Magical items

Hi, i just looked over the magical item rules in the old ADnD 2nd edition book and i really hope, 4e crafting roles will be similar. Here some quotations:

Buying magical items:
"...,no magical stores exist."
"Just how often do players sell those potions and scrolls they find? Cast in a sword +1?"
"Where is the sense of adventure in going into a shop and buying a sword +1? Haggling over athe price of a wand?"

Magic-Rare or Common?
"If magic is common, then normal people will begin to build inventions around it."
"The DM wants each magical treasure, no matter how small, to feel special,..."

Researching Magical Items
"..., the DM decides what material, formulae, spells, and rites must be aquired and/or performed to create the item."
"He does not tell the player what he needs to do! Its up to the player to discover the process and steps required..."

And the most important:

"This is part of the fun of the ADnD game. Making a magical item is more than just a mechanical process. It should also be an opportunity for excitement and role-playing"

All this was lost in 3.x with the explicit crafting rules for magical items and the desperate need for them to survive. The only consistent setting was Eberron, because it accepted magic beeing common and in fact the whole world is based on inventions around magic.

I hope rituals to craft magical items will be more guidelines than hard rules, and that the DM can decide what to perform exactly to craft them. I am a bit concerned about magical items in the PHB, because it takes the magic from those items (because everyone can look up to know what they do)...
I would rather see magical items in DMG. Maybe healing potions as items which are easy to create and thus also easy to come by is ok, but beeing able to go around haggling about a wand or a sword +1 seems wrong to me...

I'm bit concerned that we are getting back to 2nd edition magic item creation/availability rules. Which in short mean, not possible to create it or buy it, period. Unless you do a 10 sessions campaign to get +1 sword done.

"He does not tell the player what he needs to do! Its up to the player to discover the process and steps required..."

which is different way of saying "We were too lazy to come up with balanced item creation rules". And as most DMs have tendency to move to harder rather than easier when given a choice (or "OMG, they are already 2nd level, I have failed") I expect general population will have again to suffer 2nd edition problems of finding +1 exotic polearms and not being able to get their favorite magic weapon at all.

we got 3rd edition which has shown that easy access to magic items is possible and not game breaking (some types of items in 3rd were, not easy access to them). Hopefully enough people will see 'the truth' and not gimp their players too much in 4th edition.

The biggest problem was the following:

UngeheuerLich said:

Researching Magical Items
"..., the DM decides what material, formulae, spells, and rites must be aquired and/or performed to create the item."

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Whereas every other version of D&D (OD&D, 1E, BXCM, etc.) had some kind of guidelines or steps or pricing for making magic items, 2E wiped them all out and threw the DM entirely into the unknown. In my experience, that's just way too much work to demand that every DM make their own magic-construction system. And that's precisely something that kept me from touching 2E with a 10-foot pole as a DM.

I definitely celebrated when 3E came out with a cohesive, pretty simple system for making all magic items. Where I think it broke down was when people allowed players to design their own new items at will, with no risk, for no research investment.

I would prefer if item creation involved a complex process of laying several spells in the right order followed by the expenditure of a variety of power components. While AD&D core did not give you such guidelines, numerous books in AD&D described item creation (DM's Option: High-Level Campaigns, Volo's Guide to All Things Magical)

I don´t want to say it should be handled that exact way, but i think that hard wired system of 3rd editon took away the mystical feel of magical items (in eberron that was intended to make those rules consistent). I hope rituals will be somewhere in the middle of hard wired rules and DM fiat (whatever that exactly means)

Players going into the shop and trading their precious items was annoying to say the least. But it was necessary for them to stand a chance at higher level. And on top of it, by RAW, magical shops were a logial consequence even if that was inappropriate for the campaign.

What i deem appropriate is: Magical carpets beeing available in calimshan. (why only there you ask? because a) calishite wizards don´t share their reciepe, b) you need the vapours of a materializing djinn. (or something along that lines). If Rituals work that way i would be more than happy.

---> if you need a magical carpet, you have to do following steps:
a) skill challenge: history, geography, arcana to know where to get it
b) travlling to calimshan
c) concincing a calishite wizard to sell you one

I do it that way in 3.5 (you don´t exactly transform gold pieces into that carpet directly), but sometimes players think thats an arbitrary restriction set by me, because rules suggest it otherwise...

Nymrohd said:

(DM's Option: High-Level Campaigns, Volo's Guide to All Things Magical)

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speaking of High level campaigns:

it gives rules from LVL 21 to LVL 30 and says that at anytime from LVL 21 on you can chose to become a demi-god, and at LVL 30 you have to do so... sounds somehow familiar

Also true dweomers look more like rituals than actual spells (needing preparation time, you can customize them by adding rare materials etc..., and some need years to cast)

And you got special martial powers that were only usable once or twice er day from LVL 11 on (death strike, whirlwind attack, improvised attack)

When I read through that book, it occurs to me, that 4e is not so far away from D&D as some people around these boards suggest...
It only seems to me that those abilities see use in earlier Level play, not only in very rare occassions...

The problem with 1/2e is that, in the name of balance, it was nigh-impossible for players to make even simple magic item -- remember what it took to make a scroll of protection from petrification in 1e? -- but the world was still full of them, found in random treasure hordes or piled on every monster in a module. Which made me wonder -- who the hell is making all these things? Where do they find the time? If it takes a good six months to make a scroll, how come there's so many lying forgotten in dungeons?

3e solved the issue (mostly) with the wealth-by-level guidelines. It will be interesting to see how rituals are balanced.

If 4e went the way of 3.x with magic items, I would not play it. I grew up on older versions of D&D and I hate the thought of magic items shop and them being common, even needed to survive. If they are common it creates a world like Eberron (great setting BTW), which is nice if you want to play that. It sucks if you do not. 3.x magic item creation was a knee-jerk reaction to item creation in 2e. Their is a happy medium between the two, and from what I have read, 4e seems to have captured that.

If the magic items ability is based off from the level of the character using it (which I believe it is), it takes away the need to have magic shops, etc. That magic +1 sword you found at 3rd level (Because swords go up by 1 every 3 character levels I believe) will do you fine at 18th level (being a +6 in your hands at that level!!). Then finding a magic item is truly magical. You have found the Magic Sword of King Ugner, who used it all his life. You have not found generic +1 sword to be bartered off for that +3 generic sword. You may only find that one sword in your lifetime, but it is useful all your life! Also, if you 'unlock' abilities in the magic item as levels progress, it would be cool (again, I believe this is the way some items will work). Hey, I found the wand of ArchMage Fenton. I didn't find that +1 wand which is useful in the early part of my career. I could use it the whole time!! It has VALUE. As a valuable item, I am not going to sell it. It never out lives it's usefulness.

That system in an of itself would bring back the mysticism of magic items, and it keeps them simple. It also gives reason why people VALUE them. If you had one, you do not want to sell it! You do not need to sell it.

Thats my 3.5 cents worth.

Lizard said:

The problem with 1/2e is that, in the name of balance, it was nigh-impossible for players to make even simple magic item -- remember what it took to make a scroll of protection from petrification in 1e? -- but the world was still full of them, found in random treasure hordes or piled on every monster in a module. Which made me wonder -- who the hell is making all these things? Where do they find the time? If it takes a good six months to make a scroll, how come there's so many lying forgotten in dungeons?

3e solved the issue (mostly) with the wealth-by-level guidelines. It will be interesting to see how rituals are balanced.

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The quantity in dungeons compared to difficulty in making items led to a lot of side treks in my games.
If the PCs can find a monster with what they want, they'll hunt it down and get the item.
If they actually needed an item to complete a quest they were on they stop and search for another dungeon with that one bit of loot they needed.
I started playing in 2e, and I never saw a PC even try to make an item until 3e.

Lizard said:

The problem with 1/2e is that, in the name of balance, it was nigh-impossible for players to make even simple magic item -- remember what it took to make a scroll of protection from petrification in 1e? -- but the world was still full of them, found in random treasure hordes or piled on every monster in a module. Which made me wonder -- who the hell is making all these things? Where do they find the time? If it takes a good six months to make a scroll, how come there's so many lying forgotten in dungeons?

3e solved the issue (mostly) with the wealth-by-level guidelines. It will be interesting to see how rituals are balanced.

Click to expand...

I don´t know 1st edition rules, but 2nd edition rules are so open, that you can say potions e.g. are easily created. Of course you are right, that rules for creation must be appropriate for the number of magical items found.

3e didn´t solve the issue (although it was a good idea) but made this worse by inverting the problem. The middle ground must be achieved, and it appears to me, that they somehow managed it... (we will see how well, but from the previews, one can tell that they at least tried to achieve a middle ground)