Excerpt: You and Your Magic Items

[Ingolf]

And there are too many DMs who believe their precious snowflake setting is more important than the group's game experience.

Just sayin'.

I guess I'm just lucky. I haven't run into too many of either. The few layers who weren't willing to play nice with others we ran off, and the last time i had to put up with a DM copping a "my way or the highway" attitude I was like 15 years old.

 

[kitoy]

I've been lurking here for many years and this is one of the most bizarre threads I've ever seen.

Oh, and I really like the magic items rules...

This!

 

[Charwoman Gene]

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

Your point is invalid. You have a very pressing reason to change your viewpoint.

(If he doesn't respond, he's validating this, which means he's wrong and the logic travels up the chain. If he denies this, he denies his own quote by mirror logic and the logic bomb still goes off. I think I won the internet.)

 

[Family]

/I win.

 

[marune]

I've always been a champion of "DM as final arbiter" in the game, but in my opinion, how the rules are written really shouldn't make a difference with the DM's reputation for running a fantastic game. I've seen the same DM run Call of Cthulhu, D&D, Feng Shui (the most "player permissive" game I know), Spycraft, and even Paranoia (the most "player non-permissive" game I know) all to great success.

Look at Shadows of Yesterday for a fantasy RPG that is much more "player permissive" than Feng Shui.

Burning Wheel is also a good one (but the rules aren't freely available).

 

[DandD]

/I win.

Sorry, Charwoman Gene, but Family definitly won.

 

[FireLance]

I think there's a very simple reason why the default standard is easy identification of magic items and easy buying and selling of magic items: the new edition is designed to appeal more to casual players, and to casual DMs.

Sure, hardcore D&D hobbyists (like most of us who read and post in this forum) will be willing to put up with a few inconveniences in gameplay for the sake of our favourite pasttime (or we may even enjoy what most casual gamers would consider inconveniences), but if the core system suggested that most people play the way we play, we wouldn't get as many players.

And, judging from the tone of several posters in these thread, quite a few of us don't even like the way we play, and agree that WotC's default is a good one.

 

[Orius]

Years ago - almost 30 years in fact - a member of my "summer holiday" play group developed a rep for ruthlessly killing players. He'd throw a Spectre at a 1st level party, and cut off all means of escape, for example, or pit beginning RuneQuest characters against hordes of Trolls. We contemplated just not letting the guy run games for us, but we were kids, and geeks to a man, and the guy was our friend, so we felt obligated to stand by him. But finally, he wiped out the entire group in a game of Boot Hill when he was essentially serving as a "guest GM" - running our long-standing PCs from another GM through his well-crafted slaughterhouse of an encounter. I just sort of snapped, told him I'd rather be gut-shot than let him GM anymore and suggested that he do something probably physically impossible with his game. The poor guy - it was like the light went on over his head. "Wait - you guys don't like being slaughtered like cattle in every game I run? Hmmmmmm."

That's funny.

Anyway, back to the thread.

The rules themsleves look solid. The rules look like it says buying and selling magic items isn't terribly difficult, unless your DM says so. No problem there. I don't mind the players buying trinkets, but I wouldn't be giving them the chance to buy really powerful stuff. It also lets the players get rid of items they don't need. The items levels look ok too, it's somewhat of an improvement over the minor/medium/major categories of 3e, which itself improved on everything earlier where the DM pretty much had to guess how much of an impact the item would have in the campaign.

I don't really like the easy identifying rules myself, but the Arcana check shows promise. I don't think a fighter or barbarian or such should be able to easily id an item by just fondling it for a few minutes. They just don't have the sort of knowledge or training for that. That's why you have wizards who have studied magic, or bards who know a little bit of just about everything and so on. I also like a bit of mystery in the items too. Players usually like when they discover their weapon or something has powers they weren't aware of, and as the DM I enjoy slipping in the occasional cursed item to keep the players on their toes. The game can get boring if things are too predictable.

The rules for identifying items in earlier editions had their shortcomings too I suppose -- by the book, identify in the old days didn't tell you exactly what an item could do, it just gave a general idea as to its abilities. You needed legend lore for a full id. This was improved in 3.0 -- identify gave the most basic ability of the item. Even then, identify cost more than was necessary, a 100 gp material component and 8 hour casting time feels a bit over the top for a first level spell. This was toned down in 3.5, and full iding was allowed, but I think that was a bit too generous with powerful items, since it worked equally as well on a potion or scroll with a 1st level spell and a powerful major item worth 200k gp.

The Arcana check might be a good solution, if success depends on caster level and item level. So if a 5th level wizard should probably have little trouble at all iding a +1 sword (1st level, right?), have a normal chance to id that +1 flaming sword, have difficulty iding something about level 10 or so, and have little or no chance of iding something epic, I'll be happy with that. This way, a DM can put in a powerful mysterious artifact that won't be fully understood by the party, while minor magic is easily ided and disposed of if necessary.

 

[Victim]

The Arcana check might be a good solution, if success depends on caster level and item level. So if a 5th level wizard should probably have little trouble at all iding a +1 sword (1st level, right?), have a normal chance to id that +1 flaming sword, have difficulty iding something about level 10 or so, and have little or no chance of iding something epic, I'll be happy with that. This way, a DM can put in a powerful mysterious artifact that won't be fully understood by the party, while minor magic is easily ided and disposed of if necessary.

I dunno. It seems like the flashier the item, the easier it would be to identify. Recognizing a legendary item might be somewhat trivial, while it's harder to determine the effect of a weakly enchanted item.

 

[Lanefan]

Yeah, right, I'll take that under advisement. That only works if you plan out each and every encounter in advance, along with detailed preset notes on where each item is.

Er...not true. See below...

Me, I work from a very rough mental outline of what needs to happen in each session based on the last and wing everything from there. Dungeon maps? Draw 'em on the spot as the party progresses based on what sort of place they're in, usually 2 to 3 rooms ahead, more if there's branching corridors. Yes, I run ongoing campaigns with detailed plots, NPCs and villains and do it quite well.

Been there, done that; have also done the pre-planned-to the-nth-degree version, and lots of variants in between.

I have a near-photographic memory for the events and characters and plots of my games,

A useful advantage; wish I could say the same.

but tracking individual items and their properties in secret is far more work than it's worth. This new default suits me just fine, thank you very much.

If you're not taking any other notes on the fly I can see why it'd be a nuisance. Me, I'm always making notes...very brief, but enough to tell me who got in on what encounters and what those encounters were against (I work out ExP between sessions and I'd never remember these without notes); who joined; who died; what the game date is and when it changes; noteworthy or amusing events; level bumps or drains, etc.....and, what items are found. I don't note the items ahead of time; instead, I note them as they're found by the party, mirroring the party treasurer noting them on the treasury list. (I suspect you may have mis-interpreted my previous post; the item list is not generated in advance, but on the fly as the game rolls along - the only things ever listed are things actually found by the party) A small side-advantage here is the built-in redundancy; it's rare - but not unheard of! - for a player to actually lose the party's treasury list...

Another reason I thought of to track items separately is for cases when a character for whatever reason has something the rest of the party doesn't know about.

Lanefan