Excerpt: You and Your Magic Items

[Wormwood]

"Burst into flame" is a common turn of phrase. It means "to catch fire suddenly." A Google search on the phrase turns up 141,000 hits. It's not amusing or cringe-worthy in the slightest.

What he said.

 

[Aria Silverhands]

You look at the story and the campaign as yours, and more or less yours alone. While most players these days want to do their part in all of that. My own experience is that when the campaign becomes ours instead of just mine, that is when we get the really good stuff.

The core of the campaign is mine. I create the majority of it. It's mine and my own. Players can heavily influence what happens in game through their decisions however. I had a campaign where evil won, because the player's made a string of bad decisions after bad decisions with some absolutely horrible rolling. The paladin, leader of the party, who was rp'd by a very charismatic person... turned at a key moment. It was completely justified in character and I didn't stop it despite the fact that it drastically altered what the campaign became. The fellowship was sundered, the guild shattered, and the Coalition of Light crumbled. The pc's became npc's who fled into the far reaches of the world, hiding from their former ally. I spent a week writing up a short story to cover what happened after that and where the next campaign began. With descendants of the original group, including the daughter of the betrayer.

I allow the players to help tell the story, but the story has to be within the setting. Finding players capable of that level of shared storytelling though is damned hard and I hate when I have to let them go for whatever reasons.

And that way I end up feeling like I get paid to DM.

Unfortunately for me, the three groups I've dm'd for like that have all gone their separate ways over the years and finding reliable players online always seems like such a chore.

 

[Jhaelen]

Amazing how a single person can drive such a thread.

I spent a week writing up a short story to cover what happened after that and where the next campaign began.

Aria, everything I've read from you in this thread reminds me of an article from WotC's Save My Game series. It's exactly about the kind of 'problem' you seem to see.

I think you really shouldn't just dismiss the advice from this thread. Maybe, you're truly convinced there's nothing to read between the lines, but there definitely is. Even _I_ picked that up, and I'm not particularly good at spotting these things. Perhaps you should reread what e.g. AZRogue and Cadfan wrote early in this thread. I think they were spot on.

About the article: I like what I see. Basically, it's just a continuation of the trends we've seen in 3E. MIC already introduced much of this and hinted at the rest.

Regarding the verisimilitude (sp?) issue about fighters identifying magic swords:
Actually, I think it's MORE realistic that fighters should be able to find out the properties of magic weapons than wizards. What does a wizard know about swords? Nothing! I wouldn't be surprised if fighters were also the ones creating the majority of magic weapons using rituals.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

Just to jump in and ignore 90% of this thread:

I can't say much on the magic items, because I'm still not too clear on how they'll interact with the world. That said, I loves me some Holy Avenger.

 

[Yaezakura]

Heh... noble as all your efforts are, guys, they're basically wasted on Aria. Aria has a long-standing history of ignoring any viewpoint other than his/her own, looking down on anyone that disagrees with those viewpoints, and ignoring anyone who puts up a solid argument against them. "If you can't beat them, pretend they don't exist" pretty much. Just figured I'd throw it out there for those who'd rather not waste their effort on lost causes.

As for the article itself, I like what I see.

Identifying magic items always frustrated me, especially at low levels when 100gp for the pearl could hurt way more than the item was likely to help. Nevermind it made trying to run a martial party even more headache-inducing than it needs to be.

I also love the idea of magical item properties essentially being templates you apply to weapons. The way it's presented also makes it much easier to find exactly what you want. And the other benefits scaling with the pluses? Awesome idea. No more need for different magical properties that simply do the same thing, but at different power levels. "Flaming" gets better the more powerful the sword is. Elegance and beauty through simplicity.

 

[Aria Silverhands]

Aria, everything I've read from you in this thread reminds me of an article from WotC's Save My Game series. It's exactly about the kind of 'problem' you seem to see.

It's not my problem. I know players that get into a setting are rare. I already do most of what that article says. You all seem to think I'm trying to dictate to the players who they play their characters. I'm not. I'm dictating the guidelines within which they can create characters to fit into the setting. I'm merely providing guidelines. That's all.

I think you really shouldn't just dismiss the advice from this thread. Maybe, you're truly convinced there's nothing to read between the lines, but there definitely is. Even _I_ picked that up, and I'm not particularly good at spotting these things. Perhaps you should reread what e.g. AZRogue and Cadfan wrote early in this thread. I think they were spot on.

There isn't anything between the lines. I think WotC made a bad decision and I'm criticizing it. That's all there is to it. There are too many players who feel like the DM is there lapdog, only there to run the game they want to play regardless of what the DM wants.

 

[Aria Silverhands]

Heh... noble as all your efforts are, guys, they're basically wasted on Aria. Aria has a long-standing history of ignoring any viewpoint other than his/her own, looking down on anyone that disagrees with those viewpoints, and ignoring anyone who puts up a solid argument against them. "If you can't beat them, pretend they don't exist" pretty much. Just figured I'd throw it out there for those who'd rather not waste their effort on lost causes.

My point is valid. I have no reason to change my viewpoint.

Identifying magic items always frustrated me, especially at low levels when 100gp for the pearl could hurt way more than the item was likely to help. Nevermind it made trying to run a martial party even more headache-inducing than it needs to be.

I guess tough choices are such a bad way to run D&D. I mean seriously, why should the players ever have to make a tough decision. Players should always get their way. :roll:

 

[Fifth Element]

I guess tough choices are such a bad way to run D&D. I mean seriously, why should the players ever have to make a tough decision. Players should always get their way. :roll:

Yes, the sarcasm really helps. And there's no rolleyes smiley here. Probably because it's rude.

 

[Yaezakura]

I guess tough choices are such a bad way to run D&D. I mean seriously, why should the players ever have to make a tough decision. Players should always get their way. :roll:

I have nothing against posing tough choices to players. But I think those choices should stem from story elements, not from simply wondering if they can afford to find out what their hard-earned stuff does.

"Do we take time to rescue the prisoners the orcs took on their last raid? If we do, there's a chance the Cult of Orcus may raise enough undead to raze the entire village, but if we don't, those captives will surely die." That's a tough decision.

"Is it worth spending half of our pooled party funds to find out exactly what this magical-but-likely-mostly-useless-ring does?" That's not a tough decision. It's a quagmire that slows down fun at the table.

 

[Kaffis]

To follow up on my musings over exponential growth vs. pseudo-exponential growth, I went and calculated an appropriate progression for a true exponential system, then rounded to the nearest 25 for less cumbersome values (in the first tier, this rounding never amounted to more than 6gp, though the 6gp rounding I did on the 2, 7, 12, ... progression was amplified in the later tiers as I chose to keep the factor of 5 every 5 levels. The end result is that level 27 is something like 18,000gp cheaper than a strict exponential curve would dictate... 10,000 out of around a million... others were less than 1,000 "off"), to arrive at the table as follows:

Level  BuyVal  SellVal  ExtWizVal

 1        275       55        360
 2        375       75        520
 3        525      105        680
 4        725      145        840
 5      1,000      200      1,000

 6      1,375      275      1,800
 7      1,875      375      2,600
 8      2,625      525      3,400
 9      3,625      725      4,200
10      5,000    1,000      5,000

11      6,875    1,375      9,000
12      9,375    1,875     13,000
13     13,125    2,625     17,000
14     18,125    3,625     21,000
15     25,000    5,000     25,000

16     34,375    6,875     45,000
17     46,875    9,375     65,000
18     65,625   13,125     85,000
19     90,625   18,125    105,000
20    125,000   25,000    125,000

21    171,875   34,375    225,000
22    234,375   46,875    325,000
23    328,125   65,625    425,000
24    453,125   90,625    525,000
25    625,000  125,000    625,000

26    869,375  171,875  1,125,000
27  1,171,875  234,375  1,625,000
28  1,640,625  328,125  2,125,000
29  2,265,625  453,125  2,625,000
30  3,125,000  625,000  3,125,000

Now, comparing that with the extrapolated Wizards' values, we see what's to be expected. A true exponential value curve values the levels after a 5-level cluster less than the Wizards' "incremental bumps" system. A level 26 item is worth 869,375 instead of 1,125,000, a level 11 item is worth 6,875 instead of 9,000, etc. Not a problem in itself, because both the costs and the sell prices scale to the same "melt down X items to produce Y same-level item" ratio, 5:1.

But what occurred to me while making this list, is that Wizards, in spreading the marginal increases evenly between each grouping of 5 levels, is valuing each progression within a bonus tier equally, while clustering the values more strongly by bonus. That is, a pure exponential growth scenario means that whatever items fall in the 1,6,11,etc. progression (the low end of the bonus tier) can be had much more cheaply than the high end, and now I'm not so sure that's appropriate.

Without double checking myself, I seem to remember that Frost weapons are level 3's. Is having a +1 bonus with a frost effect half as valuable as a +1 with a fire effect, or 2/3s as valuable? That's what the question really comes down to. Presumably, level 1 weapon effects (and thus level 6's, level 11's, etc) will have a weaker daily power. So Wizards' system values the +2 with the less powerful effect much more strongly than the +1 with the good effect. On the other hand, the suggestion has been that the effects are the real power of magical weapons, moreso than the bonuses, so it may be that they deliberately chose this progression scheme not only because it's easier to bandy about 2,125,000 gp than it is 1,640,125 or what have you, but also to encourage players to find "sweet spots" in cost-to-benefit in taking the good effect over a bland effect with a slightly better number bonus.

In short, I'm still up in the air on it, but I figured I'd share the crunching I did to come up with the exponential table.