How I Broke Up With Item Dependence and Bad Math

[Irda Ranger]

Do you have ways to let the player control this? IE the items they invest in become unlocked or awakened or revealed?

What I meant was that if you have a Dragonslayer Axe, it's a +1 axe while you're level 1 to 8, then becomes a +2 dragonslayer axe with the listed properties once you're level 9, and upgrades further as you reach levels 14, 19, 24 and 29. The items just follow the level progression given in the PHB.

If the item was a custom item that the PC was involved in the creation of then they'd have some control of what powers were in there, but the level the power becomes available at would be based on the guidelines in the rules.

 

[Draz]

But yeah, The Lord of the Rings is my favorite argument in favor of this approach. How else can you have a 20th level Wizard, a 10th level Ranger and Warlord, two 7th level Fighters and four 1st level halflings all adventuring together? That would just be flat-out impossible in RAW D&D. RAW D&D only really supports A-Team / Mission: Impossible scenarios where you've got a group of similarly-skilled individuals.

This has become my favorite argument (well, maybe) in favor of E6-style D&D. A Level 20 Wizard and a Level 2 halfling rogue adventuring together isn't so ridiculous if the Level 20 Wizard is actually just Level 6 with 14 extra feats. (Still pretty wacked, but altering some other rules -- like giving Level 1 characters a half-decent amount of starting HP -- can fix it.)

UPDATE EDIT: Actually, I'm trying to think of a good fantasy example where everyone's the same level and I'm blanking. Maybe they're all just copying LotR, but with the few exceptions where a couple 'kids' go off by themselves there's usually a mix of levels/experience.

The Chronicles of Prydain come to mind -- there's a reason Gwydion (Level 6 ranger?) usually gets separated quickly from the Level 3-ish characters (Taran, Eilonwy, Gurgi, Fflewddur, Doli) when the action starts up!

 

[evilgenius8000]

Hey, this looks really good. A question, though: Do monsters made with the DMG's DM's toolkit work with this system, or is this meant for use with your monster creation rules? Thanks.

 

[corwyn77]

Here's a question for proponents of this HR or something similar.

I plan on giving everyone an 'enhancement' bonus of 1/3 their level - this covers item bonuses as well as the apparent discrepancy at higher levels between monsters and PCs so we'll see how that goes.

My question is how do you deal with the changes to the magic economy. Since they no longer 'need' a magic weapon/armour/whatever, do you reduce the cash the party gets? What if they want to buy an item with a specific property? What do you charge? If you leave the cost the same, those with no special weapon have a lot of excess cash to spend. If the cost is less, you need to reduce the amount of monetary rewards significantly.

 

[Garthanos]

Here's a question for proponents of this HR or something similar.

I plan on giving everyone an 'enhancement' bonus of 1/3 their level - this covers item bonuses as well as the apparent discrepancy at higher levels between monsters and PCs so we'll see how that goes.

My question is how do you deal with the changes to the magic economy. Since they no longer 'need' a magic weapon/armour/whatever, do you reduce the cash the party gets? What if they want to buy an item with a specific property? What do you charge? If you leave the cost the same, those with no special weapon have a lot of excess cash to spend. If the cost is less, you need to reduce the amount of monetary rewards significantly.

This is something I want to figure out as well.. I mean I need to figure out how to make the magic economy of D&D fit my world...
do you have people buying there magic items? sure its possible or is it also possible most of their magic is discovered in ancient ruins and traded in for the ones they really want or bartering a big ones for stake in some land....
I've always liked a silver economy instead of one so heavily awash in gold... my world has enough disaster zones.. caused by amok magic... magic items are more popular with pcs and a narrow set of npc's who want to take over the world... magical devices that can give someone an edge without being obvious are also in demand.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

Hey, this looks really good. A question, though: Do monsters made with the DMG's DM's toolkit work with this system, or is this meant for use with your monster creation rules? Thanks.

Published monsters and those made using the DMG guidelines will work just fine with these HRs, since PC stats now advance at a fairly consistent +1 per level just as monster stats do.

My monster maker/manual of monster creation is intended to fix the numbers from the DM's side of the screen rather than the players' side. So only one set of HRs is necessary.

My question is how do you deal with the changes to the magic economy. Since they no longer 'need' a magic weapon/armour/whatever, do you reduce the cash the party gets? What if they want to buy an item with a specific property? What do you charge? If you leave the cost the same, those with no special weapon have a lot of excess cash to spend. If the cost is less, you need to reduce the amount of monetary rewards significantly.

Honestly, I'm not savvy to the whole economic debate/facet of D&D. In my current campaign I'm dropping cash and loot roughly equal to the parcel system, but in future campaigns I may very well go low-wealth, if that answers any of your questions.

 

[Irda Ranger]

My question is how do you deal with the changes to the magic economy. Since they no longer 'need' a magic weapon/armour/whatever, do you reduce the cash the party gets?

To some extent I never liked (or used) the standard treasure rewards and usually aim for something that "makes sense" for the campaign world. Zombies and werewolves, generally speaking, don't collect treasure. Allowing that sort of world was the whole impetus for creating the system.

What treasure is collected however is spent on non-item things - Keeps, building churches, collecting libraries of magical tomes, investing in mercantile trading houses, etc. Some give it away to charity and others blow it on bacchanalian festivals. It's the old school way.

What if they want to buy an item with a specific property? What do you charge?

There's no formula. Magical items are rare and hard to find outside of taking them forcibly from bad guys. Sometimes though you find a poor peddler in Calimport selling a carpet or lamp for coppers without knowledge of their true meaning or power.

If a player wanted a specific item though getting it would involve commissioning it, and the NPC capable of making it wouldn't just be able to buy the ingredients on the open market - the PC would have to collect them by some means. It's not a cost in gold pieces but time & adventure.

Alternatively the PC might just get a letter in the mail from a solicitor in Suzail that his second-uncle died recently and apparently left him a sword in his will. If the PC would be so kind as to come to Suzail its delivery could quick and simple (like it's ever that simple ).

If you leave the cost the same, those with no special weapon have a lot of excess cash to spend.

Ale & whores, friend. Ale & whores.

If the cost is less, you need to reduce the amount of monetary rewards significantly.

The funny thing about money is that if you give it to people they will find a way to spend it.

 

[Irda Ranger]

I've always liked a silver economy instead of one so heavily awash in gold...

In the DMG 1E actually Gary Gygax explicitly noted that the GP prices are a result of the inflationary action brought on by piss-poor adventurers going out into the wilds and coming back with a dragon's hoard on a regular basis. So it's "realistic" - D&D economies are similar to the "exogenous wealth" economies of post-Soviet Russia and the Middle East where adventurers play the part of the Gazprom billionaires and sheiks; but none of the campaign settings that have come out since then have really emphasized that point - and it sort of breaks the tone/feel that most people aim for when playing an FRPG. So this is a problem for me too.

One of the down-sides of being a (amateur) student of the history of financial systems and markets is that "D&D economics" hurts your brain. Only the modern financial markets can maintain enough liquidity to actually buy and sell items with the book-listed values for magical items without hyperinflating the value of the currency every time an adventuring company comes back from the dungeon. Prior to financial markets wealth was unsecuritized and tied up in land or commodity goods; no one would ever have 1,000,000 of any form of currency (except when the Roman treasury decided to debase its own currency by floating millions of lead-core coins with gold leaf, but that's not really money anyway), so once anyone did come back with that much money it would quickly wash through the local economy and you'd pay for shoeshines with diamonds.

Financial markets don't require any special technology though so you could make up a D&D world that has them even with medieval-level technology, but none of the D&D worlds I'm aware of has those. The closest D&D seems to get to modern finance are Venetian-like merchant-nobility in Waterdeep and Amn.

My preference is to keep monetary rewards handsome but low so that adventurers make a living similar to landed gentry, and that other rewards (such as magic items, lost knowledge, or answers to prophecy) are meaningful but cannot be converted into cash.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

UPDATE EDIT: Actually, I'm trying to think of a good fantasy example where everyone's the same level and I'm blanking. Maybe they're all just copying LotR, but with the few exceptions where a couple 'kids' go off by themselves there's usually a mix of levels/experience.

This is in no way a thread crap, but:

The Chronicles of Prydain
The Chronicles of Narnia
The Malazan Books of the Fallen
The Outlaws of Sherwood
Dune - if you count it
The Chronicles of the Black Company - for the most part
The Wheel of Time - there are exceptions but once you get past the first book most people who are actually adventuring together seem to be of similar level
The Song of Ice and Fire - not the whole series, mind you, but there are many instances of skilled groups rather than powered troupes
The Dies the Fire series
A good bit of the Heralds series
The Rhapsody Series

Classical Precedents:
Arthurian Literature
The Song of Roland and The Matter of France in general
The Iliad
Baron Munchasen and his Clever Servants
Romance of the Three Kingdoms
Journey to the West
The Outlaws of the Marsh
The Canterbury Tales - in a very oblique and non-adventurous way
The Henriad - not all characters are equally bad-ass, but I'd say Fallstaff is as high a level coward as other characters are true knights
The Seven Against Thebes
Jason and the Argonauts - at least once Hercules has left