As the title says, I will be DM-ing the Princes of the Apocalypse module and I'm thinking of giving my players a feat and a free uncommon magic item before we begin the campaign (they are starting at level 3. Would that be too much, okay or should I just go with a feat or an uncommon magic item?
Feat at level 1 is the new normal. All recent backgrounds come with a feat, and they say that if you're using them, give everyone a feat (from a limited list), no matter what their background.
As for the item, I don't know the adventure, but it's probably overkill. If you find they need a boost, you could let them find some extra items early on.
The main OP feats to watch out for are anything with the words "Weapon" and "Master" in them. Also, the Heavy Armor Master, Sharpshooter and maybe the Spell Sniper feats.
As written, yes. Princes of the Apocalypse was released when the only real class choices were in the Player's Handbook. Pretty much any of the newer class options are going to be OP for that campaign.
But, remember that you can always simply up the difficulty challenge of each encounter. Buff the player characters, buff their enemies. All things in balance!
Keep mind that Fiends in older editions often possessed spellcasting abilities. Just by adding some useful spells to the mid and upper-tier fiends and maybe increasing HD slightly should about balance .
A DM can pretty much compensate for anything that you give to the characters by increasing the challenge of the encounters. So, giving the characters a feat and an uncommon magic item to start won't break anything.
However, stuff like magic items can often be more fun when recovered during the adventure after overcoming challenges than something they get at first level - unless you limit the first level items a bit to things with utility (Bag of Holding) rather than an item that increases character mobility (Winged Boots) or power (+1 weapon). Since you are starting at level 3 though, there is a chance that they would have already found something in their adventuring.
One thing to keep in mind with many WotC adventures is that the itemization usually isn't very good. Often they have limited magic items (Tomb of Annihilation). Or perhaps what magic items the adventure has are concentrated towards the end in one or two rooms (Curse of Strahd for example). There is also no guarantee that a magic weapon usable by a particular character can be found anywhere in the adventure. Magic bows for example can be very scarce in some of these adventures making it more challenging for a player with a ranged character. So, you may want to take a look at the characters and the adventure and perhaps adjust the items that they might find so that there is at least one item the character might find essential available somewhere in the adventure.
As the title says, I will be DM-ing the Princes of the Apocalypse module and I'm thinking of giving my players a feat and a free uncommon magic item before we begin the campaign (they are starting at level 3. Would that be too much, okay or should I just go with a feat or an uncommon magic item?
Feat at level 1 is the new normal. All recent backgrounds come with a feat, and they say that if you're using them, give everyone a feat (from a limited list), no matter what their background.
As for the item, I don't know the adventure, but it's probably overkill. If you find they need a boost, you could let them find some extra items early on.
But if you think it'll be more fun, go for it.
The main OP feats to watch out for are anything with the words "Weapon" and "Master" in them. Also, the Heavy Armor Master, Sharpshooter and maybe the Spell Sniper feats.
As written, yes. Princes of the Apocalypse was released when the only real class choices were in the Player's Handbook. Pretty much any of the newer class options are going to be OP for that campaign.
But, remember that you can always simply up the difficulty challenge of each encounter. Buff the player characters, buff their enemies. All things in balance!
Keep mind that Fiends in older editions often possessed spellcasting abilities. Just by adding some useful spells to the mid and upper-tier fiends and maybe increasing HD slightly should about balance .
A DM can pretty much compensate for anything that you give to the characters by increasing the challenge of the encounters. So, giving the characters a feat and an uncommon magic item to start won't break anything.
However, stuff like magic items can often be more fun when recovered during the adventure after overcoming challenges than something they get at first level - unless you limit the first level items a bit to things with utility (Bag of Holding) rather than an item that increases character mobility (Winged Boots) or power (+1 weapon). Since you are starting at level 3 though, there is a chance that they would have already found something in their adventuring.
One thing to keep in mind with many WotC adventures is that the itemization usually isn't very good. Often they have limited magic items (Tomb of Annihilation). Or perhaps what magic items the adventure has are concentrated towards the end in one or two rooms (Curse of Strahd for example). There is also no guarantee that a magic weapon usable by a particular character can be found anywhere in the adventure. Magic bows for example can be very scarce in some of these adventures making it more challenging for a player with a ranged character. So, you may want to take a look at the characters and the adventure and perhaps adjust the items that they might find so that there is at least one item the character might find essential available somewhere in the adventure.
OP feat list: Great Weapon Master, Heavy Armor Master, Sharpshooter, Sentinel.