DM Ways to Counter-Act Magic Items from Breaking the Game

[BDRook]

So I want to preface this by saying that I understand that in the 5e rules magical items are completely optional. I, however, personally find that taking them away strips a lot of the fun away from the game, as half the fun of playing DnD is finding all the new and shiny loot to play around with.

I like giving away magical stuff like candy to my players, but with bounded accuracy it seems to be making the game a cake walk for them. They're level 12 currently, all with +2 items gained from a hefty bit of adventuring over many years. The problem is that with all the magic SWAG I've given them, they nearly always hit even on crappy rolls. I swear the rogue/fighter has to roll below a 5 to be able to miss anything, and with ample ways to get advantage the players end up never missing. I should add I DM a group of 7+ so the damage they can dish out can pretty much annihilate any creature should they focus fire on them.

To counter-act it a little I typically bump the AC of most creatures by 2 in order to give them any sort of fighting chance. Enough to wear they're still consistently hitting, but a less than ideal roll causes them to miss. Any other DM's have the same issues/solutions?

[mgshamster]

I've been treating my party as effectively two levels higher for determining difficulty of encounters. Seems to have worked out so far.

[gfishfunk]

My preference for shiny loot is to give them things that do stuff rather than provide bonuses.

Like a sword that deals fire damage instead of regular damage, or a bottle of rocks that can grow to be 10x10 boulders. Seems to make them happy without unbalancing the game.

However, you are already there, so go with upping difficulty of encounters, not necessarily the enemies.

[SilverStud]

I posted on another thread with similar advice.

Basically, the enemies need to be smarter. Have enemies attack at night, or lay ambushes, or leverage environmental magic and effects. I had a party get wrecked (they won, barely) because they didn't expect the enemy cultists to have Water Walk. Suddenly the bridge wasn't the chokepoint they thought it was................

If enemies know the party is coming, set traps. Don't go for lame damage traps. Get traps that bind them in place, or that make loud noises, or that debilitate in some way.

Goblins in tall grass are an utter nightmare. All they have to do is stay spread out and Hide every turn after they attack.

Powerful enemies that you'd like to last longer? Give that enemy wizard a Shield Guardian, that mad Prophet some fanatic followers that block attacks with their bodies. Use the Legendary Actions and Lair Actions on the dragons and stuff. Those can hurt very badly.

Speaking specifically of dragons: Why on this green earth would a proud creature like that ever deign to get into melee with mere mortals? The first several times I threw a dragon at parties of mine, I did the same old boring schtick of having the dragon charge up, use breath once, then multiattack after that. After a prolonged slapping contest, the party usually wins. In reality (haha "reality"), dragons would strafe the ever-loving snot out of the encounter, flying around and waiting for its breath to recharge or for the party to make some dumb mistake.

Archers in the rear, tanks up front, knives in the back.

tl;dr
Just shake it up and use the full set of abilities in creatures' stat blocks. In my experience, players steamroll encounters when you forget to use monster abilities, and struggle deliciously when you remember.

[Kane0]

- Hand out more consumables rather than permanents. +X gear is the stuff that messes with the system the most

- Have them targeted for their powerful magic gear. Plenty of people wojld want to steal those wonderful items

- a couple enemies might have access to means of disabling or destroying magic items, even temporarily works when timed right. Same goes for draining charges.

[MinotaurWarrior]

Give the monsters magical items too.

Make the powerful items sentient and baneful.

Antimagic fields.

Have the PCs give out items as quest rewards. They're christmas trees, they should act like it. Ganon's coming next week. The triforce pieces are scattered one week away in each direction. You've got to incentivize two parties of adventurers / some planar allies to take care of the other two pieces.

Sphere of annihilation fight (aka the best kind of fight).

[Digimike]

Typically the party will be smaller than the encounters, so have some of the slappys attempt to disarm or graple.

If the slappys manage a disarm attempt...a kobald (or whatever) would be more than happy picking up the fighters excessively shiney sword and go dashing down a hallway in it's lair. That hallway would likely be full of traps :-)

To many bags of holding full of magickey loots? A few good fireballs may just destroy them. Dont forget some, even magical, items may be subject to aoe effects

Slimes/oozes are another good way to lessen the party's encumbrance. Although it's no longer as bad as 2/3e.

If the party seems very rich and doesn't try to be very low key they could also attract the attention of bandits or a master thief. (Making off with a single +2 magic weapon would set many NPCs up for a lifetime)

[Vogonjeltz]

So I want to preface this by saying that I understand that in the 5e rules magical items are completely optional. I, however, personally find that taking them away strips a lot of the fun away from the game, as half the fun of playing DnD is finding all the new and shiny loot to play around with.

I like giving away magical stuff like candy to my players, but with bounded accuracy it seems to be making the game a cake walk for them. They're level 12 currently, all with +2 items gained from a hefty bit of adventuring over many years. The problem is that with all the magic SWAG I've given them, they nearly always hit even on crappy rolls. I swear the rogue/fighter has to roll below a 5 to be able to miss anything, and with ample ways to get advantage the players end up never missing. I should add I DM a group of 7+ so the damage they can dish out can pretty much annihilate any creature should they focus fire on them.

To counter-act it a little I typically bump the AC of most creatures by 2 in order to give them any sort of fighting chance. Enough to wear they're still consistently hitting, but a less than ideal roll causes them to miss. Any other DM's have the same issues/solutions?

You like breaking the games magic item distribution balance but are concerned that you're breaking the game by doing just that and want advice on how you can stop breaking the game?

1) Uhm...stop giving out magic items with far more regularity than is expected? Seeing as that ship has sailed, maybe give magic items that don't give raw attack and damage bonuses, but instead ones that do fun things or have limited uses. i.e. Potions, Scrolls. Or weapons that are magical but not bonused (Weapon of Warning, Minor Magical weapons with interesting attributes: Floats in water, Weighs nothing, Unbreakable, and so forth).

2) More enemies that use magic items but are fought in conditions in which it's impossible to loot them (i.e. Chase sequence, disaster sequence)

3) Bandits/Thieves make plays for their absurdly valuable gear all the time, sometimes they get through.

Something to keep in mind, a +2 bonus isn't alot, players are supposed to be hitting most enemies much of the time so the game is working as intended, there shouldn't be many rounds of nobody hitting.

Minor magic item properties (DMG 143) seem most appropriate for any new equipment.

[Flashy]

If you really want to counteract the effect without changing anything about the game then yeah, giving every creature +2 AC should work pretty much precisely. At that point I'd ask why you bother handing out +2 weapons instead of simply weapons that simply give +2 on damage rolls, since it's the same result in the end.

The real difference with static modifiers weapons in 5e is that it fundamentally shifts the tone of the game. A +2 attack modifier is equivalent to 4-8 character levels of attack progression (depending if you count potential ASIs or not). A party of 12th level characters sporting +2 weapons likely have the same attack modifier (~+11) as 20th level characters in a game without static modifier weapons. Players go from being a normal adventuring party to a being highly elite adventuring party. You can try to scale the game to counteract that, give out magic items with crazy effects instead of static modifiers, or have their enemies treat them as notably stronger than normal adventurers. All options work.

[Kane0]

Just checking since it hasn't come up yet, how is your group faring with the attunement rules?

[JellyPooga]

Create a magic item equivalent of a Rust Monster? Give it a natural ability to emit an AMF or Counterspell effect. Make it BIG too, while you're at it. Then have a Queen version of it take up residence in somewhere with lots of wizards and a large population. She devours spellcasters and anyone with any kind of magical heritage as well. She particularly likes Elves. Have her drones go on the usual rampage around the city, bringing back items and magical peeps in an inert form/unconscious for her to consume. The longer they wait the bigger she gets as she feeds. They wait too long and they'll have a Kaiju sized beastie to fight...perhaps awakening and recruiting Tarrasque could be an option for them. Then they just have to deal with Big T...and he's hungry.

"There was an old woman who swallowed a fly..."

[Malifice]

Avoid plus X items.

Magic weapons that do an extra one D6 fire or cold damage on a hit. Magic shields that impose disadvantage on ranged weapon attacks. Magic armor that provides resistance on one damage type.

[Demonslayer666]

I completely agree with magic items being an integral part of D&D. It's part of character advancement!

In the game I run, I have been giving out magic items, but I am not having issues with their power level (they just hit 9th). I tend (try?) to keep combats a little more complex and dangerous - even before they got magic items. They are just too experienced of players. Involve more targets and environmental obstacles.

There's always the option of making them sacrifice magic items, like to a powerful being, or to an altar to open the magical gate, etc.

[MBControl]

I like my magic items to do one of three things.

1) Improve an aspect of a character that they have been striving to improve. They will be happy with even a minor improvement.

2) Foreshadow future events. A +1 magic sword is useful, but when they find out it glows around dragons (and becomes a +3 vs dragons), it plants the idea that dragons may be in their future, they just don't now when.

3) finally, everybody likes to do magic things. It's always nice to give a non-magic user a way to throw down a spell via a loaded wand or something.

Bottom line is the effects don't need to be huge.