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

[Jeff Carlsen]

Oh, dear - it looks like magic items are back to being nothing but sweeties for the GM to hand out to good little boys and girls... Ho, hum - I don't think I'm the intended audience for "default" style DDN, and nothing for any other style has come out, yet.OK, now here I see a real oddity.

The categories of "Easy", "Tough" and so on relate to levels; in other words, what is a "tough" encounter for a party of 1st level characters is an "easy" encounter for a 3rd level party. Items don't have a level - they are just "common" or "rare" or "awesomesauce" or whatever - but they are allocated depending whether an encounter was "easy", "average" or "tough"?? Where does that leave "sandbox" campaigns? Tackling a load of "tough" encounters apparently leads to more "rare", "very rare" and "legendary" items - but those exact same encounters tackled a couple of levels later would be "easy". Would they, then, net the same haul of "rare", "very rare" and "legendary" items, or not??

If you use the provided charts as they are intended, then the magic items received are based on the difficulty of the encounter at the time the PCs overcome it. The idea being that greater risk demands greater reward. In a sandbox game, the overall result might be the same. By taking on the greater challenges early, the rewards are greater up front, but it means that the remaining encounters are weaker and will provide lesser goodies. The reverse would then also be true.

The magic items aren't leveled because most of them are equally useful regardless of level.

 

[Balesir]

If you use the provided charts as they are intended, then the magic items received are based on the difficulty of the encounter at the time the PCs overcome it. The idea being that greater risk demands greater reward. In a sandbox game, the overall result might be the same. By taking on the greater challenges early, the rewards are greater up front, but it means that the remaining encounters are weaker and will provide lesser goodies. The reverse would then also be true.

I think you're missing my point. For a sandbox game, how would you know what table to roll on? The tables don't scale by the xp value of the encounter, only by the "difficulty" of the encounter for the party at the current level. In other words, what magic items are available after a specific encounter is not known until the level of the party when they tackle the encounter is known (according to the playtest rules). That would pose a problem for sandbox play; the treasure would consist of "Schroedinger's magic items" until the party actually attempted to overcome the encounter.

 

[tlantl]

They were pretty explicit about this in the Gencon videos. They said they are focusing the game on up to 10th.

But I think they are in a self fulfilling prophecy - basically they said at Gencon: D&D traditionally only really works levels 1 -10 so we are going to only do that. Rather than try to stretch it out as 4th ed did rather well. The sweet spot issue is being assumed away by bounded accuracy it seems.

The problem I see is that nothing much is going to be left after 10th. If vorpal swords/holy avengers are available after 9th and artifacts after 11th (vorpal swords/holy avengers were 30th and 25th level items in 4th). It just seems to ridiculously condensed - even more so that AD&D. As someone who has tried and enjoyed high level play over the editions I think this is silly.

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.

If you want to play with all of the really neat toys you need to get them into the game, if you want to wait the better part of a year or more before you need to deal with them then that's cool too.

I don't really have any particular liking for high level play as it moves too far into the realm of the absurd, and that's saying a lot about a game that is firmly rooted in the absurd to begin with.

For me when the mundane world can't challenge the group any more and the powers available to the character by dint of their classes it's time for me to semi-retire characters and start fresh. I still write adventures for those characters but high level play is exhausting to DM and a real chore to write for, so I do it less often.

But to the point, I would recommend setting your pace and if ten levels is too few then by all means hold off on the big guns until you think it's time to give them out.

For me, unless Next is much different than any of the other versions of the game I ever played there is no reason to plot out 30 levels of character abilities since only NPCs will ever have those levels.

 

[Jeff Carlsen]

I think you're missing my point. For a sandbox game, how would you know what table to roll on? The tables don't scale by the xp value of the encounter, only by the "difficulty" of the encounter for the party at the current level. In other words, what magic items are available after a specific encounter is not known until the level of the party when they tackle the encounter is known (according to the playtest rules). That would pose a problem for sandbox play; the treasure would consist of "Schroedinger's magic items" until the party actually attempted to overcome the encounter.

I see. You're rolling for magic items well in advanced, which isn't something I normally do. In that case, you're right. These charts won't work for you as described.

Though, really, they're really just charts for low, medium, and high magic loot. The assumption is that you would pick a chart based on the level of challenge, but you could simply use them based on the needs of the setting. If you want these encounters to be more lucrative, use the high chart, and so on.

 

[JoeCrow]

Sorry if these questions have already been answered, but:

1) Are characters still limited to a max of 20 in ability scores, or with a belt of giant strength can they actually have a 29 Str?

2) I thought the Giant strengths were going back to 1st Ed values (Hill = 19, Stone = 20, Frost = 21, Fire = 22, Cloud = 23, Storm = 24), have they changed that?

In classic D&D lore, the Strength score of a giant rises with its position in the giant hierarchy, with hill giants at Strength 19 (just a peg above ogres) and storm giants at a prodigious 24 (just short of the mighty titans).

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.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

The categories of "Easy", "Tough" and so on relate to levels; in other words, what is a "tough" encounter for a party of 1st level characters is an "easy" encounter for a 3rd level party. Items don't have a level - they are just "common" or "rare" or "awesomesauce" or whatever - but they are allocated depending whether an encounter was "easy", "average" or "tough"?? Where does that leave "sandbox" campaigns? Tackling a load of "tough" encounters apparently leads to more "rare", "very rare" and "legendary" items - but those exact same encounters tackled a couple of levels later would be "easy". Would they, then, net the same haul of "rare", "very rare" and "legendary" items, or not??

Interesting conundrum:

Per this approach, the PCs sneak into the Steading of the Hill Giant Chief, and discover that the Giants are clearly too much for them to deal with -- and the giants are using a range of fantastical treasures, to boot. So the PCs go away for a couple of levels to "toughen up" and gain some experience, and now that they are ready to fight the giants, they discover the giants are all using rusty weapons and rotting leather armor.

 

[Falling Icicle]

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.

They really need to put keywords or even just a general rule that AC bonuses from magic items don't stack. The ring of protection, specifically, has this restriction, but none of the above items do. If they made all of these items give a "magic bonus" to AC, then they wouldn't stack with each other and we wouldn't see such abuse. It would also greatly reduce the christmas tree effect, as players wouldn't "need" so many different items to raise their AC. They'd only need one, and it'd be their choice of magic armor, an ioun stone, a ring of protection, etc.

Some people keep saying that because of bounded accuracy and because magic items aren't an assumed part of the game's math, that it's okay for them to be so powerful. On the contrary, the fact that they aren't an assumed part of the game's math makes it MORE important that the numerical bonuses they grant be kept firmly in check, or else you will quickly run into the problem of invincible PCs.

I think the people at WotC realize this, and that's why we've seen magic items that emphasize cool properties over numerical bonuses, and the bonuses items grant are much smaller than in past editions (going up to +3 for weapons and armor, for example). It's really just a few items and their ability to stack that are problematic.

 

[pemerton]

Consumable Items are on the same price/rarity scale as permanent items. A potion or scroll I can use one time can cost the same as a staff or magic weapon? Bwuh?

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

Armor rarity also seems to make no sense.

There are some other weird things too. Why would anyone make magic ringmail if magic chainmail is no rarer (and hence, by implication, no harder to make)? Ringmail makes sense on the mundane gear chart (it's a cheaper starting option than chain) but not as a magic item.

Also, the Glamoured Studded Leather has the same rarity as simple +1 armour. Shouldn't it be rarer? Or, alternatively, have the glamour power but give no bonus (like Plate Mail of Etherealness)?

Yeah, the biggest problem with the belts is that they offer such an enormous bonus to hit and damage. The mightiest enchanted sword gives a +3 bonus, but you can put on this belt and get +5 to +11 (depending on what your Str score was before putting on the belt, assuming the typical range of 8-18 for PCs).

I don't think you need to worry about the greater effect on an 8 STR - that's not mucking up bounded accuracy, because it's not taking anything outside the bounds, it's just making low ability scores not matter (so may be unbalancing for another reason).

The overall numbers are OK too, aren't they? A Belt of Cloud Giant strength has the same rarity as a Vorpal Sword (both legendary), and it turns 20 STR into 27 - which is +3 to hit and damage, plus some improved STR abilities - which, to me, seems comparable to the vorpal sword.

As per your post just above this one, the real issue is stacking. It would be a pity if the Belt, together with a +1 weapon (let alone the very rare +3 defender) was better than the Vorpal sword in combo with some comparably synergistic item.

 

[pemerton]

I really like in the Flametongue description they make reference to The Queen of Chaos and the Wind Dukes of Aqaa, and in the Plate of Etherealness to the Dao (khan), I see a a lot of classic lore returning in 5th Ed, nice.

I'm not sure it ever went away. The Queen of Chaos and the Wind Dukes were alive and well in 4e! (In the DMG2 and the Demonomicon.) The Dao (in their Great Dismal Delve) were there too (in The Plane Below), although ruled by a sharif rather than a khan.

 

[Balesir]

I see. You're rolling for magic items well in advanced, which isn't something I normally do. In that case, you're right. These charts won't work for you as described.

It's not particularly a methodology I'm wedded to, by any means, but as I understand it this is more-or-less part and parcel of "sandbox" play. The idea is that you design a selection of challenges/quests/places of mystery with differing levels of difficulty and let the players pick and choose which one(s) to tackle. Part of this "design" would include placing at least the main magic items; that way, the characters can pick up rumours concerning where they might find items that they specifically desire - information which will feed into their decision making process about what challenges to take on when.

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.

Though, really, they're really just charts for low, medium, and high magic loot. The assumption is that you would pick a chart based on the level of challenge, but you could simply use them based on the needs of the setting. If you want these encounters to be more lucrative, use the high chart, and so on.

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?

It seems to me that the whole "random item" system presented is confusing, contradictory and generally poorly thought through. Giving a range of xp levels instead of "difficulty levels" would have been much more in accord with the other "guidelines" and much more useful, for example. Even just an "xp tariff" for each level of item rarity would have been more useful and more adaptable (even though it would have lacked "random table appeal").