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I know this might not totally pertain the the op's topic but the last adventure I played in was 3.5 return to the temple of elemental evil, we quested in the temple for many lvls we eventually made it to the bbeg lair we were at lvl 11 and we faced a cr 20 encounter and killed it in 6 rounds with only 2 people being effective and that was because of teamwork not super high magic items we never made it to a shop durring the adventure we just got what the dm gave us which was not alot. At the end of the encounter we lvld 4 times it was crazy and we never had crazy magic items or super high stat bonus's we just played to the weakness of the bbeg and the strengths of our party.