Excerpt: You and Your Magic Items

[AllisterH]

See, I always thought it added to sense of wonder and immersion, that magic items didn't come with instruction manuals.

"Welcome to happy joyous sword of much reaving! For avoiding all double badness, blade not to be touched with digits!"

Yeah, but I don't think the previous method actually made them "wondrous".

I mean, maybe my gaming group was freakish, but in practice, when my group found "anything" we, simply would stick it in a bag and then AFTER the adventure, simply have the wizard cast identify in the downtime....


It would be handwaved away in the same way "natural healing" would be handwaved away in 1e/2e.( "ok, a month has passed, everyone is at full and here's what you get")

I'm not exactly sure what "wonderous" purpose that served....

 

[Mathew_Freeman]

Seems to me that identifying magic items could be a great skill challenge.

Failure means thinking the item is non-magical, or activating it in a damaging way, or just wasting charges (so that it can't be used until the next day).

Obvious skills include Arcana, History ("I recognize this blade! It was used in the battle of Squatront!"), Religion ("This symbol is the icon of the god of magic!"), and possibly Nature.

This I completely agree with. For rare and powerful items, asking the players to dedicate some real time and effort to finding out what it is and what it does is exactly what I'd want.

I bought a great Dragon statue in the Dominican Republic, and I'm itching to put it down on the table and tell the players "You find...this!" and then watching them scratch their heads as they try and work out who made it, what it does, and what it's needed for...

 

[Mathew_Freeman]

As far as I can see, MAKING players make Arcana checks to identify everything would be more aggravating. We'd end up back with "Sigh, I hand all the loot to the Wizard, and go have a few beers whilst he does all the identifying..."

It's NOTgoing to be much fun for the Wizard player, it bogs down the game and it's not an interesting use of time for anyone. If characters can just work out what most stuff does (and the article does say MOST items, not ALL) then that's simple and effective and works for most people, surely?

Actually, I don't think I'd be having much fun as the wizard in that case either. "I roll a 14, did I get that one? Cool. Crap, only an 8. Ok, don't know that. 15? No? But the 14 worked? *sigh*" And then the wizard catches flak because we STILL don't know what some of the stuff does.

Whoops. Corrected my original post - missed a rather important word out there (now included in CAPS and bold so everyone can see how much of a difference it makes...)

 

[Wormwood]

This I completely agree with. For rare and powerful items, asking the players to dedicate some real time and effort to finding out what it is and what it does is exactly what I'd want.

Luckily, that's absolutely implicit in the new system (powerful or far-out items don't automagically ID themselves)

But there ain't much sense of wonder waiting 8 hours before you can write down Potion of Clairaudience.

 

[Knightlord]

But there ain't much sense of wonder waiting 8 hours before you can write down Potion of Clairaudience.

This.

 

[Fifth Element]

Yeah, because an online forum is representative of the hobby as a whole. Somehow it even takes into account the opinions of all those people that don't read or post to forums.

No, but you what has a chance of doing that? WotC's market research.

Also, while ENWorld certainly does not represent the gaming community as a whole, I believe it's fairly well-established (though I stand to be corrected) that the proportion of ENWorld members who are DMs exceeds the proportion in the general gaming population. As such, the fact that there are so many positive responses to these changes, in a group with a large proportion of DMs, implies that the majority of DMs are not too concerned with their reputation, and prefer to have fun playing the game.

 

[hong]

See, I always thought it added to sense of wonder and immersion, that magic items didn't come with instruction manuals.

"Welcome to happy joyous sword of much reaving! For avoiding all double badness, blade not to be touched with digits!"

This is true. It is much more conducive to a sense of wonder to have the players piece together the instruction manual by themselves.

DC 20: "The runes on the top read: Welcome to happy joyous sword of much reaving!"

DC 25: "The runes on the bottom read: For avoiding all double badness..."

DC 30: "You see a message deep within the emerald on the pommel: ...blade not to be touched with digits!"

 

[OchreJelly]

You know, I read the article and thought to myself “man, there’s really nothing to dislike about this one”. I come here and see a long discussion on identify. Really? Really?

Honestly, I think the question this raises is “what does identify currently add to the game?”

For me it hasn’t been much. All it tends to do is add to bookkeeping.
Them: “Ok when we played last month you gave us this pile of items that is magic. Now that we have downtime we identify.”
Me: “uh, let me dig through the module and notes from a month ago and let me compare that to the items on your list so I can tell you what is what. Hmmm did I give you this sword? I don’t see it on your list…”

Or

Them: “ok we are done with the adventure. Do we have enough pearls? No? Ok we go back to town to shop for pearls.”

Discussions about the number of pearls available can really take the wonder out of "wondrous items".

The only time I can see this sort of exchange being worthwhile is if the item is legendary, or some other kind of plot device. Typically we are dealing with barrels of +1 rapiers hauled away from the drow raiders they defeated, I think it just leads to wasted time at the table. It may not seem like much but it adds up. I have seen table time wasted on details like the above so often that I’m glad to see it go. These new rules seem to cover you on both your lesser magic items and your plot device items so it seems like a good fit for many playstyles.

As always, others’ mileage will vary.

 

[WhatGravitas]

...but I'm noticing a moderately aggressive tendency in your posting habits.

Not to dig on you, Aria, but perhaps you convey a similar message to your players - probably even without recognizing.

My players (as I'm the primary DM of my group) are pretty open about new things and rules - mainly because we discuss and vote over them.

For example, if I'd try to sell the "no-5-min-break-identification", I'd say something like that: "Hey guys, for the next game, I want to make magic a bit more mysterious to add to the atmosphere. So I don't want auto-identify, because it would break that atmosphere and gives you some extra opportunities to role-play a bit. Is that okay with you guys?"

And usually, they're open to at least try it (though I *as DM* handwaved item identification, because it drags the plot... "we need downtime", "we need to get pearls"... and so on). But then, my group is pretty open in general and also enjoys trying out other RPGs.

Cheers, LT.

 

[Just Another User]

Isn't the point of a low-magic game to make things a little more mundane? Just give them the bonuses, that's all they really need.

What I don't understand is, why they just didn't get rid of the bonuses at all? What is the point of them if they come automatically every 4 level.

And if I undestand correctly, does the low magic system mean than in a low-magic world adventurers are better than in a high-magic world?

world with magic items, the adventurer lose his weapon and have to fight with a different one. Fight at -x

world without magic items, the adventurer lose his weapon and have to fight with another one, fight with the same bonus.

with magic items, caught in a combat while not wearing his cloak of resistance (i.e attacked by assassins while sleeping at a inn), he have lower defences.

without magic items: same situation, his defenses are the same.

etc

If you think about it an adventurer have it better in a world without magic items, even just for the money he save on equipment.

Really just remove these bonuse from the system and let magic tiems being defined by their special abilities. This would remove a lot of other problems, like the wheelbarrow of +1 rapiers, better than that stupid thresold.