D&D 5E No Magic Shops!

[CapnZapp]

Epic fail on the read or deliberate reconstruction - not sure which but obviously not what was said.

the point is not that it wont work perfectly for every campaign but that it is extremely unlikely to work well for almost any campaign - well being roughly defined as helping more than it harms.

For a new Gm who is not able to look at items and gauge relative "utility" as it applies to their campaign and their party and their specifics on all sorts of things, they are far better served by a robust set of tools to assess those not from a generic perspective but from a campaign specific one. They are better served with info on "creating utility" rather than a generic utility score.

The "utility" of a scroll of water breathing vs a scroll of fireball vs a scroll of clairvoyance or even a scroll of non-detection will not be a set and common thing between even two parties in the same campaign world.

[not that utility pricing" is a thing that has almost any basis in any market resolving around any global high end goods anyway. Cost (good, resources, expertise, risk) to produce, market will bear, supply and demand are all factors that actually determine "market value in most all cases.]

Thats where i come down to for those Gms who **need** a price list for managing the sell and purchase of magic items in their campaigns, they are far better off with tools to help them "create" or "sync" the utility items purchased to the prices paid within their campaigns.

having seen "standard price lists" actually end up impacting character builds and character choices, much the same way that ye olde "magic longswords make up..." did - the magic item economy "utility price list" dream is one i think does more harm than good as far as "official" core game elements go and something best left to and focuesed completely around a "in your campaign" type of approach.

To me, having someone ask for a list ways to flap their arms when leaping out of a plane without a parachute and then giving them such a list as official handout as opposed to giving them a parachute and showing them how to use it --- that would be negligence on the part of the folks in charge of the skydiving, not "supportive of the customer's skydiving preference."


balance is created, not calculated.

Squirm all you want, you can't escape that this DM is still better off with official guidelines and tools, than without.

Meaning, if you actually were arguing that official support IS needed, only it should come in the form of a reasoned discussion and examples and formulas, rather than a ready-made and static price list, I could actually have respected that.

Sent from my C6603 using EN World mobile app

 

[Lanefan]

I would call players cheating if they broke an established rule that is in place in the game.

A Gm whose table rules forbade reading the DMG would simply see me say "well, bye, i read it long ago." So, there is that.

Fair enough.

The days when such a thing can even be a thing are long past.

To me, players can read DMG, PHB MM whatever... though i would ask for them to tell me if they have read any established adventure packs just so we know.

However they all need to know that i change a great many things.

As for knowing "what that magic item we just found is"... The DMG will not help them there much more than it is likely to hurt them in my games.

Exactly. You've gone through and done the work to change things up, as have I and many others. Exactly what's needed.

But - and here's the bigger question - are your changed materials freely available to players or are they kept as DM only?

As for adventures, yes - if I'm thinking of running something someone might have already been in I'll ask, and if someone has already read it or played through it (or worse, DMed it!) I'll either put that module aside or do a huge amount of tweaking and disguising.

The day i start hinging any important element or aspect on my game on players being *ignorant* of published material is the day i set aside GMing.

Depends on one's players, I suppose. There's a big difference between DMing a table of casual players who don't think about the game between sessions and DMing a table of fellow DMs who already know lots about everything.

Lanefan

 

[Lanefan]

It'd possible someone else has already pointed it out... But no, you're mistaken and your conclusions doesn't hold water.

Mistaken in one respect, yes; but my conclusion still stands.

1. The 3e magic item lists weren't in the PHB.

Quite right, and I apologize for this error.

It was 4e that put 'em in the PH.

So the same colossal mistake, just one edition later than I'd remembered.

2. The 5e magic item lists will never be in the DMG, since that book is already printed.

The pricing won't, that's a certainty.

The obvious solution to keep everybody happy is to publish them in a supplement. That way it will never be core, and it will never be taken for granted by entitled players.

I could almost forgive WotC for not publishing the system,if they hadn't dragged their feet for so very long. This supplement is *still* not published!

And may not be for quite some time, if ever. My guess is that such a thing would be quite some way down WotC's priority list at the moment; if for no other reason than there's not enough in ot to justify a whole book, which seems to be their release model these days.

Unless, of course, they bundled such a list in with a book of new and-or revised magic items. That I could almost see happening. Sometime.

Lanefan

 

[Guest 6801328]

This is the second time you are implicating me with the objective play test data crowd. Now I'm not asking you, I am telling you.

Stop it!

Oh, get over yourself. I'm not casting aspersions. You are the most insistent (in this thread) on having prices, so if I need an example of somebody who is going to participate in creating them you're an obvious candidate. I'm not claiming you support the methodology, just using you as an example of somebody who might end up having disproportionate influence on the results.

Plus, attempts to give people orders on the Internet often have effects which are the exact opposite of that intended. (Unless you're using reverse psychology. Or reverse-reverse-reverse psychology. But not reverse-reverse psychology.)

Just sayin'.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Quite right, and I apologize for this error.

It was 4e that put 'em in the PH.

So the same colossal mistake, just one edition later than I'd remembered.

No. Clearly your one factual error invalidates your entire argument. This is the Internet not...well, pretty much anything else.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Oh, and on the difficulty of determining prices:

1) Creating a master list of prices that keeps the majority of the people happy most of the time, without any egregious paradoxes: very, very, very difficult. Cost: non-zero.

2) A DM who knows both the desires and wealth of his players improvising reasonable prices for specific items on a case-by-base basis: very, very, very easy. Cost: zero.

Hmmm. I'll have to run some regressions to figure out which use case has the optimal cost:benefit ratio.

 

[SkidAce]

Oh, and on the difficulty of determining prices:

1) Creating a master list of prices that keeps the majority of the people happy most of the time, without any egregious paradoxes: very, very, very difficult. Cost: non-zero.

2) A DM who knows both the desires and wealth of his players improvising reasonable prices for specific items on a case-by-base basis: very, very, very easy. Cost: zero.

Hmmm. I'll have to run some regressions to figure out which use case has the optimal cost:benefit ratio.

Not weighing in on either side, but you didn't include the opportunity cost to the DM.

 

[Maxperson]

Ah, the blame it on the DM argument.

Thank you for conclusively showing you don't need to be listened to.

The fact that you think indecisive people can DM competently means that you don't need to be listened to. See, we can both play that game.

In other news, the idea that creating a pricing structure is so easy is patently absurd. It is hard and it is not something a DM is expected to do on the cuff.

I've been successfully pricing on they fly easily for decades. It's really simple. I'm surprised that you can't do it.

An official supplement by WotC, where they dump this rarity-based nonsense, on the other hand...

Is one of the crappiest places it can be. Not once have WotC price list been any good. I've had to throw them all out and price the items myself. Fortunately, it's simple to do on the fly.

 

[Maxperson]

Squirm all you want, you can't escape that this DM is still better off with official guidelines and tools, than without.

The rarer magic items are not sold unless the DM says otherwise is a "guideline and tool". DMs don't need their hands held for every little thing. Play 3e or 4e if you want rules and charts for everything. 5e is about broad ideas that leave blanks like items prices to the individual DMs.

 

[Maxperson]

Not weighing in on either side, but you didn't include the opportunity cost to the DM.

How much does a few seconds cost?