I think you guys haven't played the original BG1 in a while. You can get a diamond worth 800 gold, a ring of protection and a ring that doubles your first level mage spells before you have any real fights. A commoner in Beregost gives you a ring of protection for delivering a letter. You can steal a powerful wand of lightning in Beregost. You can get a +1 greatsword off an easy to beat half ogre just southeast of there. A +2 longsword (plus 1 cold damage) off a bounty hunter, a shortsword +2 off a bunch of hobgoblins and Thunderhammer smithy and Feldpost's sells a bunch of them .Ffs you find a plate of ankeg mail sitting around in a field in Nashkel! Not to mention a wizard in High Hedge. This is just the early levels. The wilderness is CRAWLING with magic.
This is Forgotten Realms, there's magic everywhere. I think they've got the magic items just right. If you're not going around stealing from everyone, it will take you time to kit out your party, just as it should.
oops also forgot the +2 warhammer with lightning damage off an easy to beat cleric beside Beregost!
I think you haven't played BG3 in a while.
You can get tons of magic items and tens of thousands of gold (approx 85k by level 4/end EA) in reality for free courtesy of pickpocketing without limitation or risk (when you know the technique and/or can savescum). You have access to a large amount of powerful exploding barrels. Every player can shove huge creatures to their deaths, roll twice on attacks due to guaranteed advantage, dip weapons for +1-4 damage, etc, etc.
Staff of Arcane Blessing is +1-4 attack/save and +2-8 spell attack roll. Something akin to a +5 weapon obtainable at level 2? Seems "balanced" in a way The Spiffing Brit would use the word.
Shattered Flail +2 heals wielder 1-6 hp each time you cause damage. If used in combination with another overpowered item Sapphire Spark that nearly doubles Magic Missile damage, you get healed for each missile. Brokenly OP, especially considering a Magic Missile-build is one of the top burst damage-dealers in 5e even without magic items doubling damage.
Warped Headband of Intellect sets intelligence to 18 and allows quick meta-gaming builds where intelligence can be made a dump stat.
Also, we are comparing level 4 magic item progress in BG3 vs level 8-10 in BG1.
Mate, I specifically said in my post "if you're not going around stealing from everyone". I have played enough BG3 to know that it's a more enjoyable experience when you don't abuse the theft system, same as BG2 which had an even more abusable system where you could get most of the items you need by chugging down three potions of master thievery. Like etonbears says it's EA and some items will be ironed out. The other stuff about the rules and mechanics don't belong in this thread, frankly.
My point, which is incontrovertible, is that, unlike the guy said, BG1 had tons of op magic items. The ones I quoted were all obtainable by level 3, but even if you discounted the hidden ones, there's an abundance of not only +1, but several powerful ~2 ones well before you hit the city. There's wands galore(fireball, lightning and monster summoning), bracers of archery/weapon specialisation, a +3 longbow at level 4 or 5. You get boots of speed well before the city. In the gnolls den (doable easily at level 3 or 4) you got a pair of gloves that set your dex to 18, regardless as to what it was before. How is that different from the headband? I'd say that's more exploitable than the headband because it set even races that couldn't get 18 in dex in character creation (dwarves). In the original game you could steal a cloak that let you charm someone, no save. Normal bandits with +1 swords in the middle of nowhere. A +2 greatsword with freedom of movement in cloakwood which you had to do before you went to the city. Thunderhammer smithy sold +3 leather with a bonus to hide/move silently, plus a dagger +1 dagger with unresistable poison damage.
The stuff you ACTUALLY got at lvl 8-10 was much, much better. Cloak with 25% magic resistance, +3 platemail, +3 greatsword, arrows of detonation/dispelling, gloves that set your strength to 18/00. (btw the original level cap was 7 for most classes, 8 with the expansion. Only rogues and bards hit level 10. So at level 8 you were pimped out in +3 armor, weapom, ring of free action, regeneration etc etc)
Of course the game is going to seem a bit broken if you use your meta knowledge to head down to the UD to get the powerful stuff early. Where's the challenge in that? That stuff is clearly going to be level 5 stuff, meant to be done after you've explored the surface.
Also, it's meta knowing this headband is on the ogre in the first place. I never knew it until I saw it on the forums. I just used him as a summon, which I imagine a lot of first time players will too.
If you're not going to infiltrate the goblin camp, say you're playing a LG paladin and are just going to storm it, there's only 2 weapon merchants and the lady in the UD only sells bows and xbows as I recall. So the tiefling guy really HAS to sell some +1 weapons or some players might not get any in act 1 at all. People harp on about realism a bit too much without taking into consideration that this is a videogame and it sometimes needs to bend realism a bit to fulfil some of the other important requirements of a game ie getting better loot when you have a bit of money. Mask of the Betrayer, the expansion for Neverwinter Nights 2, was a corker of a game storywise and thematically. But it was an epic adventure and the player needed epic weapons. To afford them, it led to the highly unrealistic situation whereby literally thousands of gold were just lying around Mulsantir waiting to be picked up from bins and containers.
This isn't the TT experience where the DM will make sure your party happen to have an encounter that gets you the right equipment at the right time, they have to factor in a lot of variables as to how people are going to play, weapon choice etc. I'd venture that most people who play aren't going to steal everything from the merchants, aren't going to go down to the UD early, aren't going to use a weapon which is described as giving you madness etc.
