D&D 5E Next DMG Sneak Preview is Up! Figurine of Wondrous Power!

[SigmaOne]

Could I interest you in a vorpal folding boat, flame tongue?

Yes. Yes you can!

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

Yes, with bounded accuracy the staying power of a simple lion is likely to be better than in 1e/2e/3e/4e. But a "Rare" item weighs in (I believe) somewhere between a +1 sword and a +3 sword.

In a campaign where there a many encounters over the course of a day or a few days, a +1 sword is going to be a lot better than a lion figurine by 10 country miles. A lion figurine helps you in 1 or maybe 2 fights. A sword can help you in 5 or 10 or 20 fights. With bounded accuracy that +1 is a lot more important.

While items are not directly comparable, ideally a PC could be "that guy with the lion (once per day)" as a sensible comparison with "that guy with the magic sword". "That guy with a lion, one in a week" does not cut the mustard. The logic of bounded accuracy strengthens this reasoning.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

I thought that was one of the most significant and negative issues of the wealth by level business of 3e. Too many interesting items were priced so high that by the time PCs could afford to have it in their WBL value, the power of the item had already been eclipsed.

WBL can punish you if your prices are flat out wrong and you are unwilling to admit it. In the case of 3e, more than half the interesting items in the DMG were not priced a little bit wrong, but 3X or 4X or 5X too expensive, thereby making the decision to cash out and pay full price for something boring a no brainer.

 

[dwayne]

I always thought making of items should be a long and trying affair, as the game is about adventure not about gear or how much magic items you can make for money or power. I always saw it as a struggle to over come evil and to fight the good fight and to over come monsters and obstructions along the way. Making items should be done by NPC's and not for sale per say but in regards to a reward or maybe as a compensation for a mission or favor. I do not believe in magic shops, as it cheapens the magic items and makes the game about money and getting better gear or items which is the rabbit hole many MMO's are doing now. The focus is and should be on the characters abilities and class not what items they have and how powerful they are, if you do need some thing to over come a creature don't do it all the time or fall in to a rut. A troll is easier to kill with a flame tongue sword but could just as easily be done by a group who uses pitch and a normal torch and some team work. Magic is cool and I for one love it but the best tool in your box is always your mind and imagination to use it.

 

[Boarstorm]

We have a word for readily available magic:

Mundane.

One pig's opinion, anyway.

 

[Mistwell]

It's a trap in a way that the item will either hardly get used. Never be created. Not be wanted. Any effort to acquire one of the figurines would not be enough to account for the lack of usefulness. Who wants to use a goat for 3 days of travel and then have to walk for a week? Or to have a couple of lions that you can't even take out for parties because then you won't have them for a week. Even the 4th edition figures were better than this.

First, magic items can't be "traps", given they're not for sale in 5e. Second, any town would want one available for an emergency messenger who is 1-3 days away from help, so that's one reason they would be created. I don't know why people think it must take a week or more to travel somewhere, or that you must travel multiple weeks in a row all the time with a stop-over in-between, but a lot of travel is 1-3 days, and then stop.

Also in the PHB it says that the DMG will contain special rules for special mounts and overland travel. For instance, if you have a fresh mount you can travel much faster (double fast speed) for a period of time. I think it is possible these may count as "never tires" type mounts. We won't know until the DMG comes out, but if that is the case then you could travel 60 miles a day on it.

 

[Evenglare]

Both the magic items as well as how weak spellcasters are gives me the feeling that 5e is a Low magic campaign and I'd like to see how a GM can make it a High magic campaign.

Double the spell slots , half the cost of magic items.
BAM high magic campaign. Next!

 

[MoutonRustique]

A short rest is an hour and a long is 8 hours of sleep at least not sure what rule book you were looking at, from players book page 186 "A short rest is a period o f downtime, at least 1 hour long" "A long rest is a period o f extended downtime, at least 8 hours long" so if you have altered the rules in your game from those in the book no one is to blame but your self, just increase the times they give in proportion to the ones you did for your house rules.

That the terms short rest and long rest exist is precisely to allow easy modification of the pace of the campaign. That is their reason for being. While it is, in a sense, a rule change, in the context of the goals of 5e, it isn't really a rule change (or isn't really supposed to be.)

As I said, I know it isn't a huge task to make a proportionate modification, but it is one more thing to do (even if it is a small thing).

I don't know. I would trust my players to track something like that themselves. I wouldn't make it more work for myself at all, personally. But then again I trust my players, so that's a bonus.

The items are marked as rare, so you are probably only going to have one of these items within a group at any one time. I don't really see tracking their use because they don't fit neatly into a 'Daily power' system as an issue. It means that players will have to use the item more judiciously, which to me increases its value, and also nudges me as a DM to happily allow how they are used to be more cool and advantageous when they are used, and avoid becoming annoyed that 'Bob is pulling his darned golden lion again...'

Personal impression (from someone who is only mildly interested in 5e at this stage): Enjoyed actually having a nice visual of items that have been ruminating in my games for years now Very cool.

I'm not sure I follow how my players need to track anything in this case. I wasn't talking about the tracking of time and use - I was considering the relative power/usefulness of the items.

When I give out items, I like to know how they're going to affect the game (at least in a general sense). As it stands, I not only need to use the "advice system" I'm assuming will be in the DMG to help figure out the impact of magic items, I'll also need to reverse engineer those guidelines and figure out what it means in a differently paced game. (Note: I am pretty sure it'll be easy to do.)

ex: if item X functions on the short/long rest system and it is said to be of about power 1000. No matter how I change the value of the short/long rests themselves, the power remains 1000. However, if I change the short/long rest values and the item is a "per day" "per hour" "per whatever", the power could go to 3000 or down to 50. Such a situation could affect my game in unpleasant ways.

Anyhow, it's not a huge deal, and I'm pretty sure making the adjustments will be easy; I just find it a bit disappointing that they're not using the elegant system they put in place.

 

[Queer Venger]

VERY surprised to not see Gwnevheir (or however it's spelled.)

I know!! Its probably the most iconic figurine in the history of D&D

When can we get 5e stats for it??

 

[steeldragons]

I know!! Its probably the most iconic figurine in the history of D&D

When can we get 5e stats for it??

You already have it. PHB, p.308, Panther