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

[hong]

Wow, that's only slightly less ironic than "Trust me, I'm a Politician."

Politicians get all the lovin'.

 

[MerricB]

But still, I have issues with saying that changing the price is an option to bringing these items into use. By that, they're saying the prices weren't properly blanaced to begin with, and it still won't matter because they'll still buy the big seven because they still won't need those other items. If they never needed a wand of enemy detection at 23.5k, they're still not going to need one at 12k. If the prices were balanced, and you lower them, trust me when I say that some enterprising soul WILL exploit the new price. They'll yank out those wands of enemy detection and blow the entire adventure path in the first session as they wander around town preforming sting operations to find out who is behind everything and skip the big dungeon dwelve to uncover the identities of the evil clerics.

It's a little more complicated than that. The cost isn't just in the gold spent; it's also on the action used to activate the item, and on the slot needed to use it.

Using magic to overcome challenges - as shown in your wand of enemy detection example - is a quite different issue. The pricing of wands needs to be appropriate to the spells that can cast them; thus you're not going to get a wand of enemy detection until you can cast the spell as well (and possibly not for a couple of levels later).

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. You can see one solution in the augment crystals: you augment the amulet of natural armour with a crystal that gives proof from poison. Another solution is to have a dual-amulet: it gives natural armour *and* proof from poison, and at a reasonable cost.

That's the slot problem.

The next problem is the activate action problem. You only have a certain number of actions each combat before the combat ends. If the magic item's ability is weaker than your other options, why would you use it? That's the problem identified by Andy for the rod of grievous wounds.

(Incidentally, magic items normally become obsolete as you level up. A wand of fireballs just doesn't cut it at high levels. A Ring of the Ram probably is obsolete at the moment you can craft it. The best part of the redesign to staves in 3.5e was that they pay attention to the caster level of the user, rather than the staff).

One-shot items (potions and elixirs, especially) pay a lot more attention to their actual *gold cost* Limited-use as well. The formula for wands is really wacky in D&D - it's great for a general formula, but should a wand of cure moderate wounds really cost six times the cost of a cure light wounds wand? Probably not. D&D really needs case-by-case adjucation of magic item cost... which is why there isn't a new set of formulas in the MIC.

Cheers!

 

[Celebrim]

Geez, if you just wanted to say that I do this better than you, why not just come out and say it.

If 'this' is 'act like a twerp', as it seems to be, I'll gladly concede your superiority in that arena and stand aside for your public display of twerptitude.

But, just to be clear, what said was not that you were better at sarcasm, but that you were more tedious.

'Better' and 'more consistantly' are not the same thing. And while we are at it, one does not equal to two - not even for small values of one. And, you does not equal to me - not even for the alternate definitions of you. Plug that into your statistics, incense boy - if that IS your real exotic ethnic name.

PS: Of course I'm just talking to hear myself speak. It's a good habit. Always speak to the wisest person present. You didn't actually think I was addressing you did you? That would be silly! Everyone knows better than to waste thier breath responding to one of your trolls!

 

[MerricB]

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.

If I may note, the problem with the escalation of AC isn't related directly to monsters. My problem comes with the larger gap between ACs as the levels rise. The AC keeps pace (or is slightly slower) than the attack bonus of the fighter, but unfortunately the attack bonus of the Clerics and Rogues begins to lag, and the Wizards don't even have a chance of hitting. A 20th level Fighter will have a +40 bonus to hit or so. A Wizard has a +10. That gap is problematic.

Cheers!

 

[hong]

If 'this' is 'act like a twerp', as it seems to be, I'll gladly concede your superiority in that arena and stand aside for your public display of twerptitude.

Oh, no, no, in that we are clearly equals. Please, do continue.

But, just to be clear, what said was not that you were better at sarcasm, but that you were more tedious.

Ah, right. So when you said

I wasn't elevating 'official' above anything else, and was in my own fashion being as sarky about it as you​

You were in fact saying that you were being as tedious as me. WELL, WHO AM I TO GAINSAY SUCH INSIGHT?

'Better' and 'more consistantly' are not the same thing.

And this is relevant to anything... how?

And while we are at it, one does not equal to two - not even for small values of one.

I do this better than you.

And, you does not equal to me - not even for the alternate definitions of you.

But, but directly below you say

Of course I'm just talking to hear myself speak.​

I do wish you'd make up your mind, whatever state it happens to be in at this moment.

Plug that into your statistics, incense boy - if that IS your real exotic ethnic name.

Incense is exotic, yes, but I dispute your description of it as ethnic.

PS: Of course I'm just talking to hear myself speak. It's a good habit. Always speak to the wisest person present.

Shilsen does this better than you.

You didn't actually think I was addressing you did you? That would be silly! Everyone knows better than to waste thier breath responding to one of your trolls!

I fully agree.

Do it again!

 

[ruleslawyer]

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.

That is incorrect.

The 1e/2e ring of protection gave bonuses to both AC and saves from +1 to +3. The progression then broke to yield a ring that gave +4 AC, +2 saves, and one that gave +6 AC, +1 saves. Given that saves weren't nearly as big a deal to boost in prior editions, the high-end rings were still the best.

Back to your regularly-scheduled debate.

 

[Celebrim]

One-shot items (potions and elixirs, especially) pay a lot more attention to their actual *gold cost* Limited-use as well. The formula for wands is really wacky in D&D - it's great for a general formula, but should a wand of cure moderate wounds really cost six times the cost of a cure light wounds wand? Probably not. D&D really needs case-by-case adjucation of magic item cost... which is why there isn't a new set of formulas in the MIC.

The problem with 'case by case' basis is that it is no more likely to solve the problem than any other thing.

Wands were priced cheaply by design to deal with the fact that otherwise low to midlevel spell casters would spend - as they often did in prior editions - a great many rounds doing nothing and watching the action from the back row. If you make wands more expensive, what then? Have you really solved the problem or just rearranged people’s priorities? Are we to be eternally tweaking the price list so as to be continually shifting around what the most optimal selection of items is for a particular wealth level? Because that's all you are going to do if you treat this as purely an economic problem. So long as magic items are simple functional commodities and treated that way by design that is all they are going to be and all the price tweaking in the world won't deal with that. Heward's Handy Haversack would be a sought after item at twice or three or five times its book price. Changing the price would just change the priorities.

So the real question becomes, what do you really want to do away with? Tweaking the price of a wand of cure light wounds up won't change its utility or desirability. If you tweak it to the point of inefficiency, or tweak something else's price down to the point it is a bargain, then people will just switch to some new bargain. Is trading wands of cure light wounds for wands of cure moderate wounds really all that worth it?

There are at least two good reasons for not wanting ad hoc prices.

First, ad hoc prices pretty much break the crafting system. If you take the crafting system back to fiat, in practice you might as well not have it. The only way to retain the crafting system in a functional form is to list a crafting price for every spell ever created or introduced. That's way more trouble than its worth barring a new edition, and its more trouble than I'd like to go to if there isn't going to be a new edition (which if the next one is as bad as 3.5 I'll largely ignore anyway). I like players being able to make and design thier own tools. I like it as both a DM and as a player, because I like PC's and NPC's on a level playing field, I like to as a player to use my creativity, and I like to see players use thier creativity. It has good aesthetics. A system is aesthetically pleasing.

Secondly, there is no reason to suppose that ad hoc prices are going to be any better than those produced by a system. There will still be comparitive bargins. There will still be things more efficient than other things, and the utility of and attractiveness boosts to attributes and to commonly used rolls will not go away. Players will always want to rely more on things that are 'always effective' rather than things which are situational (and which a bad DM may metagame) regardless of price. Balance is not going to be achieved. It never has in any price list or point buy in the hobbies history, so why expect it now? So we will ugly up the system for no good purpose.

We are fighting a phantasm here. It's a creation of the default setting, most people aren't really unhappy with it anyway, and the spectre has been raised pretty much solely for the purpose of selling books.

I disbelieve.

 

[Mouseferatu]

First, ad hoc prices pretty much break the crafting system. If you take the crafting system back to fiat, in practice you might as well not have it. The only way to retain the crafting system in a functional form is to list a crafting price for every spell ever created or introduced. That's way more trouble than its worth barring a new edition, and its more trouble than I'd like to go to if there isn't going to be a new edition (which if the next one is as bad as 3.5 I'll largely ignore anyway). I like players being able to make and design thier own tools. I like it as both a DM and as a player, because I like PC's and NPC's on a level playing field, I like to as a player to use my creativity, and I like to see players use thier creativity. It has good aesthetics. A system is aesthetically pleasing.

Secondly, there is no reason to suppose that ad hoc prices are going to be any better than those produced by a system. There will still be comparitive bargins. There will still be things more efficient than other things, and the utility of and attractiveness boosts to attributes and to commonly used rolls will not go away. Players will always want to rely more on things that are 'always effective' rather than things which are situational (and which a bad DM may metagame) regardless of price. Balance is not going to be achieved. It never has in any price list or point buy in the hobbies history, so why expect it now? So we will ugly up the system for no good purpose.

While I agree with you, to a point, that this "problem" isn't nearly as big as it's been made out to be, I have to disagree with the points I quoted above.

Or rather, I don't disagree per se; I just think they aren't applicable. See, they assume that the prices already in place actually use a system.

The truth is, even the DMG says that the system is a loose guideline, at best, and a great many of the items--not just in more recent books, but in the DMG itself--don't use that system to price themselves. What he have, then, are not magic items developed by a system, but ad hoc prices that are, at best, ballparked via the use of a system.

Add to that the fact that even the system itself is based on some assumptions that are now being challenged, such as the relative worth of certain types of items, and I'd argue that what's being discussed isn't any more ad hoc than what we already have.

 

[hong]

That's way more trouble than its worth barring a new edition, and its more trouble than I'd like to go to if there isn't going to be a new edition (which if the next one is as bad as 3.5 I'll largely ignore anyway). I like players being able to make and design thier own tools. I like it as both a DM and as a player, because I like PC's and NPC's on a level playing field, I like to as a player to use my creativity, and I like to see players use thier creativity. It has good aesthetics. A system is aesthetically pleasing.

Psst, elfy person. Aesthetics != utility.

Secondly, there is no reason to suppose that ad hoc prices are going to be any better than those produced by a system. There will still be comparitive bargins.

Pshaw. Perfection is the enemy of good enough. The current system is manifestly not good enough.

 

[Celebrim]

If I may note, the problem with the escalation of AC isn't related directly to monsters. My problem comes with the larger gap between ACs as the levels rise. The AC keeps pace (or is slightly slower) than the attack bonus of the fighter, but unfortunately the attack bonus of the Clerics and Rogues begins to lag, and the Wizards don't even have a chance of hitting. A 20th level Fighter will have a +40 bonus to hit or so. A Wizard has a +10. That gap is problematic.

Oh. That. Well, there really nothing to be done about that. It's a feature of every system that it begins to break down as bonuses near its numerical range. GURPS begins to break down as bonuses approach 15. D% systems break down when bonuses get near 100. D20 will always break down as bonuses get near 20. Dice poll systems begin to break down when the average exceeds the most difficult of challenges. The problem is that a system like this depends on its random factor, and eventually as the bonuses get large the random factor is dwarfed by the bonus. The system becomes non-random. It becomes deterministic.

In the example you site, a Wizard could already have a +25 bonus or so if they worked on it. But what would be the point? As the bonuses get large, pure specialization becomes more and more attractive. Why bother being good at something you don't do when you can be so overwhelming at something that you do do? Why rely on something you could randomly fail at, when you could succeed at something almost every time?

And the thing is, its an absolute you are fighting here. There isn't a tweak to the system you can do. Oh, you could change the size of the dice, but the problem would just show up elsewhere then. The gap is problimatic, but there isn't a darn thing to be done about it.

And really, this problem isn't just confined to the game. The dice are what limit games at a mechanical level, but there is a real world issue that this corresponds to. Suppose you take two ordinary youths. They play chess and ping pong together. They have different dispositions and skills and so one is slightly better than the other in one game or another, but because they've both just picked up both games, the contests are interesting. One wins most of the time at chess, but occassionally picks up a game through a bit of luck. The other wins most of the time at ping pong, but its still a close contest and the outcome isn't gauranteed. But what happens when the two players begin to hone thier natural talents? A problem, that's what. Soon the contest is no longer interesting. One youth plays ping pong all the time. The other is devoted to chess. In a very short amount of time, the two players are no longer adequate contests for the other. The outcome becomes predictable. The match becomes one sided. It becomes boring. And what's worse, neither player is a good match for the sort of challenges that is a strong challenge for the other. This one can't play ping pong against the rivals of the other. The ping pong player can't play chess with the international masters that the chess player faces.

Lastly, this isn't a new issue with the D20 system. It's always been a part of D&D. In a prior edition I had a thief with a -4 AC. Even with a magic weapon, I could barely a hit -4 AC. But the fighter in the party with a -4 AC could barely miss a -4 AC. If anything, the problem has gotten to be alot less of a problem than it was because at least now it isn't just fighters that get multiple attacks.

There isn't alot to be done about it unless you are willing to assume universal competance in everything on the part of all players, and that has its own problems.