Magic items are finally rare !

[Arkham Angel]

House rules have always been incorporated into new editions of D&D. And sometimes things change incrementally (and other things become completely different, depending on the problem). We just hope it's for the better.

And furthermore, it sounds like you don't want us to have your fun! Edit: If you have a house rule to do something a certain way, then it must need improvement. Why not include any positive changes in a new edition? (And if there's more than one way to do it well, then maybe there should be more than one way of doing it in the book, too.)

Good point and well taken. Certainly I know little about 4E, but from what I can tell is that the designers are trying to think for us and sell us on a product with rules that are rigid and constricting.. not to mention all this crazy stuff about doing damage when missing, at will powers and the list goes on.

I will be trying 4E for sure.. and I hope I'm wrong.. I hope it will be fun but I just have this feeling that we're getting too involved in mechanics and cool powers as opposed to just plain ol' good story telling.

 

[JohnSnow]

And all the characters you mention who wear little or no armor are literary characters, who don't have to worry about chance. The author can handwave their lack of armor - they don't risk injury or death unless the author decides they do. The only example drawn from history - medieval knights - pretty much always made sure to armor up whenever they were likely to face other people bearing sharpened steel intending to do them harm. Unless you have some sort of system where the players can ensure that they won't face injury or death by fiat, then wearing armor and carrying weapons - the best armor and weapons they can get their hands on - will be the only pragmatic choice.



Aragorn has the advantage of having Tolkien write his battle scenes for him. PCs don't have that. If you want to have a cinematic type advanture, then a system designed to emulate that by removing all elements of chance, like say Amber, would work. But that's just not D&D, and never has been.

What does chance have to do with what the game says about the effectiveness of armor? D&D isn't a reality simulator. It's a game that primarily is intended as a way of playing out cinematic adventure. If the rules said that a character got a class bonus to AC equal to his level, then there'd be a point where wearing armor was pointless. The balance of that sort of thing is determined by the rules.

In "the real world," there were times in history when wearing heavy armor was a disadvantage. In D&D (3e, that is), that's never the case. By making mobility important in combat, you actually begin to address this issue in a real way. Sure, if you're slugging it out in toe-to-toe combat, wearing heavy armor makes sense. But if you're making full use of mobility and the battlefield, you might find that wearing heavy armor restricts your mobility for a limited benefit.

For a game like D&D, you want to write the rules so that combat is survivable. That's the job of the designers. How you do that has nothing to do with realism (in reality, most combat is lethal and complete luck). So the question is about how the reality (surviving combat is more a matter of luck than anything else) should be bent to achieve that desired end. And that depends more on the feel you want for the game than anything else. Do you want Conan? Then give the unarmored character a defense bonus, and do something pretty similar to the Star Wars Saga rules. Do you want all characters to wear armor? Create a system much more like the one from 3e. If you want something in between, you create something in between.

 

[Kintara]

Good point and well taken. Certainly I know little about 4E, but from what I can tell is that the designers are trying to think for us and sell us on a product with rules that are rigid and constricting.. not to mention all this crazy stuff about doing damage when missing, at will powers and the list goes on.

I will be trying 4E for sure.. and I hope I'm wrong.. I hope it will be fun but I just have this feeling that we're getting too involved in mechanics and cool powers as opposed to just plain ol' good story telling.

Well, all I can say is keep in mind that the actual storytelling comes from you, so the stuff from the previews are bound to sound like a big bunch of random rules.

 

[Storm Raven]

What does chance have to do with what the game says about the effectiveness of armor? D&D isn't a reality simulator.

Chance has an effect because if you have a system in which there is a chance that someone might get injured or killed, then the pragmatic choice driven by that system is to take the steps necessary to avoid that. If the system gives any kind of benefit to wearing armor and using weapons or other magical equipment, then players will want them for their characters to raise their chances of survival. If magic arms and armor increase those chances, players will want them for their characters.

The only ways to make equipment not have this effect are to (a) make equipment have little or no effect on the survivability of the characters, which I don't think will be feasible, or (b) eliminate chance as a factor.

D&D is not a reality simulator, but you do have to have a system that people are willing to accept the premises of. And as a premise, "weapons and armor don't make you substantially better in combat" is something I think people will simply not accept.

It's a game that primarily is intended as a way of playing out cinematic adventure. If the rules said that a character got a class bonus to AC equal to his level, then there'd be a point where wearing armor was pointless. The balance of that sort of thing is determined by the rules.

No, it really isn't a way to play out cinematic adventures. For that, you have to look at other systems. D&D is a system that is a genre unto itself, and attempts to make it something else (realistic, grim, gritty, cinematic, and so on), usually fail, because players have gotten used to D&D being D&Dish. And there likely wouldn't be a point where wearing amror was pointless. Because armor would likely increase their AC even further. Or some sort of magic would. Or some combination of magic and armor would likely end up being better.

(For the record, there is a point right now in 3e D&d where armor stops being valuable - for very high Dexterity characters their Dexterity bonus to AC can potentially exceed the max Dexterity bonus of all types of armor sufficiently that wearing armor is a net negative for them, but that's a corner case).

In "the real world," there were times in history when wearing heavy armor was a disadvantage. In D&D (3e, that is), that's never the case. By making mobility important in combat, you actually begin to address this issue in a real way.

For the most part, in the "real world" there has never been a situation in which wearing no armor was better, in general, than wearing some armor. And if you think mobility in combat isn't a valuable thing in 3e D&D, then I'm not sure if we have been playing the same game at all. In point of fact, the criticism I have seen for the game has generally been that heavy armor types aren't worth using, with everyone using light armor, and sometimes (rarely) medium armor.

Sure, if you're slugging it out in toe-to-toe combat, wearing heavy armor makes sense. But if you're making full use of mobility and the battlefield, you might find that wearing heavy armor restricts your mobility for a limited benefit.

And the 3e rules generally reflect this. I'm not sure what sort of change you are advocating with this line of argument.

For a game like D&D, you want to write the rules so that combat is survivable. That's the job of the designers. How you do that has nothing to do with realism (in reality, most combat is lethal and complete luck). So the question is about how the reality (surviving combat is more a matter of luck than anything else) should be bent to achieve that desired end. And that depends more on the feel you want for the game than anything else. Do you want Conan? Then give the unarmored character a defense bonus, and do something pretty similar to the Star Wars Saga rules.

No. Not if you want to emulate Conan. Why? Because in the books, Conan wore armor. Often, and almost always when he had advance warning that he was going to be fighting someone. Because Howard wasn't silly enough to think armor was of no value. I see the "Conan doesn't wear armor" trotted out all the time, and it is nonsense, because it doesn't accurately reflect how Conan behaved in the books.

 

[AWizardInDallas]

Responding mostly to the subject line... magic items were already rare. It's the Dungeon Master that makes them not. The entitlement rules in the Dungeon Master's Guide weaken the economics in game world design.

 

[Aus_Snow]

Responding mostly to the subject line... magic items were already rare. It's the Dungeon Master that makes them not. The entitlement rules in the Dungeon Master's Guide weaken the economics in game world design.

No, they weren't/aren't.

Unless you use the same argument for everything (i.e., 'The rules of the game dictate or strongly suggest x, but the DM can always do y instead, therefore x is not a part of the game!') in which case. . . well, is there really any point making judgements about any RPG system?

 

[AWizardInDallas]

No, they weren't/aren't.

Unless you use the same argument for everything (i.e., 'The rules of the game dictate or strongly suggest x, but the DM can always do y instead, therefore x is not a part of the game!') in which case. . . well, is there really any point making judgements about any RPG system?

Yes, they are in just about every edition of the game. How many magic items you place is not set in stone anywhere. The level of magic items should be a game world decision made by the DM not by the game system. It is in fact just that...a suggestion. That's why the book is entitled the Dungeon Master's Guide. You can, for instance, design a magic poor world or a magic rich world and the choice is up to the DM and/or players and game balance and, to a lesser extent, flavor is what's at stake. If one choses to roll on random treasure charts, follow the entitlement "rules" or go with the magic items dictated in an adventure then the choice is pretty much taken from your hands.

 

[Aus_Snow]

Yes, they are in just about every edition of the game. How many magic items you place is not set in stone anywhere. The level of magic items should be a game world decision made by the DM not by the game system. It is in fact just that...a suggestion. That's why the book is entitled the Dungeon Master's Guide. You can, for instance, design a magic poor world or a magic rich world and the choice is up to the DM and/or players and game balance and, to a lesser extent, flavor is what's at stake. If one choses to roll on random treasure charts, follow the entitlement "rules" or go with the magic items dictated in an adventure then the choice is pretty much taken from your hands.

Incorrect.

D&D 3e assumes that PCs will not only have access to certain kinds, amounts and potencies of magic items at certain character levels, but will in fact own the required types/numbers/strengths of same.

If you deviate far from these rules - or even a small way, in particular directions - you must also change a number of other things in order to compensate for the inevitable consequences. That number can be small or large, but it will be there.

IOW, yes the DM can house rule whatever they like in whatever system they like (hey, I do for instance, a lot.) But that doesn't change the written assumptions, requirements, consequences, etc., in each and every game system.

 

[Arkham Angel]

Incorrect.

D&D 3e assumes that PCs will not only have access to certain kinds, amounts and potencies of magic items at certain character levels, but will in fact own the required types/numbers/strengths of same.

If you deviate far from these rules - or even a small way, in particular directions - you must also change a number of other things in order to compensate for the inevitable consequences. That number can be small or large, but it will be there.

IOW, yes the DM can house rule whatever they like in whatever system they like (hey, I do for instance, a lot.) But that doesn't change the written assumptions, requirements, consequences, etc., in each and every game system.

I agree with AWizardInDallas, but your statement about deviation is true. It's all up to the DM to balance the game in order to match the way he/she and the players want their game world to be.

I take all the treasure tables and entitlements and throw them out. I can decide what a monster has for treasure and why and also keep the balance of the game world in tact; whether it be a high magic or low magic setting.

 

[Storm Raven]

Incorrect.

D&D 3e assumes that PCs will not only have access to certain kinds, amounts and potencies of magic items at certain character levels, but will in fact own the required types/numbers/strengths of same.

If you deviate far from these rules - or even a small way, in particular directions - you must also change a number of other things in order to compensate for the inevitable consequences. That number can be small or large, but it will be there.

But 3e isn't any different from any other edition of D&D thus far. And it isn't likely to be different in this regard than 4e. The only real difference between 3e and 1e or 2e in this area is that 3e told you what the assumptions the designers made were.

1e and 2e as systems, made assumptions as to what sorts of equipment PCs would have at various points in the game, and those assumptions affected how those rule sets played. A particularly obvious example is the way those editions handled what 3e handled as DR - monsters that were immune to weapons with less than a particular magic bonus. (What has been called the "you must be this tall to fight this monster" method of design). The difference is that those editions simply didn't tell you what those assumptions were. If you deviated from those assumptions, it had an effect on how your game played. Most people didn't notice, because (as the rules didn't tell them, and the internet was either nonexistent or in its infancy) they didn't know what the "baseline" was to begin with.

But the effect was there just the same - witness the enormous number of letters and articles in Dragon about "runaway" campaigns, or super stingy DMs, and how those games just didn't seem to be any fun. And the advice given was always for the DM to come to the "happy medium". But that had to be found by trial and error, which led to most DMs going through a nasty learning curve as they found that sweet spot. All the 3e designers really did by including the wealth by level tables was try to eliminate that learning curve.

But never think that there was not some sort of assumption made when designing previous editions about what sort of equipment characters of various levels would have. There was. They just didn't bother to tell you what their assumption was.