CapnZapp
Legend
This is an introductory post to gauge general interest.
First off, read this blast from the past:
http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/dd/20070302a
I yearn for the days when you could have a serious, positive discussion about magic item creation and pricing mechanisms (and when the designers were actively interested in pursuing these subjects). If you agree, please let me know in this thread.
Do note this thread is meant as a "plus thread"*.
The goal is to create support for a 5th edition campaign where characters can visit magic shoppes to spend their hard-earned gold on magic items, where prices reflect how useful the magic effects are to adventurers (utility-based pricing).
Sure there's the "sane magic item" compendium. But not only is it pretty much the only serious effort I've seen and studied up close, it's unofficial, and - sorry to say it - pretty much flawed, since it assumes too much of a d20 campaign rather than what practical experience has taught us is a 5E campaign. I welcome discussions around specifics here, since that's what the thread is about.
But before we start thinking about specifics (which I intend to do in a second thread once I trust EN World's ability to discuss this topic constructively), we need to agree on a few fundamentals. I am assuming the campaign is running an official hardcover campaign or similar adventure. Not only because that's the only common ground we can have (except AL play), but also because narrows our scope enough to make any effort fruitful. I am telling you this because if all you run is homebrew campaigns which deviate significantly from official adventures, you might not find this thread useful for your purposes.
In short: if your campaign focus on social interaction and where combat is a last-resort conflict resolution only, as opposed to being featured front and center pretty much every play session, I wish you good luck - but you don't really need the price lists we're creating there...
Specifically, in my opinion a system like the one I want to create is useful because:
- official adventures feature world-ending threats more often than not. If you're on a ticking clock, you don't want to take a month off to build an orphanage or whatever. In short, no downtime is assumed, so we need a way to spend gold during "uptime"
- buying magic items is assumed to be fun! It allows the player a much appreciated extra layer of character building or "crunch".
- spending time on downtime is assumed to be a secondary, optional, activity. Some plots don't have time for downtime. Some groups simply don't care for it. Just like every edition before it, 5th edition should support players that just want to spend their gold on something truly useful for them in their capacity as heroes and adventurers and then go straight to the next dungeon if that's what they want.
- the combat pillar is assumed to be dominant. Full stop. (Again, I don't want to derail into explaining or defending why, so I made this thread a "plus thread". The focus here is that you're onboard with this, and feature a similar campaign in your home game.
- it sets some common limits on what is available and what isn't available in our assumed campaign.
a) For instance, few if any official adventures are "low magic". Quite the contrary, most official adventures have the heroes swimming in gold and items! This means that our discussion will not stick to the "party line" (If you want to argue "magic items are completely optional and if you decide to include them you're on your own" you need to do that in another thread!)
b) Looking through WotC modules, I make the observation NPCs are very seldom equipped with any magic items (unless major villains and/or encountered at double-digit levels). By this I mean, prices need to reflect that you can't bathe in scrolls, potions and +1 swords until much later, when you're mid or even high level. In short: everything about a d20-based take needs to be fundamentally recalibrated.
c) 5E works fundamentally different than 3E. Two quick examples: Simply having a magic weapon turns all the "resistance to non-magical damage" abilities into irrelevant fluff. Spellcasters have access to MUCH fewer spell slots, and a 3E approach to scrolls simply doesn't work - it would short-circuit this very deliberate limitation on casters. (In short: scrolls can't be as cheap as Sane suggests, and the very fact a sword is magical needs to be reflected in the price even if not a +1 item) I'm sure there's more.
d) just because the characters find a magic shoppe does not necessarily mean they're free to cherry pick from the complete DMG catalogue of items! As the Dungeon Master, you're free to stock your shoppes as you please, and set any price you want. The point here is to create a basic list which you should be confident won't break your campaign if used as-is.
Consider this thread also a test of how well this "plus thread" thing works in practice. If moderation cannot keep it clean there's not much point of discussing these issues on EN World at all, and since pretty much every previous discussion on these issues have gone down the toilet, I would dearly like to know if this topic is effectively allowed around here before I start discussing specific implementations. To be very clear: I am not a moderator; nothing I say is official.
So that's why this is just the introductory thread. I aim to create another when and if this test balloon works.
To that effect, please note again this thread is meant as a "plus thread"*.
Comments? Questions? Or just your unadulterated adulation?
Regards,
Zapp
*) What that means exactly is of course up to the moderators to explain, but since there is no official mention of "plus threads" in the forum rules as far as I'm aware, let me try to explain my personal take: if all you want to say is "don't do it" or "I don't like it" or "top three reasons why you're wrong, Zapp" that's considered off-topic for this thread and will be reported accordingly. In short: If all you want to do is derail a positive constructive discussion on how to implement magic item pricing and creation, you're (hopefully) gonna get banned. Instead, I encourage you to start a thread of your own to discuss, I dunno, the evils of magic item shoppes or, say, how great rarity-based pricing is. Don't post it here, please!
To be very clear: I am not a moderator; nothing I say is official.
First off, read this blast from the past:
http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/dd/20070302a
I yearn for the days when you could have a serious, positive discussion about magic item creation and pricing mechanisms (and when the designers were actively interested in pursuing these subjects). If you agree, please let me know in this thread.
Do note this thread is meant as a "plus thread"*.
The goal is to create support for a 5th edition campaign where characters can visit magic shoppes to spend their hard-earned gold on magic items, where prices reflect how useful the magic effects are to adventurers (utility-based pricing).
- One basic assumption of this plus thread is that the rarity-based system in the DMG is essentially unworkable and useless (if you genuinely wonder why, let's discuss that in another thread).
- Another is that making a system that is workable and useful is far from easy, and emphatically not trivial (if you genuinely wonder why, let's discuss that in another thread).
- A third is that it would be of great use if there was a ready-made system so every DM didn't have to invent the wheel from scratch.
Sure there's the "sane magic item" compendium. But not only is it pretty much the only serious effort I've seen and studied up close, it's unofficial, and - sorry to say it - pretty much flawed, since it assumes too much of a d20 campaign rather than what practical experience has taught us is a 5E campaign. I welcome discussions around specifics here, since that's what the thread is about.
But before we start thinking about specifics (which I intend to do in a second thread once I trust EN World's ability to discuss this topic constructively), we need to agree on a few fundamentals. I am assuming the campaign is running an official hardcover campaign or similar adventure. Not only because that's the only common ground we can have (except AL play), but also because narrows our scope enough to make any effort fruitful. I am telling you this because if all you run is homebrew campaigns which deviate significantly from official adventures, you might not find this thread useful for your purposes.
In short: if your campaign focus on social interaction and where combat is a last-resort conflict resolution only, as opposed to being featured front and center pretty much every play session, I wish you good luck - but you don't really need the price lists we're creating there...
Specifically, in my opinion a system like the one I want to create is useful because:
- official adventures feature world-ending threats more often than not. If you're on a ticking clock, you don't want to take a month off to build an orphanage or whatever. In short, no downtime is assumed, so we need a way to spend gold during "uptime"
- buying magic items is assumed to be fun!
It allows the player a much appreciated extra layer of character building or "crunch".- spending time on downtime is assumed to be a secondary, optional, activity. Some plots don't have time for downtime. Some groups simply don't care for it. Just like every edition before it, 5th edition should support players that just want to spend their gold on something truly useful for them in their capacity as heroes and adventurers and then go straight to the next dungeon if that's what they want.
- the combat pillar is assumed to be dominant. Full stop. (Again, I don't want to derail into explaining or defending why, so I made this thread a "plus thread". The focus here is that you're onboard with this, and feature a similar campaign in your home game.
- it sets some common limits on what is available and what isn't available in our assumed campaign.
a) For instance, few if any official adventures are "low magic". Quite the contrary, most official adventures have the heroes swimming in gold and items! This means that our discussion will not stick to the "party line" (If you want to argue "magic items are completely optional and if you decide to include them you're on your own" you need to do that in another thread!)
b) Looking through WotC modules, I make the observation NPCs are very seldom equipped with any magic items (unless major villains and/or encountered at double-digit levels). By this I mean, prices need to reflect that you can't bathe in scrolls, potions and +1 swords until much later, when you're mid or even high level. In short: everything about a d20-based take needs to be fundamentally recalibrated.
c) 5E works fundamentally different than 3E. Two quick examples: Simply having a magic weapon turns all the "resistance to non-magical damage" abilities into irrelevant fluff. Spellcasters have access to MUCH fewer spell slots, and a 3E approach to scrolls simply doesn't work - it would short-circuit this very deliberate limitation on casters. (In short: scrolls can't be as cheap as Sane suggests, and the very fact a sword is magical needs to be reflected in the price even if not a +1 item) I'm sure there's more.
d) just because the characters find a magic shoppe does not necessarily mean they're free to cherry pick from the complete DMG catalogue of items! As the Dungeon Master, you're free to stock your shoppes as you please, and set any price you want. The point here is to create a basic list which you should be confident won't break your campaign if used as-is.
Consider this thread also a test of how well this "plus thread" thing works in practice. If moderation cannot keep it clean there's not much point of discussing these issues on EN World at all, and since pretty much every previous discussion on these issues have gone down the toilet, I would dearly like to know if this topic is effectively allowed around here before I start discussing specific implementations. To be very clear: I am not a moderator; nothing I say is official.
So that's why this is just the introductory thread.
I aim to create another when and if this test balloon works. To that effect, please note again this thread is meant as a "plus thread"*.
Comments? Questions? Or just your unadulterated adulation?
Regards,
Zapp
*) What that means exactly is of course up to the moderators to explain, but since there is no official mention of "plus threads" in the forum rules as far as I'm aware, let me try to explain my personal take: if all you want to say is "don't do it" or "I don't like it" or "top three reasons why you're wrong, Zapp" that's considered off-topic for this thread and will be reported accordingly. In short: If all you want to do is derail a positive constructive discussion on how to implement magic item pricing and creation, you're (hopefully) gonna get banned. Instead, I encourage you to start a thread of your own to discuss, I dunno, the evils of magic item shoppes or, say, how great rarity-based pricing is. Don't post it here, please!
To be very clear: I am not a moderator; nothing I say is official.
