Low Magic Campaigns?

[Imperialus]

True enough, but that style of playing Paranoia is of fairly recent origin, and fairly rare at that.

(I have reccomended the game be used for such campaigns, though, and on these boards, too!)

Oh you better belive it. It was really tough to get everyone moving in the same direction. We actually ended up declaring the first 3 sessions a mulligan and restarting just so we were all on the same page. Paranoia had a lot of (really fun) baggage attached that doesn't play well with others.

 

[AllisterH]

Lighted streets are now taken for granted???

If you're playing Eberron, sure.

FR and GH? Nope. Neither has lighted streets.

Alchemist Fire: Er, when did this become magical? Even in 1E, I had this at 1st level.

S'mon is right about one thing. 3.X is the first version to state, "ok, this is what a typical adventurer at X level should have in terms of monetary wealth. Their most powerful magic item will cost 1/4 of their entire wealth". It actually states in the 3E DMG about how some encounters won't give any treasure and how you're supposed to double this at different encounters etc. etc. For example oozes won't have treasure which is mentioned in all 3 editions of the DMG (I just noticed this when perusing my copies....) My issue with the discussion is the insistence that 3E has increased the monetary/magic level of the PCs when compared to 2E. This I think is false given both what the adventures produced would result in AND what the DMG actually said.

However, in 1E/2E, there is no EXPLICIT amount stated. There are the adventures produced which pretty much make 3E characters look like paupers but there is the treasure tables which were creature dependant and even here, I'm not exactly convinced that 1E/2E characters were poorer than their 3E cousins.

Note: I'm not stating which version of D&D is better but what the books ACTUALLY said.

Ex: a single Green Hag's lair in 2E would have the following,

(x,f) - which translated to
X- Any two potions (which is what the Hag would have on her)
F - 10% chance to get 3d6x1000 silver pieces, 40% chance to have 1d6x1000 gold pieces, 15% chance to have 1d4x1000 electrum pieces (10 gold pieces = 1 plat/electrum), 20% chance of 2d10 gems, 10% chance of 1d8 art objects and 30% chance of any magic item except weapons....

Page 180 of the DMG (black cover version) and 181 of the MM (white hardcover)

3e: 1,600 gp. Pg 170 of the 3.0 DMG.... EL 5

Yeah, you could roll real badly in earlier editions but lower wealth?

 

[mhacdebhandia]

It's all very much a power fantasy. There are people trying to deny this, and act like we're out to write a novel, or create a work of art, or get into the Julliard School, or pass the qualifying exams for MENSA.

Sure, whatever helps you sleep at night.

I don't really care if my characters succeed at what they're trying to do or not, whether they live through it all or die meaninglessly, so long as I can enjoy playing out their endeavours and dealing with the consequences of their actions.

It's not about "acting the role" and showing off my skill there, or proving I can "think my way through" even when my character's abilities are actually pretty useless, or anything other than, I suppose, showing that I can take a character with an interesting personality and make a worthwhile (to me, anyway) story out of the they fall into.

So - am I playing D&D for a power fantasy?

 

[Brother MacLaren]

S'mon is right about one thing. 3.X is the first version to state, "ok, this is what a typical adventurer at X level should have in terms of monetary wealth. Their most powerful magic item will cost 1/4 of their entire wealth".

Generally correct, though visible in rudimentary form in earlier editions. For example, the Master DM's Book (p. 4) had a method for creating high-level PCs and assigning wealth to them, with rough guidelines for pricing magic items and a guideline of one permanent magic item per 2 levels of experience (as well as one temporary item per 2 levels).

Yeah, you could roll real badly in earlier editions but lower wealth?

Lower wealth isn't the issue. Lower magical wealth is. 3e assumes that PCs can convert wealth to magic, and convert less-than-optimized magic to more-optimized magic. The 2e DMG explicitly states "no magical stores exist" -- p. 83. The Companion Set DM's Book talks about magic item shops on p. 26, and the sense there is clearly this: 1) it is up to the DM whether they exist or not, and 2) if they are, the available selection, and the selection to be sold to any particular PC, is likely to be limited.

So you can find all the gold you want in lairs, but at a certain point you don't have anything to spend it on. In the two versions of D&D I've played before 3.x, it is not a default assumption of the ruleset that PCs can buy ANY magic items, let alone the exact ones they want. The randomness of treasure and the lack of magic shops are what made earlier edition treasure less advantageous for PCs.

Treasure Type F was pretty generous, and even so it wasn't likely to have ANY magical items. NONE of the lair treasures were more than 35% likely to have magic items. Some of the individual treasure types were, though even then you were rolling randomly. That's 35% chance of a potion or scroll, 5% ring, 5% rod/staff/wand, 15% misc, 15% armor/shield, 25% weapon. About 10% were cursed (14% potions, 2% scrolls, 0% wands/staves/rods, 13% rings, 17% misc, 10% armor/shield, 10% weapons). A few were useful. Suppose I'm a fighter using a +1 longsword. Yay me! Of all magic items we find, 2.6% will be a longsword of +2 or better! Good thing I'm not a battle-axe specialist (0.125%). And a magic bow? 0.0375% chance.

 

[AllisterH]

Lower wealth isn't the issue. Lower magical wealth is. 3e assumes that PCs can convert wealth to magic, and convert less-than-optimized magic to more-optimized magic. The 2e DMG explicitly states "no magical stores exist" -- p. 83. The Companion Set DM's Book talks about magic item shops on p. 26, and the sense there is clearly this: 1) it is up to the DM whether they exist or not, and 2) if they are, the available selection, and the selection to be sold to any particular PC, is likely to be limited.

So you can find all the gold you want in lairs, but at a certain point you don't have anything to spend it on. In the two versions of D&D I've played before 3.x, it is not a default assumption of the ruleset that PCs can buy ANY magic items, let alone the exact ones they want. The randomness of treasure and the lack of magic shops are what made earlier edition treasure less advantageous for PCs.

Treasure Type F was pretty generous, and even so it wasn't likely to have ANY magical items. NONE of the lair treasures were more than 35% likely to have magic items. Some of the individual treasure types were, though even then you were rolling randomly. That's 35% chance of a potion or scroll, 5% ring, 5% rod/staff/wand, 15% misc, 15% armor/shield, 25% weapon. About 10% were cursed (14% potions, 2% scrolls, 0% wands/staves/rods, 13% rings, 17% misc, 10% armor/shield, 10% weapons). A few were useful. Suppose I'm a fighter using a +1 longsword. Yay me! Of all magic items we find, 2.6% will be a longsword of +2 or better! Good thing I'm not a battle-axe specialist (0.125%). And a magic bow? 0.0375% chance.

This I agree with entirely.

My only problem with this method was "What the hell do we use all that money for" and "Geez, an eternal salt shaker?, what am I supposed to do with this?".

To me, it seemed kind of weird that you could end up with literally hundreds of thousands of coins even before 10th level and a lot of "non-optimized" magic items (folding boat anyone?, my bag of holding by then held so many magic items that truthfully I stopped keeping track) but you couldn't DO anything with them unless you wanted to buy a castle.

Really, what was the point in money then if you can't buy anything? As a player and DM, I thought it was pointless...

EDIT: Now I'm actually curious. What DID everyone do with all the non-magical wealth they used to get?

 

[Imp]

An additional complication is that 1e characters spend forever at 8th, 9th, 10th level, and in terms of non-caster PC power it's basically the endgame – the only thing for you to do is to build a castle or collect better magic items. I suppose you could kit out your henchmen, but henchmen were not a common thing when I played. Mostly my 1e characters plotted fantabulous retirements.

 

[S'mon]

EDIT: Now I'm actually curious. What DID everyone do with all the non-magical wealth they used to get?

By the book, training to advance was incredibly expensive. But the main use for cash seems to have been territory development, hiring armies of mercenaries, building a fortress, that kind of thing.

I noticed that high level 1e adventurer NPCs have a good bit more magic than in 3e, but generally 1e PCs will have less magic because they can't trade in whatever they find for magic, as said.

3e PCs seem very cash poor compared to 1e, because typically all their money goes on buying more magic items to optimise the PC, as in Diablo and other CRPGs, while this was not an option in 1e/2e.

 

[AllisterH]

By the book, training to advance was incredibly expensive. But the main use for cash seems to have been territory development, hiring armies of mercenaries, building a fortress, that kind of thing.

I noticed that high level 1e adventurer NPCs have a good bit more magic than in 3e, but generally 1e PCs will have less magic because they can't trade in whatever they find for magic, as said.

3e PCs seem very cash poor compared to 1e, because typically all their money goes on buying more magic items to optimise the PC, as in Diablo and other CRPGs, while this was not an option in 1e/2e.

Ah, cash for levelling. Let's just say I'm glad 2E got rid of that because even in 1E, I thought it was weird. "You're adventuring on the high seas and you've gone up a level or two but because your ship got sunk, you can't increase in level?".

1E/2E PCs even at mid-level have MORE magic items but less on them than their 3E counterpart. As others have mentioned, since you could trade in magic items, what tends to happen in 3.X is that the amount doesn't change when you level.

A 5th level fighter will have a magic sword, shield, armour, cloak and a couple of rings. At 10th level, he's going to have the same exact same gear but their effect will be better.

In 1E, that 10th level fighter might still be using the same exact same gear he had at 5th level but literally have a roomful of magic items that he just can't find a use for but can't sell. Which personally I think doesn't seem to me be "low-magic" since he still has a lot of magic items but he just can't use them.

I'll state here and now that I hated this paradigm. I mean, if someone somewhere came up with the folded boat magic item, it has to have some value to someone, so there should always be a market for items.

 

[S'mon]

In 1E, that 10th level fighter might still be using the same exact same gear he had at 5th level but literally have a roomful of magic items that he just can't find a use for but can't sell.

No reason not to sell them - 1e DMG has sale values for all items, including artifacts. Maybe you're thinking of a different edition?

 

[AllisterH]

No reason not to sell them - 1e DMG has sale values for all items, including artifacts. Maybe you're thinking of a different edition?

Hmm...weird, we always played it as "you couldn't sell them since you can't buy them" and I thought the GP value was simply how much it would cost to make the item if a PC spellcaster ever wanted to. Which of course was practically never.

re: Money...Yeah, I did the whole castle and lordship buying thing and that seemed to be the only option available...