D&D 5E What's the point of gold?

[Celtavian]

I kind of hate to break it to you Celtavian but that's basically still the case, in fact, it's even worse now due to "bounded accuracy". Seen a level 14 Paladin solo a CR18 Dragon yet? I have. Thanks Magic Items. Oh did I mention I am handing them out at 1/4 the recommended rate in the DMG?
The only difference is now it's way easier to mess it up because the designers left it up to us instead of giving us some sort of reference point to work with. Even the rarity groupings are pretty poorly thought out.

And unless you actually plan on running a no magic items campaign, it's even harder now to design encounters with magic items in mind, because they're not assumed as part of the maths. Your players will still probably badger you now if they badgered you before for crafting, because the rules are still there, you do realise that right? And if you have oodles of downtime and piles of gold in your campaign, there's nothing really stopping them from doing exactly the same thing. If you couldn't say "No" to your players before, you can't say "No" now either, it's not really a rules issue, it's a DM issue.
Just like I wouldn't let you do ridiculous Simulacrum/Wish shenanigans, I'm not going to let you craft whatever you want, no matter what the book says.

And just so you know, most MMO's don't just let players craft whatever they want. They usually have a system which requires a lot of work and effort to get the rarest materials - usually questing and killing some sort of challenging boss. You can't just handwave it and then *poof* you have a legendary item, you have to work for it.

It would have been nice of the designers to actually put some thought into that area after the lessons learned in 3e, but nope, this edition seems to all be about "If it's hard to get right we won't even bother!"

I guess if I was bad at math it would be a problem. I'm not. I can usually add up hit probability, DPR, probably of magic affecting the creature including the relative benefits of advantage easily. The math in this game is quite easy.

I'm having an easier time designing encounters. Most likely because I had good training memorizing all the math in 3E/Pathfinder for multiple characters including commonly used buffs and designing ACs for appropriately challenging encounters. If I wanted a say "deadly encounter" in 3E, I knew how to make that happen during encounter design.

5E encounter design is the easiest I've ever seen. Are you really having trouble?

I've played both Everquest and World of Warcraft to high end raid level with maxed out all crafting skills. My friend models his quests off MMORPGs with more story flavor. It's easy to do.

Unbelievable that anyone is having trouble coming up with interesting ways to supply magic items. It doesn't take that much work. You don't need a price list. Just come up with something for a handful of magic items. The most each player can have is three attuned items. How hard is it to come up with some process for three attuned items?

If you're letting 14th level paladins solo CR 18 dragons, that's on you. I've had zero trouble designing appropriately tough encounters. Didn't you say you were making custom monsters? Shouldn't be very hard to make appropriately tough creatures for the magic item level you want.

Seriously, the math in this game is cake compared to previous editions. I hope most aren't having problems with the math in 5E.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Knowledge became lost because it was not needed any more (yes, this also applies to roman concrete. The economical downfall of the west and the lack of interest in gigantic structures in the east caused the knowledge to slowly die out).
And why would people not craft magic items any more?

Knowledge gets lost for all kinds of reasons:

• Disasters, natural or manmade
• Inventor dies without passing along his knowledge
• Cultural upheaval
• War
• Plague
• Religious opposition
• Materials become to expensive or outright impossible to aquire

Etc.

I won't post any spoilers, but Isaac Asimov wrote a story called "Nightfall" in which civilization worldwide crashed every 1000 years, due to a convergence of natural events and the people's responses to them. I used that story as sort of inspiration for a FRPG campaign, minus the cyclic element. (Haven't run it yet.)

By doing so, I had to answer the question of what happened to magic items and the knowledge of their creation. It wasn't easy. The end result was that most but not all items and advanced knowledge became lost in the cataclysm, except in the deepest, darkest corners of the game world. The PCs, thus, would be simultaneously rediscovering the old knowledge...but also making new discoveries.

I even went back to the old AD&D way of handling spellbooks. Your initial list was randomized, not cherrypicked. Even adding new spells had a random element to it- sure, you may be wanting to add "Fireball" to your spellbook, but the fragments of old tomes you've found in your researches so far don't have enough info to let you reconstruct the spell...but you HAVE managed to find enough fragments to learn "Haste"...

 

[Celtavian]

No, our experiences DO differ: "play" or "not play" are your options as a player because DM's don't design their campaign rules by committee.

The length of campaigns had ZERO to do with the DMs having it "all their way" with the rules and everything to do with things like players not liking the story arc or the system in question, DM fatigue, and real-world commitments.

For example, my M&M game died primarily because most of the players hated the lack of iterative attacks, especially when applied to weapons capable of automatic fire. I suspected they would, and had initially offered to run the game in HERO, but nobody wanted to learn to play HERO. C'est la vie.

And I doubt your group would run a game in which fully half of your group would not be participants.

No, they DON'T differ. As in players that don't want to play, don't. You tried to claim a DM can ban anything like every DM has absolute power and his group will stay. That isn't the case. Players that don't like what a DM does leave. You don't have any power to ban anything but what the players give you as a DM. That was my exact point. That is where our experiences are exactly the same.

You are right. Our group would not run a game in which half the participants would not play. Thus DM BANNING is not an option for our group. How can you put forth a point and then not understand what that point is.

You made the ludicrous claim that a DM can ban what he doesn't like. I told you why that doesn't work all the time. A DM is as much at the mercy of willing players as the players are at the mercy of a willing DM.

I'm done discussing this particular subject. The whole DM ban thing is a tiresome refrain. If they had included a price list for magic items as an option, I honestly wouldn't have cared. I'm glad it's no longer core D&D. I hated magic marts and easily crafted items. One of the worst design choices for 3E/Pathinder. I hope it never comes back to default D&D.

 

[MoonSong]

Then don't.

The default system is DM decides how much or little magic he wants. Defaults starts at zero. You can take that number as high as you want.

Without proper guidance? or any guidance? I want a high magic game, but not a game that breaks down.

 

[Derren]

Knowledge gets lost for all kinds of reasons:

• Disasters, natural or manmade
• Inventor dies without passing along his knowledge
• Cultural upheaval
• War
• Plague
• Religious opposition
• Materials become to expensive or outright impossible to aquire

Etc.

I won't post any spoilers, but Isaac Asimov wrote a story called "Nightfall" in which civilization worldwide crashed every 1000 years, due to a convergence of natural events and the people's responses to them. I used that story as sort of inspiration for a FRPG campaign, minus the cyclic element. (Haven't run it yet.)

And we are back to the only way to explain D&D is to have a gigantic catastrophe in the past, much more destructive than anything humankind experienced in the real world (although the pox epidemic in the New World comes close). And I don't think that this being the default (and only sensible way to explain magic items in D&D) is a good thing.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

No, they DON'T differ. As in players that don't want to play, don't. You tried to claim a DM can ban anything like every DM has absolute power and his group will stay.

We differ a great deal. You're acting like it is a hostage situation, that the DM is powerless.

I say, based on experience, the power to say "no", coupled with a willingness to step away, is power enough.

Our group HAS stayed together. We have lost no one- except people who moved away- and no DM has compromised his HRs.

As stated, certain guys decided not to play in certain games. But they were still part of the group, and would eventually be back the table with dice in hand when something else was played.

Those who didn't play would also often hang out with us anyway, drinking, snacking, heckling. Sometimes bar-tending, or assisting other players or the DM. Hell, I even occasionally HOST game night when I'm not playing.

What no DM in our group will do, however, is compromise crucial elements of his campaign design for any number of players. If they don't want to play the game presented, then don't. If that means nobody wants to play, so be it; next guy- YOU step up and take the reins.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

And we are back to the only way to explain D&D is to have a gigantic catastrophe in the past, much more destructive than anything humankind experienced in the real world (although the pox epidemic in the New World comes close). And I don't think that this being the default (and only sensible way to explain magic items in D&D) is a good thing.

And yet, something to this effect is described along the basic assumptions of a D&D world, right early in the DMG. If you don't have a lost golden age where magic items were created, and civilizations created the locations which are now in ruins, then you can't have a proper D&D.

You can change some of these assumptions, of course, but you need to do work to explain how your new world works in light of such changes.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

True. But the wealthy hero that doesn't want for anything and has more than three magic items is, well, an anti-cliche. It's something only really found in gaming fiction.

Yeah, despite my love for the fantastic I read little fantasy fiction since so much is just one cliche after another and most are farmboy becomes hero of the world schlock. Ugh. Tried reading the FR fiction my brother loves and man was it just not for me. Oh well.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

And we are back to the only way to explain D&D is to have a gigantic catastrophe in the past, much more destructive than anything humankind experienced in the real world (although the pox epidemic in the New World comes close).

No we're not- most of the conditions I pointed out do not require global catastrophe, and that list was non-exhaustive.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

We differ a great deal. You're acting like it is a hostage situation, that the DM is powerless.

I say, based on experience, the power to say "no", coupled with a willingness to step away, is power enough.

Our group HAS stayed together. We have lost no one- except people who moved away- and no DM has compromised his HRs.

As stated, certain guys decided not to play in certain games. But they were still part of the group, and would eventually be back the table with dice in hand when something else was played.

Those who didn't play would also often hang out with us anyway, drinking, snacking, heckling. Sometimes bar-tending, or assisting other players or the DM. Hell, I even occasionally HOST game night when I'm not playing.

What no DM in our group will do, however, is compromise crucial elements of his campaign design for any number of players. If they don't want to play the game presented, then don't. If that means nobody wants to play, so be it; next guy- YOU step up and take the reins.

Yep. Similar here but I've been playing with largely the same group on and off for close to 30 years. Its a big part of why I have trouble understanding the issues of people who play with strangers at game stores. Though for wargaming I'm finding I may have to look at that option, which is not very appealing to me.