Excerpt: Economies [merged]

[GSHamster]

One thing I like is that it seems very "novice DM"-friendly. If the quest and encounter sections are as easy to follow, it will be very easy for a new DM to make a nice little adventure than takes the characters up one level, and gives them decent rewards.

I especially like how it goes a bit into the psychology of rewards, to give the DM some reasoning as to *why* you should hand out loot a certain way.

If the rest of the DMG is like this, it will easily be the best D&D book ever written.

 

[drjones]

The One Ring was not a magic item (by these rules) it was a plot device so I don't think any rules are needed. Just a 'this item seems very strange and powerful to you, unlike anything you have seen, you doubt you can master it' and if they pursue it anyway 'there is a flash of light and you crumple to the floor, your components gone. The ring sits as before but now red script dances across it's surface.'

 

[Rechan]

Aw, come on. The article clearly stats that you will use the money to by your character his own castle.

I stated earlier I misread a sentence.

Um... why wouldn't the NPC be able to use the item? It's just as easy to add the item's bonuses and features to an NPC as it is to a PC. I'm not sure what you're trying to say.

Well, NPCs work differently than PCs. So, they might not. I seem to recall seeing that before the monsters excerpt came out.

 

[Klaus]

One thing that caught my eye:

specifically calling out a "+1 magic sword", as opposed to just a "+1 sword".

Maybe that keyword means more now?

 

[keterys]

Yeah, I am very impressed with how novice friendly this is (and commented as such in another board I frequent).

One thing learned from figuring out the cost chart... you probably get +1 improvements to magic weapons/armor/etc on increments of 5... ie, +1 at 1-5, +2 at 6-10, +3 at 11-15, etc. Of course, your magic items are higher than your level usually so it's possible you end up with items over level 30, but if not that puts a +6 sword/armor as your cap in epic levels.

Which seems low based on the rest of the math (like for monsters), so there's probably something I'm missing. 1/2 Level + 1/5 Item doesn't come close enough to the +1 / Level we're seeing on scaling things... though I suppose you might also get at least +1/8 ability score increase, and that just leaves 7/40 to get through feats, paths, and power bonuses.

Hmmhmm. I guess that's dealable.

 

[A'koss]

This is rather off topic, but I actually have never done that. Almost all my adventures have some built in time limit and are a series of adventures tied together in a campaign that last 10-20 levels worth of time.

So, magic item creation has never really been an issue for any of my campaigns. Any player who tried spending that much time to do "out of game" activities like keep building, magic item creation, and the like were yelled at by their party members for wasting time when their enemies were getting away or while the villain had the mayor prisoner and might kill him at any time or when the evil cult might destroy the world.

Well... if you design the campaign in such a way as to effectively prohibit any kind extra-curricular activities, what do you expect? But I agree, this is getting OT...

 

[Rechan]

This is rather off topic, but I actually have never done that. Almost all my adventures have some built in time limit and are a series of adventures tied together in a campaign that last 10-20 levels worth of time.

So, magic item creation has never really been an issue for any of my campaigns. Any player who tried spending that much time to do "out of game" activities like keep building, magic item creation, and the like were yelled at by their party members for wasting time when their enemies were getting away or while the villain had the mayor prisoner and might kill him at any time or when the evil cult might destroy the world.

The problem with that is:

1) Players who want to make magical items (Or godforbid, you're playing a wizard and you need to put a spell in your spellbook from a scroll) get gimped.

2) More importantly (to me), if you go from level 1 to 20 without ever stopping, the PCs go from 1-2 in about six months in-game.

I give some downtime, even if folks don't have busywork (magical item/spell scribing etc) to do.

 

[AtomicPope]

This all comes as a pleasant surprise. I really hated the idea of rolling for wealth, just like I hated rolling for monster Hitpoints. I stopped that way back in 1st edition and I've never regretted it. There's something lazy and about rolling up treasure. It's like saying that there is no real backstory to the monsters, which destroys the illusion roleplaying tries to create.


Thank goodness for the new direction.

 

[Thasmodious]

How come no one made these WoW complaints when Eberron came out and the artificer class had rules for breaking down a magic item and making new items out of the magic you salvage from it? Oh yeah, because that was before WoW launched...

*headdesk*

What, don't you know? Through some wrinkle of the space-time continuum, WoW actually invented the fantasy genre. It all comes from there.

I'm appalled that 4e rips off WoW so blatantly with things like levels, hit points, attributes, magic. I even read that 4e will allow characters to have mounts. What a ripoff.

 

[keterys]

if you go from level 1 to 20 without ever stopping, the PCs go from 1-2 in about six months in-game.

six months? Did it in... I think it was 32 days, but I'll pretend it was a month... in one 3.0 campaign.

But, yeah, silliness ensues.