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

[Celebrim]

Piffle. It's all about killing monsters and taking their stuff...Only DMs too unimaginative to add their individual touch to a rules framework could complain about magic items being "commodities"...By "you" you mean "I", yes?

No, by "you" I mean the third or second person non-specific, which is informally used in English in place of the much stiffer 'one'.

But since you insist, "If one's world is one in which one is comfortable with magic items being treated as commodities, to be freely bought, sold, and traded, then one is being really disengenious to complain about the fact that they are treated as commodities."

What a good thing the only people complaining about this have been those too unimaginative to add their individual touch to a rules framework.

Take it up with Andy. He's the one that started all the complaining about it. Of course, when he takes it on himself to add his individual touches to the rules framework, they are 'official' as opposed to the more individual takes the rest of us make on the rules framework.

 

[Hypersmurf]

Seeten, Ralts, you both know better. In three days, remember the rules about civility.

Everyone else, learn from the misfortune of others.

-Hyp.
(Moderator)

 

[MerricB]

But unless you actually roleplay all that down time it actually makes no effective difference than walking into the town and picking it up from the first merchant you come across.

It depends greatly on the situation. If you have a time-dependent plotline, then, yes, it does matter.

If you don't, and commissioning magic items still bothers you, then make up the stats of the high-level NPCs who can create the items, and display that they don't have the feats/spells/skills to make the requested item... thus it isn't available.

The DMG recommends that items of X value can only be found in a Y-sized town or city. I'm pretty sure it doesn't say that *all* items of X value can be found in that settlement. That is up to DM judgement.

If DMs do in fact say they all are available, then they have only themselves to blame for the consequences. Mind you, I often say, "yes you can find it", because I'm not bothered by magic stores.

Cheers!

 

[Celebrim]

"let's pretend that our characters, who exist only in our heads anyway, have to spend several weeks waiting for X to happen rather than having everything they want occur at the drop of a coin".

I think I have to steal that.

 

[hong]

No, by "you" I mean the third or second person non-specific, which is informally used in English in place of the much stiffer 'one'.

No, no, by "you" you mean "I" as opposed to "one" or "we", yes?

But since you insist, "If one's world is one in which one is comfortable with magic items being treated as commodities, to be freely bought, sold, and traded, then one is being really disengenious to complain about the fact that they are treated as commodities."

No, no. "If my world is one in which I am comfortable with magic items being treated as commodities, to be freely bought, sold and traded, then I am being really disingenuous to complain about the fact that they are treated as commodities".

See, that makes MUCH more sense.

Take it up with Andy. He's the one that started all the complaining about it.

Piffle. He simply acted to fix the problems.

Of course, when he takes it on himself to add his individual touches to the rules framework, they are 'official' as opposed to the more individual takes the rest of us make on the rules framework.

Tell me why I should care a whit about "officialness".

 

[Set]

Originally Posted by MerricB
My work-around for buying magic items is that I require the PCs to commission them - so they have to wait 1 day per 1000 gp to have them made. Assuming they can find someone to make the item in question.

Particularly with the 3.x linking of magic item creation to XP expenditures, I can't imagine a crafter making something for which he hasn't already got a buyer.

"Yes, I'm going to sacrifice some of my own personal power, *permanantly*, to make something that's going to sit on the shelf of my shop..."

 

[hong]

But the thing is, these cool items usually aren't very powerful (for their price i.e. the money you get for selling them). Figurines of wondrous power are among the cooler items in the DMG for me, but many people will be selling a bronze griffon (10,000 gp) to make a +2 sword. If the bronze griffon cost 50,000 gp, so you could make a +5 sword, you can bet everyone will be selling it. But if it cost 2,000 gp... I think many more people would keep it.

I think people are also conflating "cool" ( = flavourful, quirky, original) with "useful" ( = gets used a lot, applicable in many situations). Gp value measures the latter. It really doesn't have much to do with the former.

 

[VirgilCaine]

Particularly with the 3.x linking of magic item creation to XP expenditures, I can't imagine a crafter making something for which he hasn't already got a buyer.

"Yes, I'm going to sacrifice some of my own personal power, *permanantly*, to make something that's going to sit on the shelf of my shop..."

Which is exactly why you'll see new and different useful items made, not useless crap or the same thing that's been made for 5000 years (i.e. Heward's Handy Haversacks, flying items, magic swords, cloaks of resistance, etc.) because there's already enough of those around.
Or there should be.

 

[drothgery]

I'm confused. You start by saying that there are no magic item Wal-Marts, then go on to give examples of the various small shops where you could sell/buy any magic item you want, but then say you don't spend in-game time on that, so basically turning any town effectively into a magic item Wal-Mart.

No more than towns are mundane item Wal-Marts because we don't roleplay out every individual transaction there, either. Buying items under a town's GP limit for full DMG list price and selling them for half of that is simply abstracting away the mercantile part of the game because it's not what the game is really about. And not allowing the transactions by which treasure PCs can't use (or can only rarely use) becomes treasure the PCs can use is both illogical and frustrating as a player.

 

[Celebrim]

Something reasonable in this thread? Isn't that against the law or something?

I won't tell anyone if you don't.

Ring of Protection
In earlier editions of D&D, assuming I recall correctly, rings of protection did not stack with magical bonuses to AC, and gave bonuses to saving throws. I'd prefer them not stacking, just to keep AC under control.

Yes, rings of protection were more or less an armor enhancement. Only the most powerful and rare ones gave bonuses to saving throws. I never had one that did in 15 years or so of play.

Cloak of Resistance
Cloaks have the saving throw function of the old Rings of Protection.

Cloaks were essentially the more powerful version of rings. They stack with rings and non-magical leather armor, and they give saving throw bonuses equal to thier AC bonus. Between these, rings, and bracers of defence, you could go around almost naked and have the maximum possible armor class (or close to it).

Amulet of Natural Armour
Totally new. I don't really like them that much, as they continue with AC escalation.

AC is not nearly as much of a problem as in older editions because monsters have Str bonuses and monsters aren't capped at 16 effective HD. Plus there are touch attacks, incorporal attacks, and so forth. Thus, its much harder for a PC to rely entirely on a high AC to protect them in combat compared to earlier editions. This is mostly for the good, but it does make PC's more fragile.

Ability-score boosters
Increasing stats is fun. It's essential to 3e D&D. It's also massively problematic as their are so many things that depend on ability scores. I'd be tempted to remove them (or have only +2 versions) in a new edition...

There were ways to stat boost in 1st edition, but they were rarer and because almost nothing depended on your stats until you got them really high, so they weren't really problematic. Oddly, even though they are more powerful and maybe even more desirable (in the since of being more immediately effective) in 3rd edition than 1st, they are also cheaper. I've often wondered whether this is a good idea, but I've not played enough high level 3rd edition D&D to feel confident in my opinion of them.