Does a magic weapon still feel... magic?

[Li Shenron]

Just wondering thoughts... we mostly used to play low levels campaigns, but in the last year we instead played almost exclusively at intermediate levels. Not very high, between 5th and 10th, but magic items (not just weapons, despite the thread title) are so common, and in such large quantity, that they basically feel like high-tech equipment rather than "magic" or "wondrous".

I understand that the normal D&D campaign settings is highly magical. Gamewise there is nothing wrong with it, but nowadays when my players find a magic ring, or amulet or sword or anything, it doesn't feel like a special thing at all. Sometimes, they even become mere trade goods for something better.

Also, given the quadratical price increase of an item special ability, many of our characters are loaded with many little +1 or +2 items, probably making them look like Mr.T

When I am the DM, at character creation I don't like restricting which items the PC can have (besides the $ limit), but later I try at least to avoid magic shops, or easy craft-on-demand. Therefore the characters can acquire magic stuff mostly through item creation feats or random treasures. Besides encouraging taking those feats, it doesn't help very much with the feel of magic items.

Some DMs just decide to play in a low-magic setting, and although this is a brave choice, it has some issues with balance, since the whole game assumes the PCs have access to the standard amount of items.

What could be done to bring back the feel magic things deserve? Trying to add a background story for every item is very hard, you cannot do this for every ring of protection or cloak of resistance! In 3rd edition the only magic thing left to really inspire awe in the player is Artifacts: weird abilities difficult to replicate in other ways, no chance of crafting, a background story usually provided... but I even hear of attempts to make rules to craft them in 3rd party books :\

Famous magic stuff from literature (like Excalibur, or the Ring of Power, or Aladdin's Lamp) can be probably made into non-epic magic items, but if you ask around RPGers you will probably gather the opinion that they should be artifacts, not because of their real power but rather because otherwise they lose most of their appeal
Which, now that I think about it, is the same for famous characters... that they should be at least epic in people's opinion.

 

[Hand of Evil]

I like item levels, the character has to expend EXP to get to the higher powers. This puts investment to a weapon and a character becomes attached to it. You could think of this as the naming of the item.

Another thing I do is detail items, this is just attaching a cool factor to them based on the players. Item is now shaped like something I know the player is interested in.

 

[Turanil]

For me, a truly magical item should enhance ROLE-play, while a mere "bonus item" (your +2 something) only enhances ROLL-play.

Writing a background is good, but it's only the first step.

Some points to consider:

- Limit the bonuses obtained (+1 or +2, but maybe not =3 and over), and instead give abilities that come into play during the game. Example: a sword +2 bane against shapechangers, would jolt and bounce all by itself when one is in the vicinity. So the character wearing the sword is alerted, but doesn' know who it is. Then, have this occur in the middle of a council with lords, etc. where the PC is looked upon suspiciously (because of the sword movements) and the PC knows one of the ords is a doppleganger or whatnot...

- Background must come into play: you got the sword of Aldric the kinslayer, that many people will recognize. so, some people fear you, others want to befirend you, kill you, get the weapon, etc., just because you are actually wearing the sword. Without the sword, you would be unknown, but now because of it...

 

[BigAlzBub]

Just a random thought, make the items that you give out more powerful, but assign drawbacks to using them [see the cursed magic item section of the DMG, particularly requirements and drawbacks], also consider upping the amount of intelligent items that people find, particularly those with special purposes, just don't over do it. Having a party of magic swords that constantly argue about the philosophical nature of good vs evil / Law vs Chaos vs Neutrality, sounds fun on paper but will get old REAL fast.

 

[Flyspeck23]

For me, a truly magical item should enhance ROLE-play, while a mere "bonus item" (your +2 something) only enhances ROLL-play.

Why should a magic sword that makes it easier to hit your foe and deals more damage than a regular sword should only enhance "ROLL-play"?

If you simply call it a +2 longsword, then that's all it ever will be. For instance, it could still be the "sword of Aldric the kinslayer".

 

[Frostmarrow]

Don't give it too much thought. Remember that only what is mentioned at the table is in the game. If you want magic in your game (even low-magic) you need the players to discuss magic at the table. They simply won't discuss magical items unless they get some.

The trick is how to limit the number of magical items available to the players, without them feeling short-changed. Luckily, the players want the same thing as you. They want magic to be rare, and are only too happy to rid themselves of the items they don't need (or feel is not special). Though, sometimes they need a little nudge in the right direction.

Sure, they might expect something in return for getting rid of superfluous gear. What you should do is give them exactly what they want. A holy avenger is only special in the hands of a paladin. A holy avenger is not a cool macguffin.

Ex1. You are awaken in the middle of the night by a planetar. He says:
-Here, use this well in the name of good.
*hands over holy avenger*
-You won't be needing these.
*disintigrates stack of random +1 hand weapons.
-I'll be following your progress.
*disappears*

Ex2. After crushing the magical sword with your magical hammer the hammer pulsates slightly. You can feel the power of the sword becomming part of your trusty old hammer. [It is now a hammer +2.1]

 

[jeffers]

Back in the day...

... I played 1E with a bunch of high school buddies. We always just gave out treasure. Then, one day, I said... "You find a pair of boots, a sword (looks nice!) and some bottles of colored liquid" The players went nuts! I know now that I should have been describing it that way to begin with, but I've modified the effect since then...

Now, playing with some of those same guys, they get the same description, but they look into the history of the weapon... it's so cool to hold let alone wield "the Sword of Buun's Downfall" or the Legendary "Sword of Sarcasm"
Each blade, and I mean each and every blade in my game has a unique history that can be discovered by the players.

They love it.

 

[Psion]

3e helped codify magic items, which helped defray some of the bizarre and inconsistant magic item mechanics of earlier editions. This, I feel, was an overall improvement.

However it did have the disadvantage of making some things feel a little "off the shelf". Another culprit for a bit of a bizarrely standardized feel is the "standard item loadout" of NPCs (which usually meant a few interesting items, plus +X armor (or bracers), +X weapon, +X shield (or amulet), and +Y bonus item for your favorite stat. Still another is that with DR, DMs are more loath to make players hold out until they can "get to the good stuff."

Hmmm... a solution for the latter problem might be an oil to annoint weapons giving them bonuses to hold players over for a bit.

 

[Peskara]

Making magic feel magical

In our D&D game, we keep magic items rare, so we don't have to contend with the standard amount of magic items making them feel less wondrous (which requires an adjustment to the CR of encounters), but even on top of that we make an effort to make them seem magical instead of just like high-tech tools.

As others have suggested above, most magic items in our games have names and histories. Heck, some masterwork weapons (especially swords as they are considered the highest expression of the weaponsmithing craft) have names. If you we don't know the name/history of an item, the DM often places hints to allow us to discover it later.

The names tend to reflect the personality of either the crafter (in the case of a new masterwork sword, for instance) or the former wielder. My half-orc paladin has her father's masterwork greataxe called "Earth Dragon" and it's of a dark metal inscribed with orcish runes. She has a masterwork longsword made by a surly dwarven smith, it's called "Biting Dog".

It's a good idea to give them lovingly detailed descriptions, and maybe have some that are made of unusual materials. Since they are magic, you don't have to worry about the actual properties of the materials, because magically treated copper could be as hard as good steel if you want it to be. One of my characters recently won a magic scimitar from the yuan-ti that was made of copper with a verdigris scale pattern (our yuan-ti are sorcerers rather than psionicists, so they don't have any weird crystal weapons or anything).

Another way to make magic items feel special is to have an option for PCs to receive them as a family heirloom.

You could also require them to learn something about the items to further unlock their power and make it so that the items increase in power as the character does (there are rules in OA and in a Dragon Magazine article from about the same time OA was released for having magic items that you can level up by sacrificing XP or gold or both).

In our game, a young wizard inherited his master's staff. In the beginning it could convert any prepared spell into an acid bolt with damaged based on the level of the converted spell (yeah, I know, we don't follow the rules that say staves can only have spells or effects with charges stored in them, that's too boring). But in the course of the game he quested and consulted with other wizards to learn more about the staff's powers (he first had to learn its name, so we had to complete a quest for a diviner who could reveal it). That's as far as we got before the campaign dissolved due to having too many players with conflicting goals and personalities, but everyone thought that was cool.

Another option would be to, instead of giving out new magic weapons when PCs are due to receive a magic weapon, is to have an in-game event trigger a spontaneous enchantment. You don't always have to charge gold or XP for that sort of thing, especially if it's a unique event or if a character was due to receive a magic weapon in a recent treasure anyway. Ways to do this might include, the blessings of the gods or fae (which would have to be earned in-game), slaying some powerful otherworldly foe (that might have DR that's stronger than the weapon in question), Bathing the wepon in a magical spring, or using the weapon to sunder a magic weapon/item (you'll need to use magic weapon or greater magic weapon or something similar for this option).

If players want their characters to enchant their own weapons via the item creation feats, don't make it as easy as spending the time, gold and XP. Make them have to procure rare ingredients in-game or complete a particular quest to earn the gods' blessings (for clerics). Making a story out of it increases the players emotional investment in the items making them feel more special.

Also to increase their investment, you can allow for cooperative item creation. The creator doesn't have to supply the XP, it's the end user that has to supply it. So the fighter has to learn some arcane or divine ritual to help the creator make the magic sword.

In one game I was in the DM allowed this, but instead of participating in the crafting, the magic didn't manifest until the end user completed some quest that marked the magic item or weapon as his. For example, my character's friend the wizard made an amulet of endurance (+4 Con) for my cleric. It had four gem sockets in it, which she had to fill with the blood of four mighty foes she had slain in single combat in order to make the magic work. We're pretty high level in this game (around 12th) so she was able to do that in the course of one evening's play (each time she added blood to a gem socket it crystalized into a ruby and gave her +1 Con), but it could have been drawn out longer for a lower-level game.

So there's a bunch of ideas and examples from my experience. I know exactly where you're coming from, magic does seem too mundane for my tastes with standard D&D and in our games we do all kinds of stuff to remedy that.

 

[diaglo]

another problem i see is putting the DMG and MM in the hands of the players.

typical DM: you want to buy item X. with power Y. look it up in the DMG and figure out if you can afford it.


it should not be like that.

that is the sign of lazy DMing.