D&D General Design issues with 5e

[tetrasodium]

I agree. Magic item pricing is difficult. The other problem with making magic items expensive is that if they find such items, they can sell them for a lot, which may have other unintended consequences. I'd be inclined to have legacy magic items or similar that scale with the characters in an appropriate manner, while being an iconic item or two for each player character.

There was a Traveller campaign where we managed to capture the enemy spaceship after they boarded us. Our conclusion was: sell it, then let's retire! The game master agreed with our logic.

On this tangent is somewhat solved by between session "Vickrey auction". It's a sealed bid auction where the winner pays the second highest bid. The auction type encourages bidders to bid around the actual value and the gm can manage results somewhat with NPCs bidding above bids that aren't enough of a gold sink or bidding verrrry slightly below any absurd vids that are banking on paying a more reasonable second price. Doing it between sessions means PCs need to be in town end of season and the gm has time to mull it over

I don't think that kind of manipulation of the auction by the gm is unreasonable given that Ttrpg economy is so simplified and how players get to ignore anything they would feel a need to hold back over if they were the actual PC.

 

[Lanefan]

If spells had rarity, you might be to factor that into the cost of magic item creation too.

More to the point, if spells had expensive material components that could certainly be factored in.

 

[Lanefan]

I agree. Magic item pricing is difficult. The other problem with making magic items expensive is that if they find such items, they can sell them for a lot, which may have other unintended consequences.

Unintended consequences such as?

I mean, I take it as a given that the PCs are going to end up either stinkin' rich or dead...or maybe both!

That said, 5e doesn't destroy items as a function of game play the way 1e and 2e did. It probably should, in order to give a reason to go and get new ones.

I'd be inclined to have legacy magic items or similar that scale with the characters in an appropriate manner, while being an iconic item or two for each player character.

Fine for a short campaign. Gets stale in a long one.

 

[Lanefan]

On this tangent is somewhat solved by between session "Vickrey auction". It's a sealed bid auction where the winner pays the second highest bid. The auction type encourages bidders to bid around the actual value and the gm can manage results somewhat with NPCs bidding above bids that aren't enough of a gold sink or bidding verrrry slightly below any absurd vids that are banking on paying a more reasonable second price. Doing it between sessions means PCs need to be in town end of season and the gm has time to mull it over

That sounds fine for buying items in town but it would make party treasury division, if done fairly by value, an absolute nightmare! You wouldn't be able to bid on anything because you'd have no way of knowing what your share value was going to be.

 

[Minigiant]

The issue isnt pricing.

It's consistency of magic effect across rarity and level.

In reality, magic items world only br valuable to people who would want to and be able to use them and odd collectors. Only items with wide use would be expensive. This devolves the "magical item treasure" community down to adventurers, mercenaries, assassins, protectors, and the paranoid. So it would be more barter between people of similar level and hunting for the bodies who dropped on the community via death in a dungeon (looking for someone else's corpse).

 

[Minigiant]

Going back to Proficiency.

Yeah they screwed up the numbers to "keep numbers small"

If Proficiency started at +3, then starting Expertise is +6. That makes Max Starting Abilty bonus (Nature) +3 equal to Starting Proficiency bonus (Nurture) +3.

So a fighter you want as part face can take 14 Charisma and Proficiency in a Roleplay skill and have a +5. That makes a 55% chance on a Moderate DC of 15. Just role 10 or better.

Then in Tier 3 it is +5 and +10, Proficiency and Expertise respectively. No Cha bump and the nobleman fighter is running a +7. Thats just a "dont roll bad" for Persuasion.

No need for Reliable Talent.
No need to buff every class with a new skill class feature.

Just start at +3 for Proficiency and like people spend a feat for one Expertise.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

One thing that I haven't seen mentioned is the crappiness of treasure in 5e. Not the magic items I think those are generally fine (as always there are a few eye brow raising ones and some stinkers, but on the whole they are good).

I'm talking raw gold. Everyone jokes in 5e about "useless gold". We got the stronghold rules which were....pretty meh. Finding a way to have that treasure be meaningful in some way would be great to see.

Is that a change in the game, or the players? I find that modern players see themselves as heroes rather than mercenaries, and therefore don’t want to be bothered with non-magical looting. The game is struggling to keep up with changing attitudes.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Not to pick on you here as others upthread have said similar things, but giving only bonuses or improvements without at the same time giving countervailing (sp?) penalties or reductions elsewhere is nothing but power creep.

Orcs crit hard and move fast. Dragonborn heal fast and have breath. Elves teleport. And they can all see in the dark. OK. But what do all these people give up in order to gain these benefits? The answer cannot be "nothing", else why would anyone ever play a Human that doesn't get any of this shizz?

The trick is that humans also gets a benefits package. So there is no need to worry about imbalance, and power creep across edition is pretty much irrelevant. Each edition has its own baseline, and the only power creep that would actually matter there is if they alter the narrative notably. A +2 or -2 to an ability doesn't change the narrative like that.
Some races having teleport does change the admittedly, but it also cannot be compensated by a -2 to some ability score, because until 3E, this wasn't an Elf thing, and it only has become a possible Elf thing since 4E (though then they were called Eladrin, the Elves that were still called Elves didn't have that).

 

[Minigiant]

The trick is that humans also gets a benefits package. So there is no need to worry about imbalance, and power creep across edition is pretty much irrelevant. Each edition has its own baseline, and the only power creep that would actually matter there is if they alter the narrative notably. A +2 or -2 to an ability doesn't change the narrative like that.
Some races having teleport does change the admittedly, but it also cannot be compensated by a -2 to some ability score, because until 3E, this wasn't an Elf thing, and it only has become a possible Elf thing since 4E (though then they were called Eladrin, the Elves that were still called Elves didn't have that).

Many people design with human as the baseline and build on top instead of building an elf or human off the same slate. Basing species off blank slate human just keeps you from making an elf elf. Thats they 1e had level limits. Its bad design if you plan on PCs leveling up.

Then you get to the issue that a -2 doesnt compensate for a breath weapon or teleport unless off the same score as the breath weapon or teleport. -2 Int for a Con based breath weapon is imbalance.

I find this ironic about Fantasy vs Sci fi.

Scifi games design little green aliens who are super smart and cannot process certain compounds like, I don't know, peanut butter or a species of intelligent talking dogs, most professional designers and writers dont design them from humanity. They work off a similar building block and make the species they want to the racial budget.

But when It's fantasy, they are humans but +4 INT and -4 STR and green or blue. Humans are nothing special and elf are pointy eared humans.