D&D (2024) 2024 needs to end 2014's passive aggressive efforts to remove magic items & other elements from d&d

[CapnZapp]

In my campaigns, there are no magic shops, except for Common items, such as Healing Potions or magical utilities, such as light.

It is pointless to buy and sell more powerful items, because each reflects the intention of its creator. Thus it is impossible to attune any magic item unless the item itself is "willing" to cooperate.

Even items that lack sentience, per se, dont resonate during attunement.

I am happy for you.

I hope your empathy extends to me who LIKES handing a bag of gold to the players with the expectation they will use that gold to customize their characters at the Olde Magic Shoppe. In 5E14 this was a huge pain in the rear since WotC utterly dropped any support for this very common playstyle.

 

[Horwath]

well problem with having a low magic game in DND is most classes are high magic by default. Low magic usually means low magical Item occurance which just makes, wizards, warlocks, clerics etc more powerful. The game has never ever been advertised or designed as "low magic".

we played one low magic campaign in a way that you can only have half of your character levels(round down) in full caster class(including warlock)
works like a charm. There is still magic, but it comes up later when it does not have such a huge impact.

 

[nevin]

Problem is that magic items are part of the character as much as they are the setting.

It's like how they made feats optional. It's putting other people's options in the hands of the one guy who gets to decide what all their friends get to do. It's the Alpha Friend problem of old school DM/Player dynamics.

I agree with this. But it seems to be the current groupthink on how to make games more manageable. don't like feats don't use em. Don't like gold let em carry it around. don't like magic items make em unuseable. don't like High level just do capstone leveling and make em wait. Really bad bandaids that have been turned into the holy grail of game design.

 

[nevin]

we played one low magic campaign in a way that you can only have half of your character levels(round down) in full caster class(including warlock)
works like a charm. There is still magic, but it comes up later when it does not have such a huge impact.

no different than the modifications to systems that cap the levels at 5 or 6 or 7. That's ok, but the fact that you had to limit casting classes makes my point even stronger. Casting classes are high magic.

 

[Yaarel]

EDIT

I now see you mention "expected wealth". Read my response as if you said "specific magic item prices as mechanical balance is a failure waiting to happen". We agree the game should not go back to "expecting" any wealth, since even if the GM awards a grand total of ZERO to the players, the game remains perfectly functional.

That said, the game obviously needs to explain to the DM the internal guidelines for how much gold official scenarios will reward at different levels. A +1 magic sword could cost 10 gold or 100000 gold, the important thing is to help the DM understand at which level this sword could reasonably be expected to be sold to the heroes.

And no, it still doesn't help to just list "magic sword tier II" because you STILL need a connection between how much gold you can give to the heroes at that kind of level without making items "too" cheap. Sure you could give them 100 gp and price your item at 25 gp while another GP hands out a million gp and prices it at 250000 gold.

But official adventures can't do that. The writer needs to decide on something, and in order to not ruin internal consistence the next writer can't just pick a completely different number.

/END EDIT

I hope you realize the price in gold was that accurate sense. As long as you the GM realized only the first few digits were significant, which I trust everybody understands.

Sure you could use different numbers, and sure, whether a +1 Thingamabob costs 3700 gold or 3800 gold doesn't matter in the slightest.

But you still need a quick and easy conversion from tier or level to actual gold, since what you don't want is to have to come up with "lets see tier 5-8 means, what was it again, was it 2000 gold or 4600 gold?"

If the book tags each item with an actual gold price that is both the easiest and best.

And you can still switch it up whenever you want to. Just like nobody thinks just because a jar of mayo costs $6.29 at Kroegers it absolutely must cost $6.29 everywhere.

Since gold loot is somewhat exponential you could simply double or halve any given price without ruining balance. If the gold price in the book is 4600 gold you could reward good roleplaying and sell it for 3900 gp, or you could say the seller is especially miserly and say it costs 5500 gp.

What you don't do is sell it for 200 gold or 50000 gold.

Now then. Reducing this to a level, or worse, just a tier simply makes life hard for no benefit.

For all those time where you simply don't have the time and energy to customize the inventory, you want to just be able to hand out the books and say "you can purchase everything in the core PHB/DMG". If all the players see is "tier III" or "levels 9-12" that doesn't make your life any easier.

So we are in complete agreement a number should tell the GM all he or she needs to know.

The only thing left to discuss is why you wouldn't simply use gold asking prices. I don't see why complicating things would help.

The most important thing is informing the DM with an ACCURATE assessment of the power of a magic item, according to tier. Better, evaluate the item by its precise level, but then award the item to the players by tier.

There should be a gp value per level or tier, but it belongs in the DMs Guide as variant, which of course all magic items are any way. But keep the price per level list separate from the magic item. The gp cost is a setting variant. But level and tier are fundamental game engine needs.

In past editions, gp values for magic items were inconsistent, and too often failed to correlate with the actual amount of character-optimization power of an item. There were popular homebrews that listed alternative prices for how much each magic item was "really" worth.

The most important thing is to accurately evaluate the worth of an item by level and tier.

 

[CapnZapp]

If gold is expected to be accumulated at rate corresponding to level progression and magic items are expected to be available at specific prices, then magic items are a de facto part of level advancement (with a couple of intermediate steps that add unnecessary constraints to worldbuilding).

If gold accumulation is expected to vary across campaigns, then purchased items can act as an orthogonal axis of progression, but standardized prices aren't particularly meaningful. And one can make magic items an independent of axis of progression in plenty of ways that don't involve buying or selling them.

Okay?

Having the DMG price items consistently with what heroes loot in official modules is still hugely helpful. If you decide to award half that, or twenty times that, you can relatively easily adapt the official price list. (And if you decide to just award random heaps of gold, you don't need WotC to waste precious pages on telling you what boils down to "make naughty word up")

What I mean is that you appear to have a highly theoretical argument, and that you are content with being right in theory.

 

[nevin]

Or allow characters to have abilities that aren't magic and aren't inexplicably bumped to level 9, 12 or freaking 17, or limited to once per super long short rest they're not likely going to get.

which is fine. I do it all the time but it's still just reskinned magic items, or spells or MAGIC stuff.

 

[Vaalingrade]

I agree with this. But it seems to be the current groupthink on how to make games more manageable. don't like feats don't use em. Don't like gold let em carry it around. don't like magic items make em unuseable. don't like High level just do capstone leveling and make em wait. Really bad bandaids that have been turned into the holy grail of game design.

It confuses me that some people have this very strong brand loyalty to 5e as a ruleset by virtue of not using the ruleset and telling others they don't need a ruleset.

 

[CapnZapp]

But keep the price per level list separate from the magic item. The gp cost is a setting variant. But level and tier are fundamental game engine needs.

Fair enuff.

 

[Vaalingrade]

which is fine. I do it all the time but it's still just reskinned magic items, or spells or MAGIC stuff.

Because that's all there is now. A wasteland of sparkles and eight hour naps every thirty minutes.