D&D 5E L&L for 5/12

[Giltonio_Santos]

Two things I believe are worth considering:

First, if the decision of not making magic items part of balancing characters remains, the concern with balance expressed by some people in this thread becomes irrelevant. As far as I can tell, magic items in Next are more like story awards, not an expected part of character advancement, a change of pace from 3E and 4E before it. If the DM gives away items with powerful mechanics and poor roleplaying drawbacks, who cares? He could give items with powerful mechanics and no drawbacks and that wouldn't change the game. In Next, magic items are a "at DM's discretion" thing. If you're going to measure character balance by the items they have access to, you shouldn't use attuning, and shouldn't use items with roleplaying drawbacks either. I believe the game is more interesting with those, though.

Second, the power to identify a common item during a short rest should be bounded to an Intelligence (Arcana) test. Characters with access to a library get to do it without rolling. I know that I'll use this rule in my own game. As someone else pointed, we need to keep some mystery flowing into the game, and magic items were always one of the ways to do that. Much like in every other edition of D&D ever published, once you're back to town you'll have no problem to identify everything, but easy identification "on the fly" simply doesn't work to me.

Cheers!

 

[ExploderWizard]

I like the concept of attunement, but I'll reserve judgement of the implementation until the details are published.

Detecting magic items just by handling them? Automatically identifying an item with a short rest? These ideas stink on ice and undermine any sense of mystery that attunement was trying to provide.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

....better.

Attunement still strikes me as crazy metagame (it's so stressful you can only do it three times!....three?) and largely unnecessary (Dear DMs who don't want their characters to have a lot of magic items: it might help if you can just not give out a lot of magic items?). So it's starting off on the wrong foot.

But the system as a way for describing how one finds out about a magic item's properties (and drawbacks) is pretty solid. The drawbacks and lore bits might have an issue of "sure, you can, but nobody ever does" unless 5e comes with some neat random tables to roll on for that.

So better. It still doesn't do away with my central problems with attunement, but I could see adopting the "attunement process" as a way of discovering what a complex magic item does and is all about, and dropping the apparently pointless metagame cap that the system comes with. Better. There's something usable here.

I don't think the cap is necessarily more metagame than any number of other D&D elements. The question is, how do they explain it, lore-wise? They don't really tell us that, here. I can see ways to make it very much part of the world of D&D, but also ways to screw it up and make it seem fake-as-hell.

It is kind of sad/amusing, though, that D&D, in 5E has basically got to where a lot of house-ruled D&D games were in the late '80s and early '90s ("attunement"-type processes and limits were a very common house rule in my experience), but not yet as far as Earthdawn, from 1993, which managed to make attunement an unquestioned part of the setting, rather than some weird metagame thing (of course, ED managed to do that with so many things).

As for "don't give out a lot!", that's actually kind of a weak argument for two reasons:

1) It means that if you use pre-gen adventures (whether WotC or 3PP), you will need to go through them and carefully chop down the number of magic items.

and

2) It doesn't prevent one PC ending up with a ridiculous number of items, or PCs pathologically hording magic items, no matter how minor or obsolete, both of which can slow down games and make them a lot less fun (I saw this a fair bit in 2E, particularly the latter - it was cute/cool at first, but after a few years became pretty tedious, as players acquired giant checklists of items that they had to keep track of).

Whereas a cap helps with both these things. A DM always needs to exercise some discretion, but anything that makes running the game easier is going to be good. I just hope they have decent lore for the cap. Three is a magic number, so it's hardly shocking or unreasonable to use it - note that it's not three times ever, it's three at once, too.

 

[I'm A Banana]

As for "don't give out a lot!", that's actually kind of a weak argument for two reasons:

1) It means that if you use pre-gen adventures (whether WotC or 3PP), you will need to go through them and carefully chop down the number of magic items.

Yeah, I can see that. Making it part of the core game means WotC doesn't need to worry about weird between-published-adventure synergy with the magic items they hand out. That makes some academic sense, even if it remains really artificial.

2) It doesn't prevent one PC ending up with a ridiculous number of items, or PCs pathologically hording magic items, no matter how minor or obsolete, both of which can slow down games and make them a lot less fun (I saw this a fair bit in 2E, particularly the latter - it was cute/cool at first, but after a few years became pretty tedious, as players acquired giant checklists of items that they had to keep track of).

In order for one PC to end up with a ridiculous number of items, the DM would still have to give out a ridiculous number of items, so if you don't give out so many items in the first place, there's no chance for anyone to acquire so many that it becomes "tedious."

I just hope they have decent lore for the cap. Three is a magic number, so it's hardly shocking or unreasonable to use it - note that it's not three times ever, it's three at once, too.

...which sort of contradicts the idea that these items are supposed to be special and character-defining.

It's like King Arthur giving away Excalibur to Lancelot when he gets his hands on a Flametongue.

Though I'd agree that good lore for this could go a long way toward making me happier with it. "3, because it's stressful," doesn't work. It is almost literally the LEAST they could do to put some fiction on the number.

 

[jodyjohnson]

Three is a magic number.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aU4pyiB-kq0

 

[DMZ2112]

....better.

Attunement still strikes me as crazy metagame (it's so stressful you can only do it three times!....three?) and largely unnecessary (Dear DMs who don't want their characters to have a lot of magic items: it might help if you can just not give out a lot of magic items?). So it's starting off on the wrong foot.

But the system as a way for describing how one finds out about a magic item's properties (and drawbacks) is pretty solid. The drawbacks and lore bits might have an issue of "sure, you can, but nobody ever does" unless 5e comes with some neat random tables to roll on for that.

Attunement as limitation = unnecessary metagame, but attunement as learning tool = pretty solid. Couldn't have said it better myself. For once I'm totally in agreement with KM.

And I'm fond of the idea of these items being iconic, character-defining items. But, IMO, if an item is to be iconic and character-defining, it's more of a character feature than a magic item. Excalibur isn't a magic item, it's Arthur taking the "Magic Royal Sword" feat.

...Yeah, that didn't last long.

 

[Li Shenron]

Attunement still strikes me as crazy metagame (it's so stressful you can only do it three times!....three?) and largely unnecessary (Dear DMs who don't want their characters to have a lot of magic items: it might help if you can just not give out a lot of magic items?).

I refer to [MENTION=18]Ruin Explorer[/MENTION] comment about this.

Why three times? Why not three times? It's just a number, same as the number of spells a Wizard can prepare, if there has to be a number, there has to be a number.

They actually put a "max as many items as your Cha bonus" variant in the playtest. That already is a narrative explanation, but the drawback is that low-Cha PC players will protest vehemently against this.

You could have a fixed number, a level-dependent number, or a number depending on another ability. All these options have pros and cons, and someone will always come up asking "why not the other?"

I think the main purpose of attunement is not to restrict how many items a PC has, but rather how many she can load at once. Attuning is fast, so in a sense we might be only switching from a "Christmas tree" effect to a "Santa's bag" effect, i.e. instead of a PC going around with 20+ items hanging from her body, she'll go around with just as many items stored in her bag except 3 of them, and switching between encounters if necessary. With this in mind, that DM still needs to just not give out too many items. So after all, the cap itself is actually not that necessary to have... it could be just a suggestion for the DMs who are afraid of going overboard, and prefer to have a written number to rely on.

And I'm fond of the idea of these items being iconic, character-defining items. But, IMO, if an item is to be iconic and character-defining, it's more of a character feature than a magic item. Excalibur isn't a magic item, it's Arthur taking the "Magic Royal Sword" feat. Dizzt's figurine isn't just some treasure, it's Drizzt's "PokePanther" alternate class feature. Achilles's armor isn't just a piece of equipment, its part of his "Epic War Hero" theme. That is, it's based in the character, not in the item. That's an entirely different kind of game element than "look at this sweet sword I found in this dragon's lair," and it seems odd to put them both in the same bucket. It's kind of weak to have your character-defining magic item dependent on your DM giving it to you.

Definitely this.

I liked the idea behind a Samurai's ancestral daisho in d20 Rokugan: in a setting where magic items are rare, not given out lightly (and especially not on sale), the magic katana of a Samurai was technically a class feature, a weapon which the Samurai herself "awakens" and improves every now and then.

I don't think the rules need to enforce anything like this, but it would be nice to have guidelines and suggestions. One possibility is to have an attuned item develop new abilities based on what the PC does in the story (e.g. the usual "after slaying the red dragon, your sword is now flaming"). Another is to let the player choose. A third option is to go random.

What I like in the idea of progressive attunement (i.e. the item develops further features gradually), is that stealing someone else's stuff doesn't mean you suddenly can activate all its powers.

 

[Kobold Stew]

The play test rules had two "Experimental rules" associated with attunement, both of which enrich play.

1. the cap on attuned items was equal to your charisma modifier (min 1). This removes the arbitrary cap of three and ties attunement to the character's "force of personality". It's a smart solution once the mechanic has been introduced.

2. intelligent/cursed items might resist de-tuning, resulting in a Charisma contest.

I like both of these, and would be happy to see them presented not as "experimental" but as the core rules.

 

[Li Shenron]

Not a fan of the new take on magic items detection and identification, i prefer trial, error plus detect magic and identify spell.

Unfortunately there is no one size to fit all gamers... There are a lot of gamers who would like magic items to be intriguing, so that when you find one, you have to think about how to find out what it really does. And there are even more gamers who just don't want to bother, they regard magic items as technology, and just want to use them asap, so even the old 8-hours-casting Identify spell bothers them because it takes too long for them.

It's strange however that they have made this decision, because attunement allows the DM to choose what is automatically identified with a simple short rest and no character ability VS what requires more effort, but then the DM's decision is completely bypassed by a single player who learns Identify. Unless of course the DM rules that it's not enough to learn some secrets.

 

[DEFCON 1]

It's strange however that they have made this decision, because attunement allows the DM to choose what is automatically identified with a simple short rest and no character ability VS what requires more effort, but then the DM's decision is completely bypassed by a single player who learns Identify. Unless of course the DM rules that it's not enough to learn some secrets.

Presumably it's for groups that choose to not use attunement at all. Remove attunement, use Identify, and you're back to earlier-edition methodology which some groups prefer. And if you're a group that loves the attunement mechanics and hates the Identify bypass... then you don't put Identify in your game so it's never an issue.

Basically... they're trying to cover as many different methods that groups use or might want in one set of rules, under the expectation that not every group will use every rule within that set. Some will not use the "handle for a short rest, learn basic properties" rule. Some will not use "Identify spell bypasses attunement" rule. Some will not use "3-item-limit on attunement" rule. Some will require potions and scrolls to take a short rest for learned properties just like every other magic item. But at the end of the day, they hopefully will have a format written in the book that in some basic form can cover the needs of almost every type of group. Rather than just writing "Do whatever you want for identifying and using magic items!" and ending up with thousands upon thousands of different methods based entirely upon whatever a specific DM completely invents for their table.