I have been thinking about it for a bit, and while I really like how 4e removed all the items that changed your stats, I do not think they went far enough. Players will still be too Christmas-tree-like as they advance in levels and obtain more and more items.
Fortunately, it would be fairly easy to remove a lot of the bling, and due to the power system implemented with 4e, still have characters who have options.
In order to run a low-magic campaign (maybe the next one if you guys are game), I would do the following:
Remove all +'s on swords, necklaces and armors.
To compensate for that, all characters will gain +1 to hit, damage, AC and defenses every 5th level, starting at 3rd (3rd, 8th, 13th, 18th, 23rd and 28th level). In addition, you will do +1d6 damage per inherent + on a crit.
All items become unique. There is only one item of each, all items have a history and perhaps even a personality (okay, that was a joke!). No longer will the fighter run around with 4 magic weapons, just in case. On the upside, items will in general be more powerful than the average item in 4e's PHB and AV.
There will still be potions and there will still be other wonderous and strange items. But the art of making magical items (aside from a select few potions) is long gone.
Of course, this means that characters in a low-magic campaign will have less power than normal average characters. One way to compensate, would be to give a bit more powers. I was thinking about pushing the exchange mechanic one step further away. Meaning that instead of exchanging your first encounter power at level 13 and your first daily at 15, you would exchange your first encounter power at 17 and your first daily at level 19.
Also, one could consider to add perhaps a feat per tier, but I am not quite sure how that would pan out. Yet another option would be to raise the points you get to buy stats by a bit. On the other hand, you could also not do these things (extra powers, feats etc) and simply make the game a tad more lethal.
Think about it
Hey,
SvarSletThought it worked very well when we implemented innate magic points in the 3.5 campaign. But the 3.5 ed had problems :).
In 4e the magic items dosn't have a dominant role and they dont change the character very much. We do, however, have a lot of items in the campaign at the moment, but I dont see it as a problem...yet. Nobody is running around with 3 staffs or 4 Greatswords (only our warlock has 2-3 rods, but he's always like that).
Cheers MM.