D&D 5E Wandering "Monsters": Magic Items

[the Jester]

my problem is take 2 parties of 10th level (your ed of choice) both are Human fighter, Elven Wizard, Dwarven Cleric and Half elf rouge(thief whatever) both have good above average stats...

group 1 has a +2 greatsword, a +1 holy hammer, 3 +2 daggers, +1 full plate, +1 shadowed leather, +2 chain, and +2 cloth armor, and 2 rings of protection, 4 magic amulates and a dozen potions and scrolls, a pearl of power level 4, and a ring of wizardry 2, and 10 wands (one a cure crit wounds) all of them have 20+ charges left, belt of giant str(+4), gloves of dex(+2), head band of int (+2), and perift of wis(+4).

group 2 has a +1 Defender Longsword, a +1 acid dagger, + 1 scale armor, and bracers of armor (worst in game) a wand of cure light with 9 charges left

those groups have very very different capabilities and could easily mean one could curb stomp an encounter that would TPK the other...

Yes. That's why letting the parties choose their path (and if they're smart, they will assess which path they can handle) is important in campaigns where you don't tailor the encounters to the party.

For example- spoilers for Temple of Elemental Evil here:

[sblock]When pcs go the Temple of Elemental Evil, they have several different choices for which entrance to choose. One of these, if discovered (and it's not that hard!), leads to somewhere about the fourth level of the dungeon, certainly a very dangerous area for lower level pcs. Yet it's there for cocky, careless or especially daring pcs to take if they want the risks; and the rewards are commensurate with those risks. On the other hand, they can take the ordinary way in, with weaker initial opponents, but less treasure to be had. [/sblock]

Or another example, from Keep on the Borderlands:

[sblock]The Caves of Chaos offer tons of choices, ranging from kobolds to an ogre. Some of these are far more dangerous for 1st level groups than others; again, the rewards go up with the difficulty, so the pcs can act according to their comfort zone.[/sblock]

This element of choosing your danger was a key component of play in early D&D and remains very important in sandbox games (such as mine). This element of choice affects how much treasure the party has, how quickly they advance in levels, their reputations, etc. In essence, it's in opposition to strict wealth by level rules. And it's an element I really like as both a player and a dm. I really hope 5e supports and enables it.

 

[jasper]

Bear in mind that every edition is someone's first edition, and every DM has his own first campaign. So while guidelines may not be useful to you, they may well still be of huge value to other DMs.

..

DITTO! Remember just because we are experience gamers, we forget the Monty Haul, Stingy Showcase games we played thru.

 

[Starfox]

Thats kinda what I meant, but I am guessing from your reply your are focusing on 3E here? In 1E or 2E I think magic items were a key source of new abilities for spell caster. And "increasing endurance" was also big, as the number of spells for even mid level casters could be surprisingly small. Another quibble, other classes besides the fighter could use those items. But still, not that off from what I meant.

In my experience, BCMI, 1E, 2E, and 3E were much the same here. Wizards can do anything out of the box, fighters can do everything with enough magic items (which of course you never had), and the other classes are somewhere in between. The add-on stuff for wizards was mostly boring.

3E changed this so that you could optimize your equipment instead of use the stuff you found, but the principle was the same; wizards stayed much the same regardless of gear, fighters got more options, and the others in between. Perhaps the "fun item" trend was a bit less in 3E, as most players felt forced to focus on the big six and not take the fun utility items.

4E lost this side of play, as there were very few general utility items worth the name.

 

[TerraDave]

In my experience, BCMI, 1E, 2E, and 3E were much the same here. Wizards can do anything out of the box, ...
4E lost this side of play, as there were very few general utility items worth the name.

They can? With their tiny number of spells, that the DM mostly chooses? No, not my experience. In some games a wand of magic missiles could be a big deal, and the opportunity cost of utility spells very high.

Now, when they get to high level, sure. (though you still want items). But how many pre 3E games really made it to or lasted at high levels?

Of course with a lenient DM, house rules, etc, then anything is possible.

EDIT: 4E has utility items. There nerfed, but they can still impact play.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I think becoming attuned to a magic item before it will fully function for you has as much or more precedent in fantasy literature as Vancian casting does. Usually it's portrayed as exercising your willpower over the sword, which resists it's new master. Which I suspect is why the optional rule is "max Charisma modifier" of attuned magic items, instead of three.

Sure, and the "max CHA modifier" helps the logic of it ("3" is a pretty meaningless entity). What would help more is if this was just for intelligent items or maybe artifacts, rather than "all" items, or if you could only attune a SINGLE item at a time. But genre logic isn't my major problem. I'm sure it can make sense and that some tables will like to use it at least for certain items for certain flavors of magic, and that's cool. That doesn't really make it less arbitrary as a default rule, though.

Given that a DM controls the flow of magic items as a default, there is little function for a rule that further limits how many magic items a character can wield. A DM who doesn't want a character wielding more than 3 items just doesn't give out more than 3 items per character. There isn't a real pressing need for an additional rule, here. It's unnecessary.

So if the goal is simplicity and flexibility, the rule needs to go, or at least go from the "core assumption of the game" column to the "rule you can use if you think it's cool" column.

If the goal is "to evoke the feel of certain archetypal magic items in fiction," I actually think there's still MUCH better ways to accomplish that goal than attunement, so I don't see a huge need for it there, myself. But it's got a better case as being relevant to that goal.

 

[Ichneumon]

Who noticed that you're no longer limited to two rings? I didn't. When checking the magic items pdf to see whether the rule was there, I noticed no mention of it. You can now put magic rings on all ten fingers if you wish (if you have ten to put on!).

I see the attunement limit as the replacement for the two-ring rule, especially given that many rings require attunement. Its mechanical justification seems to be controlling a particular subset of magic items that may be problematic if a PC wears too many of them at once, and eliminating the need for a general no-bonus-stacking rule. Any that boosts AC, abilities or saves belongs on the attunement list, which isn't always the case. (Ioun Stones, I'm looking at you).

Take away the attunement limit, and magic item bonuses will no longer be able to stack. Which might be a better solution.

 

[Uller]

Buying consumables, purchasing your own castle, bribing guards, paying back student loans...

The sky is the limit. It's MONEY.

Someone somewhere (sorry to be so vague, but I can't remembered) described gold as the player's lever to alter the world. That's pretty cool. If you approach gold as something that can merely be used to buy equipment, then yeah, it's boring. But that's thinking in pretty limited terms.

Sure. But why articially forbid the purchase of magical gear? It is a magical setting where castles and magic swords both exist. Why can one be purchased and not the other? If an NPC can hire the party to find a particular magic item for him, why can't the PC's hire an NPC to produce, procure, steal something for them? It just seems like an artitrary thing to me that ought not be an assumption in the rules.

 

[TwoSix]

EDIT: Because D&Dnext seems to prioritise "the adventure" over "the encounter" then you could incorporate items on the GM side by changing the "adventure budget" rather than the "encounter budget" - ie the more items you have, the more you have to do between rests if you are going to succeed at an adventure, whatever exactly it is that success consists in. This is still taking items into account in the maths of the game.

I think the intent is that baseline characters with no magic items will be able to consistently fight equivalent-level encounters in Next, whereas baseline no-item characters would fall behind the curve in 3e and 4e.

Although interestingly, higher level characters in 4e, certainly, and from my experience 3e as well, can handle escalating encounter challenges as they level. 1st level 4e characters can handle Level+2 encounters, but by epic tier, they can usually handle Level+6 encounters. I wonder if 4e characters actually need magic items at all!

 

[GX.Sigma]

Sure. But why articially forbid the purchase of magical gear? It is a magical setting where castles and magic swords both exist. Why can one be purchased and not the other? If an NPC can hire the party to find a particular magic item for him, why can't the PC's hire an NPC to produce, procure, steal something for them? It just seems like an artitrary thing to me that ought not be an assumption in the rules.

I agree. I'm running a D&D Next campaign solely using old-school modules, so the world has very classic D&D assumptions: Adventurers are very wealthy, and you find magic items everywhere. The notion that this world wouldn't have magic items for sale is ridiculous--especially in places like Baldur's Gate (the most populous and wealthy city in the entire world, which has no magic shop and no NPCs over 6th level... though that's more a problem with that adventure).

 

[Uller]

I agree. I'm running a D&D Next campaign solely using old-school modules, so the world has very classic D&D assumptions: Adventurers are very wealthy, and you find magic items everywhere. The notion that this world wouldn't have magic items for sale is ridiculous--especially in places like Baldur's Gate (the most populous and wealthy city in the entire world, which has no magic shop and no NPCs over 6th level... though that's more a problem with that adventure).

Noticed that did ya? I'm running it now. Don't get me wrong, I like it but let's face it...the plot is not appropriate for 1st-3rd lvl PCs...in our game the party openly betrayed the guild, sided with Ravengard and directly participated in killing guild members and even searching Rilsa's shop....so the guild is out to kill them. I used 9 fingers as the stats for an assassin (and added a con save vs 12 or DIE poison)...even though they were weakened after some other fights with no chance for a rest they still handily beat her (two characters had to make their saves and did)...its almost embarassing that the most powerful denizens of the fabled Baldur's Gate can't take on a party of 4 2nd lvl PCs...what the heck would stop a moderate lvl party of PCs (say 8th or so) from simply taking over the whole city? As har as my gam goes I will restat the npcs to be at least 8th level. Heck, duke adrian was a only a 3rd level fighter...