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

[hbarsquared]

Wow. I actually read through the whole thread.

MY OPINION

1) Factoring the Big Six into character progression works, but I think it's just silly. There already is a progression.

2) Players want magic items that are useful and cool. Players will almost always choose the useful items first, then the cool items. Players grumble when they cannot have both.

I see it as legitimate grumbling. D&D is a game that should be challenging (cue useful items) and fun (cue cool items).

By "forcing" the use of the Big Six in order for characters (and their players) to succeed, the "fun" is decreased.

3) This, I believe, is the perfect solution:

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.

 

[jasin]

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.

I think this is patently false.

Rings of wizardry IV are extremely useful. They double your 4th-level spells! Yet they're also hideously expensive. And hardly anyone ever uses them.

Ioun stones that give +2 enhancement bonus to a stat are more useful than a standard stat booster (since unlike the standard item, they don't take up a body slot). But they cost twice as much, and hardly anyone ever uses them.

Quaal's feather tokens are far from useless, but they see much use in the games I play it, since they're so cheap.

A brooch of shielding protects from a single spell, of all the spells in all the books. It's a rather iconic spell, to be sure, but it's still a single spell. And eventually the brooch gets used up. But while I'm not sure I've seen people buy it, I've often seen people keep it rather than selling it to save up for one of the big six. Because the 750 you get from selling it isn't as valuable as the protection the brooch offers.

OTOH, the 100,000 gp you get for selling a mirror of life trapping is much more valuable than what the mirror can do. So it'll get sold at first opportunity.

I mean, you cannot seriously argue that price is not a factor in deciding that kind of toys and tools people get!?

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.

This is surreal. Decreasing the price on something make it more likely that the item will be sold instead of kept? What, people prefer getting less money over getting more money?

 

[ruleslawyer]

Wow. I actually read through the whole thread.

MY OPINION

1) Factoring the Big Six into character progression works, but I think it's just silly. There already is a progression.

Right, but the point is that from a certain perspective, that progression is inadequate. Skill points and other significant elements of class development (ranger Reflex save progression, for example) have been "fixed" in the past; why not just adjust the character progressions to remove the need for +x items?

Granted, absent a new edition, this is complicated. A more modular solution might just be to build "heroic paths" that PCs can choose to substitute for the effects of +x items; I don't see those as being any more complicated than some of the add-on rules in, say, Unearthed Arcana.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

2) Players want magic items that are useful and cool. Players will almost always choose the useful items first, then the cool items. Players grumble when they cannot have both.

Yup. For good reason.

A boring item will get used in 50+% of encounters. An interesting item will get used in maybe 10% of encounters.

That is a very high implicit price for interesting items.

Players perceive that they will get punished in game for not choosing the boring items when possible.

Can anyone seriously say that perception is greatly misplaced in most campaigns?

(I am not suggesting that the DMs need to cater to this kind of thinking. But the player perception is not irrational. It is perfectly rational, perhaps to more of an extreme than I am comfortable.)

 

[hbarsquared]

Players perceive that they will get punished in game for not choosing the boring items when possible.

And I would go so far as to say that players are getting punished in game "for not choosing the boring items when possible." The entire game is designed around characters having a certain level of magic items that grant a certain amount of bonuses.

I'm not entirely averse to Kamikaze's solution, or to heroic paths (Midnight is one of my favorite settings). But I believe that both of these solutions stray from D&D's original intentions. Players, in general, like to accumulate the +X items. Having an item that grants the +2 can be very satisfying to a player, rather than gaining the +2 automatically while levelling up.

Instead of doing away with one or the other, or relying slowly on price increases and decreases, I believe the best solution is to combine the static bonuses with unique special abilities. I think it satisfies both perspectives quite well.

 

[Celebrim]

I don't think anyone's openly stated it this way. But it's been implied plenty of times, by any number of people. It's an absurd notion; no one's game is better than the other.

Speaking as a player who has experience many different DM's, I think that is an absurd notion. Not only are there DM's that run a game that is enjoyed more by particular groups, there are DM's that run a game that would be enjoyed more by any group compared to some other DM. I have witnessed on several occassions DM's steal groups from other DM's - intentionally or unintentionally - by simply being a better DM by any objective standard of what it means to be a better DM. So, yes, some DM's games are certainly better than other ones.

Without creating a fire storm over what it means to be a better DM, let me state that your two characterizations don't characterize my position at all.

I said, more or less, the mature game is the one were the DM provides the players the means they need to overcome challenges, not necessarily the means that they want. That isn't to say that you don't necessarily give the players what they want sometimes, or that the DM always can foresee the solution that the players adopt (good players are almost as cunnng of SOBs as good DMs *wink*), but it is does mean that a mature DM is thinking out why things are being put were they are and whether there are reasonable means to overcome the challenge.

High magic or low magic is less important to that, though I would say that a mature setting has an internal consistancy to it, so that - for example - a setting with 'magical wal-marts' and mystic items already on the shelf will look more like Eberron than it will look like Greyhawk and that the DM will have chosen a setting that suits the sort of game he wants to run.

 

[MerricB]

Rings of wizardry IV are extremely useful. They double your 4th-level spells! Yet they're also hideously expensive. And hardly anyone ever uses them.

By the time you get them, they're no longer valuable, as you're casting 9th level spells.

A Ring of Wizardry IV is an ok item at level 7, strangely enough. By 11th level, it's waning in power. By 13th level, it's not really that good.

Cheers!

 

[GoodKingJayIII]

Speaking as a player who has experience many different DM's, I think that is an absurd notion. Not only are there DM's that run a game that is enjoyed more by particular groups, there are DM's that run a game that would be enjoyed more by any group compared to some other DM. I have witnessed on several occassions DM's steal groups from other DM's - intentionally or unintentionally - by simply being a better DM by any objective standard of what it means to be a better DM. So, yes, some DM's games are certainly better than other ones.

First of all, I'm not sure that I ever talked about the quality of the DM. That is a different subject, and one that never entered into my mind nor that has anything to do with the topic at hand. I think maybe I was a little unclear, but I also think you were reading something that wasn't there.

When I said "no one's game is better than another" I meant "No one's preferred play style is better than another." I don't think you considered my comment in the context of the statement directly above it: the implied idea that less magic items equal a more mature, interesting, or challenging game. That simply can't be true, because it's a matter of preference and opinion.

If you think that's an absurd notion... well, I can't continue to have this conversation with you.

Secondly, you seem to think I was talking about you. I wasn't. There are a number of people who voiced that general opinion in this thread. I don't have to name names; to me, it's clear as day who does and doesn't think that. But I realize that's my opinion and I'm not intending to insult people or start a flame war.

Now, on to your points:

the mature game is the one were the DM provides the players the means they need to overcome challenges, not necessarily the means that they want.

I agree, except the about the last part, not necessarily the means that they want. If you're not giving your players what they want, why would they keep playing in your game. I'm not saying you should acquiesce to every little demand, but DnD is a cooperative game. It's not an "all-or-nothing" environment. DMs and players have to meet in the middle. Since DMs have to be the judge during the game, almost all of this should be hammered out before a session or campaign. When I DM it's important to me to cater to my players as well as run the game I want.

High magic or low magic is less important to that, though I would say that a mature setting has an internal consistancy to it

Again, I agree. We seem to be on mostly the same page. What are we arguing about again?

 

[jasin]

By the time you get them, they're no longer valuable, as you're casting 9th level spells.

Because they're so ing expensive! That's exactly my point. It's absurd to say "people get stuff which is useful, regardless of price". People get stuff which is useful, sure. But useful is a function of (among other things) price.

 

[Celebrim]

Again, I agree. We seem to be on mostly the same page. What are we arguing about again?

You seemed to be painting with a broad brush, and I understood your statement "no one's game is better than another" to mean "no one plays the game better than anyone else", which either from a player or DM perspective I've found to be false.

Other than that, not much. However...

I agree, except the about the last part, not necessarily the means that they want. If you're not giving your players what they want, why would they keep playing in your game.

- emphasis mine

I'd like to point out that "the means that they want" is not at all the same as "what they want". That word you left out when you segued between what I said and what you said is important. I agree that the wise DM rewards players overcoming challenges by giving them something of what they want. And I agree that a DM should at the least clearly communicate to the player what sort of game he's going to provide so that they can decide if this is something that they want to do and not waste a player's time. I do not agree that the DM is under any obligation to give any player any particular resource that they desire. If the player wants a +4 vorpal sword and a cloak of resistance +5 and a portable hole and a sphere of annihilation, the DM is under no obligation to provide any of these specific things no matter how badly a player wants them and no matter how useful they might be to solve the particular challenge at hand. The DM is under no obligation to provide a scroll of disentigration to a player no matter how simple it would make it to solve a particular puzzle. The DM is under no obligation to introduce gunpowder to a campaign world just because a player thinks it would be useful or cool. And the DM is under no obligation to allow a particular feat, splatbook, or prestige class into the game no matter how much a player whines for it.

The DM's obligation is to be fair, respectful, impartial, considerate, and to entertain. That's it.

A player is under some obligation in my opinion to respect the DM who is providing the game, to behave civily, to not rob the other players of thier enjoyment, and abide by the DM's rulings even if he thinks that they are wrong. If he can't do these things, he just shouldn't play with that DM.

This always starts an argument, but my personal feeling is that the DM owns the game. I've come to this conclusion because the DM puts far more effort into the game than anyone else. DMing is work. It's alot of work. When I sit down at another DM's table I give him all the respect and deference that I would want to recieve from a player at my table, because I know how much work goes into putting together a really great session and I feel honored to be allowed to partake of that.