I'm planning a shirt high level campaign (ive limited it to 14th or 15th level; still deciding there) that should last 1-3 sessions. To keep it short and vague, the plot hook revolves around the PCs being established heroes with QUITE the reputation of saving the land/world on an adventure or two.
There is an element in the hook that will give them a bit of disadvantage, but I'm expecting and looking forward to quite a lot of game breaking and ridiculous actions taken by the PCs via spells and techniques available to them at these higher levels. Thing is though, I want to keep it balanced between all 4 of them so no one feels less op than anyone else, and also keep things still a BIT of a challenge ala difficult challenges and their high stakes being calculated to party cr from official (and therefore more balanced) sources. Which is where the problem of magic items comes in and how they complicate what characters of each class would be capable of at their current level.
Magic/wonderous items/weapons can be loads of fun, but I'm not sure how many of each level is reasonable for players at such a high level to have each---- both in a story sense, and challenge rating sense. I've already got tables they can choose from from official sources (because like j said, I want to keep this balanced as possible, and I know how much letting people homebrew could tip the scale in one player vs another's favor)...but any suggestions on how many of each level of rarity I should allow per player? Any type limitations (like "[X] uncommon, [X] rare, and [X] legendary items but but only [X] number can be weapons")? And any that you advise I ban? (I'm pretty sure I'll be banning the deck of many things, for starters....) Any other conditions I'm not thinking of?
Also, any suggestions on how inventory? Should I just give them an amount of gold that they are allowed to "purchase" items from an expanded list during character creation with? How high do you think it would make sense to make it?
I think it's hard to have a one-way solution here. The amount of artifacts you provide your heroes with as well as the variety they can choose from I feel like lay within your own hands as a DM. If you feel they get to easy through the encounters - just push'em up. I always feel like it's really a fluid experience. Especially for two points:
Luck. I mean just by the amounts of Dice being rolled it can always go either way. Some of my big encounters the group just went through like a knife through hot butter other smaller encounters they got critted into oblivion.
The other point being your players yourself. Usually there is a big variety of how much people are into the technical and optimizing game. If you have one lady optimizing her character for hours and hours including finding the right artifacts and the other guy just is going with "oh, that sounds cool!" - it doesn't matter what you offer. The first one will most likely be stronger.
But thats okay. I feel like it's not just about raw numbers. People just want to feel useful in fights while also not being button pushers. The Warlock in my group sufferes from a bit from the "I press Eldritch Blast" sickness at the time. She gets bored by it. Because almost no matter what happens - thats what she does. Meanwhile our wizard summons fog clouds, teleports and shoots fireballs.
The warlock is still effective however - but she feels like a button pusher - the wizard in this case does not. I would encourage to sit down with your players and maybe have your players think about what these characters maybe lack. Not in power, but maybe in regards of choice. Because I feel like that is what is truly interesting. I personally mostly dislike basic "+2 Stat X" artifacts. all that changes is a number. But if they have to make a choice about it - and than have a success they feel rewarded for their choice.
If you want to go the standard way (here are 30 artifacts, here is your budget) I would set up solid prices for all of these. Maybe also make sure that they not all pick the same. It also takes away from characters feeling unique. I think the weapons limitations doesn't really matter. The greataxe barbarian probably only wants one reaaally cool greataxe, the rogue maybe wants to cool daggers. I think thats fine however.
I think you should have your "strong players" sit together with your less mechanical people in the group and just discuss it openly. How can we improve your character with some of these artifacts? What could be fun for you?
Last but not least I am also a big fan of giving each character a kind of goofy artifact. It's fun. Here I feel like you can easily also go into homebrew even if everything else is "classic". Here are a few I really like:
(I also sneaked in one of my own creations here ;) )
They are not game changing, but they make for fun moments and little peaks of excitement.
Regarding banning items I agree on the deck of many things. I personally also am not a big fan of Bag of Holdings. Too much time is spend managing that thing and the group usually tends to just trash literally everything into their that they find.
I think thats my two cents for now. All of this is of course to be taken with a grain of salt - DMing is always a very personal individual experience. Hope everything goes well, best of luck!
PCs of high level are really capable even without magic items. I have a character currently running through Tomb of Horrors and he doesn't even have a magic weapon.
You can do something like give items a point value for rarity
common - 1
uncommon - 2
rare - 3
very rare - 4
You can have 4-5 points worth of items, with GM veto power.
Use the rules from the DMG (p.38) which clearly state how much starting gold you get when making a higher level character. It also lists how many rare/uncommon items the players can choose for free besides their starting gear. Then have a simple list of the magical items with the price you deem they're worth. At that point everyone can use that list to spend their 5000 gold on buying as many magical items as they can afford. Then grant them nice items as loot as they progress during your short campaign. And I agree that +1 and +2 items are boring, but that's something you just have to accept when buying gear for new characters. The loot you give out however could be more interesting homebrew stuff.
5e isn't balanced around magical items. You can mostly ignore they even exist. That's why most of us homebrew cool items tailored to our group and campaigns. I'd be more worried about the spells and such they can have. They'll have some serious power to **** with you if they get creative. So spend time finding measures on how you want to deal with scrying, teleporting, invisibility etc etc. As said. If the players get creative they can really make your hard/deadly/challenging content as if it didn't even exists.
I'm planning a shirt high level campaign (ive limited it to 14th or 15th level; still deciding there) that should last 1-3 sessions. To keep it short and vague, the plot hook revolves around the PCs being established heroes with QUITE the reputation of saving the land/world on an adventure or two.
There is an element in the hook that will give them a bit of disadvantage, but I'm expecting and looking forward to quite a lot of game breaking and ridiculous actions taken by the PCs via spells and techniques available to them at these higher levels. Thing is though, I want to keep it balanced between all 4 of them so no one feels less op than anyone else, and also keep things still a BIT of a challenge ala difficult challenges and their high stakes being calculated to party cr from official (and therefore more balanced) sources. Which is where the problem of magic items comes in and how they complicate what characters of each class would be capable of at their current level.
Magic/wonderous items/weapons can be loads of fun, but I'm not sure how many of each level is reasonable for players at such a high level to have each---- both in a story sense, and challenge rating sense. I've already got tables they can choose from from official sources (because like j said, I want to keep this balanced as possible, and I know how much letting people homebrew could tip the scale in one player vs another's favor)...but any suggestions on how many of each level of rarity I should allow per player? Any type limitations (like "[X] uncommon, [X] rare, and [X] legendary items but but only [X] number can be weapons")? And any that you advise I ban? (I'm pretty sure I'll be banning the deck of many things, for starters....) Any other conditions I'm not thinking of?
Also, any suggestions on how inventory? Should I just give them an amount of gold that they are allowed to "purchase" items from an expanded list during character creation with? How high do you think it would make sense to make it?
Hey there!
I think it's hard to have a one-way solution here. The amount of artifacts you provide your heroes with as well as the variety they can choose from I feel like lay within your own hands as a DM. If you feel they get to easy through the encounters - just push'em up. I always feel like it's really a fluid experience. Especially for two points:
Luck. I mean just by the amounts of Dice being rolled it can always go either way. Some of my big encounters the group just went through like a knife through hot butter other smaller encounters they got critted into oblivion.
The other point being your players yourself. Usually there is a big variety of how much people are into the technical and optimizing game. If you have one lady optimizing her character for hours and hours including finding the right artifacts and the other guy just is going with "oh, that sounds cool!" - it doesn't matter what you offer. The first one will most likely be stronger.
But thats okay. I feel like it's not just about raw numbers. People just want to feel useful in fights while also not being button pushers. The Warlock in my group sufferes from a bit from the "I press Eldritch Blast" sickness at the time. She gets bored by it. Because almost no matter what happens - thats what she does. Meanwhile our wizard summons fog clouds, teleports and shoots fireballs.
The warlock is still effective however - but she feels like a button pusher - the wizard in this case does not. I would encourage to sit down with your players and maybe have your players think about what these characters maybe lack. Not in power, but maybe in regards of choice. Because I feel like that is what is truly interesting.
I personally mostly dislike basic "+2 Stat X" artifacts. all that changes is a number. But if they have to make a choice about it - and than have a success they feel rewarded for their choice.
If you want to go the standard way (here are 30 artifacts, here is your budget) I would set up solid prices for all of these.
Maybe also make sure that they not all pick the same. It also takes away from characters feeling unique.
I think the weapons limitations doesn't really matter. The greataxe barbarian probably only wants one reaaally cool greataxe, the rogue maybe wants to cool daggers. I think thats fine however.
I think you should have your "strong players" sit together with your less mechanical people in the group and just discuss it openly. How can we improve your character with some of these artifacts? What could be fun for you?
Last but not least I am also a big fan of giving each character a kind of goofy artifact. It's fun. Here I feel like you can easily also go into homebrew even if everything else is "classic".
Here are a few I really like:
https://www.dndbeyond.com/magic-items/27258-bag-o-bees
https://www.dndbeyond.com/magic-items/28085-bag-of-randomness
https://www.dndbeyond.com/magic-items/306220-the-lustpick
(I also sneaked in one of my own creations here ;) )
They are not game changing, but they make for fun moments and little peaks of excitement.
Regarding banning items I agree on the deck of many things. I personally also am not a big fan of Bag of Holdings. Too much time is spend managing that thing and the group usually tends to just trash literally everything into their that they find.
I think thats my two cents for now. All of this is of course to be taken with a grain of salt - DMing is always a very personal individual experience.
Hope everything goes well, best of luck!
PCs of high level are really capable even without magic items. I have a character currently running through Tomb of Horrors and he doesn't even have a magic weapon.
You can do something like give items a point value for rarity
common - 1
uncommon - 2
rare - 3
very rare - 4
You can have 4-5 points worth of items, with GM veto power.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
I'd just keep it simple.
Use the rules from the DMG (p.38) which clearly state how much starting gold you get when making a higher level character. It also lists how many rare/uncommon items the players can choose for free besides their starting gear. Then have a simple list of the magical items with the price you deem they're worth. At that point everyone can use that list to spend their 5000 gold on buying as many magical items as they can afford. Then grant them nice items as loot as they progress during your short campaign. And I agree that +1 and +2 items are boring, but that's something you just have to accept when buying gear for new characters. The loot you give out however could be more interesting homebrew stuff.
5e isn't balanced around magical items. You can mostly ignore they even exist. That's why most of us homebrew cool items tailored to our group and campaigns. I'd be more worried about the spells and such they can have. They'll have some serious power to **** with you if they get creative. So spend time finding measures on how you want to deal with scrying, teleporting, invisibility etc etc. As said. If the players get creative they can really make your hard/deadly/challenging content as if it didn't even exists.