D&D (2024) DMG 5.5 - the return of bespoke magical items?


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nevin

Hero
My observation is that 50 days is no barrier for most groups. The cost of living is negligible by the time you are crafting magic items. They will just get a room in town and wait it out.

Ways to prevent or slow down crafting
1. Require an expensive lab.
2. Require material components that are not easily found or bought. (As apparently DMG2024 proposes).
3. Require a special recipe for each magic item that you must first possess before you can craft an item. Drop such recipes as you will DMs.
4. My theory is that no law enforcement is strong enough to protect long term a magic item store. You deal through brokers either to sell or to buy and brokers have a reputation or discretion and integrity (if they don't they aren't getting business).
Or have a game with strict timelines. Either way is a bit cheeesey but will limit items. Of course if items are easy for playerz to craft or buy they are for villains as well.
 

nevin

Hero
i mean, i'm mostly viewing this from a build-balance consideration angle rather than worldbuilding, plus the default level of magic for default DnD is so high anyway if you're allowing fullcasters then i don't see magic item creation as something that should stick out thematically, it's just that 'magimarts' seem to be looked down on.
by some Relatively pushy people on the internet. Who cares if the table is hacving fun.
 

James Gasik

We don't talk about Pun-Pun
Ever since D&D, many TTRPG's have had these two axes of character advancement- what you get from "experience" (be it levels or increasing individual traits) and what you get from "treasure".

Treasure has always been the province of the person running the game, and for many years, there was no real guidance on what players should/could have. It was scattershot, up to DM will or whatever was in the adventure.

This led to treasure tables that were random, but weighted to yield specific results, and modules stuffed with things everyone would want- I couldn't tell you how many +1 long swords or rings of protection players at my tables have earned over the years due to this.

Sometimes, however, a character concept requires a specific bit of treasure, and games have wrestled over the years on how to get the items into the hands of players. A Star Wars game might allow Jedi, but what is a Jedi without a lightsaber? Star Wars SAGA solves this by giving a Jedi a lightsaber as a class feature. But this then leads to the question of "how much is this feature worth" when balancing classes. And then, if later on, the players find a lightsaber, how much does this devalue the class feature?

Other games try to fix this by having magic items be purchased or crafted, but this leads to pushback from people who feel magic items should be exceptionally rare or "special", as opposed to just gear characters equip, which isn't helped by the scores of rather mundane items (the +1 long swords and rings of protection for example).

The random, scattershot approach also leads to wildly different play experiences- the guy who finds a +1 longsword at level 2 has a very different experience than the guy who finds one at level 7, and a suit of +2 armor found at low levels has a very different impact than one found at level 13!

WotC initially tried to balance this by assuming that players would get magic items, but this got a lot of pushback from the people who didn't want players festooned with magical swag, so nowadays, they passed the buck- if a DM gives a player access to a magic item, on their own head be it! And the same is also true if they don't give players magic items!

And now, a 3e story!

I had a new player come to me with this fantastic character idea they had, inspired by some show they were watching. In it, a character had a "laser whip", and they wanted to build a PC around using something similar.

Whips being very underused in most games, I was on board with the idea, but the issue of how to get the whip in the hands of the player was something I wrestled with. The cost of a +1 brilliant energy whip-dagger (can't be a normal whip, because the rules said they were useless against any creature with natural armor and I wasn't sure if brilliant energy would get around that) was prohibitive and not something they could get early. So I switched gears and decided on a +1 flaming whip-dagger.

I couldn't really let them start with it at level 1, so I seeded it in a level 3 adventure. The player struggled with their normal whip-dagger for a few levels, as it's damage was low, and they had yet to acquire the abilities to make it useful, thus most of the time they were forced to use a sword.

Then tragedy struck. The character actually died on the adventure the magic whip was in, and the player was no longer interested in a whip user, so made a new character. So that when the magic whip was found, it was now an oddity that nobody was built to get much use out of!*

*Though at least, being 3e, it could be sold for extra cash later.

To this day, a lot of cool magic items I put into my adventures don't get used, for various reasons. And a magic item nobody wants is not "special" in any shape or form, thus I have to give players some way to use it down the road, either to sell, trade, or use as a gift or bribe to some NPC.

A magic item can be the most amazing, wonderful thing, but if it doesn't do what the player needs it to do, it's meaningless. Which is why I feel that letting players have at least some agency with regards to treasure can be a good thing!

Another example- I have a dual wielding Fighter in my current game. He uses short swords. During an adventure, they were able to find a truly fantastic item, the wonder blade, a magical dagger requiring attunment that occasionally produces a random, miraculous event on a natural 20 or 1. I thought they would carry this item for a long time, but session after session, it never triggered, despite my having made a table of possible results for it to spice up the game!

Last session, they defeated an enemy swordsman, and recovered his weapon, silver flash, a +1 short sword that produces light like a bullseye lantern and does an additional d6 radiant damage to undead. "Hey, now this is what I'm talking about! That's useful! And no attunement? I don't need that dagger anymore!"

I felt that in my very soul, but it was a valuable lesson.
 

Emerikol

Legend
Or have a game with strict timelines. Either way is a bit cheeesey but will limit items. Of course if items are easy for playerz to craft or buy they are for villains as well.
It's kind of hard to forcibly keep the group busy 24/7. I could suggest an adventure and the group could say "We are going to take a few months so the wizard can craft this item. The rest of us will be doing X, Y, and Z until then." Now as DM you can thrust an adventure upon them but I don't see how you can make that an ongoing practice. People have downtime if they are extraordinarily rich and want to take it.
 

Emerikol

Legend
by some Relatively pushy people on the internet. Who cares if the table is hacving fun.
I agree with this statement. If it has not been a problem for you then don't change anything. For me, magic marts are problematic. From a variety of angles both campaign setting wise and player power wise.
 

EzekielRaiden

Follower of the Way
That's pretty much what rogue-like videogames do.
Given I dislike the vast majority of roguelikes and even most rogue-lites, that's not exactly a compelling argument.

Particularly since rogue-like/-lite gameplay generally features several things D&D essentially never does, like comparatively short duration (a single life/try/run/etc. rarely lasts more than a few hours in most), a clear "win" condition, and being able to adapt around multiple strategies pretty quickly.

Players get feats very rarely. In most games, they'll get all of three, one being an Origin feat. Spells are more common, for primary spellcasters, but still pretty infrequent. There's very little ability to adjust playstyle, and even less ability to adapt around any random magic junk you find.

As a result, well, it was already said earlier, and fairly pithy:
even if magic items are 100% in your control. you still need to give items that are useful to player and items that players want. Otherwise you just give away bunch of vendor trash.
This. Items with very minimal utility will be sold off, if allowed, and if not, they'll just fester in a pack, forgotten.
 

EzekielRaiden

Follower of the Way
It's kind of hard to forcibly keep the group busy 24/7. I could suggest an adventure and the group could say "We are going to take a few months so the wizard can craft this item. The rest of us will be doing X, Y, and Z until then." Now as DM you can thrust an adventure upon them but I don't see how you can make that an ongoing practice. People have downtime if they are extraordinarily rich and want to take it.
I really don't see how it can be that hard to interrupt nearly a two month break.
 

Emerikol

Legend
I really don't see how it can be that hard to interrupt nearly a two month break.
I think once it would be happenstance. Twice would be a suspicious coincidence that loses a tad trust. The thirst time it would be unfair action on the DMs part. People live in this world their whole lives without that sort of interruption. To say that millionaire adventurers and thats what they are by about fifth level, can't get two months free even if they try hard is patently ridiculous. That world would lack verisimilitude.
 

EzekielRaiden

Follower of the Way
I think once it would be happenstance. Twice would be a suspicious coincidence that loses a tad trust. The thirst time it would be unfair action on the DMs part. People live in this world their whole lives without that sort of interruption. To say that millionaire adventurers and thats what they are by about fifth level, can't get two months free even if they try hard is patently ridiculous. That world would lack verisimilitude.
Seriously? You cannot think of anything that would reasonably mean spending seven weeks doing absolutely nothing productive isn't an option?

Magical events tied to the phase of the moon, the tides
Upcoming military attack the players are aware of and need to do something about
Disease, curse, or other malady that needs to be cured sooner rather than later
Ongoing political turmoil that could explode at any moment unless addressed
Resurrecting a party member or ally
Completing a job on time, so the party actually gets paid
Keeping a promise to someone important
Chasing down an enemy fleeing overland
Reaching a destination before the competition/Forces of Evil
Recruiting as many allies as possible as quickly as possible to deal with a looming threat

Like... I've been playing in a LMoP/Phandelver and Below game and there's been all of one time we had more than two days where we weren't doing anything particularly important. I'm sitting on a pile of cash fit for a wyrmling (something like 5k-6k gp equivalent, some in pp or ep, and that's not counting the gems and other "sell this for gp" loot), having had little to nothing to spend it on because we can't waste the several days it would take to go to Neverwinter.

It really, truly isn't that hard to make "literally almost two months" not actually a viable option. Heck, I can count on one hand the number of games I've played in where a continuous, uninterrupted span of 50 days was even remotely plausible, let alone something we actually did (which would be zero, I have never once played any game where the party thought that was a remotely good or even acceptable idea.)
 

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