Excerpt: You and Your Magic Items

[Thasmodious]

Except the character (and thus the player) has *no idea* whether it's a +1 or +2 or +3 or some combination of those e.g. +3 to hit, +1 damage, and so that information should not be given out.

Should we do the same with ability scores, to hit bonuses, damage? The character (and thus the player) don't know an 18 from a 16, all they know is stronger than, not as strong as. So, the DM should just keep all the character sheets himself and give the PCs notes that say "smarter than Borb, not as smart as Imbir; faster than Juan, hits better than Juan, not as well as Borb". Plusses are not an in-game expression, they are a relative abstract of item power, just like the cold, hard numbers representing strength are a relative abstract of actual strength. The players need these numbers to play the game.


On a different note, I've always hated the idea of playing a badass adventurer who flops around like an clown every time he finds a glowy, "I do a sumersault, run really fast, attack a tree and try to fly! Anything happen?" Visualize a whole party doing this kind of nonsense after finding several items at once.

I really like 4e's method of tinkering with the item to figure it out. As mentioned earlier, skill challenges could even be worked in there for some items. But I don't picture it like the above. I posted something similar to this in a another thread, but here is how I see it going down, in game -

Fighter looking over magic sword: Well crafted, still sharp despite its obvious age, judging by the folding method, I'd say dwarven from a few centuries ago.
-hands it to warlord-
Warlord: I'd say you're right. These runes are definitively Darmelian (ancient dwarf empire), I'd say this was crafted for the Goblin Wars of 1061, this one here looks like an elemental rune, but its ancient, not sure what it is.
-hands to druid-
Druid: I can feel it, warmth... wrath... elemental fire
-hands to wizard-
Wizard: Fire, you say? Ancient Darmelia used a primitive dialect of dwarven, let's see...fire was "beloc" [sword flames]
Fighter: Ooooh, gimme, gimme!

Then the DM tells the PC thats it a +2, because that is just a number, part of the mechanics, like the damage die the fire ability adds to his damage rolls.

 

[Aria Silverhands]

As a GM, I just want to say that I find the current tone to be just fine, and that books written the way Aria wants would not be as interesting or useful to me.

Why? Did you even read the revision I did to the short blurb from the economics excerpt? It covered every single topic that the original blurb covered, but made it clear that the DM was in charge of how much magic was available, whether it could be bought and sold, and whether it could be disenchanted and used in rituals for new enchantments. The key change, was to enable the DM to be the arbiter of what is allowed, rather than giving the players a sense that this is the way it should be.

 

[Rechan]

In other words, what I'm saying is "Of course the DM must keep up with all that stuff. It's part of the job."Except the character (and thus the player) has *no idea* whether it's a +1 or +2 or +3 or some combination of those e.g. +3 to hit, +1 damage, and so that information should not be given out.

See, that's where we differ. I am anti-book keeping. I don't even make my players track ammunition and trail rations because I think that's useless minutia. If I want to do unnecessary information tracking, I'll be a freaking accountant. That's not fun to me.

I'm only going to keep track of the stuff that's pertinent to my job as a DM: The story, the monsters, making it fun for the players. The end.

 

[Pssthpok]

nothing nice

 

[Counterspin]

Aria : Because I think that a more cooperative style is how it should be, and that means investing the players with more control. I want the books to reflect my style of play, because that makes the books more useful to me.

 

[Wormwood]

The key change, was to enable the DM to be the arbiter of what is allowed, rather than giving the players a sense that this is the way it should be.

Right, and not every DM agrees with you on that point.

 

[JohnSnow]

Aria, the fundamental point you seem to be making is that WotC's idea of "middle of the road" and your own don't seem to mesh.

Sorry, but that's life. Sometimes, what you (or I) think should be "the standard" just isn't. I assume that the WotC designers are not idiots, morons, or total nincompoops foisting their own preferences off on their audience. Rather, I assume that they are intelligent people making a product to cater to the middle-of-the-road gamer. And I guarantee you they have a much better idea than you, I, anyone here, or even the guys over at Paizo Publishing, exactly where that "average gamer" wants his road laid.

WotC does market surveys. They cater the game to the vast majority of their audience. Yes, that means that a game that is totally DM-centric is going to lose to one that's player-centric, if one assumes that players never DM and DMs never play. I don't think that's the case, however, and I assume the game has been written to appeal to the majority.

I recognize this bothers some people, who would just prefer that their flavor of D&D were the default. You have three choices:

1) Play the game at its default.
2) Change the default, find players who agree with your changes and play that game.
3) Don't Play.

Option 4, which is pretty counterproductive, is "Try to do 2, but bitch to people on a message board about how hard 2 is." And then say "nanananananana" when people tell you that they've never found 2 to be that difficult, and that if 2 is too hard for you, maybe you ought to give 1 a try.

This ain't rocket science. It's supposed to be fun.

 

[keterys]

I harbor a lot of ill will towards poorly written rulebooks and outright faulty design decisions.

It'd be nice if you directed your ill will at either of those things, instead of wasting it on well designed and popular rules that simply don't satisfy your tiny niche of the market.

You've lost any positive will I felt towards you and your rulings in the course of this discussion, sadly.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I'm not saying this kind of situation can never be used to roleplay, just that it hasn't worked in my experience. It's not usually interesting for the player (who just wants to know what the item does), it's not that interesting for the other players (who want the opportunity to know what their items do) and it's not that interesting for me (who wants to get to the meatier encounters, roleplaying or otherwise, that are fun for everyone).

As a DM my goal is for everyone to have fun at the table, and while I want nothing more than a high level of player enthusiasm, I don't want any one player to steal the spotlight to the point of boredom for everyone else

Someone mentioned used a Skill Challenge to identify magic items. I like this, but I would probably do one challenge for the whole batch, rather than one skill challenge per item. Otherwise I think the skill challenge system would start to get pretty tedious.

I didn´t meant this offensive and I not even disagree. I just think ther may be special items not so easy to identify. And to prevent nonsense like swinging it defensively or especially agressive, i would make it clear that the character has tried every fighting style he can imagine in the last 5 minutes.
So the whole party can try interesting things instead of one player asking redundant questions.

A different thing: I have noticed the lowest magical items are quite cheap 300gp, the most expensive cost 2000000 gp (because its exponential about 5^(level/6-1)*1000gp)

So my question is, what is value of 1gp? And how common are Lvl 1 magical items?

 

[Heahengel]

Absolutely. But, two things to say here:

1. You did the right thing and actually had your Fighter *do* the test in character (some here see to think such things are a waste of time), and
2. You still have no idea what the weapon's base "plus" is, if any, nor if it has any other neat and funky abilities, curses, etc.

I have no problem at all with characters figuring out what their items do, provided such figuring is done in character as exampled above. Where I have a problem is with too much information being handed out...in the example above, being told after the same test that it's a +2 Flaming sword that cannot function in an ambient temperature less than -10 C (let's assume the test was done outdoors on a fine spring day) is just too much.

At least preserve *some* mystery!

In the current game I'm playing in, we do that backwards. For example, we found a ring of feather falling the other day. The DM told us after the session what it was (he had already houseruled that for almost everything, we would have to experiment if we wanted to figure out what something was immediately, but would auto-id it between sessions). Then, next session, I rped my character experimenting with it. I didn't feel that I had to, but it added to the session, and helped establish my character's personality (this is early in the campaign).

So my Artificer started jumping around, trying to see if he could trigger it (I already knew he couldn't because it needs a 5 ft fall before it activates, and he certainly can't jump 5 ft). I started speculating about tuning it to trigger more often (and also wondering if it ever would trigger if I jumped, or only on involuntary falls - a lot of my items will have different personalities (my decision since it helps me to find interesting things to rp with my Artificer)). Then I decided to hire a laborer to test the ring, by giving it to him and pushing him off a wall.

So as a player I get to know what items I have, and the RP happens anyway, in a way that includes me more than trying to solve a puzzle. And I could decide what would be interesting and important to my character (I didn't rp out tasting the potion that he found or reading the scrolls). The rest didn't need to be mentioned.

Now, this wouldn't work in every game. We are playing in a text IRC game, so the pace is slower and more descriptive, and I wasn't stealing time from the group to grandstand (actually that was about 3 lines I think, while we were doing other things). There are certainly plenty of games where me jumping in and describing how my character is testing and thinking about an item would be annoying and disruptive. But in that kind of game, having to describe swinging a sword at a tree stump repeatedly is at least as bad anyway.