Mordenkainen's Magical Emporium & magic items

JohnSnow · Aug 7, 2010

So, I noticed some thing about this product while browsing the report from the Critical Hits blog. Since there seems to be some confusion, I thought I'd cross-post the relevant quote.

Mordenkainen’s Magical Emporium is a book of magic items designed to inject more story and descriptions into magic items. Not just a bland history, but a real story hinted at by the item’s description. The big news with this book, and all magic items in Essentials and going forward, is that magic items will be given “Common, Uncommon, Rare” designations. Common and uncommon items can be bought and created by characters. Rare items can only be given out by a DM. Most items already in existence are going to be retroactively classified as Uncommon, and almost all items going forward in new books will be Rare.

So my guess is that "common" items are things like magic swords, armor, & implements, potions of healing and similar vanilla items, whereas most of the uncommons are the flashier items like "flaming swords" and so forth.

That leaves Rares to cover things like item sets, artifacts, and similar. Again, just my guess. Thoughts?

Prestidigitalis · Aug 7, 2010

I wonder what guideline and/or mechanic will distinguish common from uncommon.

Also, will item level play into the label system, i.e. are level 2 items more likely to be common and level 30 items more likely to be rare?

UngeheuerLich · Aug 7, 2010

I like the distinction.

I guess all D&D4e items so far are common. Can be crafted by a simple ritual.

Uncommon and rare items may remind us of magic items of old versions, which, used in the right amount, made the game really flavourful.

In 3.x those powerful and flavourful items became necessary just to survive and had the power to unbalance the game, because with magic item creation feats, everyone had access to them.

I am really looking forward to giving out my players: Armbands of AC 4 or something like that...

Jack99 · Aug 7, 2010

Sounds about right to me.

There is one thing I do not understand. Why 3 classifications? I mean, you have common (things players can make) and uncommon (things players can't make) and rare (things players really can't make?) - why not just have two categories, one which covers those players can make, and one that covers those they can't make.

Also, in before the purple/epics comments!

Jack99 · Aug 7, 2010

UngeheuerLich said:
I like the distinction.

I guess all D&D4e items so far are common. Can be crafted by a simple ritual.

No, most will be uncommon, it was said.

UngeheuerLich · Aug 7, 2010

Oh ok. Even better.

ggroy · Aug 7, 2010

Most likely "common" magic items will be just stuff like a generic +2 sword with no additional powers, for example?

ggroy · Aug 7, 2010

One guess:

common - no additional powers

uncommon - has an additional daily power

rare - has an additional encounter or at-will power

JohnSnow · Aug 7, 2010

Jack99 said:
Sounds about right to me.

There is one thing I do not understand. Why 3 classifications? I mean, you have common (things players can make) and uncommon (things players can't make) and rare (things players really can't make?) - why not just have two categories, one which covers those players can make, and one that covers those they can't make.

Also, in before the purple/epics comments!

Well...just as a thought...

Common: things players can make and you're likely to find for sale in a shop that deals in such things.

Uncommon: less frequently found, they can still be made and bought, but the latter would generally be a commission thing, rather than finding one "lying around."

Jack99 · Aug 7, 2010

JohnSnow said:
Well...just as a thought...

Common: things players can make and you're likely to find for sale in a shop that deals in such things.

Uncommon: less frequently found, they can still be made and bought, but the latter would generally be a commission thing, rather than finding one "lying around."

Problem is that if you have common items (that players can make) and uncommon items (that players can make as well), there wont be any real difference. If they can make them, they will make them, and thus be common. No, there must be something else, some other distinction that we are not told yet

It would be cool for example if uncommon items required specific components before you could make them.