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

[Lanefan]

Ah, yes. Optional rules, and things that can apply to anyone and thus must be portioned out with a bias toward non-casters. Gotta love when the stuff that makes non-casters rise to the occasion is something a lot of groups will completely ignore or which push the DM to play favorites, while the stuff that does that for casters is hard-coded into their class structure and work perfectly fine unless the DM is actively antagonistic. Really emphasizes just how much these classes are peers, dunnit?

For real though, I hope you can see how this answer is not satisfactory. It is an admission that casters have a built-in advantage, which must then be counteracted by either inserting wholly optional rules, or by having the DM actively work against the game's design, showing favor to one side in order to level the playing field.

So instead of those rules being optional, should we be lobbying for them to be made core?

Should we design a game that is a natural fit for the most common approach, while still offering well-structured methods for the stuff that isn't as popular?

Or should we design a game that is totally agnostic about playstyle, trying to pretend that vague, noncommittal rules will serve all parties well?

We should design a game that is agnostic about playstyle and make rules for it that (as far as practical) do serve all parties well.

Often that serving-all-parties-well piece requires loosening the constraints a bit. A hard-coded rule-for-everything system simply cannot cater to as many playstyles as a looser each-DM-does-it-a-bit-differently system; and after trying the former with 3e and 4e WotC learned this lesson and loosened things up for 5e. Results: a) a system that, while it certainly needs some tweaking, works well enough to be good enough and b) roaring success in the marketplace.

The latter certainly serves all tastes equally, but it does so by being equally unhelpful. I would much, much rather a game commit to a particular set of design goals, while recognizing that those goals are not universal and thus offering tools and advice for moving in other directions. That's why I support novice levels, and both tools and advice for wandering monster tables, and a section on hex-grid mapping, etc., even though none of those things have any direct utility for me. They have indirect utility, because they support tastes that are not mine, but that are both traditional and appreciated today.

While this sounds good, it seems to run counter to your not-exactly-supportive remarks just above re optional rules; given that all of these "tools and advice" pieces would fall under the optional rules umbrella.

 

[Lanefan]

No, they absolutely cannot.

An NPC caster has to be making decisions, major impactful ones. A meatshield does not.

An NPC caster has prodigious power at their fingertips, even at low levels. A meatshield does not.

This tells me more about how you view and-or play your meatshield NPCs than you probably realize.

For me, any NPC in the party, even if it's someone's hench, is still capable of independent thought and of acting on said thought.

In the party I've been running for the last 3 years the PCs have, up until quite recently, all been mid- or back-liners of some sort, with the front-line duties mostly being handled by a long-serving NPC Fighter. That Fighter was every bit as much a "character" as any of the PCs, making decisions (and not always the right ones!), giving input, and then going out and not-always-perfectly doing her job just like anyone else in the party.

Just last session, after 11 adventures over about 130 sessions, that Fighter left the party and (for now, anyway) retired.

(I should probably note that I always get the players to do the dice-rolling for in-party NPCs, particularly in combat, which leaves me free to concentrate on their opponents)

I think you may have a mistaken idea of what I meant by "fully replaced by an NPC." I mean something like how Ranger pets work--NPCs that just sit there and defend themselves unless given orders. Because that's all the meatshield needs to do. Stand there, defend yourself, don't do anything unless ordered. Their task is 100% perfectly fulfilled by doing that.

If the meatshield is someone's mind-controlled robot then sure, that's exactly how it'd work.

But 99+% of the time this isn't the case. Instead, the meatshield is a free-thinking person and IMO should be played with the same amount of care and thought as would an NPC caster in the party.

 

[tetrasodium]

This tells me more about how you view and-or play your meatshield NPCs than you probably realize.

Well put

For me, any NPC in the party, even if it's someone's hench, is still capable of independent thought and of acting on said thought.

In the party I've been running for the last 3 years the PCs have, up until quite recently, all been mid- or back-liners of some sort, with the front-line duties mostly being handled by a long-serving NPC Fighter. That Fighter was every bit as much a "character" as any of the PCs, making decisions (and not always the right ones!), giving input, and then going out and not-always-perfectly doing her job just like anyone else in the party.

Just last session, after 11 adventures over about 130 sessions, that Fighter left the party and (for now, anyway) retired.

(I should probably note that I always get the players to do the dice-rolling for in-party NPCs, particularly in combat, which leaves me free to concentrate on their opponents)

If the meatshield is someone's mind-controlled robot then sure, that's exactly how it'd work.

But 99+% of the time this isn't the case. Instead, the meatshield is a free-thinking person and IMO should be played with the same amount of care and thought as would an NPC caster in the party.

That bold bit was so true up until 3.x (not sure w/4e). People who started with 5e seem to completely overlook how important it was for the squishies to sell their plan to the guy with a PC capable of saying "no.. I think I'm going to listen to Bob instead" with an expectation of not being put in fear of their life if so much as a single zombie or kobold jumped out.

 

[Emerikol]

I think there is a big disconnect between the way many of you play D&D and the way I do. I guess that goes without saying.

My parties are afraid. They do not assume they can rest ever. They think they could be surprise attacked at any moment. They expect bad guys to be plotting and planning against them if they haven't finished them off.

When these assumptions are true the game goes differently.
1. No guarantee of rest. In fact it's almost always a dangerous choice in the field.
2. Any limited resource is to be preserved to the greatest degree possible. Spells are a limited resource.
3. Enemies aren't always level appropriate.
4. There are often traps that will wear a party down.

My groups live in a dangerous world. And while, at some point they can all just teleport somewhere safe for rest, by then they are fighting serious enemies that will be very prepared for the return visit.

 

[ezo]

I think there is a big disconnect between the way many of you play D&D and the way I do.

LOL my world probably isn't quite as dangerous as your sounds, but the basic premise is the same in my game.

Adventures (perhaps not the "world") are dangerous, certainly.

 

[Emerikol]

LOL my world probably isn't quite as dangerous as your sounds, but the basic premise is the same in my game.

Adventures (perhaps not the "world") are dangerous, certainly.

I didn't mean to imply there were not safe places to go after adventures. Though I will say at super high levels if you've offended a big bad evil, you probably should prepare for attack at any time. It's why my groups traditionally have went out of their way to remain anonymous, use scry / teleport proof hideouts, mind blank spell, rings of non-detection, etc... of course all those things are easy at super high levels.

 

[FrozenNorth]

If you don't want to call what happened between Bag End and Rivendell part of the adventure, then that's your prerogative, but I have a feeling most people would disagree. 4/9 and then 5/9 of the Fellowship are directly involved with all the danger and so on that took place during that time, and a 6th (Gandalf) is nearby but never quite links up. Heck, many a D&D adventure starts with a just a few characters at the start with some joining later, and that doesn't invalidate the previous sections where there were fewer, does it?

No, Rivendell was two months of downtime, where they picked up a few new PCs, and they created a magic item during that pause.

So during the entire campaign, the PCs have a single 60-day downtime period. This seems reasonable, and actually bolsters @EzekielRaiden ’s point, that (i) multiple periods of unlimited downtime are rare; and (ii) it’s pretty easy for the DM to interrupt players taking multiple periods of unlimited downtime in a campaign.

 

[FrozenNorth]

One of the issues I have had since 5e came out is I run (and prefer to play 7 out of 10 times) in the 2nd... ones where we have families, have things we do, where sometimes our human characters age out of the campaign... not ones where a 2 week-2month down time would kill the game.

RIght now I am still running 2014 rules, BUT in my last campaign we had dozens of times were we took weeks off (not even counting when we skipped travel time) and had 2 MAJOR time skips of a year or more.

But even if you have time skips and downtime, the characters aren’t spending that time crafting. You said it yourself: they have families, they have things to do. They are meeting their lieges and vassals, they are supervising construction of their keeps, they are building trade routes. Or retraining skills and spells. Or researching the next big threat. These are all things that prevent a character from spending all their downtime crafting rare magical gear.

Even in a campaign with time skips and downtime, come next adventure, sure that one character that spent their time crafting might have an extra rare bespoke magical item. However, the activities the other characters were engaged in is more likely to drive play.

 

[Emerikol]

But even if you have time skips and downtime, the characters aren’t spending that time crafting. You said it yourself: they have families, they have things to do. They are meeting their lieges and vassals, they are supervising construction of their keeps, they are building trade routes. Or retraining skills and spells. Or researching the next big threat. These are all things that prevent a character from spending all their downtime crafting rare magical gear.

Even in a campaign with time skips and downtime, come next adventure, sure that one character that spent their time crafting might have an extra rare bespoke magical item. However, the activities the other characters were engaged in is more likely to drive play.

I think in a typical campaign it is something you can choose. I don't play LOTR's style PCs must perform or world succumbs to darkness type campaigns. I suppose if you made a campaign like that then you could make time be of the essence the entire campaign. In my campaigns, players are in an ever growing sandbox where they interact in the world realizing they are one of many. They can get downtime pretty much whenever they want when they can afford it which at low levels is not often but is a given after 3rd.

I could imagine one single adventure being something the PCs could not escape doing for some reason though I don't make a habit of it. I can't imagine running an entire campaign that way.

Edit:
In first edition, the training rules alone require such downtime all the time as PCs advance.

 

[FrozenNorth]

Sure. So long as the execution of the magic mart can be made to work within a setting framework acceptable to me and my players, I have no problem with it.

Why should it have to be acceptable to you? You’re not one of my players.