D&D (2024) DMG 5.5 - the return of bespoke magical items?

[Vaalingrade]

It always comes back to that. The referee is the one controlling the game, not the book, not the designers at WotC.

At the very least, the DM should be kicked for saying 'LOL' in real life.

 

[Ancalagon]

Again: I consider this argument deeply disingenuous.

The adventure doesn't actually START until the Fellowship is formed. That's literally the "party formation" scene. Everything prior to that is us getting the backstory.

... I'm not going to throw back the disingenuous thing back at you, but a LOT of people would disagree that what happened to Frodo, Sam, Pipin and Merry before they reach Rivendell wasn't an adventure! A lower level adventure sure, but still an adventure!

 

[EzekielRaiden]

... I'm not going to throw back the disingenuous thing back at you, but a LOT of people would disagree that what happened to Frodo, Sam, Pipin and Merry before they reach Rivendell wasn't an adventure! A lower level adventure sure, but still an adventure!

I mean, it's not called "The Hobbiton Crew"...

 

[Ancalagon]

I'd rather never give any plain +x items. I find those to be the most boring things D&D has ever done and I'm including the Champion and Dodge/Mobility as feat prerequisites.

That's where the "Magic Item Special Features" table comes in!

 

[tetrasodium]

That's a pretty long way of saying, "Spells are really badly balanced."

It's not without cause that people assumed the shield spell was one of the spells guaranteed a rewrite. TreantMonk did an excellent video on the most broken spells at some point during the playtest iirc, very few of them were fixed and some were doubled down on.

 

[Lanefan]

Okay. Then let me rephrase the original question.

Once there actually is the titular Fellowship of the Ring, do they have the time to stop for 50 days to make a magic item?

50 days, no.

I'm not sure how long they spent in Lothlorien; at least a few weeks but I don't think more than a month. (it's a while since I read those books - time for a refresher methinks )

 

[Distracted DM]

... I like random loot, with some curated picks. I also like wishlists from players, to help with those curated picks and non-random finds. But overall? Random. I use retraining rules so PCs can swap feats etc. around if they found a very cool mace that they want to focus on now, instead of their assumed "polearm build."

 

[Lanefan]

Is a month 50 days?

Not in any game I've seen.

That said, a month in the game I run is 40 days and a month in the game I play in is 60 days, so 50's not entirely out of the question at some point.

 

[Lanefan]

Fair. Who paid the GP for it? Kind of a facetious question, but it really does feel like people are reaching as far as they possibly can to suggest that adventuring parties usually have MASSIVE time gaps where absolutely-gorram-nothing happens, and that's just...not true in my experience. It's not true of most fiction I've read.

Which makes sense, as it (usually) behooves authors - and movie directors - to keep their audiences engaged by having events clip along at a perhaps-unrealistic pace. And even then, Tolkein still makes the two downtime gaps - Rivendell and Lothlorien - engaging and plot-relevant.

Thing is, we're not writing a novel or making a movie when we play our home-table RPGs. We don't have any pressure on us to keep passive observers engaged.

As players, in many cases we CAN decide to have our characters just take the winter off from adventuring and pick it up again in the spring. We CAN decide to have our characters go their separate ways and do their own downtime stuff for a few months (which, in this 5.2e-specific example, might include making items) before reconvening in the Fallen Flagon pub on the day of the Eolna full moon.

And at high level we CAN decide to have our characters do the "weekend warrior" thing, going on a short 1 or 2-day adventure eevery few weeks (teleport to the adventure site, kick ass, teleport home) while spending the time between on item creation.

 

[Lanefan]

But this is well-known, isn't it. Spells that grant bonuses to hit or to AC remain relevant at all levels, because the scale remains the same. Whereas spells that inflict X dice of damage do not remain relevant at all levels, as the scale for meaningful hp damage changes.

The only version of D&D to have really tackled this issue is 4e D&D.

Damage spells scale pretty decently in 1e as well, as the damage auto-increases with caster level instead of requiring an upcast or similar.