D&D 5E Blog Post by Robert J. Schwalb

[Hussar]

In all these years of 3E play I've never had a party craft a cure wand. (they have bought like 2 or 3 over the past dozen campaigns).
But I do get that this is a common gamecraft idea. I've always agreed that there are lots of things 3E will LET you do if you choose to torpedo your own game. If you are crafting wands and having huge fun, then WIN. If you are crafting wands and then complaining then .... ??!!!??? maybe stop??

But I've never heard anyone even suggest that Goggles of Night or Rings of Sustenance were even something to consider specially valuable, much less expect.

Heh. Different experiences. We did a fair bit of dungeon crawling and exploration style gaming in 3e, so, both were pretty much du rigour after we realised how valuable they were. No longer have to worry about food and water and can stealth anywhere, any time? Yeah, we're going to jump on that.

But, sorry, I wasn't complaining at all. That wasn't meant as a complaint. It was just a recognition of how the game tended to change as we went up levels. At low levels, obviously food and water and seeing in the dark was an issue. At high levels, it wasn't. The logistical elements, IME, got subsumed by cheap, low level magic items. Which meant that our high level 3e games didn't resemble our low level games very much. The focus just changed too much.

I just thought that was part of D&D. That's what D&D does. At least for me. You start out worrying about every arrow and day of iron rations and end up worrying about how to feed your army as you traipse across the Dessert of Really Evil Stuff. Not a complaint, just an opinion.

 

[BryonD]

And I respect that. As I said, I readily acknowledge that 3E leaves itself very much open to counter-productive issues. And I readily acknowledge that people do these things.

I'm just saying it is worth pointing out that when someone who has had bad experiences with a system says "when you do X", it fair and reasonable for someone who has had good experiences to reply "when you don't X".

From my perspective it is not that these issues are bugs in 3E, but that it is to 3E's credit that the system trusts players enough to let them do what they want rather than saving them with cures which are worse than the (readily avoidable) disease.

 

[Hussar]

Again though, no one I think is saying this is a bad thing. At least I'm no. To me this is just part of the system. The nature of 3e means that campaigns change pretty radically between "tiers". Typically because magic becomes so much more accessible.

 

[Hussar]

Continuing thought.

I look at it like this. If I dropped a 1st level 3e party in the desert, I'd expect them to have troubles. Water would be okay, but, food and shelter and consumables would be an
issue.

Drop the same party at level 10 into the desert and I would never expect the environment to be an issue at all. If it got bad, the party has enough resources to just leave and come back with supplies.

In AdnD that wasn't always an option. No overland flight spells and it was quite possible your wizard didn't have teleport. The high level party would have a much easier time of it but environment is still a fairly major factor.