D&D 5E You can't necessarily go back

[Tony Vargas]

I think where people have problems (and where I know I do) is the idea that your equipment is part of who you are, which 3e in particular strongly reinforces.

It's hard to get away from, though, since it's endemic to classic D&D. Classes used to be fixed progressions with very few choices, character development was often little more than the magic items you picked up. Pick up a Helm of Brilliance and a Flaming Sword and you're very different from the guy with a Cloak of the Manta Ray or the one with the Ring of Invisibility and Boots of Elvenkind. 3e just moved that character development more to the player side, with more coherent make/buy rules, even though it gave players a lot more choice in creating and leveling their characters. 4e did make items less central to character development - they were baked into the math, but they didn't define your character and you tended to cycle through them - and caught flack for it, leading to the 'character defining' 'rare' items in Essentials.

I think those choices are great, but any time you start expanding character creation rules outside of your character (be it through assumed items, stronghold resources, cohorts, animal companions), you're in really dicey territory.

There's also the unfortunate dynamic that equipment is far more important for noncasters than casters, which is really counterintuitive. A really good fighter should just be able to punch someone in the face or pick up a sword and go, whereas a spellcaster should need a staff or a scroll or some rare incense to do anything.

Nod, but it's also endemic. A fighter needs a hundred pounds of armor and weapons and the wizard just needs to be able to speak. /Magic/ gear, even more so. D&D magic is overwhelmingly powerful and available - far more so than in genre - and to keep up with what casters can do with their spells to any degree at all, the non-caster needs to be festooned with minor (and not so minor) magic items.

I would be nice if characters were balanced independently of their equipment.

While 4e with inherent bonuses comes pretty close to that, even it still used different weapon/armor proficiencies to help differentiate classes, and that kept the old problem of some classes being too armor-dependent, for instance. :shrug:

That is, it'd be possible to make such a game, but it would be even more "not D&D" than 4e was, and 4e was so "not D&D" as to require euthanasia for the good of the line.

 

[Hussar]

Add another vote to the whole, "drop plussed items" from D&D. Yeah, I know it's a sacred cow, but, it's boring as hell. Whoopee, another +1 sword. Sting isn't cool because it's a +1 short sword, it's cool because it glows in the presence of orcs. Hopefully with bounded accuracy, we don't need bonused items anymore. They can be used, but, aren't baked into the system.

 

[Ahnehnois]

It's hard to get away from, though, since it's endemic to classic D&D.

Indeed.

While 4e with inherent bonuses comes pretty close to that, even it still used different weapon/armor proficiencies to help differentiate classes, and that kept the old problem of some classes being too armor-dependent, for instance. :shrug:

That is, it'd be possible to make such a game, but it would be even more "not D&D" than 4e was, and 4e was so "not D&D" as to require euthanasia for the good of the line.

To my knowledge, 4e addressed the issue by making magic items less useful and powerful, which was criticized for taking the fun out of them. I think it would be better to still have +X swords in their existing form more or less, but to broaden the variety of what nonmagical items (maybe let weapon quality add between a -2 and +2 modifier to attack and or damage) can do and bring the costs down. I think save items could be made more specific, particularly with six saves, such that instead of a cloak of resistance, you'd have six different items; difficult to have all on one character. Some of the other things are more complicated, and D&D's take on armor is full of problems, but I think there's room to cut down the Christmas Tree while still maintaining many of the tropes. Not an easy task though.

 

[pemerton]

there's a rather large difference between being tied to a sword and the typical D&D magic item progression. I don't know a lot of fantasy characters who are defined by their ring of protection, cloak of resistance, gauntlets of ogre power combo.

Well, the original power combo is a Girdle of Giant Strength, Gauntlets of Ogre Power and Hammer of Thunderbolts.

Odin has a Spear of Slaying, a Hat of Disguise and probably other stuff that I'm forgetting.

Gauntlets, Ring and Cloak doesn't seem too far-fetched to me.

That's true that many magic items are iconic. I do not think, however, that if you were creating such a character in an rpg, you would create it with the signature item. Arthur did not have his sword until he pulled it out of a boulder. Sting was a gift. In D&D terms, these things seem clearly in the purview of the DM.

There are two things here.

First, not everything that is outside the PC's control need be outside the player's control. So it's not clear to me, at least, that it is the GM rather than the player who gets to decide that Excalibur or Sting is found. (An analogue from AD&D might be the paladin's mount. It is the GM who gets to decide exactly how the "calling of the mount" scene is framed, but the player is absolutely entited to the mount, as a consequence of the build resources invested in being a paladin.)

Second, it is fairly easy to have a system in which PC build resources are spent to "cement" an item, so that the GM is not at liberty to deprive the player of it on any permanent basis. This is one common way for points-buy type games to handle the keeping of found items.

Spent points or whatever on strongholds and allies can be wasted if the GM doesn't make use of the resources.

Well, in a well-designed game with such things the GM is obliged to make use of those resources, and has the scenario-design tools to do so.

And this doesn't apply to items as part of the PC build, which don't particularly require the GM to do anything!

Most of these systems also discourage the use of found, looted, or scavenged gear, which isn't a great fit for the fantasy genre.

I'll cheerfully admit that my knowledge of the fantasy genre is limited, but in Arthurian romance and in traditional fairy tales looted or scavenged gear plays a pretty minimal role. In Tolkein, the only instance of looted or scavenged gear I can think of is the use of orc disguises in Mordor, which would not be discouraged by a "pay for items" approach - once moving through Mordor is resolved, they are simply discarded.

Found or gifted gear is important to the fantasy genre, but that's easily handled via a "pay to keep" rule - which is pretty standard in RPGs that treat items as part of PC build. In fact, such an approach can encourage the GM to place items to be found, and have items gifted, precisely because they won't have long term consequences for the campaign unless character build points are spent to cement them into the PC. (Interestingly, the only version of D&D to smoothly handle gifted gear is 4e - because treasure parcels are not linked to looting in any mechanical fashion. Although 3E Oriental Adventures also suggests a way of handling it, in effect by treating wealth-by-level as a parcel system rather than a rough guideline for moderating loot placement.)

I believe it was in oD&D - although I'm waiting for Reaper to send me the Swords and Wizardry rules.

I was actually thinking of 4e, which I believe fits the description of "characters being balanced independently of their equipment" - as in, it is not the case in 4e that "equipment is far more important for noncasters than casters". And if you want to eliminate item dependency in the maths, but don't want to just level-down encounters, you can use inherent bonuses. It could hardly be easier!

 

[Ahnehnois]

First, not everything that is outside the PC's control need be outside the player's control. So it's not clear to me, at least, that it is the GM rather than the player who gets to decide that Excalibur or Sting is found. (An analogue from AD&D might be the paladin's mount. It is the GM who gets to decide exactly how the "calling of the mount" scene is framed, but the player is absolutely entited to the mount, as a consequence of the build resources invested in being a paladin.)

Like I said, I think any time you go outside of the player character mechanics describing the character himself, I think you're on thin ice. Should the player of King Arthur the character be able to declare his character a King as well? Not a far-fetched question, given that (if I understand correctly) at one point the fighter class was entitled to a keep through advancement. And, more to the point, the "assumed" wealth of a high-level D&D character is quite an extreme imposition on the game world; arguably an even greater one.

 

[Hussar]

Like I said, I think any time you go outside of the player character mechanics describing the character himself, I think you're on thin ice. Should the player of King Arthur the character be able to declare his character a King as well? Not a far-fetched question, given that (if I understand correctly) at one point the fighter class was entitled to a keep through advancement. And, more to the point, the "assumed" wealth of a high-level D&D character is quite an extreme imposition on the game world; arguably an even greater one.

Well, why not?

Let's consider, for a moment, that Excallibur is similar to a Paladin's Mount. When you hit level X, you are entitled to Y, provided you meet requirements Z. It wasn't that the fighter was entitled to a keep, but rather, if you had the keep (requirement Z) you gained followers (entitlement Y) at level 9 (level X).

Thus, so long as the fighter actually had a keep of some sort, he became a de factor lord of some sort complete with a small army. The presumption there was that your fighter (whose class title at this point actually IS lord) would be embedded into the setting in such a way that being a lord wasn't too much of a stretch.

So, if you had a class of "King of the Land", then why couldn't the player do that? He pulls out the sword, he becomes king. I don't see the problem here. Granted, it would have to be decided that this was an entitlement of the class before he pulled out the sword, otherwise it would be pretty difficult to implement, but, there are a number of games that do work in much that way.

The example of the paladin is well taken too. I don't think there was a 1e or 2e paladin player that didn't salivate at the thought of a Holy Avenger. Or a wizard player and a Staff of Power/Magi. These were signature class items right out the outset.

 

[slobster]

Like I said, I think any time you go outside of the player character mechanics describing the character himself, I think you're on thin ice.

Of course, you could design the system such that magical items, allies, or even social position is a part of character creation mechanics. I play a couple of RPGs where that is the case.

3.5 even had an example of this, the OA samurai class which got heirloom weapons that were magical, and leveled up along with the character.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Well, why not?

Because those types of mechanics can cause headaches for the DM. What to do if his adventure setting doesn't allow a mount-animal companion/etc. to come along? What to do if the political situation in the world doesn't make followers practical? What to do if the DM wants to change the magic item frequency in his campaign, but those items are assumed parts of character advancement that differentially affect different character types?

Again, I'm not saying the approach your positing is completely invalid; I'm just not a big fan of it for D&D. I think it's more appropriate when presented in a modular fashion (as the Leadership feat was) rather than as an assumed part of the base game (like animal companions, magic items, and probably other such things).

 

[Manbearcat]

FWIW I totally hate the 3e magic item paradigm; items are assumed way too much.

There's also the unfortunate dynamic that equipment is far more important for noncasters than casters, which is really counterintuitive. A really good fighter should just be able to punch someone in the face or pick up a sword and go, whereas a spellcaster should need a staff or a scroll or some rare incense to do anything.

I would be nice if characters were balanced independently of their equipment.

Why? What's dicey about the equipment being an element of the character creation rules? That's pretty common in a wide range of RPGs.

Hmm - I wonder if there's an edition of D&D in which this is the case?!

I believe it was in oD&D - although I'm waiting for Reaper to send me the Swords and Wizardry rules.

As pemerton mentioned downthread from these statements (and immediately upthread from this post), 4e actually handled all of Ahnehnois concerns quite well so if this is a large concern for 5e (that should be addressed by way of module) then the designers would do well to look to 4e for inspiration on how to elegantly achieve these desired aims.

1) Magic item proliferation can be supplanted by one of two means:

1a - Supplement PC power base through inherent + bonuses that scale in accords with the expectation of accrued magic items as determined by the wealth by level chart.

or...my preferred way (I was ad hoc-ing this exact same approach before it came into being formally in the DMG2 and has since become a staple of Dragon Magazine articles, setting books, etc. My 2 main players prefer a lower magic implied setting with PC power base being more an internal locus of control thing rather than external.)

1b - Make use of the Grandmaster Training Rules. These cover the full range of the Action Economy from Free Action to Minor Action to Move Action to Standard Action. They can be Attack or Utility Powers and range from At-Will to Encounter to Daily. Trough their established framework of potency per GP value, it is quite easy to design your own and fit them to your setting/characters. The implication is that these are story-driven PC build resources. As such, there should be (at minimum) some consultation (if not co-authorship) with the PC as to their inclinations for such a power (in mechanical design and attainment within the fiction).


2) Magic items (or wealth/level, or inherent, scaling + bonuses or grandmaster training...whichever you prefer.) are equally required/assumed within the PC build landscape of martial, divine, arcane, and primal heroes.


I have a particular affinity for 1b. I was quite pleased when WotC formally released an iteration of what I was already using ad-hoc. It creates another "fiction-centric" PC build resource that incentivizes (and rewards) a player to be pro-active in co-authorship of their character's story within the shared, emergent fiction.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Like I said, I think any time you go outside of the player character mechanics describing the character himself, I think you're on thin ice.

Is backstory that far from 'the character himself?' Arthur's backstory included pulling a sword from a stone when he was a kid. In some versions, that sword was a powerful magical weapon called Excalibur, in others it just marked him as the rightful king...

Should the player of King Arthur the character be able to declare his character a King as well?

You can /declare/ yourself a king, sure. Seriously, though, social class is also a matter of backstory. It is, indeed, something that describes the character, itself, much like race or gender - also accidents of birth.

Not a far-fetched question, given that (if I understand correctly) at one point the fighter class was entitled to a keep through advancement.

Not entitled, no, but at 9th level, if he did build a keep, he attracted a band of followers and could set himself up as a feudal lord. Other characters could also build keeps and set themselves up if they wanted, they just didn't attract a band of mostly 0-level followers, and, IIRC, collected smaller rents from their serfs.

And, more to the point, the "assumed" wealth of a high-level D&D character is quite an extreme imposition on the game world; arguably an even greater one.

Extreme? I suppose it implies something about how much gold there is sitting in dungeons...