D&D 5E Attunement

[keterys]

Semantics aside, it's a dissociative mechanic that doesn't make much "real world" sense. The same could be said of most non-magical abilities tied to a short/long rest.

I agree with almost nothing in this quote, but I understand entirely the premise it's coming from, so fair enough.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

Semantics aside, it's a dissociative mechanic that doesn't make much "real world" sense. The same could be said of most non-magical abilities tied to a short/long rest.

...but attunement is magical.

I really don't understand what you're saying here. How do you think magic items behave in the "real world"?

 

[Ristamar]

...but attunement is magical.

I really don't understand what you're saying here. How do you think magic items behave in the "real world"?

To be honest, I was mostly referring to superiority dice in that quote. You could easily hand wave the rules of attunement as mysterious magic, though it's obviously a metagame limitation in respect to previous editions of D&D. That being said, I do like the rule, and there's lots of ways to dress it up and tailor it to a particular campaign.

 

[KarinsDad]

The limitation of 3 items that attune serves a good role. It has elegance and is far from arbitrary.

Elegant how?

And how do you know that it is not an arbitrary number? Why isn't 4 a good number or 1 or 8?

Or were you talking about arbitrary as to what it is applied to? If so, what evidence do we have for that?

 

[MG.0]

There's a number of conflicting vectors that are confusing things, I feel. There are mechanical reasons why apparently similar items might have different attunement requirements: eyes of minute seeing are not "always on" (in that players would reasonably take them on and off depending on whether one was looking up close at something), and eyes of the eagle are (in that players would reasonably always keep their advantage on perception checks active). You might not like that mechanical reason, but it's fully comprehensible.

What I find arbitrary about that particular example is that the reasoning is purely metagame. Coming up with an in game reason for the difference is an exercise in rationalization, and therefore to be avoided (in my games).

There is a conceptual reason: previous editions, even with their slot requirements (gone here, but did you similarly complain about not enough armour slots?), still encouraged what has unhelpfully been called the Christmas tree characters, bedecked with magic helpfully bought from ubiquitous magic shops. Like it or not, that concept has been discouraged in 5e. Not removed, and not prevented; but discouraged. But it would not be right to call this a "non-problem": it has been a problem, for many tables, and discouraging it (while keeping options open for players who want that) is a design choice that was made.

Slot requirements? No idea what you are referring to. I've not played 3rd or 4th editions, if that helps. I'm used to playing campaigns in 1st and 2nd edition with low to mid magic availability and the idea of magic shops on every corner is horrific. Perhaps that's the difference. In my experience attunement isn't needed to keep things from degenerating to the point you are describing, but I see it could be useful for inexperienced DM's.

There may be benefits gained from avoiding stacking bonuses, etc., but ultimately I don't see that as what's driving this. In the most helpful post in this thread so far, however, Wolf118 does show there is a logic to be extracted.

The mention of stacking bonuses was pulled form the DMG's own logic for implementing attunement on magic items, page 285.

Finally, there are reasons concerning emulation. The fiction that I know, and the fantasy fiction that inspires many D&D narratives, more closely reflects the hero-with-her-single-chosen-weapon. There is, purely subjectively, a narrative purity (for want of a better term) that is reflected in a lot of fiction, which incentivizes keeping these numbers low. A rule maintains that, and lets the DM loosen restrictions whenever it's needed.

That is the only sensible argument for attunement I've heard. You may notice that I'm less impressed by mechanical factors, and more by story driven ones.

I like the attunement rule, but fundamentally (and I think this is supported by the small number of concrete examples in this thread) it is not something that is causing problems in actual play.

For me, it wasn't that it caused problems, but rather the converse: Removing attunement does not create problems. As a bonus, I felt the narrative qualities of a game without attunement are superior to one with it, although your emulation of fiction argument does carry some weight. Ok, I think I've exhausted all I want to say on the matter.

 

[Kobold Stew]

That is the only sensible argument for attunement I've heard. You may notice that I'm less impressed by mechanical factors, and more by story driven ones.

Thanks -- for me, it's the most persuasive one as well, though I admit it is subjective and there may be fantasy fiction emulating the reverse.

 

[jgsugden]

Elegant how?

And how do you know that it is not an arbitrary number? Why isn't 4 a good number or 1 or 8?
...

The core of the elegance is that allows flexibility while maintaining balance. In prior editions you had a 1 item per slot rule. That created a lot of problems that encouraged focus on a small set of items and resulted in a huge number of items being ignored. In some editions you'd find a bunch of rings you'd never use, in others you'd have a lot in the rule set that would never be picked by players or DMs to be included.

Here, due to the recommended distributions and the mechanics, magic items should be distributed and diverse.

As for why a selection of 3 attuned items per PC is not arbitrary: Math and statistics. If you take the average number of magic items that should be found based upon recommended distributions, calculate the chances that magic items would be attuned based upon the percentage of entries on the item tables that are attuned, and spread it over 20 levels, the answer becomes obvious. Basically, there should be about 3 attuned items found per PC in a 20 level career. The 3 limit encourages distribution amongst the party and limits the power of PCs that find too many attuned items - especially when there are too many high power attuned items. It prevents a party that finds too many items through luck, or a situation in which a DM allows PCs to buy items very easily, from getting too far from the balance levels that were envisioned for the game.

That is the first level of analysis. I encourage you to think about it some more on your own and look for the deeper balance issues. I could write a few dozen pages on this - but long posts never do much good. People tend to only learn things during message board discussions when they figure it out themselves.

 

[KarinsDad]

The core of the elegance is that allows flexibility while maintaining balance. In prior editions you had a 1 item per slot rule. That created a lot of problems that encouraged focus on a small set of items and resulted in a huge number of items being ignored.

In some editions you'd find a bunch of rings you'd never use, in others you'd have a lot in the rule set that would never be picked by players or DMs to be included.

This happens just as bad with attunement. In our campaign at 6th level, there are already "hand me down" attunement items and soon, there will be items that nobody wants because their attunement slots are full.

Attunement did nothing for this issue except to propagate it in a different manner. Instead of limiting the number of rings, it limits the number of attuned and cool magic items.

And quite frankly, the "ring problem" still happens for some other items. Only one shield at at time, even in 5E. Only one set of armor at a time, even in 5E. Only one set of boots at a time, even in 5E.

Here, due to the recommended distributions and the mechanics, magic items should be distributed and diverse.

Again, no different than earlier editions that had magic item tables with percentiles for different items. Diversity is totally DM dependent and if rolling on a table, basically dice result dependent.

As for why a selection of 3 attuned items per PC is not arbitrary: Math and statistics. If you take the average number of magic items that should be found based upon recommended distributions, calculate the chances that magic items would be attuned based upon the percentage of entries on the item tables that are attuned, and spread it over 20 levels, the answer becomes obvious. Basically, there should be about 3 attuned items found per PC in a 20 level career.

Are you sure of this? Where are your actual numbers for this? This seems to be a claim without any hard data written down to support it.

Let's look at some data. The number and percentage of attunement (non-consumable) items in the DMG is as follows:

37 out of 83: Uncommon (45%)
56 out of 97: Rare (58%)
42 out of 65: Very Rare (65%)
31 out of 43: Legendary (72%)

160 out of 288: Total (56%)

So except in the case of uncommon items, a majority of non-consumable items require attunement.

Based on your assumptions with a party of 4 PCs, in 20 levels, those 4 PCs will find 100 / 56 * 3 * 4 = 21 magic items or 1 magic item total per level. 56% or 12 of these items will be attunement, 44% or 9 will not.

One magic item per level is a bit light, even for 5E. This, of course, does not even take into account crappy items being found (cursed, a magic mace when nobody in the party uses maces, etc.).


The real issue here is that tables B, C, and D are mostly consumable item tables in the DMG. So, the game is set up at low level that the PCs should be finding mostly consumable items, but if one looks at LMoP and other modules, that's not the case.

Personally, I think that players enjoy acquiring magic items as a major part of the fun and if it takes 5 or 6 gaming sessions to acquire level and only one magic item is found in that time frame, it's not as much fun. IMO.

The 3 limit encourages distribution amongst the party and limits the power of PCs that find too many attuned items - especially when there are too many high power attuned items. It prevents a party that finds too many items through luck, or a situation in which a DM allows PCs to buy items very easily, from getting too far from the balance levels that were envisioned for the game.

Actually, it does not limit the PCs from finding too many attuned items. Random is random. The DM could roll 14 attuned items out of 20 found (even including consumables).

That is the first level of analysis. I encourage you to think about it some more on your own and look for the deeper balance issues. I could write a few dozen pages on this - but long posts never do much good. People tend to only learn things during message board discussions when they figure it out themselves.

Hmmm. This last sentence is a bit condescending. As if people could not come to a different conclusion.

It's pretty obvious that WotC set up the tables to match their expectations, but at the same time, WotC is not playing the game. People are, and people often fudge those tables to get results that are more fun for their individual groups.

 

[Gillywonka]

I say simply, don't use the rule. In my campaign, magic items are quite uncommon. The players are 5th level and have zero magic armor or weapons. The attunement limit of 3 is just some arbitrary number. If you feel you need to have a limit, base it on a stat. Say start with a base of 3 and add the WIS or CHA modifier of the PC. So a PC with a +2 WIS mod would be able to have 5 attuned items (3 + 2). But even better, just don't use it.

 

[Hussar]

Based on your assumptions with a party of 4 PCs, in 20 levels, those 4 PCs will find 100 / 56 * 3 * 4 = 21 magic items or 1 magic item total per level. 56% or 12 of these items will be attunement, 44% or 9 will not.

One magic item per level is a bit light, even for 5E. This, of course, does not even take into account crappy items being found (cursed, a magic mace when nobody in the party uses maces, etc.).


Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?452864-Attunement/page15#ixzz3i56VvnrQ

While I agree with the total number of items likely found KD, I'm not sure i agree with your assumption of the spread of items. Yes, strictly by the list, you might be right, but, let's be honest, there are a number of items that parties will find, like +1 Weapons or +1 Shields, which are likely going to be a lot more commonly placed by DM's than, say, Eyes of the Eagle. I'd say it's a pretty rare DM who strictly randomly generated magic items and never deviates from die rolls.

After all, it's common to put magic items on "Boss" monsters, which will tend to be weapons, armour or the like. I'm going by personal experience here, which, I realise is not broadly applicable, but, in our 5e Dragonlance campaign, which has now hit about 9th level, we have only a couple attunement items and our LMoP campaign which, is 3rd level, and has found exactly 1 (the glass staff) attunement item. I'm not sure where you are getting all these attunement items from LMoP. We certainly never found them. Granted, I'm a player in both campaigns, so, maybe we missed a lot, but, I don't think so.

Summoning [MENTION=2067]Kamikaze Midget[/MENTION] for commentary on Lost Mines of Phandelver.