New Monte Cook article Magic and Mystery

[Baumi]

Down with the +X Items!

Without it you will have:
-) more balance
-) less math
-) all items must have interesting features
-) you will need far less items (at the moment Heroes look like Chrismas-Trees), you could even play a non-magic Item Campaign

 

[Ultimatecalibur]

Down with the +X Items!

Without it you will have:
-) more balance
-) less math
-) all items must have interesting features
-) you will need far less items (at the moment Heroes look like Chrismas-Trees), you could even play a non-magic Item Campaign

Monte isn't talking about getting rid of +X items. He is talking more about getting rid of Wealth by Level guidelines.

 

[Baumi]

Monte isn't talking about getting rid of +X items. He is talking more about getting rid of Wealth by Level guidelines.

They have to get rid of the +X Items when the magic Items should no longer be Part of the Leveling-Math or at least have it much lower so it does not make so much difference. An alternative could be that they still have the usual +X Items, but it does not add to the attack bonus (only damage or other modifiers).

 

[jasin]

The article sounds like a newbie DM steeling himself to consciously examine assumptions and introduce house rules for the first time, not a veteran professional offering ideas for substantive improvement. Perhaps I'm misreading the intent of the column, and its goals and audience really are closer to the former than the latter, but from a more experienced perspective, the article seems a combination of decent DM-ing advice, reinventing the wheel, and trying to get rid of undesirable assumptions by not stating them (but still assuming).

 

[Wightbred]

This article is starting to hint at a game I want to play. Now, just get rid of a little more unecessary maths and they might get me back.

Interestingly I love players choosing items in The One Ring, but I hate it in D&D.

 

[Anselyn]

He is talking more about getting rid of Wealth by Level guidelines.

First, I must admit that I don't have mastery of all the details of the 3//4e rules but ...

Isn't the core problem that the character CR is level based:
* This then assumes a certain wealth/magic per level.
* This means that power builds can be ahead of the curve of the effective CR for a character level.

If character/party CR was derived from the actual bonuses of the character rather than on an assumption of them then monster CR could be pitched relative top that independent of party level. Then, high/low magic, good/weak builds would all come out in the wash.

 

[Anselyn]

If character/party CR was derived from the actual bonuses of the character rather than on an assumption of them then monster CR could be pitched relative top that independent of party level.

And one last thing (sorry to be quoting myself here)

I played lots of Basic, AD&D and /2e then was away from D&D until the last days of /3.5 when /4e was brewing.

On my return I had to learn what this TPK thing was. We never had that in the old days. DMs used experience and judgment to guage appropriate challenges.

Was the rise of the idea of the TPK just a recognition that there things happened, a change of play style or was it a result of people believing the CRs too much?

I know this is possibly pretty tangential to "Magic & Mystery" but I think it's related to when the mystery became mechanical.

 

[Ultimatecalibur]

They have to get rid of the +X Items when the magic Items should no longer be Part of the Leveling-Math or at least have it much lower so it does not make so much difference. An alternative could be that they still have the usual +X Items, but it does not add to the attack bonus (only damage or other modifiers).

Baumi. Yes, he is talking about removing the +X bonuses from the leveling math, but he is not talking about removing +X items from the game.

Currently 4e D&D uses a formula similar to the following to determine the expected attack bonuses for PCs:

Expect Attack Bonus = (1/2 Level) + (Weapon Proficiency Bonus) + (Primary Stat Modifier) + (Magical Item Bonus equal to 1/5 Level rounded up to the nearest whole number)

Monte's article talks about changing the expected attack bonus math to something like this:

Expect Attack Bonus = (1/2 Level) + (Weapon Proficiency Bonus) + (Primary Stat Modifier)

By doing so and then designing monsters based on that formula to be hit when a characters a roll of 11 or higher, when wielding a +X weapon a character would have a 10% greater chance of hitting per plus.

 

[Vascant]

I swear, people make math seem like a paragon monster that is impossible to overcome. I can't speak for the current edition but in previous editions I have stripped players of everything at times and they have survived it all (most have). I think WotC would be better served reviving old Dragon Magazine articles that used to help DM's learn to be better at running games and making it their own. Sorry but if a DM cannot stop players from overdosing on magic items then I doubt any amount rules will help.

 

[Kraydak]

Any treatment of magic items has to accept some basic, unfortunate, facts.

1) Without extraordinary luck and player buy-in, any item, no matter how awesomely designed, will be old-hat by the 3rd session. Forget "wonder".

2) Items without useful mechanical effects will be forgotten somewhere in a characters inventory list, only remembered when desperately searching for something, anything, to stave off a TPK. "Weird" and "quirky" doesn't actually work unless also combined with "useful". Don't like +X items, or +Xd6 fire damage weapons? I'm sorry, but that is what people *want*.

2b) If people are only really interested in magic items that have tangible effects in play, then magic items have to be considered in power balance. I have seen the problems that arise when a character in a setting with randomly placed magic items doesn't get a good enough suite of items. It isn't pretty.

3) Players can get awfully sarcastic when presented with a world with significant (even if small) numbers of magic items, but no way to trade them or make them. This isn't 1980 anymore.

Between (2b) and (3) there are reasons why 3e moved so strongly into the player agency magic item creation/purchasing, even if people who entered the hobby later never encountered them. I understand that people don't like this state of affairs, but 'tis life. You are much better off trying to make lemonade than attempting to design against human nature.