I'll hopefully be getting my DMG for Christmas (if it arrives on time). However I'm not letting that stop me from converting a Pathfinder AP that I'm going to be potentially running next year. In converting a Pathfinder AP I'm removing a whole lot of magic items, and I'm a bit unsure on what to keep and what to remove some of the times.
Has anyone run the numbers as to how many magic items the "standard" campaign is and of what type? I understand I can hand out as many (or as few) magic items as I want, but I'm looking for a baseline to guide me. All 3.5e/4e adventures have a lot more magic items then would appear in a standard 5e game. So I'm looking to not go overboard in removing them.
There is the attunement mechanism, which makes it much more unlikely to unbalance a party. If you can only use up to 3 strong items, while the smallers will have effects, but won't be half as impressive, the power level will remain stable at some point.
But since 5e doesn't need magic items at all to be played fine, I'd simply keep the most memorable and important ones, while the rest is practically unnecessary.
Thanks guys. I realise that it's not the primary balancing method. I'm largely looking for a good feel and benchmark so that the players enjoy themselves. My experience to date hasn't really prepared me for a game with 5th ed's rarity. Hoard of the Dragon Queen didn't feel like it had a very good balance in number of magic items dropped and feels a fair bit frustrating to get halfway through it with no magic items yet. The Starter Set on the other hand feels like a good rate, although perhaps a little bit too heavy.
As for removing the treadmill items (i.e. those that are purely +1 or +2) that's what I'm doing. Although I come across items like a ring of protection +1. Should that be removed? Or, given it's got a 5th edition equivalent, should it be kept? That's why I'm looking for a benchmark to help me feel my way through excising the superfluous magical items and such. If the benchmark (i.e. typical campaign) says players should end up with 20 permanent magic items by level 20 and once I've removed the "treadmill" items I've only got 13 per PC, then I could throw in a couple of the iconic items like "ring of protection" and boost up the treasure values.
Thus far I've got:
- Level 1: None
- Level 2: None
- Level 3: 1 magical item
- Level 4: 6 magical items (5 useful ones)
- Level 5: 2 magical/fantastical items (1 they abandon)
- Level 6: 3 magical items
- Level 7: 3 magical items
- Level 8: 3 magical items
- Level 9: 2 magical items
For a group of 5 players this is a total of 3 to 4 items per player. That's about 1 item for each PC every 3 levels. Do people think this is enough (realising there'll also be consumables in addition) or would it be worthwhile throwing in some more?
There is no magic item handout guide as far as I know. It's one of the beauties of 5e.
Psikerlord wrote:
Kentus wrote:
There is a chart for starting characters above first level (an eqipment chart) but it's not really intended as a "here is what you should hand out in terms of magic items at each level" sort of thing.
There's also a place that states a typical adventure yields W rolls on the challenge 1-4 tables, X rolls on the challenge 5-10 tables, Y rolls on the challenge 11-16 tables, and Z rolls on the challenge 17-20 tables.
You could find the expected chance for a permanent magic item multiply it by the expected number of rolls as given. Then probably add a few more possible items to that from quest rewards and special monsters who are armed with magic gear or have hoards of treasure.
Lawolf wrote:
JohnLynch wrote: