Why do the powerful monsters of D&D and Pathfinder (the strongest of dragons, angels, demons, devils, yugoloths/daemons...

Most monster have items. Humanoids atleast.

As far as pathfinder. Most of the high level monsers already have nautral bonuses so it won't stack.

But like this user said you as a dm could give any monster anything. What is in the book is just sample gear.

In pathfinder they don't. Angels always have magic weapons and dragons are known to abuse their generous hoard of wands, scrolls, jewelry and potions at higher levels.

>faggot forcing his meme is wrong

What a surprise.

>As far as pathfinder. Most of the high level monsers already have nautral bonuses so it won't stack.

Obviously not. They'd still benefit from enhancement, resistance, deflection, etc. etc.

>Angels always have magic weapons
But where are their belts, headbands, etc.?

It isn't but it is, there's a lot of things that basically all settings have in common unless specifically noted otherwise.

Like the implied setting of the bestiaries.

So, which feats do you recommend as a supplement to Power Attack? Furious Focus? Can you get away with just Power Attack?

Channel the power of the magic sword into their claws.

Shapechange into a humanoid form and then use sword.

Shapechange so that you have a tiny hand holding the sword at the end your claw.

Shapechange so that you have a small pocket within your bones and hide your magic items there.

Furious Focus is good if you can afford it, also Cornugon Smash

>D&D is a setting

test

In OD&D and AD&D those monsters are all specifically stated to use magic items.

In most FR books they're specifically described as using them as well.

To prevent PCs from getting too much treasure. Drow were invented for the same reason, since the Underdark was full of magical radiation that caused them (and other underdwellers) to evolve black skin, while naturally enchanting various ores they used for equipment. Removed from the Underdark, this gear rapidly lost any power it held, thus allowing DMs to throw well equipped, intelligent enemies at the party without awarding them anything useful.

A lot of them do.

OP, see
If high-end monsters were equipped the way a PC of equivalent power and experience was, they'd be gigantic loot pinatas that your group would be falling all over to murder/rob at the least provocation. Well, moreso.

Because pathfinder players would throw a bitch fest if monsters used "their" loot. They can't imagine facing an opponent that they couldn't beat in a few rounds.
Just watch, Paizo will ban allowing monsters to use item creation rolls.
Probably after a GM applies the settlement creation rules to Tucker's Kobolds and puts the highest level wizards to work.

this is all on you

fuck off, no one wants to play your maid game. just accept it

But what's the in-lore reason?

I always guessed its because you are supposed to do it yourself, in some instances they actually tell you up front to give them cool shit but dont specify too much

Unless they already have those resistances.

Also magic items are rare, yo. Just because you are big and special doesn't mean you have every magic item you could ever want.

There isn't one, D&D is purely gamist.

>Unless they already have those resistances.

Resistance bonus to saving throws, you stupid mong.

Few monsters have those.

Few monsters have enhancement bonuses to ability scores.

One doesn't exist, but at some point you have to make the game less realistic in order to make it more fun. You could say that having a massive number of magic items on your person means you're going to get robbed at almost every turn, but its really a matter of if your players would really enjoy that.

By having a giant dragon sized sword picking it up and then swinging it around. This isn't rocket science.

Welp, actually most Good Outsiders have a permanent Protection from Evil effect on them, which works just fine because they are supposed to be fought by Evil parties. High CR ones even have a permanent Holy Aura on them...

Also, speaking for Outsiders in general, consider that basically all of them have SR, except Elementals and meme-tier minor aligned Outsiders. And even those have a laundry list of resistances/immunities to elemental damage and magic descriptors

Dragons, Demons, and to a lesser extent Daemons aren't necessarily civilised or organised enough to be able to craft powerful items for themselves. They're monsters for a reason.

It's a broad generalisation, of course, but you need settlements, workshops, craftsmen and functioning economies to construct decent mundane items, let alone powerful enchanted ones. How many Dragon cities are there?

Also, mechanically, how many of these monsters have access to the requisite crafting feats/skills or weapon/armour proficiencies, and why would they have them? Remember, they're monsters.

I think your problem is that you assume that in-universe intelligence translates to a propensity for meta-minmaxing. It obviously does not. You're attempting to make the concrete facts of the game-world subservient to the abstract mechanical rules of the game. This is backwards thinking - the rules are meant to help present the world, not define it or strictly limit it.

What a lot of people don't realize is that if the GM gives them access to that wealth, as in lets the mosnters use it, that increases the CR by +1 or +2, depending on how much wealth he gives the monster access to. NPC wealth=+1 CR, and PC levels of wealth (such as dragon treasure) grant CR+2.

You can accidentally slaughter players that way.

Mind you, I'm not saying that they should never use magical items. I just think that it makes sense for it to be uncommon or unusual, so there's no problem with never coming across it.

>Welp, actually most Good Outsiders have a permanent Protection from Evil effect on them

And balors, pit fiends, etc. don't.

Good outsiders still don't have enhancement bonuses to ability scores.

>consider that basically all of them have SR

Not something you pick up with items. Go get some belts and headbands.

D&D, particularly 2eAD&D, 3.0, 3.5, 3.pf, all provide a rule set, not a game in and of itself. they provide a toolbox with which to build a game. Balors do not have magic items listed in their entry, just a single line saying how much loot relative to normal they should be expected to have. Please note, that with the exception of mundane gear (sword and armor, all mundane, basic quality) Elves, dwarves, gnomes, etc in their entries in the monster manual have no gear listed either. This is because the monster manuals, Fiend Folio, etc exist to provide tools with which to build an adventure and nothing more. if I plan an adventure based around dwarves, you can bet your ass they'll have better gear than the standard waraxe and scale mail. if I plan an adventure around a Balor demon, i'm not going to simply open up MM1 to the appropriate page and read out his statline when comes time for him to fight - he's got a treasure baseline and an intelligence greater than 3, so whatever happens to be in that kit he's got is fair game for him to use.

we're all in the monster manual somewhere, and i've yet to see someone complain that a dwarf or a human used their gear.

>Please note, that with the exception of mundane gear (sword and armor, all mundane, basic quality) Elves, dwarves, gnomes, etc in their entries in the monster manual have no gear listed either.

That's because those are low-level mooks, you fucking dumbass.

ok, Cloud Giant.
CR11, mundane(non MWK) morningstar, mundane(non MWK) chain shirt only listed gear, Treasure: Standard Coins, Double goods, standard items.
that means he has about 400gp in spare change, a handful of gems or some art deco in his house, and 1 medium rarity magic item or 2 minor. So let's give him a cloak of resistance +2 and a +1 flaming greatsword.

Balor has it's +1 Vorpal as a baseline, + standard items. at CR 20 that's 4 medium to 3 Major, kit him out as you please. Simply because you either don't read the rules, or play with a lazy GM who can't be bothered to actually build his adventures, doesn't mean the rest of us are.

Now you're making them harder than their CR.

A good GM will adjust for that.

Sorry for not wanting to increase my workload when running god damn Pathfinder.

Ya know how each monster has a treasure rating based off CR? Yeah you're supposed to factor in magical items they are carrying/using just keep it thematic.

No, that's them using the gear they have.
>Intelligent creatures that own useful, portable treasure (such as magic items) tend to carry and use these, leaving bulky items at home.
adding additional gear, class levels, or increasing their HD/Size progression, would increase their CR. Further, any DM who has run more than a few months of games knows that CR is a rough estimation, and the actual difficulty of an encounter most frequently is based on how the DM runs the monsters. A balor that charges straight at the PCs to engage in melee, regardless of his gear, is not going to be as difficult as a Balor that summons a Nalfeshnee and uses it to harass the PCs while using Greater Dispel Magic coupled with True Seeing to soften up the harder targets and attempting an Implosion on a handful of enemies, using it's flaming whip to remove weaker targets from the fight, and avoiding the melee until it has guaranteed the upper hand.

The more powerful dragons, demons and daemons have high Intelligence. They have money and know how to use it. They don't need to craft items, they can just buy them.

>3.5 crap

...

>implying that orcus would have got to his status relying on items that can be taken from him or destroyed
But trying to explain this to autists, including a very, very important underlying fact, is meaningless.

>theyre monsters

This literally means nothing

>I think your problem is that you assume that in-universe intelligence translates to a propensity for meta-minmaxing

Its not "meta-minmaxing" its common sense, if you are a powerful and intelligent being why the fuck wouldnt you wouldnt want to have magical items?

In almost every AP monsters such as demons/dragons/etc. come in with items.

An example in pathfinder is Legacy of Fire. The Genie enemies are almost always carrying magical gear.

Orcus wouldn't get beaten up as badly if he got himself some stat boosters.

Only the ones with class levels, because the rules entitle THOSE to items.

>Only the ones with class levels, because the rules entitle THOSE to items
every creature in the monster manual has a line which details whether it has standard, sub standard, or double standard, etc for items. cross referencing with the DMG will show you the table for determining how many and of what type of magical item that corresponds to based on their CR. the entry for monsters with treasure in the DMG explicitly states that monsters with an intelligence score and the physical capacity to use those items will do so. RTFM.

Don't be pedantic. Balor's have Unholy Auras, giving them a +4 resistance bonus to saves and a +4 deflection bonus to AC, as well as a base SR of 25 and an automatic 1d6 str damage against anyone who hits them.

But here's the more accurate reasoning: in Pathfinder, NPCs have much, much lower gold incomes than PCs, as defined both by their treasure values and by the NPC Wealth shown on the Character Advancement table.

High level monsters tend to lack piles of magic items because they're restricted to smaller amounts of cash -- otherwise all you'd need to get enough gold to be a level 20 character is kill one CR 20 monster. Meantime, honestly, the monsters tend to *have* less money in general because they are forced to rely on their cash a lot less than your average murderhobo. Instead, they spend it on things PCs care less about -- financing their plots, maintaining their homes and dungeons, paying minions, tithing to their bosses, etc.

If your GM thinks about it, its generally a good idea to spend a monster's treasure value on items it can use to buff itself (with the caveat that you may need to bump the CR by 1, not that it really means much). That gives you a more sensible monster spending strategy.

>Orcus wouldn't get beaten up as badly if he got himself some stat boosters.
That's because you are applying player metagame knowledge to the system like a dunce.
>sighs internally
Alright, real talk, the reason monsters do not have a glut of magic items is because it is nearly impossible to give an accurate judgment of how dangerous they are if you toss in a bevy of magic items.
Take an orc, basic bitch orc.
Now give it a belt of magnificence. What's it's new CR?
Give it +4 str braces and a +2 cloak of resistance. What's it's new CR?
And further, what do you do if/when the pcs defeat it? Now the players have ALL the enemies magic guffins. Realize that drow were created expressly under the same understanding you are pushing as an anti-pc race that can challenge pcs on their terms, often more, and leave the pcs with no wealth to gain from it.
>if you don't know why this is, you don't play D&D and just shitpost about it on Veeky Forums

>Don't be pedantic. Balor's have Unholy Auras, giving them a +4 resistance bonus to saves and a +4 deflection bonus to AC

Against GOOD enemies.

Balors are going to fight other demons a lot.

Where are the balor's belt and headband for +enhancement bonus to ability scores?

That's a nice metagame reason, but what's the in-universe reason for why monsters aren't putting on buff items?

FLOATIN' THROUGH THE VEINS!

Shit is rare and often quite well hidden when it is even there
Even a +1 to anything is a hellaciously good find

Beacuse the implied setting of 3.pf collapses on itself under as much as a brief consideration on how apparently there's a lvl 1-3 caster in every mudhole bumfuck hamlet.

Your autism is fine and natural on this board user, but you must learn to direct it constructively. Ask yourself, why IN YOUR SETTING do humanoid-shaped, intelligent outsiders use/don't use stat boosting items

They don't? What the fuck are you talking about. Most of the sources for magic weapons in the game guides, in the modules, and in lore books is from high level monsters.

>Ask yourself, why IN YOUR SETTING do humanoid-shaped, intelligent outsiders use/don't use stat boosting items
Because the game shouldn't be broken.

Then why aren't the strongest of monsters as decked out as the PCs if not more so?

They don't have then by default because they don't need them. They're often not facing strong enough foes to warrant the extra stats. If an angel really through it needed a boost to its saving throws then it would get itself a cloak of resistance or what have you, but base stat blocks are generic examples of a creature, and most high powered creatues never face threats that require them to have anynthing more than magic weapons for bypassing DR, other than that, their natural abilities suffice.

>Then why aren't the strongest of monsters as decked out as the PCs if not more so?
they can be. you just have to spend their wealth appropriately and give them +2 CR and be aware your players will have a much harder time killing them than usual.

That's a dragonkin, they have hands, but actual dragons don't, they have paws.

You mean all those angels fighting demons don't think to wear a headband or a belt for +stats?

>this system is shit because monsters can't wear items

Gets told it's actually up to the DM if they want to equip their monsters or not.

>waaaaaah effort waaaaaaaah

> muh broken game meme
That doesn't sound like an in-setting reason.