I can't think of any others that are big issues (and the Rings are not as impactful as the weapons).

 

[Sword of Spirit]

In 3e a +1 to hit was considered equivalent to a +2 damage. Does it not work out that way in 5e? Because by that metric a rare (+2) weapon is worth about 6 damage, while that +2d6 vicious is worth 7, so definitely close to rare than the 9 damage for very rare.

 

[Clint_L]

2) The 10 rings, while obviously that is a LOT of rings, I mean realistically the vast majority of those aren't going to have an impact in the majority of fights, and rarely will two rings work together to produce an even larger effect. Probably the biggest factor is that the entire party would have fire resistance or cold resistance, as normally with those items one member is looking good but everyone else gets cooked and the pressure is still on.

Every party member basically having resistance to all damage is going to have a profound effect on every fight. There's no two ways around it. The DM would have to make serious adjustments, and I sort of wonder what the point is.

3) WOTC can make all the claims it wants about assuming the game has 0 magic items....but they themselves NEVER go with that assumption in there modules. Magic Items are always found in the modules, and so to me the high level game does assume a baseline of magic items and shoudl be balanced around such. I have no issue with the game being "playable" at those levels, but it shouldn't be the baseline when its quite clear in actual play magic items are assumed. Just as a dm with a boatload of items should have to adjust harder encounters....dms that provide no magic items should have to adjust to easier ones.

It really varies by adventure. I'm currently playing the Vecna 11-20 campaign and it is strikingly low magic, which is my preference.

 

[Sulicius]

A +3 Shield is Very Rare, which is about right I think and TBH that is not a very big deal in play (at the level we are at). Not nearly as big a deal as the Vicious Weapons.

I think I have a 21 AC with a +3 shield (it was 22 before I unattuned to the Cloak of Protection), but monsters are regularly beating that at this level.

Don't get me wrong, it is better than the 18 I would have without it, but it is not nearly as gamebreaking as other less Rare items.

Yeah it will be fine at tier 3-4, but earlier than that and it causes issues. Mostly because it's always the AC stacking character who tries to get it, making a huge AC imbalance.

 

[ECMO3]

In 3e a +1 to hit was considered equivalent to a +2 damage. Does it not work out that way in 5e? Because by that metric a rare (+2) weapon is worth about 6 damage, while that +2d6 vicious is worth 7, so definitely close to rare than the 9 damage for very rare.

A +2 is worth approximately +2.5 damage, +3 is worth about +4 damage, but it depends heavily on AC and the weapon itself.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

A +2 is worth approximately +2.5 damage, +3 is worth about +4 damage, but it depends heavily on AC and the weapon itself.

Thanks!

 

[Mort]

9

A +2 is worth approximately +2.5 damage, +3 is worth about +4 damage, but it depends heavily on AC and the weapon itself.

And, as a whole, 5e monsters have fairly low ACs. I haven't looked to heavily at the 2025 versions, but I don't think they changed AC much at all.

Then you have easy to get advantage which means likelihood to hit goes up even more.

Interesting to see the math, but I suspect 2d6 per attack will outpace even a plus 3 weapon against an average monster meant for 18th level PCs.