Do Magic Item "Shops" wreck the spirit of D&D?

[Storm Raven]

Absolutely right. The difference between LotR and D&D is that in D&D everyone and his brother seems to have magic items. In LotR I doubt anyone in the Shire had a magic item (not counting Bilbo or Frodo since they are the protagonists of the tale).
The elves have them in spades but they are an ancient breed and seperate from the rest of the world by choice. Thats their mysticism.

And a LotRized campaign in which magic was rare, and mysterious would probably be fun too. But it isn't a campaign that would be very easy to replicate with any version of D&D as the rules are written. I can think of some other RPG systems that would probably work well (GURPS, for example), but they have different baseline assumptions than any edition of D&D has ever had.

 

[Storm Raven]

EDIT: Of course, for those in Bizarro Land, "No it isn't; and the Earth is flat too!" seems to make a pretty Stern Rebuttal.

I think that you don't actually understand what "Bizarro" means.

When your argument is "The rules say X", and the rules say exactly the opposite, it pretty much destroys your point when someone says "the rules don't work the way you say they do". Thus far, your track record on 1e rules mechanics isn't very good.

 

[Storm Raven]

I do not have much (any, really) experience with 1E modules. When I played it back in the day, my brother was the DM and he made his own adventures. I do the same now. Going by both the probabilities and advice in the 1E DMG, there is far, far less magic in a 1E world than the 3E one -- and high level characters are not super-heroes, and magic is much less certain, and old stanbys never go out of style or have to get "levelled' up to be used later on. That, to me, is much more S&S and 3E is.

If you used the treasure types listed in the 1e MM, the players would usually be rolling in magic items by the time they were mid-level.

 

[PallidPatience]

The players are there to have a fun game in a social setting, and to play the story that the DM has created.

If they are not having fun, they can leave. Or they can petition the DM to change the elements of the game that are not fun so that they can. If this includes how much treasure is released, why shouldn't they state their complaints? Oh, yeah. Because it's "dishonorable" to complain or to leave, as stated by another poster earlier. Well, I don't play to be "honorable". I play for fun. I'll choose fun over anything else. And if the DM doesn't state up front what the expectations for the campaign are going to be, I'm going to assume the baseline values. Why? Because they're the baseline.

Stop thinking about them like they're restraints. Do you know what the guidelines do for you? They give you a starting point for customisation. They're not to be upheld in every campaign. Having default values merely gives you the chance to tell your players definitively "THIS is how my campaign is different". If you don't say that, don't expect anyone to know it, and expect players to be annoyed. I'd be irritated if I was led to believe the game would be one kind and it led to another. Not letting them know the commonality of magic items is, in this case, like telling them "we'll all be pirates!" and then grounding their ship for a huge "explore the dangerous, uncharted continent" story arch. If a DM told me, when I let him know that he'd completely missed the expectations I have for the game, to shut up, that it's his game, and it doesn't matter what I say, I would probably just leave. But I might hit him, first, because that's my first urge to people who are such s.

In short, the guidelines give you a baseline for expectations, so you know how to tell the player to change theirs if they want to play. Letting the players know how the world works up front should be the baseline for any DM, anyway, since in most cases, the players are playing characters native to the world. The possible trade of magic items (or lack thereof) would be common enough knowledge, I'm sure, for ADVENTURERS to pick up on it. There are always rumours, if nothing else.

 

[Korgoth]

And a LotRized campaign in which magic was rare, and mysterious would probably be fun too. But it isn't a campaign that would be very easy to replicate with any version of D&D as the rules are written. I can think of some other RPG systems that would probably work well (GURPS, for example), but they have different baseline assumptions than any edition of D&D has ever had.

I don't see why it would be hard to run LotR with Classic. Elf, Dwarf and Hobbit racial classes already built around the Tolkien tropes... everybody else is a Fighter or a Thief. Elves cast spontaneously and Elven Lords (Name level) can also use spells from the Cleric list (except Raise Dead). Wood Elves don't cast magic but get some extra bonuses (bow stuff probably); easy to draw that up as a separate class. Regular Clerics don't exist, and regular Magic-Users are extremely rare (the Mouth of Sauron is the only one I can think of offhand); the Istari are a special class (easy to draw up). Everything else pretty much goes by the book.

The Fellowship has several high level Fighter types (Aragorn, Boromir and Gimli) who get access to the Smash attack [Mentzer]... -5 to hit and add your Str score to damage. Lots of one-hit takedowns. Legolas probably has some kind of "Elf Archer" move that does the same thing but lets him add his Dex to damage instead. Voila! Instant Tolkien.

 

[Raven Crowking]

When your argument is "The rules say X", and the rules say exactly the opposite, it pretty much destroys your point when someone says "the rules don't work the way you say they do". Thus far, your track record on 1e rules mechanics isn't very good.

Quote 'em up, then.


EDIT: I certainly accept MerricB as an authority on what various rules editions actually say, as I would say his knowledge is pretty darn encyclopedic & I have yet to see him err substatially (if at all). (Note that I don't always agree with the conclusions he draws from the material, merely that his knowledge of the material is impressive.)

 

[Raven Crowking]

I don't see why it would be hard to run LotR with Classic. Elf, Dwarf and Hobbit racial classes already built around the Tolkien tropes... everybody else is a Fighter or a Thief. Elves cast spontaneously and Elven Lords (Name level) can also use spells from the Cleric list (except Raise Dead). Wood Elves don't cast magic but get some extra bonuses (bow stuff probably); easy to draw that up as a separate class. Regular Clerics don't exist, and regular Magic-Users are extremely rare (the Mouth of Sauron is the only one I can think of offhand); the Istari are a special class (easy to draw up). Everything else pretty much goes by the book.

The Fellowship has several high level Fighter types (Aragorn, Boromir and Gimli) who get access to the Smash attack [Mentzer]... -5 to hit and add your Str score to damage. Lots of one-hit takedowns. Legolas probably has some kind of "Elf Archer" move that does the same thing but lets him add his Dex to damage instead. Voila! Instant Tolkien.

Yep. Pretty durn easy for most = Impossible in Bizarro Land.

 

[Vocenoctum]

Voc: We are talking past each other. Or at least, I know I'm talking past you and in my experience that's usually a two way street. One last try, and then we'll just have to agree to disagree.

I don't think we are really. I think we agree on many points, but that I think the rules allow all these playstyles whereas you present that somehow these other play styles are flawed compared to the way you customized your campaign.

And my point is that you don't need that word 'just'. It's a qualifier, and its a subjective qualifier. It implies that they have an inferior quality. I agree that no matter what, these gloves are still gloves. I don't agree with the 'just'. Once you get rid of the 'just', the whole way of looking at things changes.

The word "just" fits, because there is no mystique to Gauntlets of Ogre Power in most campaigns, and never has been. Are the players happy to now have 18/00 strength? most certainly. Does it make a difference if the item is Gaunlets of Ogre Power, or Boots of Heavy Lifting? In the vast majority of cases, no. The player will remember he has 18/00 strength, but the gaunlets themselves are nothing more than a venue. If you make the item "more" by detailing the background and building a story around them, and do the same with every magic item that the players have, then the gauntlets will still most likely lose their mystique and return to the status of "reason I have strength".

Unless of course you're building the Gauntlet/Girdle/ Hammer setup of course.

They are freaking gauntlets of ogre power!!! Gauntlets of ogre power!!! No mystique to gauntlets of ogre power!?!?! I do not want to play in your games.

Probably not. I don't make a big deal about inconsequential items. I also don't have 15 minutes of backstory every time the Magic User casts Magic Missile.


You know, in previous editions, we didn't wonder why wizards made powerful items. We wondered why they made the weak stuff. The rules were so nebulous that it seemed the same effort to make a +1 sword as to make a +5 sword.

I don't have to invent one. It's called story-telling.

Here we do seem to be talking across one another, as I'm refering to actually changing the item, vs adding to a story where the item remains the same. One is rules based, one is storytelling.

You do know that a rule is a restriction? Without rules you can do anything. Customizing things is actually harder in 3.X than in earlier editions. It takes more work, and there are restrictions in what you can do if you want to maintain the structure. That isn't to say that the results might not be more satisfying 3.X, but don't imagine that the DM has more options to customize items, monsters, and the like than he had before.

Again, you're crossing things up here. 3.5 is a lot easier for a player to customize things, as there ARE rules he can assume are in place. In earlier editions, the DM adjudicated such things and the random factor was so nebulous as to make it more of a bargaining process with the DM rather than a player crafting something he wanted.


As DM, the power to "customize" things was all based on the DM's will in earlier editions, and there is no way a ruleset can prohibit the DM from customizing his game, so it's the same in 3.5. 3.5 does give guidelines for power balancing and such, but if the DM wants to throw a CR5 monster at his first level PC's, he can do it. (or he can just run a Necromancer module.

3.5 has certainly not made magic items more customizable than any previous edition, and I am most certainly not complaining that about the power to create items being available to the PC's. If you think that, you aren't hearing me.

In the core rules a player can customize his magic items by adding powers to retain the Masterwork sword he started with. This wasn't a core rule in previous editions. They've also added customization options such as Weapons of Legacy, Ancestral Relic, Kensai, etc.

I think you're saying that items aren't as customizable because the options are presented, and somehow that limits the player. I disagree, since in previous editions the options were not presented at all, and that limited the player a lot more. Now we at least have a baseline before having to stray into DM Fiat land.

If I create a new magic item, it in no ways alters the rules. If I create a new monster it in no way alters the rules. I can do all sorts of customization without touching the rules.



Are you sure about that? I mean, yes, as a matter of fact I'm not using the rules as written, but if I was, it wouldn't preclude me customizing my game in different ways.

I'm not saying that customizing the game and changing rules to fit the game are in any way wrong. I regard them as required for most things, otherwise we wouldn't need teh DM as referee. If you create a new system for making magic items scaleable or otherwise useful throughout a career, at least in previous editions, then you're customizing/houseruling and while that's fine, it is a change.

 

[Vocenoctum]

I dunno, man, 18/00 strength was a pretty big whopping bit of mystique to me I tell you what. But then, the highest I ever got in 1e was like 10th level and that dude was a thief. Some of you sound like you got to play with all kinds of stuff – best things I ever found were like a frostbrand, magic boomerangs (totally made up), and flying carpets. Vorpal swords? Pssh. I wished.

I'm not sure how long you were in the game, so hard to say. It also depended on how much free time you had at the time of course...

But, we played a lot. We had lots of characters over lots of games. We had "iconic" characters for each of us that went well into triple digit levels. The most fun was a dragonlance group who stopped around 16th level. (That one had the only time I've seen the Gauntlets/ belt/ hammer grouping, in the hands of a minotaur barbarian.)

We had lots of free time, lots of imagination, we had different campaigns so we could play something when only certain players showed. (i.e. we had a Campaign for A,B,C,D and another campaign for A,C,D and another for A,B,C,E...)

 

[Vocenoctum]

My assumption is that there is a certain segment out there that operate under assumptions like, "Anything that is not explicitly allowed by the rules is implicitly forbidden." Hense, they would suggest that since there is no substance in the core rules that has 300 hardness, that you would have to break the rules to have one.

I would posit that you are better off judging our discussion by our discussion, rather than bringing external baggage from past threads into it. No where have I said that adding stuff to the campaign is somehow wrong or limiting. I DO of course maintain that such things are straying from the baseline, and you might get complaints when the guy who got the Adamantine sword to slice through stuff is frustrated when he can't slice through your Unobtanium door. That's a seperate issue of course.