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

[the Jester]

Ive experienced it twice. Seen it at least.


Most of the nonmagical official monsters are boring as heck. There's no official rewards that means anything once you take out magic items. And if you do throw in a magical monster or a tough noncombat obstacle, you'll quickly realize that the characters were designed to be extremely narrow and rigid without magic.

This forces low or no magic campaigns to need on iffy or unreliably of 3PP product market.

And this is because of 2 things. D&D has a history of being a higher magic game. And there are many definitions of low magic. So WOTC hallway supporting it doesn't work.

Thanks for this. I appreciate that you had this experience. But I'm not sure that speaks to how a low magic 5e game will necessarily run. Anecdote vs evidence and all that.

Depending on how strictly you define low magic, I have run a lot of low magic item games and I have played in a couple, too, and my experience was pretty different than yours. As a player, I found it smooth but challenging, and sometimes required us to use creative or unorthodox tactics and strategies. As a DM, I let the pcs use the resources they had (spells, class abilities, etc) and didn't really turn anything down for them and it seemed fine.

As for rewards, there are all kinds of things you can do without magic items- the DMG discusses this with things like boons, bonus feats, etc. Money, land, position, reputation- there are tons of nonmagical rewards out there. What they are actually worth varies with the campaign, but things like a fleet of merchant vessels, a business, a noble title and castle, or access to a gang of thieves and spies are all pretty awesome rewards that are (I think) actually better in a low magic item game than they are in a standard game.

 

[mamba]

Body slots on the character sheet make this self-evident.

and yet @tetrasodium was saying that they had arguments over this in 3e that had body slots, so apparently it is not any more evident than this description already is…

I am not opposed to slots, I just see no need

 

[the Jester]

That's an absurd example, nobody would claim or suspect that a helmet or pair of gloves are capable of being worn as chest armor.

You do need something if you want to use that something to limit stacking of magic items not physically worn in a different location. It's telling that you choose helmet gloves and chest armor rather than something less clear cut like say... Any of these

• Amulet, Brooch, Medallion, Necklace, Periapt, Scarab
• Headband, helmet
• Cloak, Cape, Mantle
• Etc

Once upon a time you could use bonus types to limit stacking as well or instead if body slots and similar were not the right tool for a particular use case... Except those are not an option either because 5e removes those as well.

I am struggling to see the problem here. You have three attunement slots, you can wear things that make sense together, all bonuses stack because there are very few bonuses. There's no reason you shouldn't be able to wear an amulet, necklace, and medallion at the same time, except for completely artificial ones like body slots. I think it's pretty hard to come up with an example where it's not clear whether you can use two magic items together in 5e.

They are individual issues related to a complicated problem. You can see proof of that in the way they interact differently with your overly simplified solution.

Ithe part you are overlooking is where the impact on the check from magic items causes the DC ladder to lsg behind PC skills. Given how that happens even without magic items influencing skills it only accelerates the problem to add magic items to checks

The DC ladder never changes. A hard DC is the same at level 20 as it is at level 1. Higher skill bonuses, as well as magic items that give bonuses, just accelerate the process of a pc who is good at something being able to succeed at the harder challenges (that DC 30 lock is beyond you at low levels), and given bounded accuracy, that is the game working as intended. Or so it seems to me.

 

[the Jester]

Unless you ban 50-75% of the content, official 5e as printed doesn't work without magic items.

This is quite a claim.

 

[Yaarel]

and yet @tetrasodium was saying that they had arguments over this in 3e that had body slots, so apparently it is not any more evident than this description already is…

I am not opposed to slots, I just see no need

In my opinion, 3e had too many body slots.

Keep it to about eight, including one for "anywhere".

Jewelry can be ignored − except only one magic item attunable in a slot.

 

[James Gasik]

Yes - you know your group best. If your fighter player is perfectly content sitting on his hands during the fight where you dazzle everybody with you fantastical magic, you should definitely do that.

Myself... I don't know. If I knew the campaign would have no items, and I still created a wizard character... I would probably realize ahead of time that I would contribute to the net sum of fun for the group if I reserved my concentration spot for the fighter... just once in a while.

But you do you.

Now hold on, this has nothing to do with "dazzling everybody" or selfishly not supporting the Fighter. I, for one, would love to throw buff spells on my martials! However, often a Wizard player has to use their concentration on higher priority effects. It's one of my main gripes about concentration- the mechanic in it's current form was made to prevent people from layering spells, but often what it does is prevent me from using buffs on allies. I'd love to give my Fighter Enlarge, Haste, Fly, and Magic Weapon. But I can only do one. And by doing that, I can't hold enemies at bay with Hold Person, Hypnotic Pattern, Sleet Storm, Stinking Cloud, Wall of Fire, Evard's Black Tentacles, Banishment, and a host of other effects, which can potentially be far more effective in helping the group secure victory than letting the Fighter deal his full damage to a foe!

My current list of prepared spells is Mage Armor, Shield, Mirror Image, Misty Step, Web, Dispel Magic, Fireball, Sleet Storm, Slow, Protection from Energy, and Confusion. If I could put Magic Weapon on there (probably by removing Misty Step or Mirror Image), I'd be down to Dispel Magic, Fireball and cantrips for my contribution to battle, all to ensure one weapon used by my allies is magical (given that my party has a dual-wielding Ranger and a multiclassed Monk without Ki-Empowered Strikes, that wouldn't even ensure that all their attacks could deal full damage!).

There may be a circumstance where that's the best play, but so far, it really hasn't been for me. And this has nothing to do with selfishness or seeking glory- my party needs me to do certain things (like provide Protection from Energy while the Cleric is maintaining his Spirit Guardians), and I can only do so much at once.

 

[tetrasodium]

I am not sure what to say. You are clearly writing passively-agressively, but what is your argument here?

That magic weapon isn't as essential to non-magic campaigns as I'm arguing? That all the castings of the spell is hogged by "self buffing gish types"?

But... if all those "who feel cool buffing their own weapon" really can, you know, buff their own weapon... doesn't this mean you agree with me?

Somewhat lost here.

Instead of the magic weapon spell being designed for the needs & limitations of a primary caster (nicely described by @James Gasik in post 306) it is designed in severe conflict with a number of those. A Gish PC like EK AT valor bard or similar through some multiclass combo is going to have a different set of needs & limitations imposed by their lower casting attribute that would ultimately result in many of the listed concentration spells shifting into nonstarter choices. Extending from that for the gish build is going to be the almost certain reduced spell slot count, that too will make spreading around the spell they can't spread around for reasons of both concentration and spell slot availability. Also... Buffing the party has never really been the role of a gish for many reasons

 

[tetrasodium]

I am struggling to see the problem here. You have three attunement slots, you can wear things that make sense together, all bonuses stack because there are very few bonuses. There's no reason you shouldn't be able to wear an amulet, necklace, and medallion at the same time, except for completely artificial ones like body slots. I think it's pretty hard to come up with an example where it's not clear whether you can use two magic items together in 5e.

You have the mechanical need backwards, that would explain your "struggling"... It doesn't matter if a player is clear on when a PC can use two magic items together when the GM is faced with the problem of trying to make it clear when the PC can not use two items together. Stating that 5e designed so all bonuses stack after removing laterally every way that a GM could conceivably attempt to minimize stacking of magic items as they would need to once they start using magic items in some role other than "always a boon" does not change the lengths 5e went to in order to ensure it would be difficult to use magic items in any other role.

Going beyond that to your talking up of attunement as a solution...

Which section of the character sheet is dedicated to recording a PC's magic items & current attunement?
Can you explain why a +1/+2/+3 weapon is no attune?
How about brooms of flying & so on also being no attune?
Speaking of attunement... the word attune or attunement appears on PHB pages 50, 66, 80, 81, 92, 178, 246, 252, 266, & 271; can you point out which page in the PHB explains attunement to a player reading only the PHB & how they are told to record current attunement?

The DC ladder never changes. A hard DC is the same at level 20 as it is at level 1. Higher skill bonuses, as well as magic items that give bonuses, just accelerate the process of a pc who is good at something being able to succeed at the harder challenges (that DC 30 lock is beyond you at low levels), and given bounded accuracy, that is the game working as intended. Or so it seems to me.

Yes. I am aware it causes multiple problems even without adding magic items that influence skill checks. Those problems become even more pronounced & impact the game sooner if magic items influence skill checks.

You can read an excellent article detailing some of the problems with the 5e "skill" & DC system at the link below

1D&D: The 5E Skill System Is Bad

One of the most talked about changes in the One D&D playtest is the decision to make all natural 1’s auto-failures and all natural 20’s auto-successes.My first gut reaction to this was:

thealexandrian.net

and yet @tetrasodium was saying that they had arguments over this in 3e that had body slots, so apparently it is not any more evident than this description already is…

That is Pretty much the opposite of what I said until you start engaging in partial quotes. I mentioned how defined body slots made it trivial to simply declare that it didn't matter because the two items use the same slot. After a GM said that there was no more room for hair splitting & debate on if this helmet could fit over that hat with this specific crown.

 

[mamba]

That is Pretty much the opposite of what I said until you start engaging in partial quotes.

here is the full quote

Even in 3.x when slots existed it was common for players point at movies tv shows & things like pictures from renfest with a person wearing hat helmet headband & crown or multiple crown/tiara hoping for an exception to have their hopes shut down by having the gm point out that cape and cloak use the same slot.

tell me where my summary is not exactly what you wrote here

 

[Minigiant]

it was not the base assumption, as any WotC adventure shows

That's the point.

WOTC: Magic items are not required. The CR systems based on PCs not having magic items.

Same WOTC: Puts Magic Items in every adventure.

1. There was only reward system included: Magic Items.
2. There was only two methods for growth horizontally: Feats and Magic Items.
   1. Covering weakness
   2. Enhancing strengths
   3. Gaining resistances and immunities
   4. Entering combat roles
   5. Entering combat roles
3. Some monsters require magic items or a social agreement of spellcasters handling buffing martials or building for offence
4. Common aspects of mid and high levels requires magic items of a social agreement of spellcasters handling it
   1. Flight
   2. Planar Travel
   3. Planar and Extreme Survival
   4. Resurrection