Libramarian
Adventurer
As DM I would only accept an item wish list if the last line said "and if you do not listen, then to hell with you!"
And then I would only accept it, but still not actually use it.
D&D 5E Attack Bonuses
And then I would only accept it, but still not actually use it.
Ya but my ranger and has a good dex, and even with disadvantage to sneak, he still has a way better chance (since he's trained in it as well), and it's also much easier and faster to remove scale armor than plate. Let's face it, the ranger will have a much better go at adventuring, which is why I love playing them so much as well, I just think it's a fool's cambit to spend so much money on plate when not using plate and using a shield is so much better + cheaper.
Now, with a 14 dex and 5k to buy mirthal chain, my ranger will have 19 AC and can dual wield, has no disadvantage or speed penalty, whereas a fighter in mundane plate, with a shield as well, will have 20 AC, -5 speed, and can't shoot a bow because his dex isn't that good most likely (in the example you cited). Maybe his cha or wis is better, who knows, but we're talking about core combat effectiveness here. How is that balanced? I know, it's weird me arguing for balance, I just don't like the short thrift that plate armor is getting yet again. I think the easy fix is to make plate = 1000gp with ac 18, field plate is 2500 gp with ac 18 but max dex 1, and maybe full plate is ac 19 with max dex 1. Still keep the disadvantage, maybe, but I want a fighter with plate and a two handed sword to be a viable alternative to the S&B combo, which currently it isn't IMO. Can we get some math on that? I remember in 4e is was almost always better to max damage instead of defenses, because the earlier you kill your enemies the less damage they can do to you (best defense is a good offense). I just want in this edition the best defense is the best defense, and your offense is mitigated somewhat but you should be able to get your cake (best AC) and eat it too (use a two handed sword).
If scale + shield was as good as plate for 58gp, why was plate ever invented? What kind of economics does this game have? I appreciate the economies of scale (pardon the pun), for producing scale vs plate, I just think the max dex should still exist in heavy armors too, removing the benefits of min-maxing. Or maybe not.
I've given up on DR in D&D, and accepted AC, but I agree, Rule of Cool + ease of play. If they model the game economy that money is scarce, magic items are scarce and special, then mundane equipment should have decent options. Which plate tries to be, but fails. For 5k my medium armor wearing guy won't have a speed penalty OR disadvantage, for the cost of 1 AC, and the same price. Mithral plate should cost double regular plate, but remove the speed penalty.
Right now the pricing on armors is wacky.
Splint is 500gp for AC 17, -5, and Disadvantage
Banded is 750gp for AC17, and Disadvantage
Hello, no speed penalty was a paragon level magic item property in 4th, that's WAY too good for only 250gp more. They should make Splint mail cost 200gp and Banded 1k, or at least increase the price disparity a bit.
Same thing for mithral plate. I just don't see anyone paying 5k for plate when mithral is just a tiny bit more expensive and you get to keep your speed. If you're blowing 5k on armor, why not 6? Or conversely, why not skip out on spending the extra 4k and just stick to banded. I don't want a silly arcana check to resize armor permanently, that was so silly in 4e.
What I'd like to see is fun gameplay, where you can have something to spend your money on as you go up in levels. Scale I feel is too cheap at 50gp, it should be 100gp at least. I want there to be a good reason starting adventurers are only able to afford studded leather or chain, to have a reason to go back to town and spend some of that gold. That's a really integral part to any D&D game to me, spending money to buy better gear. Right now Next is really lame in that department. You can afford any weapon you want, very decent armors, for less than 1/2 of your starting gold.
The price of a greatsword is waaaay too cheap!! I own a bastard sword and it cost me 300 clams, is that equivalent to 350gp? Obviously there is no relation, but if you told me my starting gold was 3x the price of a sword, I'd say why are adventurers starting out so rich? Why are they giving away so much? I know, this is a DM override dial, but I just don't think any of these costs makes sense compared to what they should be worth.
I want there to be several grades of sword, at least a masterwork version, that costs 10x as much and boosts the damage die by 1 step (not! just a +1, that sucks and doesn't scale). A magic weapon would be masterwork + an extra +1 to hit. That way, masterwork items create a sink in the economy because there are no magic item shoppes (nor should there be). A masterwork greatsword would be 2d6, same as the default one in Pathfinder, that didn't seem to break the game, and you can buy it by level 2 since it's expensive. I don't want a repeat of 4e where you've all this loot bag and you can't sell any of it, or if you do you get a fixed price dictated by some politburo down at Wizards HQ instead of the DM or some sensible economic theory. Ahhh, just thinking about how 4e ruined magic items for me is giving me a headache. Let alone plate armor costing 50gp. I should have known right then...this game doesn't even try to model a low-magic game that has interest for treasure hunters.
D&D to me has many components, but there HAS to be a good reason to get loot bags...to buy better gear! Sure, that sounds like a silly trope, but it's a classic for a reason. Why can't we have a game economy that is fun? I know it's a playtest, but still. Just eyeballing the costs for the mithril plate vs normal plate shouldn't have been published like that. Why put prices at all? I didn't realize this in my playtest survey, but it bugs me if they don't get mundane equipment costs right from the start. Fine, dial the starting gold to taste, but there should be meaningful tradeoffs and steady upgrades. I just don't see anyone buying splintmail, ever.
Right now the pricing on armors is wacky.
Splint is 500gp for AC 17, -5, and Disadvantage
Banded is 750gp for AC17, and Disadvantage
Hello, no speed penalty was a paragon level magic item property in 4th, that's WAY too good for only 250gp more. They should make Splint mail cost 200gp and Banded 1k, or at least increase the price disparity a bit.
Same thing for mithral plate. I just don't see anyone paying 5k for plate when mithral is just a tiny bit more expensive and you get to keep your speed. If you're blowing 5k on armor, why not 6? Or conversely, why not skip out on spending the extra 4k and just stick to banded. I don't want a silly arcana check to resize armor permanently, that was so silly in 4e.
What I'd like to see is fun gameplay, where you can have something to spend your money on as you go up in levels. Scale I feel is too cheap at 50gp, it should be 100gp at least. I want there to be a good reason starting adventurers are only able to afford studded leather or chain, to have a reason to go back to town and spend some of that gold. That's a really integral part to any D&D game to me, spending money to buy better gear. Right now Next is really lame in that department. You can afford any weapon you want, very decent armors, for less than 1/2 of your starting gold.
The price of a greatsword is waaaay too cheap!! I own a bastard sword and it cost me 300 clams, is that equivalent to 350gp? Obviously there is no relation, but if you told me my starting gold was 3x the price of a sword, I'd say why are adventurers starting out so rich? Why are they giving away so much? I know, this is a DM override dial, but I just don't think any of these costs makes sense compared to what they should be worth.
I want there to be several grades of sword, at least a masterwork version, that costs 10x as much and boosts the damage die by 1 step (not! just a +1, that sucks and doesn't scale). A magic weapon would be masterwork + an extra +1 to hit. That way, masterwork items create a sink in the economy because there are no magic item shoppes (nor should there be). A masterwork greatsword would be 2d6, same as the default one in Pathfinder, that didn't seem to break the game, and you can buy it by level 2 since it's expensive. I don't want a repeat of 4e where you've all this loot bag and you can't sell any of it, or if you do you get a fixed price dictated by some politburo down at Wizards HQ instead of the DM or some sensible economic theory. Ahhh, just thinking about how 4e ruined magic items for me is giving me a headache. Let alone plate armor costing 50gp. I should have known right then...this game doesn't even try to model a low-magic game that has interest for treasure hunters.
D&D to me has many components, but there HAS to be a good reason to get loot bags...to buy better gear! Sure, that sounds like a silly trope, but it's a classic for a reason. Why can't we have a game economy that is fun? I know it's a playtest, but still. Just eyeballing the costs for the mithril plate vs normal plate shouldn't have been published like that. Why put prices at all? I didn't realize this in my playtest survey, but it bugs me if they don't get mundane equipment costs right from the start. Fine, dial the starting gold to taste, but there should be meaningful tradeoffs and steady upgrades. I just don't see anyone buying splintmail, ever.
Wish lists in 4e are a consequence of the relationship between the ingame/story role of magic items - they're things that the PCs discover or are given - and their metagame role - they are elements of PC build. The player conceives of the PC build, and then hands the GM the wish list because the GM has control of the relevant fiction (ie it is the GM, not the player, who in 4e has the authority to establish, within the fiction, what gear it is that NPCs/monsters possess).
That's not a defence of wish lists, just an explanation. Obviously there are other ways to approach the metagame role of magic items - eg as reward rather than build element - which is where D&Dnext seems to be heading. And you could change the story role, too, by making them primarily things that the PCs build. (I gather some approaches to 3E play go further in this direction than 4e does.)
This is just a different way of bridging the same issue that wish lists address: "loot bags" are an expected player resource; the unlocking of that resource is mediated via the GM's role in establishing the relevant elements of the fiction (namely, what do the NPCs have to give away/sell/have taken from them); and the GM is expected to provide a town where the loot can be exchanged for better gear. (Whether that gear is magic or non-magic may be important as a matter of flavour, but seems pretty peripheral to the basic questions of game design.)
In the wish list model, the NPCs yield up desired gear direct to the PCs without mediation; in your model one set of NPCs yields up gold to the PCs, who then go to another set of NPCs who yield up the desired gear in exchange for that gold. Which structure is preferable seems to me to depend mostly on how important you think it is to have that transition between the two sets of NPCs. In some games, that sort of mediation/transition fits well (it's downtime, healing, research etc); in other games it's just a pain that mucks up pacing (eg in a high-paced race-against-the-clock type game, it just prevents the PCs getting the gear upgrades they need). I think it's interesting that in the classic fantasy quest adventure - LotR - items are acquired either as part of backstory (mithral coat, Sting, etc) or via a "wish list" process (ie on their adventures the characters find or are given exactly what they need: the barrow daggers, Anduril, the gifts from Galadriel, the Palantir, the orcish disguises, etc).
Either model is very easily broken by appeals to verisimilitude. The "spend gold in town" model will break down as soon as a GM decides that it's "unrealistic" that the town should have a shop stocked with such a good range of gear; much the same as the wish list model will break down as soon as a GM decides that it's "unrealistic" that a PC's enemies often have items that are useful for that PC. In the first case, the players get stuck with gold on their PC sheets that is useless as a resource because they have no character abilities that take gold directly as an input; in the second case, the players get stuck with items on their PC sheets that are useless as resources because those items don't contribute in any meaningful way to the PCs' builds.
Last edited:
That's an argument more for decoupling a particular weapon (more like a magic item property, really) from a PC build. Sure, the greatsword guy wants the magic greatsword the party finds, but they may never ever find a magic spiked chain, or whip, and might have to make one. That's one of the tradeoffs of taking one of the rarer types of weapons or armor, it might not have a magic version. Certainly it would suck to find a magic plate that wasn't also mithral, for example, unless you could do transfer enchantment which seems too munchkinny even for me. What would be best is a way to actually have some decent crafting capability in the game, but ones in which it's very expensive and time consuming. So if you really have no chance of finding what you want out in the wilds, you should be able at a certain level to either craft something or pay someone to, but that's entirely up to the DM. I personally don't find the very limited way the current +3 items are always tied to a certain weapon type. What if I want my holy avenger to be a greatsword? Can't happen.
There's a balance between having a magic item shop with a drop down menu of "select your weapon type", "select your magic bonus", "select your property", then you put the gold in and out comes the weapon/armor, and the other end never having a chance to have a certain property on a weapon type you favor. In that sense, I think wish lists are cool, but instead of a "list", more like a "I have a quest to build the ultimate golden battle axe that can be thrown, it will be legen---wait for it---dary". Vorpal swords being bastard swords only seems kind of cool, but I kind of like property categories that can be enchanted certain ways, similar to 4e. For sure in a splat book or the DMG there will be ways to accomplish this, I'm not too worried.
My appeal isn't to verisimilitude per se, it's to my expected biases, which I know might not be your's, but I just won't want "builds" to be all about one weapon property or another. You character "build" should work with mundane items, for the most part (acknowledging that items can become associated with a character later on, in their lore, but that's something else, and more about story than mechanics)
There's a balance between having a magic item shop with a drop down menu of "select your weapon type", "select your magic bonus", "select your property", then you put the gold in and out comes the weapon/armor, and the other end never having a chance to have a certain property on a weapon type you favor. In that sense, I think wish lists are cool, but instead of a "list", more like a "I have a quest to build the ultimate golden battle axe that can be thrown, it will be legen---wait for it---dary". Vorpal swords being bastard swords only seems kind of cool, but I kind of like property categories that can be enchanted certain ways, similar to 4e. For sure in a splat book or the DMG there will be ways to accomplish this, I'm not too worried.
My appeal isn't to verisimilitude per se, it's to my expected biases, which I know might not be your's, but I just won't want "builds" to be all about one weapon property or another. You character "build" should work with mundane items, for the most part (acknowledging that items can become associated with a character later on, in their lore, but that's something else, and more about story than mechanics)
Starfox
Hero
"You must spread some Experience Points around before giving it to pemerton again."
Very clear and concise post. One can disagree with the ideas you explain, but the explanation was very very clear.
I find that time is a very poor currency when designing magic items. It might work in sandbox games, but for adventure-path style troupe play it doesn't work well. This is because there is nothing else for the other PCs to do while one of them crafts magic items. This is especially noticeable if the party has an item creation specialist who creates items for everyone. That character might be busy for years at a time and the other characters simply have to wait. And if the others decide not to wait, but to go on another adventure instead, the handicap for the stay-at-home character becomes just too great. An adventure can take days, crafting can take months or years.
I have had this happen in a 3.5 game set in the Warhammer world. My character was the crafter, and we accumulated "wyrdstone", a resource that could substitute for the xp costs of item creation. The idea was that we'd take a break over winter and continue with our new shinies in the spring. Instead, it turned out I had to spend a whole year + next winter to spend the wyrdstone resources of the entire party. The rest of theparty just waited and feasted. The time was never played out. Yes, this example is a bit extreme, but I think you get the point. Unless something else happens in the interval, time spent crafting magic items is just empty pages in the adventure log.
If "You character "build" should work with mundane items" is a matter of how high-powered your fantasy is. It is true in a game with few magic items, especially if there are other ways of customizing your characters. But in either the 4E model (characters are the sum of their synergies) or the 1E model (characters are differentiated by their magic items) it is not true. Looks like it can be true in Next, which is actually one of the best things about the new edition. It lets magic items be special again.
It looks like you are still including a shield in your ranger ac calculations, so no dual wielding (i believe the current spiked shield is simply a typo not an intended feature.
To your question, the ranger gets speed and flexibility, the fighter gets a better AC. The balance is in the player decision...is that bit of extra ac worth the tradeoff?
But also remember that stat points are a precious resource. Theres nothing that says a fighter can't have a good dex and get the medium armor...but those stat points don't come back. He has lost stats somewhere else. For some concepts it may be completely worth it, for others its not. But to me there is viable choice with the current system.
I don't see the difficulty in getting a 14 Dex for a human fighter, at all.
When viewed from that POV, a fighter or a ranger are both better off with a shield (spiked or not) and medium armor, than plate and shield, given the negatives to adventuring pillars that plate insinuates. I just don't think they've thought it through. It could provide 2 AC more than medium armor and STILL be a trap choice, for that reason. Think about it, dumping your Dex is very silly in D&D, given all the times a higher Dex will benefit you more than simply in AC, throughout your adventuring career. That's the kind of data I'd like to see, I'd be very curious to see that, a survey based on how many dex saves or ranged attacks are incoming vs, say, wisdom saves, and a bit more AC. I just don't see the data, but my gut feeling, very unscientific to be sure, is that the plate guy will end up in a ditch somewhere while the more nimble medium armor wearing fighter will make it to higher levels. Perhaps that is the lesson of this story. At least it's not light armor or no armor that wins in this edition, at least that's some improvement over 4e.
When viewed from that POV, a fighter or a ranger are both better off with a shield (spiked or not) and medium armor, than plate and shield, given the negatives to adventuring pillars that plate insinuates. I just don't think they've thought it through. It could provide 2 AC more than medium armor and STILL be a trap choice, for that reason. Think about it, dumping your Dex is very silly in D&D, given all the times a higher Dex will benefit you more than simply in AC, throughout your adventuring career. That's the kind of data I'd like to see, I'd be very curious to see that, a survey based on how many dex saves or ranged attacks are incoming vs, say, wisdom saves, and a bit more AC. I just don't see the data, but my gut feeling, very unscientific to be sure, is that the plate guy will end up in a ditch somewhere while the more nimble medium armor wearing fighter will make it to higher levels. Perhaps that is the lesson of this story. At least it's not light armor or no armor that wins in this edition, at least that's some improvement over 4e.
Similar Threads
