Hit the Reset Button


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We've all been here as DM's: the party has so many magic items that nothing can touch them and they easily dispatch any foe they find.  When you load parties up with magic armor, magic weapons, staves/wands/rods, rings, cloaks, and potions it can make them almost immortal!  Or, the one I see on Facebook all the time: My party is abusing the "wish" spell, what do I do about it?  I have two solutions for this, both are pretty radical.  First, don't be afraid to hit the reset button during a campaign.  Second, as the DM you control what kind of magic is available in the campaign.

Hit the Reset Button

If the party's magical items are unbalancing the campaign and making it so it is not challenging then hit the reset button on them!  What I mean is, take the magic items away!  Put the party in a situation where they are robbed or somehow rendered unconscious or otherwise powerless and all their magic items are taken away.  Then they have to start over.  This immediately fixes your problem, creates some great story lines, and brings even high level characters down to earth.  It also allows the players to focus on developing their characters as opposed to stuff.

Or we can be captured and imprisoned.  Now we have to use our wits to escape.  This happens in a lot of the source material the game comes from.  Conan gets captured and imprisoned in several of Robert Howard’s stories.  Tarzan the same.  Gandalf and the hobbits in LOTR same.  The list goes on.  

You Control What is Available

As the DM you control what is available in the campaign.  In other words, if things are becoming abused or unbalanced it is your fault.  If the spells are too powerful, remember that a magic user has to actually find the spells to learn them and 7th-9th level spells should be really rare and difficult to find.  In fact, this should entail a quest in its own right.  Then, if you find that certain extremely high level spells are unbalancing things (like the wish spell) incorporate a penalty.  For example, a character can suffer a stroke and be unable to remember any spells until a quest has found the magic ingredients to restore their health but they are unable to learn that spell from this point forward...

In my current campaign we're just beginning to encounter magic items as loot (2nd and 3rd level characters), the problem is we either can't use them (thieves/druids and chain mail for example) or we're not proficient in them (characters are proficient in scimitars and bows, but we find long sword and battle axes).  

By the way, it's not like magic items come with a tag that says: "This is a suit of chain mail +2."  Characters should have to go to great lengths to find out what the magic item is and what it does.  They could spend money on a scribe identifying it, for example (it might be cursed...).  I'll allow an identify spell to determine the properties, but that takes a spell slot that could have been used with something else!

The point behind all this is that as the DM you are in charge and you have options if the campaign is becoming unbalanced with magic items.

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