D&D 5E Magic Items in D&D Next

Shadeydm · Jul 8, 2012

Mustrum_Ridcully said:
Well, the rules don't necessarily have to state it as a must to have a +3 weapon. They can just tell me: "Hey, a +3 weapon is worth about 1,000 extra XP worth of monsters" or some such.

They could also just as well get rid of stupid +x weapons. But it seems D&D will never go there.

I guess what it boils down to is I've always had a problem with the notion that the plus of an item is more important than what the item is and does. This isn't an issue with just 4E its been an issue is every edition even 1E made you chase a +x weapon just to be able to hit a demon for example.

Minigiant · Jul 8, 2012

The issue is that it took several editions to get something close to a modular system. Every edition have certain expectations of magic items to level and if you deviate a little too much, the game could break to all sorts of pieces.

So I hope there is a How to Run a No/Low/High Magic game section in the DMG.

Because if you are going to divorce magic items from the game math, you BETTER help me put it back in.

Mustrum_Ridcully · Jul 8, 2012

Shadeydm said:
I guess what it boils down to is I've always had a problem with the notion that the plus of an item is more important than what the item is and does. This isn't an issue with just 4E its been an issue is every edition even 1E made you chase a +x weapon just to be able to hit a demon for example.

That is a a problem for me as well. Though I would say that it may not have been "that bad" in 3E. Of course, whether the abilities those weapon had I have in mind were really flavorful or just mechanically optimized may be a subject to discussion.

A +1 of Evil Outsider and Undead Bane can be better than a +3 Longsword in many common situations for high level adventurers.
But how flavorful are these weapons really? Name-wise, they're cool, I suppose (well, Evil Outsider bane sounds a bit generic/mechanical, but okay).

But the real flavor comes from something like Sting, that glows in the presence of Orcs (or am I confusing swords and creatures? But you know what I mean). Whether it also grants a +2 enhancement bonus and +2d6 damage against Orcs is only secondary.

The cool stuff about the magic item rules described by WotC so far is definitely the part of history generation and this possibly even affecting the item's abilities.

Too much attention may have been given in 3E and 4E (maybe even before) to combat mechanics of these. I am not saying they are unnecessary or shouldn't exist - but I am saying that the non-combat elements should get some emphasis as well. A Flaming Longsword shouldn't just deal +1d6 fire damage or deal fire damage instead of weapon damage, it could keep you warm, for example.

john112364 · Jul 8, 2012

I think I can agree that there should be some form of guidelines as to how to adjust encounters based on the + of the weapon. Back in the 1e days we just winged it because there were no guidelines and things usually worked out ok. But guidelines would definitely have helped especially the neophyte DM.

That being said, I do think that too much emphasis is being placed on the + of the weapon. Even with the flat math I don't think it's a gamebreaker! "Ok, this encounter was too easy, let me tweak the next one a bit." By the time you get to the final encounter you should have a good handle on it. (And again, guidelines will help with this.)

My 2cp.

Mercule · Jul 8, 2012

I think that article gave me what I needed to help reinvigorate my playtest.

dkyle · Jul 8, 2012

billd91 said:
The DM always does and always will have to do some of the designers' jobs - that's the nature of RPGs. Good suggestions and guidelines are welcome, of course, but let's not forget that players and DMs will inevitably come up with situations, encounters, actions, whatever, that the designers haven't foreseen.

The DM is inherently a world builder, storyteller, and arbitrator. Not a game designer. It is entirely possible to play (good) RPGs entirely with rules as written. And it's entirely possible for game designers to create rules that handle situations that they did not forsee.

With refluffing and reflavoring, there's a heck of a lot of stuff that can be handled by using the mechanics of 4E, game rules as written, that might not initially seem supported. In addition, an important thing to remember is that not everything done in a typical RPG session is a "game".

When the party talks to a local lord, and just roleplays everything out, that's not a game. Even though the DM is operating without rules guidance from a game designer, he is still not playing game designer, because there's no game there.

Depends on the end goal. If the primary end goal is to build a game that incorporates fantasy tropes and enables a group to play though exciting adventures, you can do that and have fun with a game that doesn't value mechanical balance.

It's possible to have fun with just about anything. That doesn't mean it's a good, or not-broken game.

That's not broken. It's just not producing a game that conforms to your desires. Claiming that it requires "fixing" because it's broken isn't true.

OK, it should be obvious that every post on 5E comes with a big fat implied disclaimer of "If 5E is meant to be a game that I'll want to play, then..."

If WotC has given up on me, and what I desire, then I guess that's their prerogative. But that's not been what they've been saying.

It's broken to me. It needs fixing to appeal to me. That's all the weight any of our opinions on this can carry.

It requires modification to match your desires, just like I would have to modify a Honda bought at your typical dealer to do all of the weird off-road shenanigans that they pull on Top Gear. In both of our cases, we might have been better served choosing a product closer to our initial desires in the first place. But in neither case are we "fixing" something broken.

We're currently being sold on 5E as a game to appeal to fans of all past and present editions of D&D. That includes 4E fans like me who are accustomed to, and expect, solid balanced encounter rules. If it fails to do that successfully, then it is broken.

If I buy a Honda advertised to be great off-road, and it isn't, and I have to modify it myself, then yes, it was "broken". It did not live up to its expected performance.

Lanefan · Jul 9, 2012

Balesir said:
As you say, problem (1) is that the system contains no mechanical support for assessing the risk of a specific route or encounter other than "roll agains INT"... AD&D actually did have some (low level) stuff for this; the Cleric's "Augury" spell, for instance. I am setting up to playtest something very similar as a ritual in my 4e game, in fact - I think it could work very well as a ritual, since that doesn't limit it to the Cleric. Problem (2) feeds straight back to [MENTION=710]Mustrum_Ridcully[/MENTION]'s point, though; if you don't have a clear mechanism for the DM to estimate how tough a particular challenge is, how the devil is s/he going to give that information to the players?

Quite often the estimation mechanism is nothing more than an educated guess by the DM, admittedly easier in older editions where the math was more coarse-grained. And even in a situation where the PCs can gather information, in a realistic game world that info would not always be accurate, thus no matter what you do there's going to be (and, in all fairness, probably should be) occasions when the threat posed by a particular challenge isn't going to become apparent until the dice are already hitting the table.

Never mind the vagaries of the dice - sometimes an easy challenge turns deadly due to good/bad rolls in the wrong places; other times something that should be nigh-impossible becomes a pushover for the same reason.

Lanefan

Shadeydm · Jul 9, 2012

Lanefan said:
Never mind the vagaries of the dice - sometimes an easy challenge turns deadly due to good/bad rolls in the wrong places; other times something that should be nigh-impossible becomes a pushover for the same reason.

Lanefan

This is often overlooked but so very true the dice are a very fickle mistress.

Ratskinner · Jul 9, 2012

kinem said:
The article says "We want magic items to make you strictly better, rather than allow you to keep pace with the game," ...

which is strictly impossible, unless you play in Lake Wobegon. The average PC can't be above average.

That's not how I read that at all. I think what they are saying is that they want to make having a magic item a big deal again. Having an expectation of +x/y levels available really kinda mutes the "Wow!" factor of magic items, as well as their relevance. If every Ftr7 has a +2 sword, then no one really does. Kinda like The Incredibles:
<dl><dd>Helen: Right now, honey, the world just wants us to fit in, and to fit in, we just gotta be like everybody else.</dd><dd>Dash: But Dad always said our powers were nothing to be ashamed of. Our powers made us special.</dd><dd>Helen: Everyone's special, Dash.</dd><dd>Dash: Which is another way of saying no one is.</dd></dl>

Ratskinner · Jul 9, 2012

Minigiant said:
"Umm... okay I gave everyone +1 armor and +1 weapons. So an ogre is too weak for there to be a challenge.. right? Uhh... Stone Giant is a stronger big giant, right."

"Ooops. Everyone died. TPK. My bad."

Honestly, I just don't see it as being that sensitive. I think we're too used to a 3e/4e mindset where a challenge that's more than 2 units away from party level is a big deal. 3e/4e are set up to be that way.

What if it wasn't? What if eyeballing the difficulty of an encounter was both easy and forgiving? In my experience, this need to finely tune the power of any encounter is a product of the later editions and their ever-escalating power curves. Removing that curve (i.e. Bounded Accuracy) removes a great deal of the level-based sensitivity of the system in the first place.