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What does one do as a DM in a setting where magical items are rare, powerful magical items are unique and encounters still have the same CR as any other setting? In this case I am referring to Dragonlance. In the current iteration the Gods have only recently returned and in the magical dark ages when the gods were absent magical items were horded and a massive amount where either expended completely or Spell Leached for magical power. As Sorcerers and Mystics could not create magical items (As only Wizards, Clerics and Druids can craft magical items) by the time the Gods returned magical items are rare commodities. As clerics and wizards are only recently relearning their arts there is not a large assembly line system of magical items in the setting.
The D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder economy calculate CR's based on expected power levels of the party with magical gear. The Age of Mortals adventure path reflects the low amount of magical items as there is only a few items that show up in the adventure and by the time they reach level 8 they'll find only one magical item crafter who charges higher prices and can only craft magical items with a value of 2000 or less. In addition before level 4 there is only ONE magical weapon available which can easily be missed if the PC's do not do an optional encounter that can easily be skipped over. Without this item they end up in fights with incorporeal creatures without any magical weapons. So should I as a DM try and incorporate more magical item drops into a low magical item setting or should the PC's bite the bullet and "Deal with it"?
I have a set of house rules that I use to replace the vast majority of magic items with build in abilities for characters. Evil Lincoln has a similar one floating around.
Something like one of those is what you need if you want to maintain the CR system but have very few magic items. I can link you if you like.
Edit: Mine
His is a bit easier to implement then mine, I think mine offers more flexible options.
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Dragonlance is an odd beast to be sure. There is plentiful amount of users of magic in the world. There just isn't a lot of Magical Items due to massive overuse and spell-leaching and restrictions on who can make them. Indeed this also affects the economy of healing items as well. You're not going to walk into a random church and be able to buy a Wand of Healing on a whim. At best you might find one in a larger city with A LOT of effort and a massive pile of money (As magical items are rare they're marked up in price). Any magical gear beyond a +2 rating is "Unique" as there is probably no one commonly available that can craft something so powerful these days except maybe the Masters of the Orders, the Dragon Overlords or the leaders of the Holy Order of the Stars.
Dragonlance is an odd beast to be sure. There is plentiful amount of users of magic in the world. There just isn't a lot of Magical Items due to massive overuse and spell-leaching and restrictions on who can make them. Indeed this also affects the economy of healing items as well. You're not going to walk into a random church and be able to buy a Wand of Healing on a whim. At best you might find one in a larger city with A LOT of effort and a massive pile of money (As magical items are rare they're marked up in price). Any magical gear beyond a +2 rating is "Unique" as there is probably no one commonly available that can craft something so powerful these days except maybe the Masters of the Orders, the Dragon Overlords or the leaders of the Holy Order of the Stars.
I am aware of that. Thats why I am suggestiong one of the above 2 systems. They replace alot of the bonuses you get from magic items, so the players can function even at higher levels with very few magic items against typical CR opponents.
... So should I as a DM try and incorporate more magical item drops into a low magical item setting or should the PC's bite the bullet and "Deal with it"?
Kinda depends what you (the whole group not just the GM) are looking for in the campaign.
a) Some people really want a real gritty/hard-mode/always-on-the-verge-of-death type of campaign where the PC's have to figure out a way to compensate for their lack of gear. I personally really like those type of campaigns (even though I die a lot), but many people do not.b) Opposite extreme add more drops and/or take away the monster resistances and DR.
c) Somewhere in between. Maybe drop a low charge wand with versatile weapon. Maybe change the DR adamantine/25 down to DR adamantine/5. Discuss with the players that there are spells and/or cheap things they could make themselves (like a scroll of magic weapon, versatile weapon, ghostbane dirge, align weapon, etc...) or should have the spell prepared most of the time.
The other option instead of giving bonuses to characters as Kolokotroni suggests is to instead just scale down all the CR and encounters the group would fight. Some creatures may just have to be outright removed because without magic items you simply couldn't win. I think this option has a grittier feel to it.
Implementing it is probably as hard as implementing an option that gives bonuses, however some people have already laid out systems for you.
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The other option instead of giving bonuses to characters as Kolokotroni suggests is to instead just scale down all the CR and encounters the group would fight. Some creatures may just have to be outright removed because without magic items you simply couldn't win. I think this option has a grittier feel to it.
Implementing it is probably as hard as implementing an option that gives bonuses, however some people have already laid out systems for you.
I personally think this is a better way to go. I never liked the idea of giving bonuses to players to 'replace' the 'loss' of magic items. While it does work to maintain game balance, it just feels cheap to me (sorry).
Adjusting CRs and watching for party-killer-monster-abilities is a bit more work for the GM, but I think the result can be quite good. I am starting to run a game just now where magic items will be less common and it is the way I am going with it.
You can do this if you are writing your own material, but it becomes a lot bigger of a challenge when using published material. Its not so easy to adjust CRs of story critical encounters, and it kind of defeats the purpose of using published adventures. One of the primary reasons I made my house rules is because since moving to pathfinder I've started using AP's instead of writing my own adventures (mostly due to life changes and having less time to do prep).
I also think that anything that adds to a GM's workload is a bad thing. Particularly at high levels a simple scaling of CR's wont be sufficient. Particularly when it comes to things like saves and dcs, the math doesnt skew evenly across monsters.
I've played with some groups where it wasn't so much of a burden on the GM as it was on the players.
We had to always make a lot of effort to learn about the potential opposition. Spy on them and watch what they did in other fights and conflicts. Have plans and contingencies already in place to deal with an unexpected encounter with say a DR Evil/20 creature. Things like that.
Also, we often had to run. So we always had an escape and evasion plan in place. The slow / heavily armored guys had a brace of fly potions. The fast hard to hit guy was detailed to try and lead the bad guys away. General directions of flight and a rendezvous point were set.
http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2q1ra?P6-Codex-E6Pathfinder
Check it out... I think it has a lot to offer
Please contribute:)