• NOW LIVE! Into the Woods--new character species, eerie monsters, and haunting villains to populate the woodlands of your D&D games.

D&D 5E +# magic items so much fun!

Grimmjow

First Post
So we play tested last night. At the end of the playtest my DM game me a bow +2, which in 4e would have been somewhat boring, turned into an awesome bow. Having me role a d20 i came up with a 13. All of a sudden my bow was crafted by a elemental of fire. My friend next to me got mirthral chain +3. Dumb. But with a roll of 14 on a d20 and hes wearing armor made by water elementals. Its just so much more fun then a minor enchantment on a weapon or armor making it slightly better. Now my bow and his armor dont even feel like they were magically enchanted. It feels like the fire bow and water armor get their powers from the fact that they were made in the elemental chaos. They feel like that if i were to show it off to a fire elemental he would just laugh and say "its just a normal bow" cause its an average bow in the elemental chaos. But im rambling, so ill stop now XD
 

log in or register to remove this ad

I'm hoping your DM realizes what he just did.

That's a lot of power to be giving out against things that can't hit the broad side of a barn.

I don't expect you'll be missing very often now that you have that nice bow. It'll get boring pretty fast for you and frustrating to the extreme for your DM.
 



lol

I'm hoping your DM realizes what he just did.

That's a lot of power to be giving out against things that can't hit the broad side of a barn.

I don't expect you'll be missing very often now that you have that nice bow. It'll get boring pretty fast for you and frustrating to the extreme for your DM.

ya he knows thats not the point though. The magic items are cool!
 

If I might say this sounds like an endorsement of that april fools book "Roleplaying for Rollplayers" or whatever it was.

Rolling on a table of random flavor elements that have no effect make it a roleplaying game. NPC's need random personality quirks (from a table, because DM's can't do this) as well to make your social interactions better.

I love flavorful magic items, but I think it's more removing them from base assumptions that helps. Otherwise the DM's get tired of having to come up with a half dozen unique stories every time you kill a goblin. Attunement, and playing up the flavorful descriptions will help to keep them unique. Otherwise that table roll would be pointless, it'll be forgotten, or confused with a plethora of other items from various elementals, devils, demons, angels, and gnomes.
 

I agree that the random attribute tables are awesome. There's an Orc with a +1 shield in the Caves of Chaos, and I rolled and it turned out to be a Drow shield, so I narrated it as being made of dark metal and having a spider symbol. Suddenly, there was a bit of intrigue and mystery--are there Drow in the caves? Instead of just being a bit of math, they now have an adventure hook that they can't expose to sunlight. :)
 

The best part about those magic item tables in the playtest document is that you can easily use them whatever edition of D&D you're playing. So, you can have that +2 bow crafted by fire elementals whether you're playing 4e, 3e, 2e, etc.
 

The best part about those magic item tables in the playtest document is that you can easily use them whatever edition of D&D you're playing. So, you can have that +2 bow crafted by fire elementals whether you're playing 4e, 3e, 2e, etc.
You could also have that before without having to roll on some table.
 


If I might say this sounds like an endorsement of that april fools book "Roleplaying for Rollplayers" or whatever it was.

Rolling on a table of random flavor elements that have no effect make it a roleplaying game. NPC's need random personality quirks (from a table, because DM's can't do this) as well to make your social interactions better.

I love flavorful magic items, but I think it's more removing them from base assumptions that helps. Otherwise the DM's get tired of having to come up with a half dozen unique stories every time you kill a goblin. Attunement, and playing up the flavorful descriptions will help to keep them unique. Otherwise that table roll would be pointless, it'll be forgotten, or confused with a plethora of other items from various elementals, devils, demons, angels, and gnomes.

I understand what your saying. Personally, i will never forget that i played a character with a bow made by a fire elemental
 

Into the Woods

Remove ads

Top