Where Has All the Magic Gone?

[EroGaki]

I miss my wand of fire, I really do !!

I think some of my favorite items were the cursed ones. I miss cursed items a lot. Not because they messed around with the players ( I admit that that aspect can be fun), but because they represented a facet of magic that has been lost in 3rd and 4th edition: magic can be unsafe, It can be unpredictable. It can have results that were not intended. That, in my opinion, is what killed much of the mystery and mysticism of magic items, and magic itself, in the current editions. Magic has had all of the bugs worked out of it, for better or worse. It is now safe and entirely predicable.

A few of my favorite items from AD&D were the Ring of Contrariness, which afflicted the wearer with the inability to agree with any idea, statement, or action, while at the same time granting the powers of a random magical ring. Also, I love the Ring of Truth, which granted the wearer the ability to detect any lie told to him, while at the same time preventing the wearer from lying. These items, while cursed, offered some cool abilities and inspired role playing.

Nowadays you don't find items such as these. Instead, you find lame equipment, such as the Cloak of Resistance. This item, while useful, is dull. And worse, it is one of the most common magical items found in a treasure horde. As you gain levels, you should expect to find better cloaks, such as the Cloak of the Manta Ray. But instead, you just find a more powerful Cloak of Resistance. Yay.

I feel that magic was more mystical and mysterious when it was a supernatural force. In the current editions, magic is an applied science.

 

[AllisterH]

As soon as magic items can be bought and sold, magic items have to be "balanced". If you do not allow for magic items to be bought/sold and easily created (contrast for example, what PO:Sp&M said it required to make a Wand of Fire versus the 3e equivalent, Staff of Fire), then you can have as much wahoo magic in the game as before....

The rod vs wand vs staff naming convention shouldn't affect the feel of magic (really, if a person A calls it a wand of fire and person B calls it a staff of fire and they both DO the same thing, I'm not understanding why the latter is less magical than the first).

Spell Compendium might've been loved by players who liked magical classes, but trust me, many a DM and many a martial fan point towards the Spell Compedium as the biggest source of power-creep for the most powerful classes in the game already....

Nostalgia is also a powerful force. I have the Encyclopedia Magica (the leather tomes from pre 3E that had ALL the magical items ever printed for the game up to then....) and the vast majority of the items in the books are, well, shockingly mundane. Great fluff and description but the effect is pretty "normal".

 

[Vicar In A Tutu]

I agree with the OP. I'm always a DM, and when I read RPG books I want to be inspired. Reading 4E, I fall asleep (though I'm looking forward to Manual of the Planes). By far the most boring part of 4E, IMHO, are the magic items.

 

[ExploderWizard]

I will give 3rd edition this though, they introduced what may be my favorite item of all time. Why take some boring new sword when you can have...an Immobile Rod! Which seriously has more uses then you could ever fully comprehend.

A truly awesome item but 3rd Ed didn't create it. This was the recreation of the Rod of Inertia from the D&D companion rules.

The magic item issue is the same is pretty much the same as the spell issue in 4E (and 3E to some extent), balance over flavor. Older editions gave you cool stuff and suggestions for balance. The degree of game balance with any edition still comes ultimately from those playing, so killing off the quirky cool stuff in the name of balance certainly dulls the flavor and for what? Something that a good group of players can provide for themselves?

Designing a non-competative roleplaying game with balance as the primary focus seems like designing to the lowest common denominator to me. The design philosophy screams " We know that you are not qualified to use common sense and good judgement to run your games so it will built into the system. We shall therefore remove any and all elements from the core of the system that require common sense or good judgement to include in your game."

Magic that feels magical lives in older editions/other games now.

 

[Ydars]

The problem with all D&D magic is the point and shoot aspect of it. It is about as magical in feel as a 357 magnum much of the time. Here are some things I have done in the past to try and put back the magic in various RPGs. They tend to only work well in story driven campaigns and I have never tried them in sandbox or dungeon-bash type games but then neither of those is a particular friend to the mystical anyway.

Magic can be made somewhat more mystical if items and spells are tied to certain places and/or can only be used at certain times.

If often invent a set of star-formations, like the zodiac, then when the moon is in the house of the hunter, spells of nature would wax whilst those of necromancy would wane. You get the idea. I often use the cliched 3 moons of your average fantasy world to good effect and have items or spells tied to waxes and wanes of one of the moons, or else to the seasons.

Similarly, if you take a leaf from the "Wizard of Earthsea" a wizard's power depends upon words and his powers are blunted when in strange lands where the earthpowers do not recognise his voice. Thus the land becomes a patchwork of locations that favour or disallow certain types of magic. This could be a way of handling over-powerful mages in 3.5E and to prevent the use of certain game-breaking divinations/transportation magic in all editions of the game; just site the adventure in a time and place that makes the use of spell X very difficult. I have even gone so far as to have certain spell be castable only at 2 or 3 sites in the entire world, often divinations or resurrection magic.

Magic can also pierce the veil between worlds very easily at certain times of year and so carries some risks. You can introduce risks into the game associated with magic that include magical laws.

I have used the Law of Threefold consequence to good effect so that any damage done to others is visited threefold unto the mage unless he is protected by ritual at certain times of the year.

Similarly, charm and enchantment spells can be made more powerful through the use of hair or other connections to the target, and rituals can also blunt magical attacks.

I have also ruled in the past that summoning rituals must be performed at certain times and creatures bound into service and only then can you cast summon monster I and expect the creature to come. The creature should have personality and story and be a character as much as NPCs do.

Lastly, I make wizards do magical research to get their new spells at each level; in a proper laboratory. Sorcerors are required to find and hold discource with supernatural powers to gain their new spells. They often have to find a lake with a powerful Fey at the bottom and then bargain to gain new power.

All this slightly nerfs spell-casters but in 3.5E, where I used most of these to best effect, this is no bad thing.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Some of the issues have already been explained well (e.g. 3e defined 'wand' and all wands had to fit to that definition).

The other big issue IMO is the idea of 'expected wealth' which was introduced in 3e. Because a lot of the versatile, interesting magic items were still in the DMG, but were given an 'expected wealth value' which was so high they never saw play in the game.

In my Eberron campaign I threw the expected wealth guidelines out the window, and it was the best thing I did for my game. It freed me up to provide powerful, flavourful items as I saw fit without worrying about the supposed 'balance' issues it might cause - I'm a big boy, and I can resolve any power balance issues as they arise.

4e strives to make items a bit more interesting than 3e at low level, but still suffers a bit from the "you're heroic tier? Only one daily power for you!" metagame design - and there seems a complete paucity of multi-functional higher level stuff at all. It is as if an average has been taken which is a bit better than low level 3e, but worse than high level 3e, and that average stretched across all the tiers.

The 4e exception for me is artifacts, which I think have probably recieved one of their best core rules treatments I've seen.

Cheers

 

[Jack7]

I think some of my favorite items were the cursed ones. I miss cursed items a lot. Not because they messed around with the players ( I admit that that aspect can be fun), but because they represented a facet of magic that has been lost in 3rd and 4th edition: magic can be unsafe, It can be unpredictable. It can have results that were not intended. That, in my opinion, is what killed much of the mystery and mysticism of magic items, and magic itself, in the current editions. Magic has had all of the bugs worked out of it, for better or worse. It is now safe and entirely predicable.

I think a lot of people said a lot of things I entirely agree with, and a lot of people said things I disagree with, but still liked and could see their point.

But this ladies and gentlemen, the quote section above, for those who understand what it means, this said a whole lot about the nature of modern fantasy gaming.

EG, I'll be running some XP up the flagpole in your direction.
Look for my signal.

As for the rest of you, please carry on as you were.
And good job.

 

[Henry]

I admit, I've missed the magic items of 1st and 2nd edition for a long time now. I think that part of the issue is that magic items were one thing that separated your character mechanically from others - it was the equivalent of feats or powers nowadays. You weren't just Aravis Blackblade, you HAD the BLACKBLADE, a +2 Dagger that could magically transform into a Tattoo and back again (got that from the Encyclopedia Magica with a little name change to the weapon), or, you had the Rod of Lordly Might, the Swiss Army Knife of AD&D. There wasn't a fighter who didn't dream of one day owning one of those Rods, because you felt like freaking James Bond with that one item.

4E grabbed a little of that feel (like the swords that explode with area attacks, or the items that give a special defense once a day), but the feel of items like the Wand of Fire, or the Xiphoid Xebec, are still missing from the game, and may never return because of inherent balance issues.

 

[Dausuul]

For what it's worth, the Apparatus of Kwalish made it's way into Adventurer's Vault. We need to remember that 4E is still very new, and there's a good chance a lot of the old favorites will find their way into the game eventually. Of course, they may lose a little of that cool factor for the sake of ease of use/implementaion and balance. That said, I was pleasantly surprised with how the Apparatus turned out. (Vorpal Sword? Not so much...)
Later!
Gruns

Indeed. I agree with the sentiment that most of the magic items in the 4E Player's Handbook are boring as hell. However, the Adventurer's Vault contains some pretty cool stuff, particularly in the Wondrous Items section. My personal favorite right now is the Horn of Gondor Summoning. It's a magic horn that, when blown, can be heard by everyone within a 1-mile radius; and allies within that radius are immediately awakened from sleep and made aware of your situation.

This, to me, is what magic items should be like. It's difficult to see how it could be used to break the game. You can't one-shot Tiamat with it, or bypass half the adventure. It doesn't do a danged thing in combat. But it's cool and fun and has a lot of style. Moreover, it encourages the players to look for creative ways to use it.

On the other hand, plenty of legacy stuff from 1st Edition is just as bland and boring as you can imagine. The biggest offender, to me, is the "+X item." Those should never have been put in the game. They add nothing to the game experience and complicate combat math unnecessarily, but now they've become such a sacred cow that I have little hope they'll ever go away.

 

[el-remmen]

Is this about player expectation or the game itself?

I mean, the way I got around this issue in 3E is by (as Plane-Sailing said) throwing wealth guidelines out the window and continuing to give out magical items that we were weird and quirky and most have some minor to moderate downside along with their cool power (in my homebrew when you create a permanent (i.e. not charged or potion/wand) magical item it almost always has a small downside unless you are willing to pay more coin and XP to make it).

I also make them a lot less available (i.e. party of 6 5th level PCs have 2 magical items (not including potions or scrolls) among them (they had 3, but one was lost in a duel))

However, if the expectation of your players at the table is that they should have a new magical item every level or so and they should have items that that they fully understand and fit the wealth guidelines as written, then the problem is a difference in playstyle.

The rules are written are beside the point.