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

[Raven Crowking]

Actually, I'm saying it. Or, at least, saying that it should be a perfectly viable way to play DnD. *Every* magic item can be unique, mysterious and special. *Every* magic item can have a story and be more than its plusses. *Every* magic item can make the game more magical and more fun.

I stand corrected.

So, then, that's two polar extremes of how magic items can be played. Every item is special; no item is special. However, you still aren't saying that this is theonly way to play, are you?

Unless you let players get whatever they want, whenver they want -- via the magic shop handwave -- and then *every* character is going to have the same crap.

The tendency for the same items to come up repeatedly....myth or not? Those of you who use this handwave would seem to be best situated to answer that.....

 

[Raven Crowking]

Is anyone in this thread arguing that artefacts are mundane? I haven't seen it if they have. But some people have certainly been arguing that +1 swords are special snowflakes.

Mundane? No. Predictable technology? Yes. If the argument is made that any magic which has rules is perforce predictable technology, and artifacts are magic which have rules, then the argument encompases the idea that artifacts are predictable technology.

 

[diaglo]

Is anyone in this thread arguing that artefacts are mundane? I haven't seen it if they have. But some people have certainly been arguing that +1 swords are special snowflakes.

who's arguing?

i once had The Sword of Light in a treasure trove. (light spell effect when activated. no plus to the sword at all.)

the party thot it was the best item in the whole trove.

 

[Vocenoctum]

At the risk of throwing the thread off on a bit of a tangent the Elric universe, much like Tolkien, was one with little in the way of magical gear. I find a suggestion that Elric was wearing magic boots but Moorcock never bothered to mention them about as credible as saying Frodo was packing some Gloves of Dex.

I think it depends on what you consider magical items. I think LotR had a lot more magic than is immediately obvious, but there was no Detect Magic spell to tell. Sting would glow, so it was magic, but were the Barrow swords magic or masterwork? Sure the Rings were magical, but was Aragorns bow perhaps what in D&D would be considered magical? I'm sure it was lovingly crafted by hot elven babes and woven with the tears of prancing elven men, so maybe it was. Tolkien didn't call attention to his magic in an obvious manner, and I think that's the bigger difference.

For Elric, I think as emperor he had a lot of magic items, in the sense of demon bound items or other items of superior craftsmanship. He had to really. The story just didn't consider them important unless they came up in the text.

I think the difference is that these items in both cases didn't have special/ obvious effects, but were simply enhancements. A sword that strikes better and has an enhancement bonus of +5 instead of +0, is still a pretty mundane looking sword.

It just comes down to every item doesn't need to be a storied artifact, or it detracts from the actual storied artifacts. Because frankly, even in my earliest memories of D&D, we always had quite an array of magical items in mid to high levels of play.

 

[molonel]

For Elric, I think as emperor he had a lot of magic items, in the sense of demon bound items or other items of superior craftsmanship. He had to really. The story just didn't consider them important unless they came up in the text.

I'm presently reading through the last FOUR PAGES of this thread that popped up since yesterday - curse you, Enworld! I need to get WORK done today! - and I'm composing my reply, but this one caught my eye.

Elric had two artifacts - Stormbringer and the Ring of Kings - and regularly called in favors his people forged with the lords of other realms.

Elric is high fantasy and high magic, and what he lacked in NUMBER of magic items, he certainly made up for in QUALITY.

If a DM told me I could only have two artifacts and the ability to call in the lords of other realms to do my bidding, I'd hardly call that a low magic environment.

 

[jensun]

For Elric, I think as emperor he had a lot of magic items, in the sense of demon bound items or other items of superior craftsmanship. He had to really. The story just didn't consider them important unless they came up in the text.

From the books he had two, Stormbringer and the Emperors Ring. Thinking through the rest of the books the examples of other magical gear are all extremely rare. Mournblade, the giant mechanicals the priestess of law whose name I forget just now had.

The idea of demon binding to create gear is very much an artifact of the RPG and not something really supported within the books.

For well made stuff, absolutely yes. For alchemical stuff, yes, in fact in one book he makes a sort of invulnerability elixir. For random lots of +1 magical gear, not really. There is no real "magic artificer" class within the novels and beyond demon binding the RPG's dont support it either.

 

[Vocenoctum]

I stand corrected.

You should invest in a good chair, standing at the computer gets old quick.

The tendency for the same items to come up repeatedly....myth or not? Those of you who use this handwave would seem to be best situated to answer that.....

My view is that maybe 25% of magic items are important to the wielder, meaningful in some way. A sword for the warrior, the robes of arch-dudeness for the wizard, etc.

Gauntlets of Ogre Power or other stat buffers are not as important, and generally are as replaceable as the silk rope you bought at first level. The exception might be Headband of Intellect or Cloak of Charisma for a caster, since it is tied to what the character IS.

I think MIC pushes the idea to combine these effects into items that WILL be more important. Instead of having a mundane boring +2 Belt of Strength, you can get the same bonus added to an item you actually do care about.

 

[Raven Crowking]

A system can be predictable - the DM using it doesn't have to.

In terms of a D&D game in actual play, what the system allows the DM to do determines the level of predictability.

Oh, and let me save you the trouble: bizarrobizarrobizarrolalalalaimnotlisteningtoyourargumentsfrombizarroworld

Put forth an argument that requires a response other than cut & pasting my (or better, since others have written responses much better than mine) earlier responses to it and I'll respond. Actually answer the earlier lines of reasoning rather than ignoring them, and I'll respond.

Otherwise, why would you expect anything different?

 

[Storm Raven]

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.

Well, for one thing, you've had to make a host of changes, which is different from playing D&D as written. Many of the differences are pretty substantial in scope, and have some pretty dubious grounding. Where, for example, do elves in LotR really cast anything resembling a D&D type spell? You can make a limited argument that Elrond cast some sort of divination in The Hobbit, and may have used a healing spell of some sort on Frodo in LotR, and there is the control over the waters of Rivendell's river, but that's it, and those don't fit any known D&D spells with respect to their use (and at least two seem more to be simply "really good skill" rather than "spells"). Galadirel scried using her font, but that seems to have been a property of the font, not a D&D style spell. And you're "everything else goes by the book" leaves a lot undefined. Do ranger's get animal companions? Do paladins exist? Do they have special mounts? Is Aragorn really a plain fighter, or is he some other class? Does he cast spells?

But the real difference is in magic availability. Using the standards set in the various editions of D&D, magic items are just much more common, and much more prominent in D&D than they ever are in LotR. You have to radically alter how magic really works to make D&D work like LotR, unless you are willing to handwave away a lot. And that's why D&D is a poor fit for LotR - the volume of handwaving and customized rules starts to overwhelm the system. At that point, there are a lot of systems that work much, much better for getting a LotR feel into a game session.

 

[Vocenoctum]

For well made stuff, absolutely yes. For alchemical stuff, yes, in fact in one book he makes a sort of invulnerability elixir. For random lots of +1 magical gear, not really. There is no real "magic artificer" class within the novels and beyond demon binding the RPG's dont support it either.

My view is not that he had scores of unique items, but rather that what D&D makes a "magical item", the world of Tolkien or Moorcock makes a "well made" item. Elric also uses the Emperors Armor or whatnot, right? In D&D such an item might be Adamantine Full Plate +5 Fortification. In the story, it would look just like any other well made item.

When a hobbit finds an elven sword, he doesn't spell out that it's +4 Keen, but it certainly hits harder and easier and cuts off limbs better.