D&D 5E Frustrated with 5E magic items

[S'mon]

This! This made me laugh my asses off. I know a few female player would kill for such a rod.


For coocking of course, what were you thinking?

"coocking"?!

Surely you meant "cocking"?

 

[S'mon]

So invent money sinks, it is then. Might as well just refrain from giving them gold then, and save the time spent on the money sink "roleplay".

You can just as well leave the money in the adventure, and the PCs can take it or leave it.

 

[Matrix Sorcica]

You can just as well leave the money in the adventure, and the PCs can take it or leave it.

Sure. But why would they ever spend the time taking it, whne all there is to use is for are money sinks?

 

[NotAYakk]

Sane grossly underestimates the usability of a lot of magic items in 5E, basing it way too much on hold overs from 3.X. I'd suggest you use Blacky the Blackball's excellent treasure supplement.

He puts armor +1 and shield +1 in the same category. Which means he fundamentally doesn't understand that (a) shields are worse than armor because far fewer can use them, and (b) magic shields are one of the ways S+B keep up with greatweapon/archery builds.

It was a simple test, and he failed it. Checking everything else he does is going to be a lot of work, and if he failed that one, I cannot have much faith.

Wow. Cloak of Invisibility is cheaper than a +2 suit of armor?! This guy is nutz; CoI is a top tier legendary item!

 

[Matrix Sorcica]

He puts armor +1 and shield +1 in the same category. Which means he fundamentally doesn't understand that (a) shields are worse than armor because far fewer can use them, and (b) magic shields are one of the ways S+B keep up with greatweapon/archery builds.

It was a simple test, and he failed it. Checking everything else he does is going to be a lot of work, and if he failed that one, I cannot have much faith.

Wow. Cloak of Invisibility is cheaper than a +2 suit of armor?! This guy is nutz; CoI is a top tier legendary item!

Because +2 armor breaks bonded accuracy. And cloak of invisibility is an at will 2nd lvl spell, that's why. You can't use magic item rarity for anything, as is well described in the document.

I suggest you read it, and perhaps this thread as well, where you can see the very valid reasoning behind the pricing. Now, it might not be perfect, but it's way better than Sane or anything WotC has offered us. I'm using it in my campaign, and so far it's working out fine (around 9th level).

 

[S'mon]

Because +2 armor breaks bonded accuracy.

I think if I were using the DMG monster building rules, statting +3 armour & shield as 'priceless' would make sense. As it is I'm used to monsters with +15 to +19 attack bonuses and PCs going up to +20, so an AC in the 26-30 range doesn't break anything.

I do think he over rates those items considering how an Eldritch Knight can just spam Shield spells for +5 AC.

Edit: But the general approach is sound, it's just that attune/non-attune is not the enormous power gap mooted, and getting high AC armour at high level is still an important thing for heavy armour PCs IME or they'll be out-AC'd by naked barbs and by some DEX-based PCs.

 

[S'mon]

Sure. But why would they ever spend the time taking it, whne all there is to use is for are money sinks?

Why do magpies collect shiny rocks? Heck why do people IRL take money they don't need?!

 

[Flamestrike]

Depending on the campaign and the availability of high level NPCs in the campaign and the general alignments of the PCs, the tax rate might not be such a good idea.

Here is what my mainly neutral group would say (Greyhawk, not that much high level NPCs)
Dear captain, are you really sure you want us to pay such a tax? We did kill that ancient dragon you know? Do you really make us angry, go away, and spend our treasures in an other city. Are you aware that the lich Narzuk has awakened and that your lordship wants us to take care of it? Maybe we should pass on this mission for now...

At low level, it would be easy to enforce such a tax. But adventuring is not a revenue in itself and it would be very hard to tax a high level adventurer that does not want to pay such a tax. Income tax was not really a thing. It was usually a fixed amount of money based on the live stock and the properties that you owned. Barring money, a lot of taxes were paid through working for the liege or in live stocks or in fabricated goods instead of money. Treasure would hardly be taxable as you could not prove it was not previously taxed.

As I see things, adventurers are providing a service to the crown by removing threaths fromthe country. The best way to get the money they make is by letting them spend their cash in your city/country and to tax the commoners/artisans. It is less risky, it makes adventurers happy. Your artisans gets money from them and so do you. If there are common fee to enter a city, most characters will pay the fee but they might not return to that city. And a city entry fee is usually a few copper per persons and live stocks anyways.

The tax shennanigan would only work a few times then the characters would quickly either change the zone in which they are adventuring, start hiding their treasures to avoid taxes or simply start to slay the soldiers trying to tax them. Especially high level non good PCs.

There are zones of ways to separate players from their money. Tax is the least appealing of them.

Im not a huge fan of taxing PCs for other reasons. Its a game. Its supposed to be fun. Taxes are not fun. Not for me anyway!

I dont have too much of a problem with money. I tend to run longer adventuring days as default so a lot of money gets spent on healing potions to press on when those HD are expended. I also tend to rule most valuable material components of spells are expended with use as a HR so that places a resource drain the casters.

Plus, my group likes to spend money on big parties and living the life of luxury in any event. Like most real people would.

 

[werecorpse]

Because +2 armor breaks bonded accuracy. And cloak of invisibility is an at will 2nd lvl spell, that's why. You can't use magic item rarity for anything, as is well described in the document.

I suggest you read it, and perhaps this thread as well, where you can see the very valid reasoning behind the pricing. Now, it might not be perfect, but it's way better than Sane or anything WotC has offered us. I'm using it in my campaign, and so far it's working out fine (around 9th level).

Thanks for this reference. I have been using Sane as a help, now I’ll use this as well. I don’t agree with all of it but I like to see the reasoning. I’m surprised armour isn’t broken down into armour types, especially given it’s usefulness. I mean +2 chainmail is only marginally better than non magical plate so surely its value is no more than a few thousand?

 

[werecorpse]

Im not a huge fan of taxing PCs for other reasons. Its a game. Its supposed to be fun. Taxes are not fun. Not for me anyway!

I dont have too much of a problem with money. I tend to run longer adventuring days as default so a lot of money gets spent on healing potions to press on when those HD are expended. I also tend to rule most valuable material components of spells are expended with use as a HR so that places a resource drain the casters.

Plus, my group likes to spend money on big parties and living the life of luxury in any event. Like most real people would.

Tax, like anything, needs a game purpose. I run two games at the moment. One is a short time frame standard 5e exp, levelling up after every couple of days adventuring. In that game tax is irrelevant the party spends their money on potions and scrolls. One is long term slow exp (1/10th) The party just spent 6 months downtime, just after their city had to defend itself and hired mercenaries to do so. As such I doubled the daily cost of living expenses above comfortable to reflect increased taxes. By the end a few of the characters were in debt and it was a good in game motivation for them to go on a risky treasure hunting adventure - the players enjoy that motivation existing.