D&D 5E Rime of the Frostmaiden magic items

[MarkB]

You realize that the AL doc that I excerpted in my post was, literally, the Adventurer's League Player's Guide for Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden? That if you were to play RotFM in organized play, you'd be entitled to up to 3 basic permanent magic items at level 5? A five character party at level 5 just has 15 permanent magic items beginning with the first session the party is at level 5, with basic items covering the gaps.

I really can't agree with an assertion that the adventure as written is "how it's really supposed to be run" when WotC themselves are also explicitly telling you for this exact adventure that when you run it you should add up to a dozen magic items at level 5, and up to another dozen at level 11 on top of the items presented in the adventure itself.

Will the game break if you don't give out items? No. But it's disingenuous to take that and extend it to mean that no magic items is appropriate, intentional, ideal, expected, desirable, or in any way the default experience.

AL games have other metrics to meet, though. An AL character who has played through part or all of this campaign needs to still be equipped to a similar standard as those who have played through other campaigns, in order to maintain character portability.

So it's not necessarily any indication of what is intended for this particular campaign in any context other than AL play.

 

[tetrasodium]

AL games have other metrics to meet, though. An AL character who has played through part or all of this campaign needs to still be equipped to a similar standard as those who have played through other campaigns, in order to maintain character portability.

So it's not necessarily any indication of what is intended for this particular campaign in any context other than AL play.

if t were 3.5 or 4e where the rules are designed with the expectation where you would meet a "you must be this magically equipped" bar at various levels you would have a point, but 5e is designed to not require that stuff Also there are magic items in it, just not enough to equip an entire party... That creates a situation where Alice & Bob are not "equipped to a similar standard"as Chuck & Dave who happened to get the magic item fitting their class.

 

[Olrox17]

Adventures League’s has its own set of quirks and rules, that AFAIK are not published in any d&d rulebook, not even as variants.

As such, those rules are completely irrelevant to me and my game, and they do not color my perception and interpretation of the game in any way.

 

[jasper]

AL games have other metrics to meet, though. An AL character who has played through part or all of this campaign needs to still be equipped to a similar standard as those who have played through other campaigns, in order to maintain character portability.

So it's not necessarily any indication of what is intended for this particular campaign in any context other than AL play.

i have read this five times and still having trouble making sense of this. 1. Are you saying an AL character must have similar magical loot to maintain the ability to hang with other AL characters from other season who are the same or near the same level? 2 Or did I eat too much for lunch and my brain is asleep?

 

[TheSword]

If only there were a way to represent both goals. Perhaps some 12d chess champion adventure designer, or even a regular adventure designer/writer working on one of the few yearly HC adventures put out by the industry leading company could really stretch their capability. Maybe such a herculean feat would look something like the italicized bit here with some advice on how to play up the other aspects you reference while still balancing

Spoiler: these"

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/ad&d dmg115

Do you think that the primary target audience for HC adventures are "dm's "of extraordinary skill"? If not do you think that 5e somehow makes up the gap between the target audience of GMs & those of "extraordinary skill"?... Either way how do you think that AL is so unlucky that only GMs of eextraordinarly mediocre skill run AL & thus need all of that extra treasure baked into the AL rules for the season itself?

Well done for managing to be rude using someone else’s words.

I made it clear I wasn’t referring to adventurers league as that has additional items for balance in other campaigns.

I made it clear that I would restrict magic items when the campaign made it appropriate and not as standard.

I have no earthly idea why you think a poorly written, condescending snippet from a 25 year old book would be relevant today. A 5e character is a very very different animal to an AD&D one as I suspect you know. They have far more resources.

Play your games as you like. I don’t agree with your premise that a wide range of magic weapons are essential in the game.

 

[MarkB]

i have read this five times and still having trouble making sense of this. 1. Are you saying an AL character must have similar magical loot to maintain the ability to hang with other AL characters from other season who are the same or near the same level? 2 Or did I eat too much for lunch and my brain is asleep?

Not "must" - just that there may be a certain expectation of roughly similar levels of reward regardless of how they got there.

 

[Bacon Bits]

Not "must" - just that there may be a certain expectation of roughly similar levels of reward regardless of how they got there.

I mean, canonically, basic items from renown are about as fungible as the contents of your ration packages. If you switch to a different adventure with your AL character, you could just lose the basic items and pick from the new renown list for the new adventure. You pick them before the start of every session, exchanging or replacing them as you see fit. You can switch a renown magic longsword to a battleaxe or a greatsword between sessions of the same adventure. There's no need for renown items to be universal across adventures. The rules as they currently exist already allow that to not be the case with zero changes.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I've avoided RoTFM spoilers so far, but seeing this thread has made me realize that it's probably a bad campaign to take a barbarian into.

It's a great campaign for playing a barbarian! Many role playing opportunities there.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

This phrasing gets trotted out all the time, and it's often misused.

What it means is the game doesn't require you to give out magic items in order to function on a basic design level.

Yes, agreed.

What it does not mean is "it's okay to not give the PCs rewards".

True. But magic items are not the only rewards. In a horror flavoured campaign like RotFM being not dead is its own reward. And if you can help the people of the Ten Towns also be not dead that's gravy.

The point is: If you're using magic items as rewards, the designers very clearly think you're supposed to get a lot of magic items. They thought that in 2014 when they wrote the DMG.

I see no indication of that in the DMG. If you give out too many rewards you devalue them. Generally, I tend to give out a small number of interesting and moderately powerful items that suit the characters and are tied to the plot.

They think that now when they're writing Adventurer's League rules. Yes, Virginia, you're supposed to give out magic items.

AL is for people with no friends to play with.

All the phrase means is that magic items make you better. Magic items used to make you hit par. Now they make you better.

Agreed. And having over-par PCs is a good way to suck the tension out of a horror campaign.

The game is saying that you don't have to reward your players with magic items like you did historically, but you still need to reward players with something. If you're not giving out magic items, you should be giving out equivalent alternate rewards of some kind.

Sure. And you have to pick what motivates your players. My players are role players first and foremost, and get more excited by something that looks cool than something massively powerful.

But when you are writing a published adventure you cannot know what is going to excite a particular group of players. They are all different. It's an absolutely core part of the DM's role to a) select and adventure that suits the players; and b) adapt the adventure on the fly to fit the players' preferences.

 

[MichaelSomething]

I have no earthly idea why you think a poorly written, condescending snippet from a 25 year old book would be relevant today. A 5e character is a very very different animal to an AD&D one as I suspect you know. They have far more resources.

Because Dungeons and Dragons was BUILT from condescending snippets from decades old books?