D&D (2024) Uncommon items - actually common?

[Minigiant]

You can just use my username, I don't mind.

It's not just you.

There is a whole section of people who want Monty Hall dungeons with muddy early Medieval world with nobles who don't leverage their wealth.

And you are no where near correct in what I was saying. If you were referring to someone else, fine, I suppose you could be...

However, I, for one, never said I "want the entire world outside of the dungeon to be a void of magic" or anything like it. I don't recall anyone else saying anything like that either. Nor do I want dungeons "flooded with magic", and again I don't recall anyone else claiming that, either. You are exaggerating my statements and shifting goalposts at the same time.

That's why I didn't name you.

This is where you are incorrect IMO and IME.

I can certainly have magic ITEMS (which, by the way, this was always supposed to be about magic ITEMS, not magical classes or anything else magical--only ITEMS... at some point you shifted the goalposts) be rare and not common in the world as a whole. No one might craft them currently, and items found are from the lost ages, etc.--yes, typically in (shocker!) dungeons!

I shifted to 5e's shift.

5e shifted from the count having a +1 sword, +2 plate armor, 3 potions, 2 antitoxins, and a ring of scrying to the count having a wizard and a cleric in his court.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I don't want to push the point too hard - just that, at least in standard versions of D&D's rules, no injury that can be healed by hp recovery alone causes a risk of life-long impairment.

I don't think in standard 5e rules there is any way to suffer such an injury, apart the optional lingering injury rules in the old DMG (which probably are not in the new one?) But things that are liable to cause injury, still deal HP damage, so I think in this abstraction it makes sense that a thing that restores HP also heals that injury.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I don't think in standard 5e rules there is any way to suffer such an injury, apart the optional lingering injury rules in the old DMG (which probably are not in the new one?) But things that are liable to cause injury, still deal HP damage, so I think in this abstraction it makes sense that a thing that restores HP also heals that injury.

Best you can do in 5.5, unless you're willing to look outside for other rules.

 

[Maxperson]

Yeah, the "wide magic" principle that Eberron pioneered really seems to have taken hold. Magic is pervasive, though not as cheap and omnipresent as technology is in the modern world. Instead of a world where kings have court archmages and peasants scrabble around like medieval farmers, the magic is spread a little more evenly.

An extended family pitching together to get a Prosthetic Limb or Ersatz Eye isn't impossible for the common folk. Rich kids running around showing off with their Masquerade Tattoos and Cloaks of Billowing makes sense. A well to do specialist having a single uncommon magic item related to their trade is fitting. And I'm okay with all that. It makes the fantasy world feel like a fantasy world, not Renfaire Earth with a few wizard towers dropped in randomly.

For me, if magic is common, then magic is no longer magical. It's ho hum. Drab and boring. I want the players to actually be excited when they find a magic item, not feel like they just found some blacksmith's tool of magic magicking, just like the 27 city blacksmiths and 43 retired blacksmtihs back at home all have.

 

[Maxperson]

It is very common for adventurers to have uncommon items. I can't recall a campaign where there weren't at least a few items of the sort.

My observation is that it seems the rarity is not rated to adventurers.

Rarity is how it is in the world at large. Adventurers break that mold by being exceptional. They encounter monsters at a rate that if monsters were truly that common, the civilized races would have been wiped out millennia ago by the hordes of ravenous beasts. Most of the world doesn't meet one of the strange creatures that adventurers routinely encounter. Magic items are the same way.

 

[jmartkdr2]

I don't want to push the point too hard - just that, at least in standard versions of D&D's rules, no injury that can be healed by hp recovery alone causes a risk of life-long impairment.

In standard dnd, there’s no rules for lifelong impairment in general, so all injuries can be treated with h recovery.

 

[Kurotowa]

For me, if magic is common, then magic is no longer magical. It's ho hum. Drab and boring.

That's certainly a traditional school of thought. I wouldn't say it's one that's widely held, anymore. Take Harry Potter, for example. Hogwarts is dripping with magic, from every student to the paintings on the wall, but I challenge you to tell anyone who grew up on the Potter books that Hogwarts is drab and boring and not get laughed at.

I feel I have to agree with the newer attitudes. Restricting magic to a small elite doesn't make it more special, it just makes the rest of the world more boring.

 

[Maxperson]

That's certainly a traditional school of thought. I wouldn't say it's one that's widely held, anymore. Take Harry Potter, for example. Hogwarts is dripping with magic, from every student to the paintings on the wall, but I challenge you to tell anyone who grew up on the Potter books that Hogwarts is drab and boring and not get laughed at.

Harry Potter is a different kind of setting, though. If I played in that setting, I'd expect magic items all over the place. In D&D, though, I don't like it. This may come as a shock, but I dislike Eberron for just that reason.

I feel I have to agree with the newer attitudes. Restricting magic to a small elite doesn't make it more special, it just makes the rest of the world more boring.

Nah. The 45th +1 weapon you find isn't exciting or special, but finding Goblin Reaver, the +1 sword, +3 vs. Goblins that can cast Augury 1xday and Clairvoyance/Clairaudience 1xda, ostensibly to help find goblins, is far more exciting. And special.

 

[Oofta]

In standard dnd, there’s no rules for lifelong impairment in general, so all injuries can be treated with h recovery.

As the 2024 DMG points out, the rules are not physics nor are they a model of the economy. It's talking about exploits like the peasant railgun, but I think it applies to things like permanent injuries.

Just because we don't have rules since people don't need them, that doesn't imply that they don't happen.

 

[jmartkdr2]

As the 2024 DMG points out, the rules are not physics nor are they a model of the economy. It's talking about exploits like the peasant railgun, but I think it applies to things like permanent injuries.

Just because we don't have rules since people don't need them, that doesn't imply that they don't happen.

But we have to apply that broadly, not selectively: there’s no reason to say “healing potions wouldn’t help in cases of dismemberment because the rules for healing potions don’t specifically state that they apply to any injuries involving dismemberment.”

HP covers all kinds of stuff.