D&D 4E AICN 4e Review Part 2: DMing 4e

[AntiStateQuixote]

Who on this thread actually had a "Wal-Magic" in their world, where players could just buy any item in the DMG at will, if they had the cash?

While no "Wal-Magic" per se, it was assumed that in the largest of cities at least one (probably several) casters were available that could craft pretty much anything you wanted and if you had the cash they had the time.

Furthermore, most of our spellcasting PCs took Craft: [something] and made stuff for the party all the time.

 

[Spatula]

What makes you think that isn't taken into account?

Because it's a very common mistake, and there was nothing to indicate that it was taken into account. And likening the multiplication of 3 terms to calculus (hyperbole, I know) doesn't impress me to the author's mathmatical bonafides.

I could probably dig around and find a 3e playtest report that said the same sort of thing - "The EL system makes building encounters a breeze! For example you can take 8 lvl 1 orcs and see that they're an appropriate challenge for a level 7 party" or somesuch. The rules explicitly state this, but they are wrong. That is not obvious at first blush, though.

There's a difference between slapping price tags on magic items, and hardwiring the system to expect PCs with access to Magic Item Wal-Mart. I don't care if the game supports the possibility of magic item shops. I just don't want it to require them as a central element of game balance.

True, but this isn't the modern world. You can't sell your loot on eBay. Particularly in a points-of-light setting with restricted teleportation, it's quite easy to say that the PCs' ability to find a buyer for their plunder is severely limited. Sure, everybody wants a +3 sword, but can you find somebody who wants it bad enough to pay you 9,000 gold pieces for it? Or even 1,000?

See my previous post. The system doesn't assume the existence of Magic Item Walmarts; DMs do. The system also doesn't (and shouldn't) assume you have to spend an entire game session trying to unload unwanted loot for a decent price; DMs do. Some people like it one way, some the other, most are probably inbetween. In my games I allow the players to liquidate unwanted items and commission upgrades & new items given the proper location and enough downtime, so that we can get back to butt-kicking. Some people prefer to haggle and roleplay that stuff, and that's fine. The DMG makes no assumptions on how the items are acquired.

 

[Henry]

Me. This was a given in almost every 3e game I played. I think the primary reason it was so prevalent is that most of the DMs I played with realized the consequences of NOT allowing that kind of access to equipment meant one or more of the characters usually ended up being decidedly weaker than the rest of the party by mid-level.

..And my group, too, for the exact reasons Ourph describes. Sure, some of it is plain laziness (who wants to role play out every single Gather info check for a commodity?) but it was laziness born out of realization that magic items are so integral to power levels in 3e that it's a necessarily frequent transaction.

 

[Darrin Drader]

Well that's it. Stick a fork in me.

Having rules that emphasize roleplaying and having solid guidelines for saying yes to players when they ask to do something not covered in the rules, plus the non-reliance on magic items has pretty much made up my mind. My biggest gripes with 3.5, other than the massive amounts of prep time, are that the game is designed to take placed in the dungeon, that you often times have to go through mental acrobatics to create a rule on the fly that lets players do something not covered, and the fact that you're expected to load them up with magic at every level to keep the game balanced. The idea that its easy to calculate the XP of an encounter and easy to calculate power levels is also excellent. These are all things that can be tricky in 3E which make designing quality adventures (I won't say hard, because that would be too strong of a word) not easy.

Eliminating prestige classes and broken class abilities that stack in strange ways is yet another thing that really pleases me. Kensai + Vow of Poverty? HEAD EXPLODES IN FRUSTRATION AT THE BLATANT RULE BREAKING GOING ON WITH THAT ONE!

How much of a discount do we get by preordering from Amazon?

 

[Wormwood]

. . . but it was laziness born out of realization that magic items are so integral to power levels in 3e that it's a necessarily frequent transaction.

And this. Especially this.

 

[Dausuul]

Because it's a very common mistake, and there was nothing to indicate that it was taken into account. And likening the multiplication of 3 terms to calculus (hyperbole, I know) doesn't impress me to the author's mathmatical bonafides.

I could probably dig around and find a 3e playtest report that said the same sort of thing - "The EL system makes building encounters a breeze! For example you can take 8 lvl 1 orcs and see that they're an appropriate challenge for a level 7 party" or somesuch. The rules explicitly state this, but they are wrong. That is not obvious at first blush, though.

See my previous post. The system doesn't assume the existence of Magic Item Walmarts; DMs do. <snip> The DMG makes no assumptions on how the items are acquired.

But it assumes that the items are acquired. That's the problem.

The system assumes that the PCs can sell any item they find, for 50% of list price. It also assumes that they can purchase any item off the list in the DMG at the given price. Changing these assumptions has a dramatic effect on game balance.

No, this does not require Magic Item Wal-Mart in the sense of "one giant superstore where you can buy any item." But it does require Magic Item Wal-Mart in the sense of "every item is available for sale at list price, and every item can be sold for half list price." Whether the DM makes up hoops for the players to jump through in order to find the necessary traders is immaterial; the game expects you to have those traders and make sure the PCs find them every level or two.

The 3E rules do not cope well with a world where the magic item "market" is mostly nonexistent; where magic items are highly prized and seldom traded, and you cannot count on being able to find any given item X for sale, or on being able to find a buyer for item Y at anything resembling its listed price.

Your magic item shops can be giant superstores or hard-to-find dealers in back alleys, but the option to not have them at all isn't there. Furthermore, because both DMs and players quickly tire of hoop-jumping when they could, as you say, be butt-kicking, the hunt for magic item dealers typically ends up getting handwaved and you end up with de facto, if not de jure, Magic Item Wal-Mart.

As long as PCs receive magic items they don't want or will eventually tire of, there will be magic item trade of some sort.

PC1: "Who wants this necklace we found in the owlbear cavern that allows the wearer to understand the chittering of squirrels?"
PC2: "Not me. Just put it in your backpack and forget about it, since the rules specifically forbid us to buy and sell magic items."
PC3: "Why don't we just drop it back on the ground? We're adventurers; we don't need to pick up every single piece of loot we find."
PC4: "Nah, I got a better idea. We'll use it to pay the innkeeper for room and board when we get back to the town. Or we'll use it to pay for our wenching later."

At the risk of sounding like a crotchety old grognard, I played a bunch of 2E games without a single magic item shop anywhere, and never once did I see PCs trying to offload magic gear. Magic items were too rare and precious. If you found a necklace that let you understand the chittering of squirrels, you damn well hung onto that necklace and started keeping an eye out for squirrels. Who knew when it might come in handy?

And if you wanted to give it to the innkeep for room and board? More power to you, and that innkeep would be your best friend for life. You could probably even get a little gold for it--drop the price low enough and somebody would pay. What you couldn't do was sell it for two thousand gold pieces and head off to buy a +1 sword... because there simply weren't that many people around with two grand to drop on magic items, or with +1 swords they wanted to sell. Sure, the old warrior in the tavern might have a +1 sword, but he got that sword from his grandfather who had it from his, and it saved his life in battle half a dozen times, and he wasn't parting with it, nohow.

 

[dungeon blaster]

While I liked most of what I read, there were a few comments that I found troubling...

"The idea of the single lone monster fight is almost entirely gone" I LIKE the single lone monster fight. I don't want it to be almost entirely gone. What's wrong with lone monster fights? Was it too difficult to design lone monsters that were balanced against PCs? Now, I know there's "solo" monsters, so apparently the possibility is still there. I'll just have to wait and see how many "solo" monsters there are (or if a normal monster can be easily converted into a solo monster).

"clever players will simply require them [complicated tactics and encounters" Um... I can see how a lot of people will think this is a good thing...but what about DM's who don't derive great enjoyment from creating clever tactics and encounters? I don't want to have to spend a lot of time thinking about tactics, I'd rather think about the plot and story then the minutiae of a combat. Of course, clever players who focus on tactics have always required greater cleverness on the part of the DM, but I'm hoping that it will still be possible to adequately challenge such players without having to spend hours thinking up tactical monster combinations and so on. Are we going to start seeing monster "mobs" comprised of creatures that mesh well in a tactical sense, but would not realistically coexist together? Something like a pixie, a beholder, an azer, and a golem, for example.

Overall, 4ed sounds quite exciting, but I'm worried that the game is going to be far too focused on tactics.

 

[jaelis]

In regards to the availability of magic items in 3e, there is also this:

Every community has a gold piece limit based on its size and population. The gold piece limit (see Table 5-2) is an indicator of the price of the most expensive item available in that community. Nothing that costs more than a community's gp limit is available for purchase in that community. Anything having a price under that limit is most likely available, whether it be mundane or magical. While exceptions are certainly possible (a boomtown near a newly discovered mine, a farming community impoverished after a prolonged drought), these exceptions are temporary; all communities will conform to the norm over time.

 

[Incenjucar]

The lone monster fight is now a SPECIAL event, rather than standard, is all, and there is a breed of monsters, "Solo Monsters," designed specifically for this.

Sort of like Mini-Bosses, I'd wager.

 

[fnwc]

At the risk of sounding like a crotchety old grognard, I played a bunch of 2E games without a single magic item shop anywhere, and never once did I see PCs trying to offload magic gear. Magic items were too rare and precious.

You must have played in a bunch of homebrew adventures; a ton of published 2E TSR adventures were chock full of magic items.