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

[Wulf Ratbane]

I'm thinking it might be better to have an innate bonus for the "big six". A level based system that automatically applies an enhancement bonus to your stats, weapons, etc.. And thereby free up treasure for more interesting items.

That makes three of us, now, in this thread.

I think we're officially a conspiracy.

 

[jasin]

If you read the 3.x edition DMG, you get the impression that the writer thinks the reader is too stupid to conduct a game with the grace and elegance that the author himself most certainly does, and so instead of writing 'peer to peer', he lays down some really juvenile guidelines for how to run a campaign designed to get say a 12 year old kid up and running as a reasonable DM on his way to maturity.

Is this necessarily a bad thing? Who needs the guidelines more, a 12 year old kid who thought it might be fun to try running a game of this "Dragons & Dungeons" thingy while he's grounded from WoW, or the mature, experienced and sophisticated 35 year old DM who played and ran all three editions?

 

[Felon]

Actually, in his campaign, I doubt you'd be invited to play, so it would be a mute point anyway.

I wouldnt play if I were invited. Life is too short for crappy games. Also, its moot, not mute.

Meeeow!

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

Threads like this make me wonder if I should have even started the new 3.5 game. "I got screwed since my wealth by level isn't the same as the book, plus my actual items aren't in the big six so they suck!".

Given that item creation is tied into the market price, I would expect that reducing the price of non "big six" items would encourage players making, buying or questing for items outside of that group. Because their value is more accurately calculated in relation to other items, they are more likely to see use.

 

[Celebrim]

How does this look in practice? If it's players saying "we spend a lot of time gathering info and finding those involved in secret markets" and you replying "OK, you found a guy who's willing to give you 18,000 for that +1 unholy greatclub" how is it different from just walking into a "magic shop"?

Versimlitude. The one of the many problems with 'Magic Item Wal-Marts' is that they encourage the player to think in ways that are anachronistic for the setting (or more precisely, I should say 'my setting', since for some settings - say Eberron - modernity is actually what you are going for to a certain extent). By treating the RP universe as a model of the real world culture he is familiar with, he's limiting his emmersiveness from his perspective (and I'd hope that that is a loss) and from my perspective he's limiting the depth of his interactivness because he's unable to see a good portion of the game world as it exists (and for me thats a loss). If I encouraged the player to think that he could just walk into a shop and buy anything (or even something) off the shelf, he'd be missing something. It's not just with magic items. You can't go in and buy platemail off the shelf. For one thing, it takes a year to make. For another thing, there may be laws prohibiting its sale in much the same way that people can't just go buy M1-A2 main battle tanks off the shelf. I won't the player to think about the fact that going around with a sword, lance, mail, and a warhorse looks alot like what we'd think of as riding down main street with an M-1 tank. I want the player to understand why he's conspicious and what social role and status he currently occupies, so that for example, when his social status improves as a result of these heroics he's engaged in he can experience the difference.

So, he's losing something and its just going to confuse him if doesn't get started accepting the conventions of the setting if for example when he goes strolling up to the gates of the nearest town and the guy at the gate says something like, "Halt! Why is that you go about bearing in such fell arms? What business have you in this city that you are arrayed in such ironmongery, for know now that no one may enter our peaceful city wearing such warlike gear without the consent of our Lord. Now, speak your names strangers, or else prepare yourself for the taste of steel!"

In other words, I'm drawing on things like Beowulf, and the Illiad, and medieval epics and all sorts of other things, and I expect the players to get into that. I'm not drawing on Diablo, and if you want to play Diablo, I suggest we have a LAN party and not bother with pen, paper, and imagination.

"If it involves actually playing out all the conversations even though nothing exciting happens, isn't it just boring?"

I guess that depends. I love dungeon crawling. I love wilderness adventures. I love urban adventures, murder mysteries and epic campaigns to save the world. But, I also think that slowing down and doing dialogue and letting the PC's and NPC's characterize themselves is a big part of role playing. To give it an analogy, maybe someone thinks of that part of the 'feast' as 'broccolli', and they hate 'broccolli' and I can sympathize with that. 'Broccolli' isn't everyone's thing, and I certainly wouldn't waste alot of time on it if we were eating 'fast food' instead of a 'feast'. I'd get right down to the entree, whatever it was. But, if I'm going to take my time and enjoy the meal, I'd like some well prepared vegetables to go with everything else - whether I'm a DM or a player.

To use a somewhat imperfect example, consider the campaign laid out in the popular web comic - 'The Order of the Stick'. Is it your contention that all that interaction with NPC's are things were 'nothing is happening' and that those parts of the story are 'just boring'? What would happen to the comic if we cut out every panel about character maintenance, equipment maintenance, character development, and non-combat NPC interaction?

 

[Garnfellow]

I'm thinking it might be better to have an innate bonus for the "big six". A level based system that automatically applies an enhancement bonus to your stats, weapons, etc.. And thereby free up treasure for more interesting items.

Rather than have these innate bonuses come from class levels, maybe a slightly better way to enact this concept would be to have the big six all act fundamentally as bonded/leveled/growth items: items that grow in power along with the characters. The more time spent with the item and the more powerful the character, the more and mightier powers are unlocked.

A key piece would be to make the investment non-transferable: the sword might be +5 in the hands of the fighter who inherited it from his father and wielded it for the last 10 years of game time, but it's only worth +1 to the brigands who stole it last week.

This idea was really popularized in Earthdawn, and has been tried several times in 3e (Weapons of Legacy, Swords of Our Fathers, etc.) but (IMHO) never successfully. My biggest problem with all implementations I've seen -- be it feats, prestige classes, or raw XP costs -- was that they were just too expensive to be really enticing for a player. My players cleaned out the WotC revision of White Plume Mountain, and none of them had any interest in keeping any of the legacy weapons.

Making the big six all bonded items might solve a LOT of problems, actually. Take hong's problems with NPCs loaded with too much magic gear. That conundrum largely goes away if his stuff is all bounded, and thus worth far less to the PCs than to the NPC.

 

[Seeten]

Meeeow!

*Flashes Claws*

 

[Celebrim]

Is this necessarily a bad thing? Who needs the guidelines more, a 12 year old kid who thought it might be fun to try running a game of this "Dragons & Dungeons" thingy while he's grounded from WoW, or the mature, experienced and sophisticated 35 year old DM who played and ran all three editions?

No, its not necessarily a bad thing. I completely understand why they did it, both from a technical writing standpoint, and an economics standpoint. The game isn't going to last if they don't bring new blood in, and the player/user you have to write to the most is the one that has the least experience. I'm just saying that there is a cost, and I wish that they would have found the space for a few more sidebars - not so much for the DM - but for players that might be reading the DMG, so that they'd maybe understand more along the lines that this part of the game they neither have nor should want any sort of control over. Not knowing the secrets of the game and the setting, not having the same game experience with each DM, not approaching the same challenges in the same ways, and using the resources that you are presented with are big parts of enjoying the game. So many players seem to think that the game is only fun if they know the secrets of the game and the setting, if the game experience is exactly that specified by the default guidelines, if they can choose and customize thier resources however they like, and so forth. But this seems to me exactly backwards, and far more suited to the sort of 'tool tweaking/tactical gaming' experience associated with CRPGs - were roleplay is light to non-existant - than it is in face to face pen and paper gaming where the main advantage that you have over a tactical wargame or a board game or a computer game is the ability to indulge in heavy RPing.

 

[Eridanis]

Why is my statement not ok, but his sig ok?

Given that his initial statement, which is loaded with edition war type messages, why is expressing the opposite opinion not allowed? I think 1st edition was a mediocre at best designed game, with poor internal consistency. Why is he allowed to state we should look to it for inspiration, but when I state the opposite opinion, its forbidden?

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[Shazman]

The ability to create my own content and play flexibly with a group of players all free to do the same is why I play this instead of D&D Online, EverQuest or any of a handful of competitors in the market.

I'm sure it's better for WotC's bottom line this way but honestly I'd love to see them focus on mechanics rather than implementations.

Don't sell us soulmelds, give us an Incarnum workbook, a couple examples and directions how to make soulmelds.

Don't sell us vestiges, give us a Binding workbook, a couple examples and directions how to make vestiges.

Demand for campaign specific and pre-made content will drive "implementation sales" on a separate line of books. I don't want WotC to hold my hand, I want them to put tools in it.

That's great if you've got gobs of free time to come up with your own soulmelds, vestiges, etc. Knock yourself out. There are a lot of us DM's that barley have time to read an adventure once during the week before the weekly game. If I have to do the work to create all of this stuff, it isn't going to happen, because the time simply isn't there. Thankfully, WotC's done enough of the work for us so we can get by. There's still nothing to stop you from making your own custom material if you have the time, creativity, and energy.