D&D 5E Oct playtest magic items are legend---wait for it--ary!

Jeff Carlsen · Oct 10, 2012

Balesir said:
Possible modifications that might allow such play do come to mind, yes. In addition, the set of "guidelines" concerning the character levels for which various levels of item might be "appropriate" seems to chime discordantly with the actual system presented. Does the "Magic Item Rarity" table mean that, if you roll for a "tough" encounter that 3rd level characters are to face and get a result including one or more "Rare" items, you ought to ignore that result because "Rare" items are "appropriate" only for characters of level 5 or above?

I think they're supposed to be two different tools, and they aren't intended to be used together. The rarity by level chart provides guidance for when you're picking and choosing individual magic items for an adventure, and is for games where you want a steady increase in the power of items. The Easy, Moderate, and Tough charts are for if you want to roll randomly and have surprises.

tlantl · Oct 10, 2012

JoeCrow said:
That's from September's Wandering Monsters column at Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (The Bigger They Come . . .). So, not an actual promise or anything, but what with all the statements about supporting classic D&D lore, a very strong implication that seems to have been disregarded in this case.

Me, I'm gonna be going with the classic setup and reworking the Giant Strength items for my games. Something along the lines of giving the encumbrance levels for the associated giants Size rating, letting the wearer use size-appropriate weapons, and probably giving the wearer giant-style rock-throwing. I really like the idea that they were originally spouting about bounded accuracy, and I'm gonna work like hell to keep that in my game, no matter how much the core team gets lured away from it,

Yes, I realize that probably means I'm gonna end up house-ruling my way into a completely different home-brewed game system. Wouldn't be the first time.

Or because as some have pointed out these original numbers were too low when using the new version of ability score modifiers.

Go have a look at the strength score bonuses from the 1e monster manual II and you will see what I'm talking about.

Saying that they didn't do what they intended is misrepresenting the issue.

The real issue with really strong creatures and bounded accuracy is that the to hit numbers are too high. If the strength bonus to hit were halved then their bounded accuracy formulas wouldn't get mauled by really strong characters or monsters.

Ultimatecalibur · Oct 10, 2012

Falling Icicle said:
I'm also concerned by the stacking of magic items that grant bonuses to AC. Let's take a fighter with a +1 plate, a shield, a defender sword and a dusty rose prism ioun stone (for another +1 AC). Such a character can have an AC of 25! That's insane. Most monsters would only be able to hit the character if they rolled a natural 20. As bad as that is, even higher ACs than that may become possible once we see +3 armor and +X shields.

I have couple problems with this kneejerk:

+1 plate and Defenders are very rare and a dusty rose ioun stone is rare.
The Defender is a greatsword, so no shield, making the max AC 23 if the wielder puts the full +3 bonus into defense and AC 20 if he doesn't.
Currently the most powerful monsters in the bestiary(Minotaur and Troll) are level 6 with a +4 bonus 2 hit. The kit you describe can not be reasonably expected before level 10.

Truename · Oct 10, 2012

Balesir said:
This technique generally requires, therefore, that the main "treasures" and the general "toughness" of the opposition be designated in advance - something that, with the rules presented in this packet, you cannot do.

I disagree. In fact, the packet addresses this specifically:

Using the Magic Item Award Tables said:
These tables are designed to help you award magic items based on the difficulty of a given encounter. You can determine the available items at the start of each encounter for a taste of unpredictability, or roll for all the encounters in a given adventure area ahead of time and parcel them out as you see fit.

It's also quite clear that the random tables are a tool whose results you can ignore or modify:

You can ignore the result of a roll or modify it as suits your needs... You could instead pick one or two appropriate items for that award and scatter the rest throughout the adventure. Or you could save up several results and award them all at once, when dramatically appropriate.

And you can choose not to use the tables at all (emphasis added):

When you create your own adventures, it’s up to you as the DM to determine where magic items are located... The tables that follow provide guidelines for awarding magic items based on the difficulty of encounters. You can add or withhold magic items in your adventures as you see fit; such items are an award, not a necessary part of a player character's advancement.

This all seems perfectly compatible with a sandbox campaign to me. Either you just decide where the items go, or you roll (in advance) for each encounter area based on your opinion of whether it's an 'easy' 'moderate' or 'tough' area, or you roll and then tweak the results to taste. Or something else. "It's up to you as the DM to determine where magic items are located."

Raith5 · Oct 10, 2012

tlantl said:
I see this as a matter of scale. If you are planning on having games span a dozen or more levels then you dispense those items over a longer period of time. I don't plan out thirty level campaigns, I seldom plan out anything over two or three levels and go from there. I don't play D&D for epic plots or long drawn out plotlines so I don't really have too much invested in the long run. The highest level characters I ever ran were mid to upper teens in AD&D and those characters were several real time years old by the time they reached those levels. .

This is true, you dont have to automatically get these items at 9th - but the level distributions in the playtest give some rough sense of how they are going to pace magic items (especially the high profile ones) across the levels of PCs. I think that range should be broader than what they show - for me a vorpal sword is a 16+ level weapon, not a 9+ level weapon.

I am basically a one campaign per edition player - so all my campaigns have gone beyond 4 + years. So I like high level play - both for the crazy combats and roleplaying reasons.

I am not sure many people care about this but I my underlying point here is that you need to leave game play space (magic items, monsters, spells) for higher level and epic level play to work.

ZombieRoboNinja · Oct 10, 2012

Raith5 said:
This is true, you dont have to automatically get these items at 9th - but the level distributions in the playtest give some rough sense of how they are going to pace magic items (especially the high profile ones) across the levels of PCs. I think that range should be broader than what they show - for me a vorpal sword is a 16+ level weapon, not a 9+ level weapon.

Yeah, I'm sensing some real ambivalence from WOTC as to what the level range of this edition will be.

Clearly they're not even thinking of anything past 10th level right now in terms of class design. But I understood that to mean that they're just holding off until they get levels 1-10 right before moving on to "paragon" tier classes, abilities, specialties, etc., with the adjustments to math and abilities that the change entails. (For example, they might have to bump up damage from basic attacks and cantrips so that they keep better pace with special attacks.)

That particular item table makes it sound more like they're imagining a game that ends at level 10, with level 11 being epic. To me, that sounds very limiting. Like a lot of people I personally enjoy lower-level play, but that's partly BECAUSE level 10 characters aren't walking around with artifacts.

So I'd say, take that chart and stretch it out to level 20.

One thing I do like a lot: no generic items above +1.

Steely_Dan · Oct 10, 2012

ZombieRoboNinja said:
But I understood that to mean that they're just holding off until they get levels 1-10 right before moving on to "paragon" tier classes, abilities,

I'm hoping it will be more organic than that.

Falling Icicle · Oct 11, 2012

pemerton said:
Not quite - per page 2, one permanent item corresponds to 1d2+2 consumables of the same rarity.

Ah, I didn't notice that. Thanks for pointing that out.

Falling Icicle · Oct 11, 2012

Ultimatecalibur said:
+1 plate and Defenders are very rare and a dusty rose ioun stone is rare.

Rarity doesn't excuse the stacking problem. Rarity is entirely subjective and up to invidual DMs and campaigns. In one campaign, such items may be extremely rare, so you won't likely run into the stacking issue because PCs won't likely have more than one of those items, if they are lucky enough to even have one. But what about campaigns where PCs do have those items? It's important to balance the items around the assumption that people will have them, not around the assumption that they won't. That way, these items won't be a detriment to the games of people who want to include them in their games.

Ultimatecalibur said:
The Defender is a greatsword, so no shield, making the max AC 23 if the wielder puts the full +3 bonus into defense and AC 20 if he doesn't.

You're right, my bad. The shield was only 1 point of that character's AC though, so it's still a problem. I was also assuming that the character was "only" wearing +1 plate, when armor can go as high as +3. And who knows what other miscellaneous AC boosting items may be published? Without a rule against them stacking with each other, the example I provided may even be on the low end of what's possible, and that's a terrifying thought.

Ultimatecalibur said:
Currently the most powerful monsters in the bestiary(Minotaur and Troll) are level 6 with a +4 bonus 2 hit. The kit you describe can not be reasonably expected before level 10.

Because of bounded accuracy, we can expect that even high level monsters won't have an attack bonus that is too much higher than the monsters we have now. Even monsters with a +10 to attack will only be able to hit an AC 25 character on a roll of 15 or better (meaning that they will miss roughly 70% of the time, on average). For every point of AC the character adds, that miss chance increases by an additional 5%. It is very important for the game that both attack values and AC be kept in careful check, or else you can end up with fights where people almost always hit on one end, or whifflebat fights on the other. Neither extreme is acceptable.

GMforPowergamers · Oct 11, 2012

The ring of protection has an intresting presadent...it does not stack.

Maybe we need another step back... remember old school AC had a cap of -10 (that would be 30 in new way to count.)