D&D 5E Does/Should D&D Have the Player's Game Experience as a goal?

[Vaalingrade]

What I dont want is the fallout of those guidelines being magic items become expected (either through purchase, wishlisting or whatever) by players and/or they become part of the math of the game.

I mean, that's exactly what I want to see happen.

 

[Imaro]

I mean, that's exactly what I want to see happen.

I'm curious... why?

 

[SableWyvern]

Ok. Here’s an example of where DnD went from transparent to opaque.

Start with the 3e wealth by level assumptions. That was very clear. A character of level X was presumed to have Y wealth in gear. Everything in the game was then based on those presumptions. Magic item values were based on how much power they grant to the pc.

Not that the system was perfect. Far from it. But it was completely transparent.

Then comes 4e which takes this a step further by not only presuming wealth by level but then also plunking magic items into the phb equipment lists and then advising players and DMs to use wish lists. Equipment as a character building tool same as proficiencies or feats.

And people strongly reacted to that.

So now we have 5e’s magic items. Not assumed in anything. Meant as power ups. But the rarity system is never actually explained. What level should a character start seeing “very rare” items? Who knows? Figure it out yourself. Never minding that rarity does not equal utility. After all a potion of supreme healing is equivalent to a 25 Strength Belt of Giant Strength. Because that makes total sense.

Does anyone think that it helps game play to make the magic item system totally opaque?

I have no real horse in this race (I don't play and have no interest in 5e), but I don't like the wealth-by-level assumptions of 3e, and I found the extremely precise and rigid iteration of the system in 4e is absolutely terrible. So it certainly sounds to me like 5e is an improvement in this respect (for my own needs, at least).

 

[Vaalingrade]

I'm curious... why?

Because I find magic items enhance the fantasy of the game but how D&D usually handles it; having someone else portion them out, often at random, takes a lot of fun out of them for me.

All too often, I find myself thinking "Oh good, I got a magic scimitar I can't use well, a boring +x item I can use but don't care about, and one of the dozens of items that exist for niche uses in a module from thirty years ago. Why can't I just pick what I'm actually excited about and a bag of holding so I can ignore the part I'm super not excited about?"

 

[Imaro]

Because I find magic items enhance the fantasy of the game but how D&D usually handles it; having someone else portion them out, often at random, takes a lot of fun out of them for me.

All too often, I find myself thinking "Oh good, I got a magic scimitar I can't use well, a boring +x item I can use but don't care about, and one of the dozens of items that exist for niche uses in a module from thirty years ago. Why can't I just pick what I'm actually excited about and a bag of holding so I can ignore the part I'm super not excited about?"

Fair enough, not my cup of tea so I'm glad 5e didn't go that route after 4e tried it.

EDIT: You could always use downtime for you or a comrade to make the items you want if your DM is willing.

 

[Lanefan]

Let me clarify… a third party product (aside from settings and adventure modules) typically seeks to fill in some gap. Let’s say Matt Colville’s “Strongholds & Followers”, for example.

My concern with a product like that is that the designer doesn’t understand the base game enough to design their addition in a way that fits well with the base game. That it doesn’t disrupt the game’s balance.

Here again you're (perhaps not wrongly) assuming intent.

What if the intent is, at least to some extent, to disrupt the game's balance in order to make it play a bit differently?

With something like S+F, for example, one might go in with the specific intent of disrupting the balance such that instead of always having small tight parties, more 1e-like parties with lots of henches, hirelings etc. become viable.

To pull this off, I posit one either needs a pretty good handle on the game in order to know what to tweak, or almost no handle on the game such that one's thinking and creativity isn't limited by established convention.

Colville seems like a solid game designer. He’s worked in video games. He’s provided dozens of hours of advice, most of which was clear and had a point of view, even if I may not always agree with him. And yet “Strongholds & Followers” still has plenty of design concerns. It doesn’t fit perfectly with the base game. Is it workable? Sure. But I think it serves to show how even someone like that will still have issues.

I hope that’s clearer.

It is; though given that these people are in theory trying to design things that will enhance the game by making it different, I wonder whether fitting in with the base game - while obviously important to a point - is being given too much priority.

 

[Lanefan]

I'm not adverse to guidelines for magic items... though I'm stumped on how they could do this and keep them optional.

What I dont want is the fallout of those guidelines being magic items become expected (either through purchase, wishlisting or whatever) by players and/or they become part of the math of the game.

Perhaps the math of the game needs to be made a bit less fine-tuned, such that a party with items and a party without are equally viable.

Or - or maybe 'and' - there could be a move toward random (or random-seeming) items; where even a 1st-level party has a chance of finding something stupendous. Flip side: items also need to be made destroyable, such that there's some turnover.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Here again you're (perhaps not wrongly) assuming intent.

What if the intent is, at least to some extent, to disrupt the game's balance in order to make it play a bit differently?

With something like S+F, for example, one might go in with the specific intent of disrupting the balance such that instead of always having small tight parties, more 1e-like parties with lots of henches, hirelings etc. become viable.

To pull this off, I posit one either needs a pretty good handle on the game in order to know what to tweak, or almost no handle on the game such that one's thinking and creativity isn't limited by established convention.

It is; though given that these people are in theory trying to design things that will enhance the game by making it different, I wonder whether fitting in with the base game - while obviously important to a point - is being given too much priority.

You have, in the past, talked a great deal about “knock-on effects”, so I’m thinking you understand what I mean. Whether the intent is to maintain the game balance or to disrupt it in some way, the point is that the supplemental material and the original material need to interact in the desired way.

 

[pemerton]

The way to have magic items not disrupt "the maths" is to have them expand capacity "sideways" rather than "upwards". This was fairly easy to do in 4e D&D - an item confers a power, and if you're using inherent bonuses you can just ignore its enhancement bonus altogether.

It's a bit trickier in 5e, I think, because 5e doesn't use a standard ability suite on a standard/move/minor action economy, but presumably is nevertheless possible.

 

[Hussar]

Again, I was trying to illustrate with an example, NOT actually trying to turn the discussion into a debate over the specific example.

The question was asked for examples of when D&D was transparent and also other systems which had transparancy as well. Whether you specifically LIKE these mechanics or not is irrelevant. The point is, the mechanics were very, very transparent. And that transparency allows DM's and players to understand more easily the underlying assumptions of the game, as well as predict what changing these assumptions will result in.

By reducing transparency, it's pretty much a crap shoot as to what effects the magic items in D&D will have. After all, in 3e, (I'm going to completely ignore 4e here because I'm rather tired of having to dredge up 15 year old edition warring crap yet again, so, I will no respond to any reference to 4e and, if I get the urge, I'm very likely to go back, edit my past posts to remove any reference to 4e since that seems to have simply clouded the issue) I KNOW pretty clearly what will happen if I adjust the party wealth up or down.

When I ran the World's Largest Dungeon in 3e, there was no way to purchase or craft magic items. Everything was 100% random - whatever they found in the WLD, that's the items they had. And, because I knew what they should have (at least in a ballpark way) at a given level, I could adjust encounters to suit the power of the party.

In 5e, I cannot predict that. If I give a group of 7th level PC's a Rare magic item each, what impact will that have on party power? Well, it ranges from nothing (5 potions of Superior Healing would have zero impact on this group) to massively overpowering the group - the fighter gets a Belt of Hill Giant Strength, the wizard gets a wand of Fireballs, the cleric gets a Staff of Healing, a Cloak of Displacement for the Rogue and a Flame Tongue sword for the Paladin.

Those two parties are now MILES apart in power level despite having what the game tells me are exactly the same value magic items.

And what have we gained by making the assumptions opaque? Some sort of touchy feely feeling of magic items being "wondrous"?

A game should NEVER be opaque. That's the poorest form of game design.