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

[Micah Sweet]

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?

They stop in Lorien for quite a while, and end up with several magic items. No reason they couldn't have made such while they were there.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Is a month 50 days?

Now you're just being nit-picky. Tolkien didn't write LotR with 5.5 rules in mind.

 

[tetrasodium]

The problem is not "yeah well MY dad character could beat up YOUR character!"

It is that two options are presented as being peers while actually being, to use the old phrase, "casters & caddies".

Just because the difference is not as extreme in some editions as it has been in others does not mean the difference is not there. The players are peers. The game presents the different class choices as being peers. They should be peers.

Peers are not 100% identical to one another. We aren't bees in a hive, we aren't clones, we have our different strengths and weaknesses. But when we form a peer group, we don't have one CEO and one VP alongside one janitor and one IT tech. "But the janitor performs critical maintenance and support, and the IT tech can fix ethernet issues that would prevent the CEO or VP from managing the company!" Doesn't even slightly mean that the first two are peers of the second two.

It's endlessly frustrating that people say (effectively) "well there is something useful they can do!" as though that were in any way a useful reply to "one set of options is actually in control, the other is just useful flunkies."

The fact that the meat shield can be fully replaced by an NPC with zero loss of functionality is pretty damning.

That kinda talk lost it's punch when wotc started poking fun at it to hype new martial focused features, Weapon mastery is hardly a thing that screams "this is for spellcasters"

Spoiler

Oh yea weapon masteries are a significant tool added to the quiver of those "meat shield" type PCs

Okay. The criticism still stands. The items are meant to add flavor and color and consistency, but all they really do is get chucked in a bag as uncomfortably awkward currency. They might as well have been a tapestry, or a set of jewelled earrings, or an illuminated manuscript. All of those things would be at least as flavorful if not moreso, while being (a) much more likely to get overlooked by looters and (b) much less likely to just be chucked in someone's pack and sold at the nearest town so the party can get something useful.

As I've said three or four times now, I am not saying that it's bad to add groundedness or that having the occasional flavorful but pointless weapon or armor is a problem. My point is that you can very easily meet a reasonable standard of groundedness, while still having mostly items that are actually exciting for the characters. I gave multiple examples.

You can do your consistency work and world building with any items, and you can have good reasons why normal expectations (e.g. "dwarves like axes, ruined dwarf fortress should have magic axes") are not going to apply in some cases (e.g. "this fortress fell to an orc siege, and all the magic axes had been in the hands of its defenders; other, less-favored weapons were left behind because dwarves are stubborn and sometimes foolishly traditionalist.")

They are not pointless though, Mister Valentine did an excellent job of demonstrating why in the twilight zone. Those weapons form an important barrier in play that makes the game world a nice place to play rather than letting it slide off into being "a nice place to visit". What you describe might work for an isolated one shot with no expectation of continuing beyond the initial short adventure but it would quickly turn into an episode of the good place as the campaign continued & everyone started to realize they too were playing the role of Mister Valentine.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I wouldn't say that. A path where you go from 1st to 20th? Absolutely not. I've never ran that sort of campaign. I realize the concept is popularized because of Paizo but I still wouldn't say a continuous unbroken path is normal by any means.

Doesn't have to be 1st to 20th. Can be just 1st to 12th. Like, say, a certain recent game for electronic computers. Or maybe 4th to 15th. Or whatever.

Path-like play is by far the more common style than sandbox-like play.

Did you perceive I was arguing against any of that?

Yes. It very much came across as "I feel bad for those folks buuuuut that's just how the cookie crumbles."

In fact if you read what I said, I was saying exactly that.

Er...no. You said that they would struggle. Nothing of what you said was that it was a bad design choice to make rules and tools that produce this. Which is why I said what I said; your post basically says, "well, kinda sucks it's just like that" and I responded with "well...shouldn't we have advocated for it to be, you know, NOT that?"

I do think though that a DM has to learn or his campaign will struggle. So some guides on how his group might go off the beaten path power wise would be a good idea.

I mean, sure, but it would be better if the system were actually designed from the ground up to make that learning process easier. Which is what I said.

I like that 5e assumes nothing about magic items. At minimum that makes the party too powerful but never too weak which for newby DMs is a good thing.

I hate it. Because all it really does is encourage an even worse DM/player arms race, which is one of the hardest things for a newbie DM to manage. Especially in 5e, where the line between "reasonable challenge" and "multiple near or actual TPKs" can be razor thin. (Guess how I know this!)

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Now you're just being nit-picky. Tolkien didn't write LotR with 5.5 rules in mind.

Not nitpicky at all. The point was that continuous (because I mistakenly believed it had to be) breaks of 50+ days are rare. That was the whole point.

 

[James Gasik]

50 days is such a weird amount of time. It's not two months. It's not six weeks. It's an amount of time that is so specific and arbitrary that no one would ever say "hey let's rest for 50 days exactly" without this rule.

I can see taking a week or two off, or even a month, but 50 days? I don't know, maybe it makes sense to other people, but in my campaign, downtime activities take one or more weeks, because I feel that's a more manageable block of time.

 

[tetrasodium]

50 days is such a weird amount of time. It's not two months. It's not six weeks. It's an amount of time that is so specific and arbitrary that no one would ever say "hey let's rest for 50 days exactly" without this rule.

I can see taking a week or two off, or even a month, but 50 days? I don't know, maybe it makes sense to other people, but in my campaign, downtime activities take one or more weeks, because I feel that's a more manageable block of time.

five weeks... in forgotten realms

Tenday

A tenday was a Faerûnian unit of time. The Calendar of Harptos divided the thirty-day months into three blocks of ten days each, or simply put, "tendays".[1][2] The word was used interchangeably with the Earth term "week".[3][2] Other terms used synonymously with tendays included eves, domen...

forgottenrealms.fandom.com

Yea it's weird, but it probably comes from that

 

[Micah Sweet]

I mean, assuming you don't give two figs about whether non-casters get to meaningfully contribute at higher level, sure.

That's what strongholds, domains, and armies are for.

 

[Micah Sweet]

what if I don't want to be someone else's bodyguard but do want to stab fools?

High level fighters with good magic items are pretty good at stabbing fools.

 

[Micah Sweet]

it occurs to me that between the requirements of Arcana proficiency and needing to have the spell prepared magic item crafting is most inaccessible to the characters who would need and benefit from it most: martials.

the OG magic item tables were weighted the way they were because magic weapons and gear were functionally de-facto class features for martials and after various editions class design hasn't really changed enough in the ways that matter to remove the unstated design assumptions in the game that assumes your fightery types should each be lugging around a few peices of good magical gear past the lowest teirs.

Wouldn't it be tricky setting logic-wise for a character with no ability to use magic to make a magic item? I could certainly see it as a bespoke class feature, or a setting feature, but barring that...