No magic items

[Garfunion]

Has anyone used the Fixed Enhancement Bonuses table in the Dark Sun campaign setting book. If so how well did it work for your game.

I maybe moving back to playing 4e from 5e

[Gilphon]

It's a generally a well regarded system. Most people don't go for no magic items at all, though, just not as many.

[Tegu8788]

I always use it. One thing that can be frustrating of its a low magic world, you want an item for its enchantment, and don't get the full benefit compared to the guy that bought a less mechanically important item. You got a belt, I got a sword, but somehow the belt feels better.

Now, at higher level I bet that's less of an issue. At lvl 2/3 I got frustrated, but if my inherent bonus was higher than my magic item I'd be less peeved.


It is very, very important if someone wants to use more than one item to hurt people, as it is if a character ever loses their weapon and has to rearm with generic stuff is still competent. At higher levels, it's great, and it let's you use an iconic low-level weapon for an entire campaign.

[Garfunion]

Thank you. I didn't think I would get a response so quickly. These forums don't seem to be really active.

[Tegu8788]

By and large we have mostly said everything to each other that we want to say, but we still want to talk. Which means when someone new shows up, we are all very excited to answer questions.

[Kurald Galain]

Has anyone used the Fixed Enhancement Bonuses table in the Dark Sun campaign setting book. If so how well did it work for your game.

It is my experience that the game plays better (more streamlined, more balanced, and faster) with few or no magic items (and the fixed bonuses you mention), than with the WBL christmas tree that is the default.

[MwaO]

Two issues with no magic items:
Certain types of combat get really weird if no one has magic items, which really encourages specific archetypes. Aka ranged PCs over melee. Flying opponents as an example.

A striker PC ought to be averaging about 20/40/60 damage per round at levels 10/20/30 as a baseline. If they're doing that, they kill a standard in the same and 'right' amount of time at all levels. More than that and the DM has to start leveling up encounters to present the right amount of threat, less than that and combats will start to drag out and go with at-wills. The second eventually happens without magic items.

[MoutonRustique]

If you remove magic items from the game, you remove some possibilities of expanding a player's abilities - i.e. the melee Fighter will be hurt if you require a lot of mobility (no teleport, no fly, etc... those kinds of things)

Honestly, it's not something that will really make itself felt until late paragon/epic levels. 4e does a fair job of evening the field between the casters and non-casters, but at the higher levels, some builds could feel a good deal more "mundane" than others. But again, this isn't really felt until high-paragon/epic levels - so probably not even a thing.

Also, it's just something that will need to be kept in mind by the DM - there's nothing game-shattering in any case.

Takeaway - you're fine.