Gamer's Limited Knowledge?

[Acid_crash]

I have to admit I wouldn't know where to find rules for magic items that level. Unearthed Arcana? I'd just ask on ENWorld probably.

Unearthed Arcana...nope.

You can try Earthdawn...oh, that's not d20. Hmmm... give me a half hour and a few hours of sleep and I will be able to answer this question. I do know, for sure, that Dragon Magazine had a article on leveling up magic items as the character levels up, I just don't remember the number.

 

[fusangite]

I notice a real lack of empathy and somewhat inaccurate description of those of us who are picky about purchasing properly playtested products. Balance is a major concern in D20 -- it's a big part of the spirit of the game now. I'm not a game mechanical genius and so I cannot always figure out if something is over- or under-powered just by reading the rules. So, for me, scrounging free stuff off the web or purchasing products by publishers I have never heard of always presents genuine risks to my game balance going all out of whack. I don't just stick to WOTC and really established brands like Green Ronin out of some kind of superstition or irrational loyalty; I stick to them because I can't immediately tell if an class, feat or mechanic is unbalanced or broken and there are legitimate reasons not to trust some new hit point mechanic that might radically underpower the barbarians in my world, for instance.

 

[hong]

I have to admit I wouldn't know where to find rules for magic items that level. Unearthed Arcana? I'd just ask on ENWorld probably.

Clearly I have not pimped enough.

 

[jmucchiello]

I notice a real lack of empathy and somewhat inaccurate description of those of us who are picky about purchasing properly playtested products.

But you have the Internet. All you have to do is ask on this very site "Hey, is X balanced?" or "What's right/wrong with X?" Unless the book is totally obscure or not out more than 10 minutes, you'll get a reasonable response.

I think the real lack of empathy is toward the people who buy "official" stuff sight unseen and without asking around. Even with "thorough" playtesting, unbalanced stuff gets out - even through official channels.

 

[jmucchiello]

I have to admit I wouldn't know where to find rules for magic items that level. Unearthed Arcana? I'd just ask on ENWorld probably.

Personally I don't think you need rules for them. Just give out a magic item. If the "right" character has it, it has more abilities than it does for other characters. Over time, the magic item gains power because the character wielding it become the "right" character for another ability. When the party identifies the item, just say "there are other abilities that alude this spells abilities to describe them." Once they see a magic item power up a few levels later, the party will potentially seek out items that defy identification similarly.

I don't see how you put (concrete) rules on that. The value of the magic item is equal to all of its abilities with discounts for stuff that only a paladin or elf can unlock. I've thought about writing something up on this, but it's always pretty short on rules.

hong's take is interesting for a campaign where you don't give out magic items normally. Yet everyone benefits from them.

 

[Ibram]

As a DM I am very very careful about what products I allow into my game, and because I dont have unlimited time and money to fully research products I doubt that I would ever let a player bring something 3rd party into one of my games.

There is a LOT of material out there, and at least 80% of it will unbalance a game if casualy allowed in (I learned this the hard way with Swashbuckling Adventures and an assasin that could do 200 points of damage at 12th level... without magic of any kind). Since there is so much out there (a good portion of which is poorly designed) it can be very hard for a DM or a player to find something that suits their taste.

WotC offers a good baseline for DM's. Its campaing setting material is balanced for that setting and the splatbooks are balanced for all the campaing settings. Its perfectly reasonable, IMO, for a DM to declare that only WotC books can be used in his game.

 

[fusangite]

But you have the Internet. All you have to do is ask on this very site "Hey, is X balanced?" or "What's right/wrong with X?" Unless the book is totally obscure or not out more than 10 minutes, you'll get a reasonable response.

I think the real lack of empathy is toward the people who buy "official" stuff sight unseen and without asking around. Even with "thorough" playtesting, unbalanced stuff gets out - even through official channels.

I agree strongly with your second paragraph. I certainly don't equally value all WOTC and Green Ronin products. You are quite right that even that most reputable brands produce crap. But this is hardly a case for the general high quality of RP products currently available.

As for your first paragraph, I certainly do read RPGNow reviews, ENWorld reviews and the like but in many cases the products in which I am interested are either not reviewed or are reviewed by reviewers I do not know or trust. Furthermore, as someone whose credit rating was destroyed 10 years ago, many of the good online products are simply unavailable to me and many of the products I see in local stores have not been reviewed online by people I trust/know.

Lastly, my first point still stands: I am not a wealthy guy. This supposed universal availability of coherent balanced variants comes with a high price tag that I am less than willing to pay. I'm the kind of guy who buys the core books and then spends $100-$200 per year on the hobby, the majority of which is spent buying non-gaming books for research, making copies for players, cooking the occasional in-game meal, etc. That means one or two supplements per year. The reason I did not play Magic the Gathering and games of its ilk is that I am not interested in participating in a hobby which is premised on the idea of spending $500 per year to "properly enjoy" it.

 

[Malin Genie]

WotC products provide a common ground for people beginning to game with one another, so that each player/DM knows that what is being used in the game is (1) widely available (2) widely accepted; if not actually 'better' than the alternatives.

I don't for one moment think that WotC balances or playtests its stuff better than all other publishers, but as noted already there has been in the past some very poorly-thought-out 3rd-party material that may still influence gamers' opinions of non-WotC material.

If I buy a WotC book I have a reasonable chance that any group I play with will accept material from it; if I create a character from WotC resources, I have a reasonable chance that the DM will accept it without challenging or altering mechanics or equipment I have chosen; if I want to start an online gamebased on non-WotC material I have less of a chance of finding people who already own the relevant material.

Which reinforces my tendency to buy WotC books over non-WotC books. I have bought non-WotC books before and will in the future, but I know for the above reasons I probably won't get as much mileage out of them as I will out of WotC books, and so they have to offer something extra in terms of functionality or inspiration to overcome that. In addition, I can usually flip through WotC stuff in my FLGS, whereas many non-WotC books I might otherwise buy are only available through ordering over the Web, and I have no way of actually checking out the contents before buying. Yes, I can access reviews - but a WotC product is likely to be tried by more people, and thus more thoroughly reviewed and discussed than any third-party product, so I have a more informed opinion before I consider buying.

I'm not saying that the above situation is good, but it exists; just as many businesses will buy Microsoft because they fear potential interconvertibility and compatibility issues (which may or may not exist) reinforcing the tendency of the next business along to buy Microsoft.

(I use Linux and Firefox, though, so make of me what you will )

 

[buzz]

You know, I don't sweat balance. I'm the DM. If a certain combo is making Bannor more powerful than Balto, well, more orcs are going to attack Bannor. Simple. But, then, I don't play D&D to win, nor do I worry too much about all the numbers adding up. I just care about fun. If a product has an option or mechanic that sounds like it might be fun --and doesn't seem obviously mal-designed in some way-- I'm all for it. I don't feel a need as a DM to make all player choices fit into some prefectly-balanced, well-oiled machine. I want, both as a player and a DM, to see cool stuff happen in the game. If all the participants are happy, it's a success.

Still, I admit that I will more readily buy WotC product sight-unseen than I will most other companies, save for a handful like Malhavoc and Green Ronin. Why? It probably has more to do with being a collector and completist than anything else. And, well, I consider WotC to be in that "handful" of quality d20 companies. (You can talk about "d20 companies" all you want, but don't for get that WotC is one, too.)

As to Joe's original point... yeah, I get frustrated with those attitudes as well. The OGL was one of the best things that ever happened to D&D, let alone RPGs in general. I think to eschew the very diversity that the OGL enables is kind of counter-productive. I mean, WotC can only employ so many people. Some of the best designers in the d20 industry have never seen their names grace a WotC hardcover. While I will not fault anyone for not actively pursuing d20 product (money and time both being in short reserve for many of us), I do think that specifically eschewing these "alternative" products in the name of "keeping it core" is just plain silly.

And, like I said, the pursuit of Perfect Balance is, IMO, a fool's errand. If I want balance, I'll hop on my Mac and fire up Quicken. (And then weep, oh, weep...)

 

[Izerath]

A few tidbits.....

...I don't for one moment think that WotC balances or playtests its stuff better than all other publishers, but as noted already there has been in the past some very poorly-thought-out 3rd-party material that may still influence gamers' opinions of non-WotC material.

I agree with the first part of your statement, and the second, while redundant, is a well made point regardless. Put an apple with a worm in it next to a rotten apple and most will take the one with the worm.

Ironically, if you take a good hard look at many of the SPFs (Spells, Prestige classes and Feats) that are getting pumped out in WotC products, they are seriously broken, and while perhaps play-tested, in reality WotC has as little time as the next publisher to test all this stuff. Sure, maybe they have bigger volunteer bases for playtesting, but does that make it better? Do they really test the impact each feat will have on the core rules? I doubt it. They do their best, but I would wager that it's hardly as thorough as most believe.

As an example, IMO, much of the "Complete" series crunch destroys the game balance that the core books bring to the table.

Tacit example: The SUDDEN metamagic feats in Complete Arcane. Your BBEG is gonna take a big hit on the chin when that 5th level Wizard casts a SUDDEN MAXIMIZED fireball, which quick-boosts wizard's effective caster level by 4 by doling out the average damage for a 9th level fireball. Not to mention that the wizard should normally be 11th level to even try this under normal circumstances. Is once a day enough? Sure - just enough that you better think about raising the CR of your BBEG if you want the encounter challenging enoug to be the crescendo of the adventure and not a big ol' flop.

SPFs have become an excuse for "breaking" the rules (more the P&Fs). Now, I mean this not in the sense that using them is wrong - do what is fun for your group - but in the sense that it definitely can make the game mechanically unfair if overly abused. And we all know that min-maxing is SO rare.

As for your comments on why WotC gets the lionshare of "acceptance?"

Mindshare, marketshare and market presence. They aren't owned by Hasbro without complying with those basic marketing principles. There are too many Hasbro suits lingering around the accounting books for that type of business ignorance to fester.

Until another publisher can break ground in the mindshare category for solid mechanics, the other pieces won't get maximized.

For FUN:

Think about the RPG market in medieval terms.

WotC is King.

WotC holds a tournament (OGL) where lords (3rd party Pubs) joust for rulership of a vassal of the King's lands (the RPG market)

While the Lords squabble for the vassal, the king gets fat and happy with noone to contest his rule over the rest of the kingdom.

Eventually, the Lords kill each other off until there are only a few strong ones left.

Then, the King starts the tournament over by releasing 4th edition.