D&D 5E Amulet of Health, Another Strong Item

Kinak said:

In a way, I think 5e's equivalents are actually worse, because the people with good scores (read: 20s) won't get any benefit from them. So they'll naturally trickle down to the party members with the worst scores.

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Everyone laugh at Thogg the Barbarian when Thogg decide to wear Gauntlets of Ogre Strength.

Then Thogg fight Shadow.

Now Thogg laughing.



Cheers,
Roger

Kinak said:

Of course you can choose not to equip the item. It's what happens if you do put it on that counts.

It's just that wearing the item makes your choices at character creation and level up regarding that statistic irrelevant.

Any resources you spent on that attribute is wasted whether that involved assigning a decent stat, racial bonuses, applying points for point buy, or bumping it with feats. Unless, of course, you got it all the way to 18, in which case the item never does anything for you.

This isn't theorycraft. Every time I handed out gauntlets of ogre power or girdles of giant strength back when they worked like this, the recipient realized within a few sessions that their character would be better if they'd assigned a worse score to strength.

I'll just apply the lessons learned in 2nd Edition and never hand out items like this.

Or give them substantially larger drawbacks than just eating up an equipment slot. It's a fine ability for Stormbringer or the Axe of the Dwarvish Lords, for example.

Cheers!
Kinak

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I think the kicker here is the "three" attunement slots. If these items require attunement, it is very very hard to give up one of three magic items you can have to randomly increase a stat you maybe only sort of use.

Remathilis said:

By all means, give yourself an 8 Con and wait for that Amulet of Health to come your way. Maximum return on investment, if you live that long.

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The fact that low con is so much more dangerous than low anything else aside, I just don't want my players to feel dumb because they put a decent score into something and got a sweet magical item later.

Maybe nobody else has ever had that problem, I honestly don't know. But it was pretty consistent back in my 2nd Edition days and I'm really not excited to see that mechanic back.

Cheers!
Kinak

Kinak said:

Of course you can choose not to equip the item. It's what happens if you do put it on that counts.

It's just that wearing the item makes your choices at character creation and level up regarding that statistic irrelevant.

Any resources you spent on that attribute is wasted whether that involved assigning a decent stat, racial bonuses, applying points for point buy, or bumping it with feats. Unless, of course, you got it all the way to 18, in which case the item never does anything for you.

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I don't understand how an item that might not even exist in a given campaign, or be found if it DOES exist, can negate a choice made about a character.

With that in mind your complaint is essentially that a strength enhancing magical item actually makes you stronger. Of course it does! The item wouldn't be of much use if it didn't. You didn't make the choice that you could fly at 1st level so I suppose wings of flying take away your decision to remain ground bound. So in essence then no magic item can give you capabilities that you didn't already have lest it invalidate some choice.

I'm not believing that.

Kinak said:

This isn't theorycraft. Every time I handed out gauntlets of ogre power or girdles of giant strength back when they worked like this, the recipient realized within a few sessions that their character would be better if they'd assigned a worse score to strength.

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Think about that for a sec. It is WAY beyond theorycraft, it is pure metagame crybabying at the worst possible level.

"I feel bad because I can't redefine the core of who my character is every time I find a random doodad in order to be the bestest most optimal machine in the universe!!" WWWAAAAAGGGGGHHHHHHH.

It would be all I could do NOT to hit such players upside the head with 2 X4.

Roger said:

Everyone laugh at Thogg the Barbarian when Thogg decide to wear Gauntlets of Ogre Strength.

Then Thogg fight Shadow.

Now Thogg laughing.

Cheers,
Roger

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That's actually a cool point I hadn't considered.

ExploderWizard said:

"I feel bad because I can't redefine the core of who my character is every time I find a random doodad in order to be the bestest most optimal machine in the universe!!" WWWAAAAAGGGGGHHHHHHH.

It would be all I could do NOT to hit such players upside the head with 2 X4.

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I find threatening my players with violence doesn't solve many problems, particularly as I'm married to one of them.

I agree D&D, particularly 5e, sets attributes on a pedestal. A magical item that ignores "the core of who my character is" just feels bad unless it's part of some major storyline.

The first realization is usually feeling a little cheated because their attribute could be anything, the magical item is the only thing that matters. The second realization is usually that, well, the magical item is the only thing that matters.

I get a more positive response from items that respect the choices they've made in character creation, even if the final bonuses are lower. It's not a question of being optimal, it's a question of whether a player's choices are more important than the magical items I've given out.

Cheers!
Kinak

Remathilis said:

By all means, give yourself an 8 Con and wait for that Amulet of Health to come your way. Maximum return on investment, if you live that long.

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Yeah, and if it comes along at all. As soon as people start looking at magic items as a bonus and not a right, it all starts making sense.

Kinak said:

I find threatening my players with violence doesn't solve many problems, particularly as I'm married to one of them.

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The 2x4 was figurative!! It is after all only a game.

Kinak said:

I agree D&D, particularly 5e, sets attributes on a pedestal. A magical item that ignores "the core of who my character is" just feels bad unless it's part of some major storyline.

The first realization is usually feeling a little cheated because their attribute could be anything, the magical item is the only thing that matters. The second realization is usually that, well, the magical item is the only thing that matters.

I get a more positive response from items that respect the choices they've made in character creation, even if the final bonuses are lower. It's not a question of being optimal, it's a question of whether a player's choices are more important than the magical items I've given out.

Cheers!
Kinak

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I think player choices in actual play, are more important than anything including build choices. Thinking too much about what could have been back in character creation is a waste of valuable game time. In theory a player should just play with a 10 in everything because an item might show up and invalidate having a higher score.

Focusing on what the players ARE doing in the game instead of what the characters CAN do in a mechanical sense makes this a non-issue.

So, attunement seems to drastically reduce rarity / increase acceptability of strong items (see Bracers of Defense), which I'm good with in theory, but suspect will turn in practice. Essentially, it only works if there are 3+ strong permanent magic items _per party member_. So it doesn't work at all at low level, nor does it work in lower magic campaigns. Strange.

I'm with Kinak that stat replacing items just screws with the system and character creation setup in undesirable ways. The sad thing is that while I can just not give them out in home games I DM, they're already warping the metagame: an amulet of health was in one of the Gen Con adventures, and it generated a lot of discussion over the magic item policy, its balance, who most "deserved" the item - mathematically speaking, organized play's retraining rules ("so if I find this before 5th level I can retrain my Con to an 8-10?"), and how much people could get for the item on ebay.

So, that's a thing. I can't wait to see if organized play starts regularly pickpocketing people's necklaces before combat. Cause, hey, that's fun, right?

What follows is all IMHO, blah, blah, there is no wrong way to play, blah, blah, blah, why doesn't everyone just understand everything on the internet is just opinion without having to state it all the blah, blah, blah.

Fixed ability score magic items are just horrible, they invalidate character choices, they don't help the characters they should, just horrible.

Attunement slots don't mean anything at all, think about it, your character has three, every character in the party has three, magic items are supposed to be infrequent, not all magic items in fact it seems few require attunement. All of that adds up to not having worry about attunement slots until everyone in the party has found 3 items each that require it, what level does this happen?

I mean if you have 5 characters in the group that is not until around the 16th magic item requiring attunement do you need to worry about it, if one in three magic items needs attunement thats what 60+ magic items floating around the group?

So my solutions, make every non-expendable magic item give a basic bonus and something extra if attuned, that way what 3 items you choose to attune matter more, and the limit comes into play earlier on in the game, fixed ability score magic items won't exist in my game, instead items of increased attribute will either add a flat +2 bonus or give a short duration special ability like an amulet of health giving you regeneration for an encounter.

keterys said:

So, attunement seems to drastically reduce rarity / increase acceptability of strong items (see Bracers of Defense), which I'm good with in theory, but suspect will turn in practice. Essentially, it only works if there are 3+ strong permanent magic items _per party member_. So it doesn't work at all at low level, nor does it work in lower magic campaigns. Strange.

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Doesn't low-level/low-magic already have a check on power, namely NOT MANY ITEMS TO BEGIN WITH? I mean, whats to worry about 1-2 items per character anyway?

Attunement fixes the Christmas Tree problem of wearing All Six Stat Boosters, Boots of Speed, Cloak of Displacement, Ring of Protection, Etc. You pick three. This allows them to be more useful overall.