D&D 5E Tired of doing WotC's job

[Hoffmand]

That’s easy. Thwy

I hear you. I haven't run Saltmarsh because there's no puffy pirate shirts listed in the equipment section.

that’s an outrage!

 

[Lanefan]

Best and most complete equipment guide I've seen is Pathfinder's "Ultimate Equipment Guide", except some of the pricing is a bit wonky.

Lycanthropy - I've always seen it as more like a disease than a curse, meaning that a) Detect Magic hasn't a hope of finding it and b) Cure Disease has a chance of fixing it. I wonder if 5e defining it as a 'curse' is specifically intended to make it easier to both detect and to deal with? (and if yes, it wouldn't surprise me)

As for the OP's concerns regarding his ever-growing amount of houserules, all I can say is don't fight it, embrace it! Once you make that choice, sooner or later the time will eventually come when you've houseruled almost the entire game into being what you want it to be, and then your work is done.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

Thoughts on things like buying cloaks or boots or satchel bags....

If a player wants one just to say they have it for decorative purposes...we just assume all PCs start with "whatever clothes and equipment a standard adventurer would have". We don't do the starting out shopping minigame at our table. Money is spent on weapons, armor, and any nonstandard items.

If a player wants something like a cloak for a specific purpose....maybe a super fancy one to impress nobility or a completely waterproof one for some kind of spell shenanigans then I make up a price and corresponding rule for the item as needed. I also don't write this down as a "house rule" because its not important enough to keep track of. The rule for a fancy cloak may vary from when you asked about it in 2017 and when you asked again in 2020 unless someone wrote it down or remembers it.

Even if I had a 400 page COMPLETE TOME OF THE MARKET with 300,000 items priced out I would still just give it for free or make it up on the spot and move on.

 

[Charlaquin]

Lycanthropy - I've always seen it as more like a disease than a curse, meaning that a) Detect Magic hasn't a hope of finding it and b) Cure Disease has a chance of fixing it. I wonder if 5e defining it as a 'curse' is specifically intended to make it easier to both detect and to deal with? (and if yes, it wouldn't surprise me)

Lycanthropy as a curse is much more consistent with the source folklore than lycanthropy as disease.

 

[Mistwell]

Because this is the alternative.

Lycanthropy – d20PFSRD

www.d20pfsrd.com

I still don't see anything about whether it's magical or not, or detectable with a detect magic spell, or dispellable with dispel magic, even with pages and pages of text. Did I miss it?

 

[NotAYakk]

I've been running a new game online and its been ok. Today, one of the PCs failed to save against a wererat's bite and has lycanthropy. This was just as we ended the session. So, I took some time to research it and found very little information. Just that it is a curse and can be removed with remove curse. Some questions arose:
is it magical? can you detect it with*detect magic*? if so, why can't you use dispel magic? is the target aware they are cursed? and so on.

Something is magical if (a) it is a spell or duplicates a spell effect, or (b) uses "magical" in the description.

So you cannot by default detect it with detect magic.

In 5e, "dispell magic" and "detect magic" are mostly about detecting spells, magical items and similar. They don't detect everything supernatural.

Another example: in bringing in a new player for today's game, his PC wanted to buy a cloak. a CLOAK, and it isn't listed. What is the cost and weight? I decided finally just to tell him to get a blanket and say that is his cloak. I mean, really, how hard would it have been to put in a table for purchasing common clothing items like cloaks, boots, and shoes. Yeah, I know, we can come up with our own if we want to, but damn it, should we really have to?

A cloak is part of an outfit. The price of a cloak will vary hugely depending on what outfit and culture you are in.

A table of every piece of clothing and similar sundry would have negative value for me, because it would (a) be a bunch of noise in the game's signal, (b) would be reasonably likely to have errors (like the old "a 10' ladder is cheaper than 2 10' poles") that make using it as a brainless source of information useless.

Ultimately in the case of the lycanthropy curse, now I have to decide as DM how I want to handle it, what will the PC be aware of, will they ever be able to control it if it isn't removed, and such.

So, the rat lycanthropy: what story do you want to tell?

Do you want to tell a story where one of the characters descends into madness as they change into a rat at night and attack innocents? Do you want to tell a story where they get the disease under control? Do you want to tell a story where they use their strength of will to hold it back and desperately seek a cure? Or where maybe a sage in the party makes a knowledge check and they go about curing it by doing a quest for a local priest?

Those are all legitimate stories for being bitten by a were rat. Each of them should have different mechanics around what the bite does.

 

[Lanefan]

Lycanthropy as a curse is much more consistent with the source folklore than lycanthropy as disease.

Maybe - but the way Rowling handles it in Harry Potter is much closer to my take on it: it's a physical disease or even genetic mutation transferred by being bitten (and is thus somewhat treatable cf Snape making Lupin a treatment potion every month), and can be passed on to one's offspring.

 

[Charlaquin]

Maybe - but the way Rowling handles it in Harry Potter is much closer to my take on it: it's a physical disease or even genetic mutation transferred by being bitten (and is thus somewhat treatable cf Snape making Lupin a treatment potion every month), and can be passed on to one's offspring.

Yeah, that take is pretty common ever since The Wolf Man, and it’s certainly valid. Just saying, 5e probably went with it being a curse because that’s what it is in classic folklore, not to make it easier to detect and cure.

 

[Lanefan]

Thoughts on things like buying cloaks or boots or satchel bags....

If a player wants one just to say they have it for decorative purposes...we just assume all PCs start with "whatever clothes and equipment a standard adventurer would have". We don't do the starting out shopping minigame at our table. Money is spent on weapons, armor, and any nonstandard items.

An inviolate rule at our table is this: if it's not written on your character sheet, you don't have it.

This to prevent people from "just happening" to have the right tool or mundane item at the right moment when logically they'd never have thought to buy and-or carry such a thing. And though by no means do I enforce encumbrance to the letter, having one's gear listed in detail at least allows me to do a vague audit now and then if something seems really screwy.

Even if I had a 400 page COMPLETE TOME OF THE MARKET with 300,000 items priced out I would still just give it for free or make it up on the spot and move on.

I'd use it as a baseline, then if it seemed necessary roll to see if there's any local price variances at the time.

 

[Tonguez]

I still don't see anything about whether it's magical or not, or detectable with a detect magic spell, or dispellable with dispel magic, even with pages and pages of text. Did I miss it?

It calls the progress of Lycanthropy Corruption and gives details on its development and cure. On that alone it appears that for PF at least Lycanthorpy isnt magical or disease, its a special category of Corruption caused by the claws or teeth of an elder Lycanthrope