Has D&D become too...D&Dish?

[Hussar]

I think the word you are looking for is "verisimilitude."

Oh man, I REALLY gotta go home for a while. I'm losing my bloody English. Spend too much time teaching 5 year olds and you start to talk like them.

Yeah, that's the word though. I'm not terribly concerned about RAW demographics since they seem "close enough to work" for me. However, as I said, ignoring the elephant in the corner is something of a breaker for me. I can live with it, and I certainly do in many games. But, when I stand back and think about it, I can't see why it shouldn't be more pervasive than it is.

 

[Glyfair]

My experience was and is that most players don't find the majority of treasure, even when it is in plain sight.

In my experience, this was very common in the more character oriented or storytelling games. Taking all the treasure, searching for every nail in the building, putting it in a pile, and casting Detect Magic seemed out-of-character, and didn't advance the stories. So, the players tended to resist those sorts of things and missed a lot of treasure that way.

Also, groups that were goal oriented tended to miss loads of treasure as well. Go in - accomplish mission (usually defeating the BBEG) - get out. Those players missed a lot of treasure because they weren't interested in searching every single door, book, dumbwaiter, etc.

 

[Hussar]

Excuse me, but the equation for pricing the fabrication of magical items assumes this is the overall cost in components, materials and various items used to build the magical trinket, right? Wouldn't these prices vary from nation to nation or from world to world, given the rarity or not of materials, availability of spellcasters and specialists (such as alchemists, smiths and jewelers) and basic services needed.

Where in the RAW does it state that basic prices may NOT vary at all from place to place, or under specific circumstances?

Under every magic item in the RAW it states a listed price. That price is not variable. There are no mechanics for varying that price. By RAW, all prices are absolutely fixed.

Now, I agree that this is utterly ridiculous and the first thing I would do when designing a campaign would be to chuck in what is available where and for what price. That's fine. However, in doing so, I am changing the RAW.

There is no need to say that the prices may not vary. Since there is no mechanic for determining the variance, there is no means for the prices to vary.

 

[Numion]

In my experience, this was very common in the more character oriented or storytelling games. Taking all the treasure, searching for every nail in the building, putting it in a pile, and casting Detect Magic seemed out-of-character, and didn't advance the stories. So, the players tended to resist those sorts of things and missed a lot of treasure that way.

Also, groups that were goal oriented tended to miss loads of treasure as well. Go in - accomplish mission (usually defeating the BBEG) - get out. Those players missed a lot of treasure because they weren't interested in searching every single door, book, dumbwaiter, etc.

That's strange talk coming from "The World's Greatest Thief"

This is of course anecdotal, but I've never played in a group that didn't loot. Our group looted even in Cyberpunk 2020. And Twilight 2000 (that makes sense though, everything being scarce and all). And Traveller.

Your argument carries no weight in 1E vs. 3E comparisons though, because the same arguments can be made for 3E.

 

[Geron Raveneye]

Under every magic item in the RAW it states a listed price. That price is not variable. There are no mechanics for varying that price. By RAW, all prices are absolutely fixed.

Now, I agree that this is utterly ridiculous and the first thing I would do when designing a campaign would be to chuck in what is available where and for what price. That's fine. However, in doing so, I am changing the RAW.

There is no need to say that the prices may not vary. Since there is no mechanic for determining the variance, there is no means for the prices to vary.

Don't get me wrong, I don't intend to actually join in this variant of a favoured discussion between you and Raven Crowking (even if it's always a pleasure to read a civilized discussion between two disparate points of view ), and I don't know if this little piece is included in the 3.5 DMG, but in my good old 3.0 DMG, it says on page 243 in the box Behind the Curtain: Magic Item gold piece values:
"Use good sense when assigning prices, along with the items here as examples."
It's actually the last sentence in that box.

Maybe I'm wrong, but to me that sounds like the authors are telling me "If you want the components of a Wand of Fireballs to be extra rare in your campaign, you're fully justified to up the costs for that item as well." They actually mention that a few formulas cannot possibly cover the whole range of different cost factors for all the diverse magical items presented in D&D. So I'd say they do allow some leeway in the cost factors of magical items, and thus their market prices.

 

[Hussar]

Maybe I'm wrong, but to me that sounds like the authors are telling me "If you want the components of a Wand of Fireballs to be extra rare in your campaign, you're fully justified to up the costs for that item as well." They actually mention that a few formulas cannot possibly cover the whole range of different cost factors for all the diverse magical items presented in D&D. So I'd say they do allow some leeway in the cost factors of magical items, and thus their market prices.

Heh, I do enjoy a civilized convo. LOL

I would point out though a couple of things. The spell pricelist in the PHB carries no such caveat, which is more what I've been talking about anyway. Permanent magic items isn't what I'm after. It's the effects of permanent low level spells. Also, the value of gold in DND is absolute. It becomes difficult to adjust for any sort of market factor when the value of the money never changes. Thirdly, the price for all equipment and spell components in the PHB are not subject to change either.

Even if magic items vary wildly in value, by RAW, none of the spells will. A country where pearls are very rare will simply use smaller pearls to power an Identify spell. After all, all I need is 100 gp in pearl. It says nothing about how big that pearl, or even the quality of that pearl.

 

[Raven Crowking]

To me, it's extemely difficult to ignore the elephant in the corner that is low level permanent magics. As was mentioned, these exist solely for metagame reasons. That's true. The only reason to have permanent light sources is to reduce the PITA factor of dungeon crawling. However, again, that reason doesn't have to be examined. We only have to worry about how it affects the setting, not why it's there in the first place.

Well, the elephant in the corner is exactly the same as D&D demographics. Those peasants don't choose PC classes for the same reason that those casters don't choose continual light or continual flame.

 

[Raven Crowking]

That's strange talk coming from "The World's Greatest Thief"

This is of course anecdotal, but I've never played in a group that didn't loot. Our group looted even in Cyberpunk 2020. And Twilight 2000 (that makes sense though, everything being scarce and all). And Traveller.

Your argument carries no weight in 1E vs. 3E comparisons though, because the same arguments can be made for 3E.

Not only that, but the players I was talking about would think that they had done a good job looting, too!

 

[Raven Crowking]

Don't get me wrong, I don't intend to actually join in this variant of a favoured discussion between you and Raven Crowking (even if it's always a pleasure to read a civilized discussion between two disparate points of view ), and I don't know if this little piece is included in the 3.5 DMG, but in my good old 3.0 DMG, it says on page 243 in the box Behind the Curtain: Magic Item gold piece values:
"Use good sense when assigning prices, along with the items here as examples."
It's actually the last sentence in that box.

Maybe I'm wrong, but to me that sounds like the authors are telling me "If you want the components of a Wand of Fireballs to be extra rare in your campaign, you're fully justified to up the costs for that item as well." They actually mention that a few formulas cannot possibly cover the whole range of different cost factors for all the diverse magical items presented in D&D. So I'd say they do allow some leeway in the cost factors of magical items, and thus their market prices.

The point is not that you cannot make changes to the prices; the point is that the RAW must be altered to circumstance if you are going to use real world examples and socio-politics or economics to "logically" determine anything about a world.

 

[Numion]

Not only that, but the players I was talking about would think that they had done a good job looting, too!

Heh heh .. then it's absolutely no foul, no harm. Depending on your plans as a DM you can of course hint in-game they've missed a lot, if you want them to loot more, or just let it be. Like let them talk to a shopkeeper who just bought a lot of stuff from the refugees of their expedition.

FWIW the early adventures of the Shackled City campaign have a lot 'Greyhawked' treasure. It becomes even a bit annoying how oblivious the PCs can be - but due to the self-correcting nature* of 3E advancement it's not a big deal to miss either gold or XP. Hurts in the short term, but the whole campaign doesn't require 'taking 20' on the whole complex.

* Missing gold at lower levels is only a pittance compared to the usual hauls at upper levels, and missing xp is not a problem since lower level characters will net more from later encounters.