Andy Collins: "Most Magic Items in D&D Are Awful"

[Storm Raven]

I don't know about you, but I don't pay fifteen times my annual salary on a haircut, or even being generous and saying I used to make three times what a "commoner" would, that's still on the order of a hundred-thousand dollars.

And really, saying that adventurers should regularly spend lots of cash on frippery just misses the point as to why the "Big Six" are the most common items owned by adventurers.

I own a car, a lawn mower, a dishwasher, and a refrigerator. So do all of my neighbors. I, and most of my neighbors, own our houses. These are all relatively big ticket items that everyone owns because of their utility. Heck, most people in my neighborhood own two cars. Almost no one owns a boat. Only a couple have motorcycles. None have pools.

Now, if the question comes down to whether to keep our second car, or get a boat, I'm going to keep the second car. Not because I don't think a boat would be cool, but rather because I know what is going to be more useful to me and my family. I don't need a boat as much as I need a car.

The same holds true for adventurers. They find certain things to be more useful in a wide array of situations. This will be true no matter what magic items are available in a campaign. Unless you posit the extremely unlikely scenario in which magic items are all completely useless, some will be more useful than others, and as a result, those will dominate the property lists of characters.

Think of it this way - lots of people own cars; very few people get $10,000 haircuts. Even among people who drive porsches, bentleys and rolls royces, spending five figures on a haircut is a rarity. Expecting that adventurers will spend in a manner wildly different from the manner in which actual humans spend their actual money is unrealistic and misguided.

 

[painandgreed]

I don't know about you, but I don't pay fifteen times my annual salary on a haircut, or even being generous and saying I used to make three times what a "commoner" would, that's still on the order of a hundred-thousand dollars.

Well, I think that what a commoner makes compared to today's equivilent is a whole different discusion. Suffice to say that a commoner of even a LG D&D world is not equivilent to even lower class American standard of lifestyle. That you are trying to mix the two without first even establishing a correlation, really doesn't show anything.

There is a huge disparity of wealth between commoners and nobles, or even the well to do merchants of the middle class. Adventurers, simply by default of having wealth, are way above commoners also. The services that the two require are way different too. Certaily, a PC can live like a commoner, and they're going to appear as a commoner to everybody around them. They're going to stink like a commoner, have dirty hair like a commoner, and filthy, patched clothes like a commoner. You 1sp/day commoner is still living like a medieval peasant covered in crap, not near anything like somebody even making minimum wage in a major city in the USA. If they wish to appear or be in a social standing higher than a commoner, they'll end up spending more than a commoner. The differences between the two is easily a hundred fold. If you have a situation such as the French aristorcracy with powdered wigs and such, it takes people helping you to even dress like that. You can't put on and apply the powder to those wigs by yourself. To do so, you're going to have servants and those servants are going to make much more than your commoner.

In the real world, the differences between services, while not as great, can still easily be ten to fifteen times even without leaving the middle class. A $20 haircut may be fine for children and most men, it is not at all uncommon for somebody these days to spend ten times that much on their hair regularly. Go to a nice salon and have foils done along with wash, trim and style, and it will easily run you hundreds of dollars and there are plenty of salons in any town that women have to make appointments to get into. There's also anything within that range, as well as salons and services way above it.

We'll take an example for our fantasy world. There used to be a cantrip called "color". Worked very well for things like dyeing your hair. Presdigitation sort of takes the place of this spell but doesn't last near long enough. So let's assume that there is a 1st level spell for coloring hair that works as a permanent dye. Your first class hair treatment in the D&D fantasy world would not involve going to the same barber that makes a commoner's wage, but rather soembody who expects to make considerably more, which would require having an establshment suitable of entertaining people paying that much. Servants would take care of you while you waited or were beign worked on. hair would be cut and washed. Spells might be cast to make the ahir the proper color. For fancy events, Predigitation might be used to keep the style in place or give it a magical sheen. Anytime you start having people cast spells, it's going to cast money. In a D&D fantasy world, people who can spend the money will.

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

Seems like a fine solution to me. Have you found it limits your ability to play a module as written? Do you have to do anythin beyond converting loot into numbers more reasonable for your game? Do you need to throw the CR tables out the window, as some have suggested? Does any other part of the game need a major overhaul?

It doesn't limit the ability to play a module as written and doesn't require any fiddling with CR or other system manipulations. That's why I chose it, by keeping the effects and ditching the items themselves I can keep the powercurve but do away with the wealth asumptions. All I've got to do is rejigger the the loot into an appropriate value for the game.

I'm not nearly as worked up as you think I am. Again, hyperbole and all that. Actually, the thing that most upsets me is when a community of generally pleasant and friendly folks turn an otherwise interesting debate into flame war and name-calling contest. Not everyone is doing this, of course. But there's something about this topic that really polarizes people. It's ridiculous.

That's one of the dangers of the internet, text has no undertones like speech to indicate sarcasm or hyperbole. Considering how many posts on this thread have been through the roof it seemed reasonable.

 

[howandwhy99]

Aren't many of these repriced items constant ones or use-activated ones? IIRC, those are priced out at 100 uses, so 100x the single use price.

Perhaps variable costs could be offered to DMs? Items could be multiplied by 10, 20, 30..., etc. depending upon the likelihood of use in the specific campaign worlds.

Underwater items could be virtually worthless in a desert setting, but extraordinarily vital in ocean-only worlds. Of course, need would increase abundancy too. All of which leads me to...

...this reminding me of balancing spells. Like most magic items, many spell effects have little to nothing to do with combat. So the level at which they are included in the game is really arbitrary to the DM and the world he or she is simulating.

 

[lukelightning]

Of course they are awful. Most magic items aren't Scottish, and if they aren't Scottish they are crap!

 

[Schmoe]

And really, saying that adventurers should regularly spend lots of cash on frippery just misses the point as to why the "Big Six" are the most common items owned by adventurers.

I own a car, a lawn mower, a dishwasher, and a refrigerator. So do all of my neighbors. I, and most of my neighbors, own our houses. These are all relatively big ticket items that everyone owns because of their utility. Heck, most people in my neighborhood own two cars. Almost no one owns a boat. Only a couple have motorcycles. None have pools.

Now, if the question comes down to whether to keep our second car, or get a boat, I'm going to keep the second car. Not because I don't think a boat would be cool, but rather because I know what is going to be more useful to me and my family. I don't need a boat as much as I need a car.

The same holds true for adventurers. They find certain things to be more useful in a wide array of situations. This will be true no matter what magic items are available in a campaign. Unless you posit the extremely unlikely scenario in which magic items are all completely useless, some will be more useful than others, and as a result, those will dominate the property lists of characters.

Think of it this way - lots of people own cars; very few people get $10,000 haircuts. Even among people who drive porsches, bentleys and rolls royces, spending five figures on a haircut is a rarity. Expecting that adventurers will spend in a manner wildly different from the manner in which actual humans spend their actual money is unrealistic and misguided.

It seems to me that repricing of items isn't going to change the fact that PCs will still own and prioritize "the big 6." The only effect is that they may be willing to spend a little more on some of the extras. Instead of getting the Corvette (+5 sword), they may be willing to stick with the Camaro (+4 sword) and get a dinghy, too.

 

[WayneLigon]

I don't know about you, but I don't pay fifteen times my annual salary on a haircut, or even being generous and saying I used to make three times what a "commoner" would, that's still on the order of a hundred-thousand dollars.

Huge, huge disparity in what a commoner makes and what even a minor noble or member of the aristocracy makes. In the example,. Ralts is talking about what happens at the upper ends of the spectrum.

In about 1880-1890 in the US, an unskilled laborer earned around a ten cents an hour for an average 10 hour day. Let's be generous and give him a couple windfalls to have him make $400 a year. It took $600 to rear a family of four at the poverty line.

A society woman - not nessesarily a member of the upper class or the truly wealthy - would be expected to have dresses from paris costing over $1000, but we're already entering the era of manufactured items, which drives down the cost.

If anyone can find a Gilded Age price list, I'd love to see one. I looked for hours for costs on specific things and found nothing.

 

[Kerrick]

It seems to me that repricing of items isn't going to change the fact that PCs will still own and prioritize "the big 6." The only effect is that they may be willing to spend a little more on some of the extras. Instead of getting the Corvette (+5 sword), they may be willing to stick with the Camaro (+4 sword) and get a dinghy, too.

That's exactly it - you can tweak and adjust prices until doomsday, and it won't change the fact that PCs will buy the things they find most useful, no matter the price. Increasing the prices of those useful items will only mean that the players will gripe about it, and their PCs won't be able to afford them until higher levels (which, by the time they CAN afford them, might well be obsolete). Decreasing the prices of less-useful items only makes them less valuable, and more likely to be pawned off on henchmen, sold, or bartered away for other, more useful items.

And really, I think Andy got it wrong: the more common, more-often-bought items are going to be cheaper, on the whole, than less-often-used items, because sellers have a better chance of unloading them. This is, of course, assuming that

a) you allow magic items to be bought and sold - I'm not supporting the "Magic Item Walmart" stance (I think that idea's totally absurd), but I do think that, like nuclear warheads, F16s, and M1A1 tanks, there IS a market for such things. Anything can be bought and sold, if there's even one of it in existence and someone's willing to buy/sell it.

b) sellers aren't gouging potential buyers by pricing things at 5 or 10 times their actual value because they know people will still buy them, because the items are SO useful that the buyers can't go without them (the California Gold Rush is a good example of this).

c) the most useful items are reasonably common. If you're playing in a low-magic world, ALL magic items, no matter how useful they are, are going to be expensive, simply because they're rare. In a normal D&D world, you can pretty well assume that commonly-used items like weapons and armor will have fair to high availability.

"Usefulness" is, of course, subjective - in a world that's 90% ocean and all the kingdoms are on archipelagos, items like helms of underwater breathing, folding boats, and rings of free action are going to be in high demand and would most likely appear a lot more often than they would on a desert world (Dark Sun, for instance). Likewise, PCs in an undead-heavy campaign are going to buy/make items like wands of searing light, holy swords, and ghost touch weapons/armor, because those are more useful to them. But yeah, even in those two cases, the "Big Six" will still be cropping up because they're useful no matter the situation - they possess universal utility, so to speak.

I may have magic shops have an "on hand" limit about 1/10th (Maybe I'll tweak that. S'just off the top of my head.) the gp limit of the city that they're located in, too. It seems unreasonable to expect nothing to be on-hand at Gargool the Great's Imporium of Wonders, after-all...

I like this idea - it makes total sense. Gargool's going to have a good stock of cheap magic items, but he's not going to burn gold/XP (or have his artificer do it) on high-price items just to have them sit on a shelf and collect dust - he's going to wait until someone commissions such items, and THEN makes them. It's just like a real world bookstore - they can't carry every single book that comes out, but chances are they CAN special order it for you.

No, the problem with many items comes down to the slot it uses. Why wear an amulet of proof against poison when the amulet of natural armour is just far better in most circumstances? At this point, the gold cost of the amulet is irrelevant. To fix this, you need another solution.

Carry two amulets and swap them out as needed? I play in an NWN persistent world; I have an amulet of natural armor +2, a lesser amulet of health, and two necklaces that protect against acid and cold. You know which one I wear the most? The amulet of health, because a lot of the monsters I fight use poison and/or disease attacks. Never mind that my Fort save will likely protect me against most of them; I just prefer not to have to deal with it. When I go into a fight, I chug a potion of barkskin - that obviates the need for that amulet of NA +2, which sits in a chest in my inn room. If I'm dealing with oozes or ice elementals, I swap out protection necklaces as needed. Granted, it might not be as easy to do this in a PnP game, but combining effects like you're suggesting increases the price, sometimes by quite a lot, when it would be cheaper in the end to simply buy/make another item that does the same thing and swap them out as needed.
Additionally, it fosters overdependence on one item; imagine if the PC had this great necklace that granted +2 natural armor, +2 saves, and +2 deflection. The PC uses his two open ring slots for less-useful items, but if he loses that necklace, he's going to he hurting far worse than his friend who lost his amulet of NA +3, because he just lost the equivalent of three items!

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

It seems to me that repricing of items isn't going to change the fact that PCs will still own and prioritize "the big 6." The only effect is that they may be willing to spend a little more on some of the extras. Instead of getting the Corvette (+5 sword), they may be willing to stick with the Camaro (+4 sword) and get a dinghy, too.

If that were the extent of the problem, then I do not think anyone would care.

Is the Fighter investing whatever spare change he can find in his sword, armor, shield, and Cloak of Resistance a bad thing we want to change? No.

The problem is there is such a radical disconnect between practical value of most non-Big Six items and their price that "interesting stuff" gets cashed out without batting an eyelash.

The penalty for doing so is already reasonably steep, selling an item garners 50% of its nominal value. Now one could pull out the DM Fiat stick to discourage cashing out, but that is not a satisfying solution in most campaigns IME. If the 50% penalty does do the trick, there is something wrong with the pricing structure.

It does not bother me that PCs tend to prioritize a certain way. That will always be the case, as you point out.

What bothers me is the pricing structure creates a huge disincentive for the DM to get his creative juices going, and place interesting or weird items.

FREX, the DM might like to drop in a +1 Sword of Frost Fire-type Bane because it fits the NPC and might make an interesting/useful backup weapon in the long haul. But the PC is probably thinking: "Sweet! I can cash that out for 9000 gp and I can afford to upgrade my gauntlets from +2 to +4."

This I consider a problem. This is a pretty mild example, too.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

a) you allow magic items to be bought and sold - I'm not supporting the "Magic Item Walmart" stance (I think that idea's totally absurd), but I do think that, like nuclear warheads, F16s, and M1A1 tanks, there IS a market for such things. Anything can be bought and sold, if there's even one of it in existence and someone's willing to buy/sell it.

b) sellers aren't gouging potential buyers by pricing things at 5 or 10 times their actual value because they know people will still buy them, because the items are SO useful that the buyers can't go without them (the California Gold Rush is a good example of this).

I dunno.

I am not recommending magic WalMarts. But if the 50% penalty for cashing out an item is not getting reasonable behavior, then you are only putting a bandaid on the bigger issue.

In the historical real world, things like a very good suit of armor or a superb warhorse were items that literally only a thousand or so individuals in a large kingdom could conceivably afford. Yet there were bought and sold with reasonable transaction fees of 10-15% for the middle man. (Multiple middle men typically both getting the fee.)

I do not think a +4 Sword would seem all that different in the Forgotten Realms.

I am all for tweaking the official market prices based on the utility in the particular campaign. But playing the "Oh, that is valuable. 10x the price you were expecting." game does not work IME.