D&D 4E Dragon 421 is up! Level-by-level Multiclassing for 4e; Dragonlance Items; Draconian!

[D'karr]

This was such a brilliant and simple solution to such a long standing problem - and yet it was compromised even before 4e was consigned to ebay. Is it really so hard to understand???

Sure, but "power" level has always been an "important" discriminator between items. For a DM it is important to have an understanding of "how powerful" an item really is. I understand your frustration, but tilting at windmills doesn't answer the question.

Artifacts are rare, and mostly unique, but they are not the only "rare" items. They are not the only "unique" items. Some Artifacts might be "intelligent" - are they the only intelligent items?

The DL items shown in the article are not as "powerful", with powerful being a determinant of mechanical power and versatility, as artifacts. However, they are slightly more powerful than "similar" capability items. So do we call them artifacts? Do we call them magic items? Do we coin a new term for them - legacy items?

WotC made the mistake of doing something half-assed (surprise, surprise). Like you said, even the designers there make these mistakes. They need to simplify and solidify the framework, so you can have an intermediary "magic item" that is rare and more "powerful" than similar ones, but is not necessarily an Artifact.

 

[Jared Espley]

Seeing my name in the author list of the issue was unexpected. In 2011, I had originally done an elemental bestiary article on commission which included mephits among other creatures. After I turned the article in, I was told that my mephit portion was being merged with another article on mephits. I didn't hear anything on the matter after that and I assumed it was in perma-limbo. Then yesterday, tada -- mephits!

Anyway, glad to have done my part to bring them back to 4e. Some portion of my original text and design even made it in the final version.

 

[D'karr]

Seeing my name in the author list of the issue was unexpected. In 2011, I had originally done an elemental bestiary article on commission which included mephits among other creatures. After I turned the article in, I was told that my mephit portion was being merged with another article on mephits. I didn't hear anything on the matter after that and I assumed it was in perma-limbo. Then yesterday, tada -- mephits!

Anyway, glad to have done my part to bring them back to 4e. Some portion of my original text and design even made it in the final version.

LOL, a 2 year limbo - there was definitely some time warping in the Astral Sea. Good article BTW.

 

[Balesir]

Sure, but "power" level has always been an "important" discriminator between items. For a DM it is important to have an understanding of "how powerful" an item really is.

Sure - but "how powerful" should be given by the level. For Artifacts, "level" is just "Heroic", "Paragon" or "Epic" (because it doesn't need to be as precise, and is likely going to be more situational, anyway).

Artifacts are rare, and mostly unique, but they are not the only "rare" items. They are not the only "unique" items. Some Artifacts might be "intelligent" - are they the only intelligent items?

As far as I'm aware, artifacts are the only "intelligent" items. Since intelligent items are essentially NPCs, this makes sense because, like other NPCs, they are in the DM's domain.

The DL items shown in the article are not as "powerful", with powerful being a determinant of mechanical power and versatility, as artifacts. However, they are slightly more powerful than "similar" capability items. So do we call them artifacts? Do we call them magic items? Do we coin a new term for them - legacy items?

As far as I can see, should I ever run a DL game with these (unlikely, but possible), Brightblade, Rabbitslayer and Wyrmslayer would be Paragon Artifacts, The Kender Spoon and Dragonlances would be magic items (with the lances being unknown until the events of their 'discovery') and the staves would be Heroic Artifacts. FWIW.

WotC made the mistake of doing something half-assed (surprise, surprise). Like you said, even the designers there make these mistakes. They need to simplify and solidify the framework, so you can have an intermediary "magic item" that is rare and more "powerful" than similar ones, but is not necessarily an Artifact.

I don't think so, no. The split is simple and comprehensive; either items are player-available party build resources (magic items) or they are DM-controlled plot devices/world spice/maguffin/whatever (artifact). Why would a third category be required? What would it add?

 

[Keeblrkid]

I dont usually say anything on this site, but I hate when people post things that are blatantly wrong. Sadly I am at work, so I cannot quote the things I am about to say, but I can later.

Balesir. First there is an entire dragon article dedicated to intelligent non-artifact items and they can be found on the charater builder.
And second, when wizards introduced the concept of item rarity at the release of essentials it was stated that rare items are story items they define characters or plots and are outside the realm of the player's advancement. They are not quite artifacts because they do not go away and they do not have there own motivations, but they are more than one or two steps better than an uncommon or common item.

 

[adamc]

Uh, no thanks. What's the advantage of HTML over a pdf?

The browser renders it and browser plugins can do various things to improve the experience, like bump up the font size. In addition, they could have a table of contents that links to articles separately, instead of making me download the whole crappy pdf to read one article. PDFs privilege page layout over usability.

 

[Sunseeker]

The browser renders it and browser plugins can do various things to improve the experience, like bump up the font size. In addition, they could have a table of contents that links to articles separately, instead of making me download the whole crappy pdf to read one article. PDFs privilege page layout over usability.

Quite true. And there's really no reason we can't have both.

 

[Jhaelen]

The browser renders it and browser plugins can do various things to improve the experience, like bump up the font size. In addition, they could have a table of contents that links to articles separately, instead of making me download the whole crappy pdf to read one article. PDFs privilege page layout over usability.

I've never had a problem zooming into a pdf and I definitely prefer downloading the whole 'crappy' pdf. I'm may not be interested in every article right now, but I may be interested in them later. If I downloaded them, I have them already, particularly after my DDI subscription has run out.

I'm glad they switched back to complete pdfs. As to why they don't offer both, I suppose it's been too much effort.

 

[Jhaelen]

One more time, from the original 4e stuff:

"Magic Items" are items that are in the province of the characters and players. PCs can make them. Characters can buy them (albeit they might be scarce and hard to source). They all have a level, which should be truly representative of their power. Later on they also have a "rarity" which, as far as I can tell, relates mainly to how laxly and thoughtlessly they are designed.

Your information is outdated. With Essentials the role of magic items changed. Check out the items in Mordenkaine's Magnificient Emporium to get a better idea how items of the different rarities are supposed to look like. Only common items are supposed to be bought and crafted by players.

Rare items are almost at the same power level as artifacts and DM's are encouraged to ensure every player only has at most one at any time.

 

[Balesir]

I dont usually say anything on this site, but I hate when people post things that are blatantly wrong. Sadly I am at work, so I cannot quote the things I am about to say, but I can later.

Balesir. First there is an entire dragon article dedicated to intelligent non-artifact items and they can be found on the charater builder.
And second, when wizards introduced the concept of item rarity at the release of essentials it was stated that rare items are story items they define characters or plots and are outside the realm of the player's advancement. They are not quite artifacts because they do not go away and they do not have there own motivations, but they are more than one or two steps better than an uncommon or common item.

Yes, I know all about the changes made with Essentials - they still make no sense as I will explain further.

" And second, when wizards introduced the concept of item rarity at the release of essentials it was stated that rare items are story items they define characters or plots and are outside the realm of the player's advancement." Which is exactly what they had previously defined artifacts as. Rare items are redundant; their inclusion makes no useful contribution. Further to this, at the same time they removed the requirement for "Daily Item Uses" - which artifacts never had in any case. Rare items and artifacts fill, according to this definition, exactly the same space, and they do so in exactly the same way, as I'll note next...

" They are not quite artifacts because they do not go away and they do not have there own motivations, but they are more than one or two steps better than an uncommon or common item." Artifacts 'go away' at the behest of the DM - but what item doesn't, in the final analysis? Artifacts do not necessarily have motivations. Look at the "Hammer of Thunderbolts" or the "Shield of Prator" in MME. 'Concordance' is clearly not a requisite for artifacts.

In the end, I made my answer not because I contend that the rarity mess never happened - clearly it did. I made my answer as I did because I can offer no properly coherent answer with rarity included because the definitions of rarity are redundant, confused, ambiguous and nonsensical. An item's "power" defines its level, not whether it's an artifact or not - compare any 'Heroic' artifact with any level 25+ item to see that. An item that is "more powerful than others of its level" is just wrongly assigned a level. Rare items, as far as I can see, fit either into the category of "wrongly levelled" or into the category of "should be an artifact". The classification itself is totally redundant. Hence my answer was made without reference to something that makes no sense as part of the 4E system; to do otherwise would make my answer as nonsensical as the whole, muddled "rarity" guff already is.