Shields, Leather, Daggers, & Healing Potions: Most Popular D&D Items

Jay Verkuilen said:

I think they really missed an opportunity with not having a clear mundane gear upgrade path, with starting gear generally being the worse options.

They hint at it with Splint Mail and Plate but really should have done the same thing with some of the better weapons and other armor, making the mundane but definitely much nicer weapons cost a lot. Saving for better gear is a HUGE motivator for many players and opportunity for people to savor at lower to medium levels. Using the cost differential from Ring to Chain to Splint to Plate as a guide, I think you could easily have some of the better weapons cost similarly. For example, have Rapiers, Longbows, Greatswords, etc., cost like 500 gold or more. That preserves the utility of the cheaper weapons for a while and gives the PCs a reason to get treasure.

It can even be built into the campaign world, nicely, too, when the PCs outgrow the work the village smith can do and need to head to Waterdeep or Greyhawk to get better armor when the wizard is heading to the same place for better spells.

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This feels really old school, which is a compliment. That said, WotC seems to be moving away from old school type rules.

CleverNickName said:

I think this is why a popular houserule is to reduce the damage of the rapier to 1d6.

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Idea for solving the rapier by making it 1d8-1?

Blue said:

I'm glad for this one. Because it clearly shows the bias of their collecting method which can shed light on the utility of the other releases.

Look, if purchasing light armor, you're not going to go for leather unless you're a very low level and the money is tight. So the fact that it's the "most popular" is bunk. It's the "most common" possibly, but that's just because it's given out with several classes.

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Yeah, this is a good point. The notion that "is chosen" = "is popular" is not good reasoning from the data. Especially for lower level characters, what gets chosen is essentially what they're given.

chrisshorb said:

Idea for solving the rapier by making it 1d8-1?

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This basically makes it meaningless as the average of D8-1 and D6 is the same. There might be very slight difference but they're so small as to make no never mind. It also means that the rapier is in all ways inferior to the short sword. It does the same damage and doesn't even have the benefit of being a light weapon.

chrisshorb said:

This feels really old school, which is a compliment. That said, WotC seems to be moving away from old school type rules.

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I do think WotC is doing that highly inconsistently and it's mostly oriented around things the devs don't seem to like (e.g., gear). The game is still quite solidly showing its wargame roots and only has a few dipped toes in "new skool" rules here and there, not in a solid enough way to be core in the game. I don't know that this needs to be seen as particularly old skool, either.

Regardless, I do think they missed an opportunity here, and not just in an old skool vs. new skool way. Players like getting loot and upgrading. I totally get and support the reason why they didn't want to make it necessary or let things get out of control, as happened in 3.X and 4E but it's fun for one's PC to get better. The rules for medium and heavy armor illustrate how one could use non-magical gear this way very nicely. Most characters built to use medium armor will start off with the lesser versions but need to save up for either the breastplate or half plate. Ditto for heavy armor. So this is already part of the game.

Make the lowest tier (e.g., padded, hide, ring) the base, which starting characters may have but would graduate from quickly. Lots of weapons fall in this category, too: Clubs, sickles, spears, daggers, etc. Then have a few levels of upgrades that are purchasable from craftsmen of various sorts. Most of the better tier of weapons would do essentially one die better. Other ways to make this cool would be to allow for multiple damage types and weapon qualities For example, making some weapons do different types of damage (e.g., piercing or slashing, user's choice) and then making more use of resistances and vulnerabilities would give players some interesting choice points while allowing the player who doesn't want to make those choices the ability to simply default. A few other interesting qualities would also fit nicely. Again, this builds on things that already exist, such as light, finesse, etc. Some interesting ones might be things like "ignores shields" or "advantage on trip attacks", etc.

This kind of stuff could be kept optional to minimize complexity. I'm not saying this is completely trivial to manage, but it would be a lot easier than devising a fully functioning magic item crafting system. It keeps magic as magic and it allows PCs to feel like they're growing while keeping their abilities in reasonable check.

dnd4vr said:

I'm surprised Leather tops the armor list, but I guess other players make a lot more DEX-based build than I do in general. Of course, padded armor was superior and more common in use than leather. But D&D has gotten that backwards in every edition, so I didn't expect 5E to get it right. I'm trying to revamp all the armors to more accurately reflect how effective they should be and make them more historically accurate.

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You mention the problem itself. D&D has never been historically accurate in various ways. Armour is just one of worse and easily researched. Please tell me you will be doing a kickstarter on historically accurate armour. I will give a leg up. Remember the battle of Wisby.

jasper said:

You mention the problem itself. D&D has never been historically accurate in various ways. Armour is just one of worse and easily researched. Please tell me you will be doing a kickstarter on historically accurate armour. I will give a leg up. Remember the battle of Wisby.

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I thought a 5E version of an Arms & Equipment Guide would be really cool! Maybe I'll start a kickstarter campaign for it LOL! The biggest problem would be playtesting everything to keep things in balance.

Another armor issue is the limited DEX mod bonus. Utter bull$#!{. Although heavy, with proficiency a character should be able to add DEX mod to AC, even if limited a bit. Our group recently decided after I showed them several videos of just how maneuvers such as rolling, dodging, running, getting up, etc. can be done to adjust armors:

None: DEX mod unlimited
Light: DEX mod limit to +4
Medium: DEX mod limit to +3
Heavy: DEX mod limit to +2

Sure, at low levels a AC can be huge adding DEX mod to heavy armors, but that sort of character is VERY focused and has other weaknesses.

dnd4vr said:

Our group recently decided after I showed them several videos of just how maneuvers such as rolling, dodging, running, getting up, etc. can be done to adjust armors:

None: DEX mod unlimited
Light: DEX mod limit to +4
Medium: DEX mod limit to +3
Heavy: DEX mod limit to +2

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On the other hand if your going with accuracy you should remove Dex bonuses against ranged attacks.

People can’t dodge arrows from typical dnd skirmish ranges.

Combat remains an abstraction. If you want more realism, how real do you want to go?

Stalker0 said:

On the other hand if your going with accuracy you should remove Dex bonuses against ranged attacks.

People can’t dodge arrows from typical dnd skirmish ranges.

Combat remains an abstraction. If you want more realism, how real do you want to go?

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Well, I've always thought of the AC mod from DEX not as specific "dodging" but more "defensive movements" that makes you harder to hit, think "bob and weave."

True, it is an abstraction for an insanely complex system, so I am not sure just how real, but real enough to more accurately reflect how you can still take advantage of DEX mods even in heavy armor.