D&D 5E Do you miss attribute minimums/maximums?

[Lanefan]

To be honest, for me the perfect system would be somewhere between the two. Third editions transparency combined with its use of XP costs as a balancing feature was in many was quite inspired. But turning gold into a veritable secondary chargen point buy system, and reducing magic down to a "vending machine" model made it overly commoditized, far too easily broken (see 'wand of cure light wounds') and demystified.

Agreed, with a further broken factor being the cheap g.p./x.p. cost of some of those constantly-seen items (again looking at Wand of CLW).

That being said, I've played around with different mechanics for making magic "inaccessible, strange, ancient, rare, lost, eclectic", mysterious and numinous, and the big problem with them is that though I think they work pretty well, they shift to much mechanical burden on to the GM. It only really works to make magic mysterious and numinous if you have a system that does the book keeping for you.

I think ultimately, table top roleplaying games will morph into a quasi-electronic system that runs off table apps and the like. I can imagine spells being cast by pressing barcodes up to phones or tablets to automatically do the bookkeeping, and DMs able to send messages from their app to all players like 'new round', 'new hour', 'new day', 'short rest', 'long rest', etc. to allow automatically updating resources, effect durations, and what not.

Sounds rather hideous, but whatever.

I don't understand, though, how this has anything to do with the sentences following:

At that point, you could have players owning items that they don't fully understand yet. But as it is, eclectic items with quirks and unidentified powers are really burdensome in play.

I've never had that problem, at least not enough to notice it, and the whole point is that magic is intentionally supposed to be mysterious, quirky, and sometimes downright risky. The idea is that when you find a magic item in the field you have no real clue what it does unless you happen to have seen it in use. You have to field-test. You have to experiment. Maybe you have to burn a 100+ g.p. pearl and drop an ID on it. You have to take the risks.

And you have to take the time.

Both the players and the DM have to take the time to record what's found (an item-numbering system is useful here; can't recommend it highly enough!) and then on the player side track your discoveries about it. And if that's "shifting too much mechanical burden onto the DM", I certainly don't see it as such. If anything, it shifts some burden on to the player who takes on the role of party treasurer (which is usually me in any game I play in, if only so I don't end up as mapper).

As for magic item creation, I'd like to see a model move to research/recipe + XP cost, plus perhaps power ingredients, sacrifices, rituals and so forth to help defray XP costs.

Other than minor things like scrolls and potions, I don't mind having item creation be something that simply isn't done by adventuring PCs at all; as I'd rather they focus on field work (in other words, adventuring). That said, I've no objection to having (most) items be commissionable at significant cost from an NPC artificer, with such construction taking months or even years depending what is being crafted and enchanted.

Lan-"and yes, our parties do map the dungeons they explore"-efan

 

[Celebrim]

I don't understand, though, how this has anything to do with the sentences following:
I've never had that problem, at least not enough to notice it, and the whole point is that magic is intentionally supposed to be mysterious, quirky, and sometimes downright risky. The idea is that when you find a magic item in the field you have no real clue what it does unless you happen to have seen it in use. You have to field-test. You have to experiment. Maybe you have to burn a 100+ g.p. pearl and drop an ID on it. You have to take the risks.

So, I'd like to think you could assume as a reasonable assumption that I've played 1e largely according to how it was written, and that how I play 3e is heavily informed by that. So sure, finding items in normal D&D where you are not sure how they work is a thing, and experimenting with them to figure out how they work is a part of the game, as is burning pearls to ID items, and cursed and dangerous treasure. Likewise, it is also a thing that in D&D, players typically have more than one magic item.

Now the problem with that is that the D&D system tends to provide for magic as a very regular, understandable, predictable technology. But, before I get into that, consider the consequences of a player having say 5 magic items on their person that they have not identified. They just, niavely or otherwise, put them on and hope to figure out how they work and what they do in play. On every single die throw, the DM has remember what the 5 items that the player is wearing are, and how they might potentially effect the rolls that the player is reporting. If the player has a sword +2, +6 versus giants, then the DM has to remember to adjust the reported attack rolls and damage mentally and remember, "Oh yes, that sword has an advantage versus giants.", or else the DM has to just reveal these features to the player so that the player can track them. It's not so bad for one item, but when you have six players with 5 or 6 items each, it's burdensome to leave the mechanics unrevealed. In the case of something as trivially simple as a sword +2, +6 versus giants, revealing the mechanics isn't really a problem, but it does show how even in this simple case, it's hard to make a magic item be mysterious, numinous, eclectic, quirky and downright risky.

For that to happen, full understanding of the item can't be given to the player, but must inherently be the province of the DM for as long as possible. And these items, being quirky and mysterious and perhaps downright risky are inherently mechanically complex. As a trivial off the top of my head example, you might have a sword +2 that is a sword -5 on nights of the new moon, that does +2d6 damage versus ki-rin and causes the wielder to go berserk unless they pass a saving throw when in the presence of same, which lowers the temperature by 10 degrees in a 30' radius during the night, and which plagues the owner with strange nightmares after the first month of possession that make the DC of getting a restful nights sleep +2. Now that's a risky numinous dangerous quirky item, but good luck keeping all that straight when you have 30 items in the party possession that are just as mysterious, quirky, and dangerous or more so.

Both the players and the DM have to take the time to record what's found (an item-numbering system is useful here; can't recommend it highly enough!) and then on the player side track your discoveries about it. And if that's "shifting too much mechanical burden onto the DM", I certainly don't see it as such. If anything, it shifts some burden on to the player who takes on the role of party treasurer (which is usually me in any game I play in, if only so I don't end up as mapper).

This is straight up 1e era advice. Yes, the party does have a party treasurer. That's completely unrelated to the problem I'm talking about with magic that isn't strictly command word activated.

Lan-"and yes, our parties do map the dungeons they explore"-efan

And yes, our parties do map the dungeons they explore, and I do try to play Gygaxian tricks of making it difficult for the party mapper to figure out what level of the dungeon they are on.

 

[Maxperson]

Agreed, with a further broken factor being the cheap g.p./x.p. cost of some of those constantly-seen items (again looking at Wand of CLW).

I never had a player who was okay with removing his PC from the game long enough to abuse wand(or any other item) creation, so I never saw this happen in my games.

 

[Maxperson]

Now the problem with that is that the D&D system tends to provide for magic as a very regular, understandable, predictable technology. But, before I get into that, consider the consequences of a player having say 5 magic items on their person that they have not identified. They just, niavely or otherwise, put them on and hope to figure out how they work and what they do in play. On every single die throw, the DM has remember what the 5 items that the player is wearing are, and how they might potentially effect the rolls that the player is reporting. If the player has a sword +2, +6 versus giants, then the DM has to remember to adjust the reported attack rolls and damage mentally and remember, "Oh yes, that sword has an advantage versus giants.", or else the DM has to just reveal these features to the player so that the player can track them. It's not so bad for one item, but when you have six players with 5 or 6 items each, it's burdensome to leave the mechanics unrevealed. In the case of something as trivially simple as a sword +2, +6 versus giants, revealing the mechanics isn't really a problem, but it does show how even in this simple case, it's hard to make a magic item be mysterious, numinous, eclectic, quirky and downright risky.

I had one DM who solved that issue by saying that abilities like +6 vs. giants had to be known about in order to be used. Essentially he had an instant activation for constant abilities like that, and if you didn't know about the ability, you couldn't activate it. I assume he did that in order to avoid having to track all those things. It wasn't enough to keep me from playing in the game, but I can't say I was happy with his solution.

 

[Hussar]

I never had a player who was okay with removing his PC from the game long enough to abuse wand(or any other item) creation, so I never saw this happen in my games.

Really?

A wand takes 1 day to manufacture. Your campaigns were so high paced that the PC's couldn't spend 1 day to make a wand? Even a 2nd level wand only took 2 days to craft. Heck the most powerful wand you could make (4th level) only took 10 days. But, anything 1st level only took 1 day. Bang out a wand of CLW for every PC in the party took less than a week.

How high paced were your games?

 

[Maxperson]

Really?

A wand takes 1 day to manufacture. Your campaigns were so high paced that the PC's couldn't spend 1 day to make a wand? Even a 2nd level wand only took 2 days to craft. Heck the most powerful wand you could make (4th level) only took 10 days. But, anything 1st level only took 1 day. Bang out a wand of CLW for every PC in the party took less than a week.

How high paced were your games?

A lot could happen in a week, or even a day. The world didn't stop for them to make wands. It wasn't that something would necessarily happen during a given day, but they knew that it often did and they didn't want to be out of commission if something happened. The rest of the party wasn't going to ignore it just because a wand was being made.

 

[Hussar]

Heh. Very different from our games. We had MONTHS between adventures. Heck, in the last 3e campaign I ran, it took them a three month sea voyage to get from Sasserine to the Isle of Dread. More than enough time to crank out whatever the heck they wanted.

I cannot imagine a campaign where the pacing is that frantic. Good grief, you'd hit 20th level in a couple of months of game time.

 

[Lanefan]

So, I'd like to think you could assume as a reasonable assumption that I've played 1e largely according to how it was written, and that how I play 3e is heavily informed by that. So sure, finding items in normal D&D where you are not sure how they work is a thing, and experimenting with them to figure out how they work is a part of the game, as is burning pearls to ID items, and cursed and dangerous treasure. Likewise, it is also a thing that in D&D, players typically have more than one magic item.

OK, cool.

Now the problem with that is that the D&D system tends to provide for magic as a very regular, understandable, predictable technology. But, before I get into that, consider the consequences of a player having say 5 magic items on their person that they have not identified. They just, niavely or otherwise, put them on and hope to figure out how they work and what they do in play. On every single die throw, the DM has remember what the 5 items that the player is wearing are, and how they might potentially effect the rolls that the player is reporting. If the player has a sword +2, +6 versus giants, then the DM has to remember to adjust the reported attack rolls and damage mentally and remember, "Oh yes, that sword has an advantage versus giants.", or else the DM has to just reveal these features to the player so that the player can track them. It's not so bad for one item, but when you have six players with 5 or 6 items each, it's burdensome to leave the mechanics unrevealed. In the case of something as trivially simple as a sword +2, +6 versus giants, revealing the mechanics isn't really a problem, but it does show how even in this simple case, it's hard to make a magic item be mysterious, numinous, eclectic, quirky and downright risky.

For that to happen, full understanding of the item can't be given to the player, but must inherently be the province of the DM for as long as possible.

Yep. I have a place on my DM screen where I clip notes about just this sort of thing. And even somehting as simple as a bland boring +1 sword is something I have to keep track of, if the character thinks it's something else or has no clue at all.

And these items, being quirky and mysterious and perhaps downright risky are inherently mechanically complex. As a trivial off the top of my head example, you might have a sword +2 that is a sword -5 on nights of the new moon, that does +2d6 damage versus ki-rin and causes the wielder to go berserk unless they pass a saving throw when in the presence of same, which lowers the temperature by 10 degrees in a 30' radius during the night, and which plagues the owner with strange nightmares after the first month of possession that make the DC of getting a restful nights sleep +2.

That's a pretty extreme example, I'd say. I can't think of more than one or two weapons - or items in general, for all that - in 30+ years I've been DMing that have been anywhere near that complicated or fussy.

The biggest headaches, to be fair, are the ones where the character(s) think everything is known about an item but it still has something up its sleeve that their field-testing or ID spell just didn't (or couldn't) pull; as those are the ones the players just assume to be what they believe them to be. Most of the time if an item is unknown or uncertain the players remind me; a typical conversation might go like this:

Fighter's player: "I'm using this shortsword we just picked up. Roll to hit is 17 + 1 for strength, 1 for spec., and whatever the sword gives me."
Me-as-DM: "What item number is the sword?"
Player or treasurer: "147. I think it was in the mummy's coffin."
Me-as-DM if I remember what makes sword 147 tick: "Right, that one. You hit. Hard. Roll damage."
Me-as-DM if I don't remember sword 147: "147? Let me look that up... <<quick glance at my records>> ...right, that one. You hit. Hard. Roll damage."

I usually don't have to look back very far as after each adventure they ID everything then divide and-or sell it. Again, it's only when they think they know one thing but the truth is another that I have to worry about it long-term, and even then only if they don't sell it. Those are the ones that generate sticky notes on the back of my DM screen.

Lan-"players forgetting to record item numbers with their characters' possessions (guilty!) also causes grief"-efan

 

[Lanefan]

I never had a player who was okay with removing his PC from the game long enough to abuse wand(or any other item) creation, so I never saw this happen in my games.

The 3e game I was in, the whole party would shut 'er down for a few game-world weeks now and then (in part because we used training-up rules) thus there was always time and opportunity to crank out relatively minor stuff like that.

Lanefan

 

[Maxperson]

Heh. Very different from our games. We had MONTHS between adventures. Heck, in the last 3e campaign I ran, it took them a three month sea voyage to get from Sasserine to the Isle of Dread. More than enough time to crank out whatever the heck they wanted.

I cannot imagine a campaign where the pacing is that frantic. Good grief, you'd hit 20th level in a couple of months of game time.

Not everything is battles man. It sucks getting invited to eat dinner with the local lord and not being able to go because the wand is being crafted. Everyone else goes, though. Roleplaying is had, and the player of the wizard or cleric just sits there making a wand.

The DM who just says, "Three months passes for everyone and you make 20 gazillion wands." has created the problem, not the creation rules.