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Dissapointed with Attunement
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<blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 6034084" data-attributes="member: 2067"><p>I don't think D&D is about that for many of its players. And if that's all D&D is about, then <em>Diablo</em> does D&D better than D&D ever did. There's more to this game than that (as evidenced by the large quantity of people in 3e and 4e who wanted to strip out magic items entirely or almost so). </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>In a lot of ways, having zero magic items WAS the default for editions before 3e and 4e. It was not a guarantee. If you got a magic item (which was randomly determined), it might be useless or cursed or worse. You often had to wrest them from enemies who used them against you. They were only the result of certain treasure types that you never had to use. And, yes, the magic item might be taken from you at any moment (aah, Disenchanters...). You could ignore magic items and it wouldn't have any cascading effects on your game. The games presumed you'd eventually get some magic items, but in a lot of ways the early games presumed that your characters would eventually become unbalanced. </p><p></p><p>It was a Big Deal when 3e actually considered magic items in the balance of the game, thus working their existence into the rules. It took us about a decade (and a half) to realize that's not really what we wanted. </p><p></p><p>We should not cling to this idea that magic items must be "balanced." We should instead discover the fun that accepting a (controlled) imbalance can bring. And the only person who needs to be able to control that tilt is the DM, not the designer. We don't need the rules to babysit us. We just need them to prepare us.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Mostly it's the idea that magic items must have some sort of arbitrary "limit" to "balance" them that I'm protesting, here.</p><p></p><p>Attunement is a lovely concept, and I'd be all for it as an optional rule, and with a few tweaks (adopting the experimental rule and changing the requirements from "10 minutes" to something a little more unique) it'd be fine up there as something you could use if you wanted to make items feel special. </p><p></p><p>It doesn't seem to me to have a valid and essential purpose, though. There's nothing about magic items that means attunement has to happen. So it shouldn't have to happen. It COULD happen, if you wanted it, but it NEEDN'T happen. Playing with Attunement as a requirement is a little like saying you must have...I dunno...Dragonborn...in your game. Yeah, you can always cut it out, but why should it have to be there in the first place?</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="I'm A Banana, post: 6034084, member: 2067"] I don't think D&D is about that for many of its players. And if that's all D&D is about, then [I]Diablo[/I] does D&D better than D&D ever did. There's more to this game than that (as evidenced by the large quantity of people in 3e and 4e who wanted to strip out magic items entirely or almost so). In a lot of ways, having zero magic items WAS the default for editions before 3e and 4e. It was not a guarantee. If you got a magic item (which was randomly determined), it might be useless or cursed or worse. You often had to wrest them from enemies who used them against you. They were only the result of certain treasure types that you never had to use. And, yes, the magic item might be taken from you at any moment (aah, Disenchanters...). You could ignore magic items and it wouldn't have any cascading effects on your game. The games presumed you'd eventually get some magic items, but in a lot of ways the early games presumed that your characters would eventually become unbalanced. It was a Big Deal when 3e actually considered magic items in the balance of the game, thus working their existence into the rules. It took us about a decade (and a half) to realize that's not really what we wanted. We should not cling to this idea that magic items must be "balanced." We should instead discover the fun that accepting a (controlled) imbalance can bring. And the only person who needs to be able to control that tilt is the DM, not the designer. We don't need the rules to babysit us. We just need them to prepare us. Mostly it's the idea that magic items must have some sort of arbitrary "limit" to "balance" them that I'm protesting, here. Attunement is a lovely concept, and I'd be all for it as an optional rule, and with a few tweaks (adopting the experimental rule and changing the requirements from "10 minutes" to something a little more unique) it'd be fine up there as something you could use if you wanted to make items feel special. It doesn't seem to me to have a valid and essential purpose, though. There's nothing about magic items that means attunement has to happen. So it shouldn't have to happen. It COULD happen, if you wanted it, but it NEEDN'T happen. Playing with Attunement as a requirement is a little like saying you must have...I dunno...Dragonborn...in your game. Yeah, you can always cut it out, but why should it have to be there in the first place? [/QUOTE]
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