Kudos to the original poster for taking the time to highlight an issue that the roleplayer in me finds detracts from the focus on the characters.

The problem is on many levels; quantity and quality are both bloated to an extreme degree. The party is incentivised to become pack-mules ala Fallout 4, looting everything not nailed down. The sheer power of some of these items are character defining and incentivises cookie-cutter builds/class selection based on metagaming knowledge.

There surely must be someone at Larian with an out of control crush on the Wizard class in particular. Universally recognized as the strongest D&D 5e class, yet favored by implementations such as unlimited "Magical Secrets" (one of the best features of the Bard class), needlessly buffed ray of frost/fire bolt cantrips (made even stronger by the elemental shenanigans), and items such as:

1. Warped Headband of Intellect sets intelligence to 18 - allowing metagaming Wizards to turn Int into a dump stat.
2. Staff of Arcane Blessing has a permanent superpowered Bless-spell providing +1-4 saves, +2-8 on spell attack rolls.
3. The Sapphire Spark nearly doubles the damage of the Magic Missile spell. Will benefit from the Evocation level 10 that adds Int mod dmg to each missile. Now made the best spell in D&D for upcasting and add 2 levels of fighter for Action Surge to add to the madness. This alone makes me think Larian really doesn't understand D&D/balance.

I thought the original games went pretty nuts with the high magic setting, but even in the era of Diablo they held back the crazed loot bonanza much more than Larian.

Last edited by Seraphael; 02/11/20 11:41 AM.