Even their lucky blows dealt negligible damage. Monsters could only hit him on a roll of 20. I once ran a convention game for a paragon-tier table that included a defender optimized for maximum defense. Item slots worked perfectly, but once players added boons from powers and abilities, the game allowed extreme optimizations. The game added cloth armor so Wizards could gain an AC bonus. The ring of protection became the neck slot’s amulet of protection, but amulets could no longer enhance AC. For example, any enhancement to armor class had to come from armor, while items in the neck slot improved other defenses. This restriction relied on common sense until third edition’s Magic Item Compendium quantified body parts as item slots.įourth edition reduced the number of item slots and linked types of enhancements to specific slots. One limitation reduced the decorations on Christmas-tree PCs by limiting magic items to one per body part. Presumably, the designers pledged to hold to a short list of types. Each new type opened another opportunity for min-maxers.ĭespite the flaws of typed bonuses, the system worked well enough to reappear in the fourth edition.
But as the game expanded, the number of bonus types grew too. In 3E, the scheme could have worked better if the designers had managed to settle on a small set of bonus types, and then stick to them. Few players liked to keep track of it all. Even well-meaning players occasionally made mistakes when they applied bonuses. Players needed vigilance to notice that, say, a bonus from a spell overlapped with a bonus from a magic item. Now the belt and gauntlets both added enhancement bonuses, which did not add. Bonuses of the same type never added, so an enhancement bonus would add to a morale bonus, but not another enhancement bonus. Instead, third edition introduced a system of typed bonuses. The designers recognized that such a case-by-case treatment would create problems as the game grew. The old fix would add the girdle-now belt-and gauntlets to a list of items that did not combine, right after rings of protection. Typed bonusesĬombinations like the girdle and gauntlets showed how stacking bonuses could break the game’s math. Plus, they worked for wider improvements. In third edition, the designers added a fix: they cut the rate of fire for darts. “ Gauntlets are particularly desirable when combined with a girdle of giant strength and a hurled weapon.” The exploit just required DMs as careless as the game’s designers and fighters able to tolerate the embarrassment of relying on darts. The Dungeon Master’s Guide even hinted at the combo. If a fighter gained a few strength enhancements, every encounter became the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre. However, a fighter could use their multiple attacks to throw a lot of darts, and they added their strength bonus to each dart’s damage. A dart just inflicted 1-3 damage, so even though characters could throw three darts in an attack, darts seemed weak. (Note to new players: A girdle is a belt, and 5E now includes a belt of giant strength, depriving new players of the obvious, juvenile gags that we old-timers relished.) The combination turned dart-throwing fighters into living Maxim guns. In second edition, a girdle of giant strength could add its strength bonus to another bonus from gauntlets of ogre power. In practice, DMs rarely noticed that their players had gained too much magic until the game broke.Įven shrewd DMs might overlook problems caused by the right combination of items. Mostly though, Gary asked dungeon masters to award fewer magic items.
For example, rings of protection did not stack with magical armor. “These god-like characters boast and strut about with retinues of ultra-powerful servants and scores of mighty magic items, artifacts, relics adorning them as if they were Christmas trees decked out with tinsel and ornaments.” Still today, gamers compare over-equipped characters to Christmas trees.Īs a remedy, Dungeons & Dragons imposed a few limits on what magic items could combine effects. In the original Dungeon Master’s Guide, Gary Gygax mocked PCs who gained too much magic. From the beginning, the game’s designers struggled to grant players magical powers without making them so powerful that the game lost its challenge.
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