D&D 5E Levels 1-4 are "Training Wheels?"

Vaalingrade said:

Man, I hate the insistence that there's no such thing as 'magic marts'.

If there's nothing people won't buy or sell. There have been sellers of mummies (for eating!), military weaponry, and islands with storefronts and everything. IF magic items were a thing maybe they wouldn't be stored on premises, but there WOULD be a catalogue.

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Alert the media! Hell has frozen over - I'm in agreement with @Vaalingrade!

Oofta said:

In my campaign I assume that magic items are bought and sold because most magic items last forever unless explicitly destroyed. Throw a regular sword into a lake and a couple of years later it's rust. A magic sword? Just waiting for someone to come along so they can claim it from gal who happened to find it while taking a swim.

Most uncommon items can be purchased, although there is a chance it may not be available immediately or not at all. Items with greater rarity have less of a chance of being available although it does happen. There is no magic item treadmill though, and it's rare that a magic item is built to order.

It just never made sense to me that the PCs could go out, find magic items and sell them but never be able to purchase anything.

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If the PCs can sell them then someone's buying them; so why can't the PCs be the buyers when another adventuring group is selling?

Also, and this trips up the no-item-sales crowd every time, nothing can ever prevent the PCs from buying items from each other; and unless a lightning bolt drops from the sky on 'em their so doing establishes that magic items can indeed be traded for money in the setting without consequence. After that, the only challenge is finding outside buyers/sellers - which in fairness some settings will have more of than others.

Lyxen said:

Except that the principle of 5e (you might like it or not) is that there is simply no market for items, not enough items on the market, not enough buyers, not enough communication means and, even more importantly, not enough trust that it will not be stolen at one point or another.

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Not arguing, just hadn't looked some of it up in a while/ever, and since I was bothering to do that...

The marketability seems to vary greatly from world to world.


And the DMG has some general guidance on selling them...





Buying on the other hand is repeatedly said to be up to the DM, and note that if your world has a large number of adventurers, say, then it would be more likely (like rare art purchases in the real world). I like the rare art analogy (in the pre-internet days).



Anyway, now I'm curious how uncommon they are in the various modules and in various home made adventures. It would feel odd to have them be rare, and yet have every party of 1st or 2nd level characters happen to find some. For reference, +1 ammunition is uncommon, +1 armor is rare, and a +1 weapon is uncommon. "Uncommon" for some of these doesn't seem to mesh with "rare art".

Lanefan said:

Fair enough. My own experience is that xp - usually given out at the start or end of a session and not every session by any means - represents what amounts to a short bookkeeping break from play: I give 'em out (and am often corrected by the players as to who should get what, or reminded of things I've missed), the players add 'em up, we see if anyone has bumped and deal with that, then we get on with the game.

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Oh yeah, we are miles apart on this. Nobody gets bumped mid-session. Always happens between sessions now at my table. Game time is optimal fun when I GM.

Levels 1-4 are whatever you make them. It doesn't matter what level you are, the GM makes the universe and can tweak whatever he wants in order to make a good experience for him/her self and the players. It isn't hard at all to make lvl 1 characters feel heroic.

Lanefan said:

We've had - and have still - a few characters who are really big on the self-promotion piece. The rest of us either ignore them or laugh at them, most of the time.

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That's all dependent on the type of campaigns and characters.

Lanefan said:

I guess I should ask: is it your general assumption that the PCs are the only active adventurers in the setting? That can make a big difference here; and I always assume there's other adventurers out there willing to do, or try doing, what the PCs don't or won't or can't. (and if there's no other adventurers out there, where do replacement PCs or henches come from?)

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They are not alone, but there are not that common either. And even when two parties meet, there can possibly be trade, but it's very different from having shops around the corner.

Lanefan said:

Terminology mix-up perhaps. When I say a mercenaries' hangout I'm referring to the warrior equivalent of a Thieves' or Wizards' guild or Clerics' temple - i.e. the sort of place where other adventuring types can and often will be found. Put another way, the same sort of places you'd go if your party was looking to recruit a replacement Fighter, or hire a sneaky type as a hench.

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Well, I usually go by the genre, and they might go to an arena for fighters, or try to find a thief in a thieves' guild if they know where one is, or maybe to a seedy part of town, but there are no "adventurers halls" where you can shop for adventurers of any level when you need one.

Lanefan said:

With this, showing the sword around these sort of places will put it in front of other adventurers who will have at least a vague idea of what such a sword would be worth to them and who thus might make an offer for it.

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The thing is that there are no such places. Are there such places in published settings ? I don't think it's the case, even in the FR. Maybe Eberron, but even when we play there, we can easily get consumables or low level items, but not much more.

Lanefan said:

Another trivially easy way to determine an item's in-setting value is to take it to an artificer and ask "If I wanted another one just like this, how much would it cost to have you make it for me?" Whatever the answer is, boom, there's your item's base value.

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First, we don't use artificers, and second I'm not sure that artificers can craft any item they want (at what level do they get that feature ?) and know the cost.

Look, at this stage, I think it just shows that we have very different views about the magic item trade in the settings. I like the 5e approach that there might be some trading if you let people know that you are interested in buying, it might get to the right ear and someone might contact you. But there is as high a likelihood that someone will come to try and steal it or scam you. These are powerful items and they attract powerful nasty people. And while I agree that people will trade anything if they can, they also have to protect their business, assuming that they can even make one, because it requires so much investment and it's so risky. The way I see it, magic items shops just cannot survive, what protection can they buy that will prevent powerful adventurers and thieves from stealing from them ? Who can they even hire to protect themselves ? They would have to be powerful adventurers, and adventurers are not interested in protecting magic shops. And actually, they might actually steal from the shop rather than guarding it.

Now and then, there might be a powerful wizard selling his production (and able to protect himself to some degree), but wouldn't it be better for him to create things for his own use or his own research ? If he's that powerful, he is very probably rich enough to not needing to sell off items.

Lanefan said:

That right there tells me your DMs aren't being truly neutral arbiters when running the game, which raises a very large red flag.

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Actually, our DMs are way better than this ( ) they are arbiters of fun, not only of nitpicking monetary rewards and magic items value, because that is absolutely meaningless to some people and some characters, whereas fun is important to everyone who comes playing the game.

What I mean here is that our philosophy is that there are many imbalances in a TTRPG that the system cannot compensate, in particular because the players themselves are imbalanced their capabilities and what they expect from the game. So we think it's better for a DM to balance the fun that people are having, even if it means giving different people different things depending on what they expect. This in turn means that while some people might be interested by money or items, others are not, so some people find riches and others find fame and story, and there is no universal coinage to balance this apart from fun.

Not sure if I'm clear, though...

Lanefan said:

Only partly; 1e had training by RAW, we've just modified how it works.

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Which is fine, but 1e was a long time ago...

Lanefan said:

I'd love to try playing a character at your table*. Not sure how long I'd last at it and I'd probably upset a few apple carts along the way, but it's be all entertainment all the time as long as it lasted.
* - though despite being Canadian I speak virtually no French, and I seem to recall you're in France...?

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Yes, I did run a few games in english between France, Canada and the UK when I could get my daughters and their friends online, but two of my players (my eldest daughter and her boyfriend) are moving to Australia, and it's going to become really complicated (I played with Europe when I was in Australia myself, but it was already tough, but my third daughter is still in Canada and it's going to be impossible to manage).

Retreater said:

Last night a player commented: "Levels 1-4 are just training wheels. The game doesn't even start until 5th level. Unless you're playing D&D for the first time, you should just start at 5th level."

Now, she hasn't been playing for ages - probably just around 5 years. I would expect it to take longer than that to become that jaded to low-level play.

Do you agree? If not, how do you address this? Start at 5th level? Speed through Levels 1-4? House rules to give more power or better options?

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I am not looking up where it is mentioned, but I'm positive that when 5e came out, they referred to levels 1-4 as the "Apprentice tier" and 5-(something) was Heroic Tier of play and so on to paragon tier and epic tier or something else. Don't recall the other tiers but I do distinctly recall 1-4 was identified by the designers as Apprentice tier.

Now what apprentice tier means to you/your table is a matter of choice, but it seems it was intended for it to be the more "you don't quite have a name for yourself as an adventurer" type thing, at least that is what apprentice tier would mean to me. And you're still the one clearing out rats in the cellar or basic bumbling bandits

Lyxen said:

That's all dependent on the type of campaigns and characters.



They are not alone, but there are not that common either. And even when two parties meet, there can possibly be trade, but it's very different from having shops around the corner.



Well, I usually go by the genre, and they might go to an arena for fighters, or try to find a thief in a thieves' guild if they know where one is, or maybe to a seedy part of town, but there are no "adventurers halls" where you can shop for adventurers of any level when you need one.



The thing is that there are no such places. Are there such places in published settings ? I don't think it's the case, even in the FR. Maybe Eberron, but even when we play there, we can easily get consumables or low level items, but not much more.



First, we don't use artificers, and second I'm not sure that artificers can craft any item they want (at what level do they get that feature ?) and know the cost.

Look, at this stage, I think it just shows that we have very different views about the magic item trade in the settings. I like the 5e approach that there might be some trading if you let people know that you are interested in buying, it might get to the right ear and someone might contact you. But there is as high a likelihood that someone will come to try and steal it or scam you. These are powerful items and they attract powerful nasty people. And while I agree that people will trade anything if they can, they also have to protect their business, assuming that they can even make one, because it requires so much investment and it's so risky. The way I see it, magic items shops just cannot survive, what protection can they buy that will prevent powerful adventurers and thieves from stealing from them ? Who can they even hire to protect themselves ? They would have to be powerful adventurers, and adventurers are not interested in protecting magic shops. And actually, they might actually steal from the shop rather than guarding it.

Now and then, there might be a powerful wizard selling his production (and able to protect himself to some degree), but wouldn't it be better for him to create things for his own use or his own research ? If he's that powerful, he is very probably rich enough to not needing to sell off items.



Actually, our DMs are way better than this ( ) they are arbiters of fun, not only of nitpicking monetary rewards and magic items value, because that is absolutely meaningless to some people and some characters, whereas fun is important to everyone who comes playing the game.

What I mean here is that our philosophy is that there are many imbalances in a TTRPG that the system cannot compensate, in particular because the players themselves are imbalanced their capabilities and what they expect from the game. So we think it's better for a DM to balance the fun that people are having, even if it means giving different people different things depending on what they expect. This in turn means that while some people might be interested by money or items, others are not, so some people find riches and others find fame and story, and there is no universal coinage to balance this apart from fun.

Not sure if I'm clear, though...



Which is fine, but 1e was a long time ago...



Yes, I did run a few games in english between France, Canada and the UK when I could get my daughters and their friends online, but two of my players (my eldest daughter and her boyfriend) are moving to Australia, and it's going to become really complicated (I played with Europe when I was in Australia myself, but it was already tough, but my third daughter is still in Canada and it's going to be impossible to manage).

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Lyxen said:

That's all dependent on the type of campaigns and characters.



They are not alone, but there are not that common either. And even when two parties meet, there can possibly be trade, but it's very different from having shops around the corner.



Well, I usually go by the genre, and they might go to an arena for fighters, or try to find a thief in a thieves' guild if they know where one is, or maybe to a seedy part of town, but there are no "adventurers halls" where you can shop for adventurers of any level when you need one.



The thing is that there are no such places. Are there such places in published settings ? I don't think it's the case, even in the FR. Maybe Eberron, but even when we play there, we can easily get consumables or low level items, but not much more.



First, we don't use artificers, and second I'm not sure that artificers can craft any item they want (at what level do they get that feature ?) and know the cost.

Look, at this stage, I think it just shows that we have very different views about the magic item trade in the settings. I like the 5e approach that there might be some trading if you let people know that you are interested in buying, it might get to the right ear and someone might contact you. But there is as high a likelihood that someone will come to try and steal it or scam you. These are powerful items and they attract powerful nasty people. And while I agree that people will trade anything if they can, they also have to protect their business, assuming that they can even make one, because it requires so much investment and it's so risky. The way I see it, magic items shops just cannot survive, what protection can they buy that will prevent powerful adventurers and thieves from stealing from them ? Who can they even hire to protect themselves ? They would have to be powerful adventurers, and adventurers are not interested in protecting magic shops. And actually, they might actually steal from the shop rather than guarding it.

Now and then, there might be a powerful wizard selling his production (and able to protect himself to some degree), but wouldn't it be better for him to create things for his own use or his own research ? If he's that powerful, he is very probably rich enough to not needing to sell off items.



Actually, our DMs are way better than this ( ) they are arbiters of fun, not only of nitpicking monetary rewards and magic items value, because that is absolutely meaningless to some people and some characters, whereas fun is important to everyone who comes playing the game.

What I mean here is that our philosophy is that there are many imbalances in a TTRPG that the system cannot compensate, in particular because the players themselves are imbalanced their capabilities and what they expect from the game. So we think it's better for a DM to balance the fun that people are having, even if it means giving different people different things depending on what they expect. This in turn means that while some people might be interested by money or items, others are not, so some people find riches and others find fame and story, and there is no universal coinage to balance this apart from fun.

Not sure if I'm clear, though...



Which is fine, but 1e was a long time ago...



Yes, I did run a few games in english between France, Canada and the UK when I could get my daughters and their friends online, but two of my players (my eldest daughter and her boyfriend) are moving to Australia, and it's going to become really complicated (I played with Europe when I was in Australia myself, but it was already tough, but my third daughter is still in Canada and it's going to be impossible to manage).

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I couldn't agree more about magic items in 5e. Them being commonly sold doesn't make sense. Also entirely separate from that is the issue that if the players could just buy magic items then the GM and party can't have fun with stuff like detecting magic, identifying magic, dealing with cursed items, etc. so why would I rob myself of the fun of awarding magic items during adventuring? Then I'd have to wonder whether I'd sold them too much good items when I want to spice up the adventure.

Best magic item experience I ever had was when I gave a halfling player cursed gloves. They gave +5 to sleight of hand but as soon as she successfully stole from someone she learned that they're the Gloves of Honesty and would shout "I think she's stealing", and also she couldn't take them off yet.

Last night a player commented: "Levels 1-4 are just training wheels. The game doesn't even start until 5th level. Unless you're playing D&D for the first time, you should just start at 5th level."

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bolded for emphasis.

I think many missed this part to the quote or didn't truly examine it.

The player doesn't think the game starts until level 5. What happens at level 5? At level 5, PC become actors on the story universally at all tables. At level 5, a fighter, rogue, cleric, or wizard all have the power to act upon the world without an automatic cringe of fear.They are no longer automatic reactors. At level 5, they've all received a subclass and either a stat bump or feat and their prof bonus goes from +2 to +3. Warriors get a second attack, doubling their deadliness. Casters get 3rd level spells that blatantly wreck physics or bodies. Rogues get to say "nah bro, half damage"

At level 5, whether your DM had fun plots or not, whether your DM is a killer or a softie, you are strong enough to make your own adventures.

Because you can feel the clarity of both obstacles above you and annoyances below you.

Minigiant said:

I think many missed this part to the quote or didn't truly examine it.

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I did, and it was part of my annoyance with the overall position, in particular due to the fact that this person clearly states that the majority of the players on the planet (remember the DDB stats that say that most players don't even go past level 5?) are not even playing the game. This is badwrongfunning to the extreme.

Minigiant said:

The player doesn't think the game starts until level 5.

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Which is just plainly stupid, and should not even be discussed.

Minigiant said:

Because you can feel the clarity of both obstacles above you and annoyances below you.

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Yeah, right, clearly it's people playing below level 5 are stupid for only playing annoying things. sigh