D&D 5E Magic Items for individuals?

[AaronOfBarbaria]

I shoot your "suggestion" down not only because the 5E magic item rarity rules are doing a piss-poor job of emulating the 3E playing style (that is me telling you how bad they work for my purposes)

Except I can use them to perfectly emulate the 3E playing style, so that you can't is because of something different about you from me, rather than something different from the 5th edition book and the 3E book - you'll have to excuse me for assuming myself as not being some kind of super-special DM of awesomeness capable of things you couldn't even dream in my estimation that because I can do it, you can do it too.

..but because you somehow think it is okay to dismiss my wants by "just do it yourself, how hard can it be".

It isn't the lack of difficulty that causes me to suggest you do it yourself, it's something else entirely that you don't seem to have picked up on from my prior posts.

You need to choose. Either the work is so hard that any attempt will be "flawed", and then it is very uncharitable for you to suggest I do it myself. Or the work is so easy I can "take charge of my game" - and if so, why can't I hope for a professional designer to take my money and make an even better job?

I don't need to make that choice, and here is why: The work, if done by someone other that you, will be "flawed" because that person cannot actually be relied upon to make the same assumptions and value judgements for how important/useful something will be for your game specificially, no matter how skilled of a professional designer they might be.

Only you can mold a system that perfectly matches assumptions and judgements of value to your own group and campaigns, so only if you do the work yourself is an un-flawed system for your desires actually a possibility.

This should be clearly evident given your opinion of item rarity as presented, and how my opinion of item rarity as presented is entirely different (i.e. it does everything that I want/need it to, and you keep saying that it basically sucks).

And more importantly, make an official job, available to all equally.

Not everyone wants the same thing the same way, so even if some pro designer did put together the type of parts list item creation rules that you are asking for, there is absolutely no guarantee that it would actually be satisfactory to you.

So, to reiterate: I'm not saying you should do it because I don't think you deserve official support for your playstyle; I'm saying you should do it because that's the only way to have a reasonable chance of the result being the one you actually want.

 

[CapnZapp]

That's balderdash.

You're seriously trying to sell me the idea that of all possible subsystems and supplements, the one I want the most, is precisely the one you claim I need to do myself, since WotC will fail to give me what I want.

I really really need to restrain myself from giving you the profane reply that deserves. Stop trolling me.

 

[CapnZapp]

The addition of a 3.5 style spell-based item-creation/pricing system could fill in between those extremes: items it's OK to leave in the PCs' bailiwick but which require significant resources (wealth, downtime, feats, spells known) to make so they don't just flood the campaign with them. Crazier stuff can be left strictly to the DM.

Yes exactly

What I'm envisioning is an updated and improved 3E system that is tweaked for the changed parameters of 5E and has learned from the experiences of past edition to put abuse prevention front and center!

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

Having a single definitive price list for magic items would certainly be a break from what they seem to be aiming for for 5e.

What would be the default campaign assumptions used to assign values to properties? Should they produce several lists to fit different types of campaign?

I'd be rather surprised if no one has gone ahead and done a player-made magic item price list using DMG values as a base actually. Why not track down one of those that fit the particular campaign that you're running?

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

Having a single definitive price list for magic items would certainly be a break from what they seem to be aiming for for 5e.

What would be the default campaign assumptions used to assign values to properties? Should they produce several lists to fit different types of campaign?

I'd be rather surprised if no one has gone ahead and done a player-made magic item price list using DMG values as a base actually. Why not track down one of those that fit the particular campaign that you're running?

Thank you for seeing what it is that I've been trying to illustrate for [MENTION=12731]CapnZapp[/MENTION], who has chosen to interpret me saying that WotC likely won't value magical effects the way that he does (as evidenced by their valuing of magic items in the book by rarity which he has stated severe disagreement with) so they won't make a price list that he actually likes as "trolling."

 

[Tony Vargas]

Yes exactly

What I'm envisioning is an updated and improved 3E system that is tweaked for the changed parameters of 5E and has learned from the experiences of past edition to put abuse prevention front and center!

I'm not sure abuse-prevention is really on the table with 5e's design paradigm, but, going the 3e way you'd create an 'economy' presumably mapped to level. Within that economy the relative prices of magic items and the minimum level to make them would 'gate' each item. One question you'd have to answer is how far out of reach you want to place high-level items and how trivially available you want low-level ones, because those two factors are negatively related. Make higher level items much more expensive, and it becomes trivially easy to have a huge number of lower-level items; make higher level items less overly expensive, and it becomes possible to acquire them at lower level.

I suppose you could have outright 'tiers' where items from one tier require components and are traded within an economy that has no direct relationship to other tiers. So if healing potions are part of the gp economy, then magic swords and wands of fireballs would be part of some, IDK, 'mana economy' and there's no exchange rate between the two (for some arbitrary laws-of-magic reason).

Another question you'd have to confront is the relative balance of 'assuming' magic items at a given level. Do you pull back the power-level of the classes to keep it balanced - for instance, fewer daily slots on the assumption that the difference will be made up by items - or do you seek a new balance, upgrading challenges across the board?

 

[CapnZapp]

No Aaron.

You get to have whatever opinion you like.

But what you don't get is the power to decide for me it is in my best interests that WotC doesn't fill the biggest hole compatibility-wise visavi 3rd edition.

You can say "they won't do it" or "what we have is all we will get" all you like. That's kind of beside the issue, since neither of us decide WotC business.

What we can discuss is the hypothetical addition of a 3E-style magic item pricing mechanism.

 

[CapnZapp]

Having a single definitive price list for magic items would certainly be a break from what they seem to be aiming for for 5e.

What would be the default campaign assumptions used to assign values to properties? Should they produce several lists to fit different types of campaign?

I'd be rather surprised if no one has gone ahead and done a player-made magic item price list using DMG values as a base actually. Why not track down one of those that fit the particular campaign that you're running?

What they "seem to be aiming for" is not something I feel is very fruitful to discuss. WotC might never make the kind of supplement I want. And that's all there is to say about that part.

Now, assuming they were, I can discuss your other points.

What I need - what many of us need, is a starting point. One list.

Like for d20, I am perfectly capable of tweaking that list to suit special considerations. No metal on this world? Okay fine, all metals are X times more expensive. You're in the Elvish capital city. So magical leathers and bows are cheaper. And so on.

Generally, there's no need to try to make this problem out to be even bigger than it already is. D&D has never had any trouble selecting a baseline. So why should suddenly magic items (for the first time!) have to have several different price lists?!

I was as surprised as you, Capn.

But the reality is that I haven't seen anything coming even close. (The sane magic item prices is an attempt at tweaking the worst logic bombs of the DMG prices, but it's a far cry from listing modular magic property prices.)

My only guess is, and I repeat myself, that the work needed is much larger than the detractors are willing to concede.

 

[CapnZapp]

I'm not sure abuse-prevention is really on the table with 5e's design paradigm, but, going the 3e way you'd create an 'economy' presumably mapped to level. Within that economy the relative prices of magic items and the minimum level to make them would 'gate' each item. One question you'd have to answer is how far out of reach you want to place high-level items and how trivially available you want low-level ones, because those two factors are negatively related. Make higher level items much more expensive, and it becomes trivially easy to have a huge number of lower-level items; make higher level items less overly expensive, and it becomes possible to acquire them at lower level.

I suppose you could have outright 'tiers' where items from one tier require components and are traded within an economy that has no direct relationship to other tiers. So if healing potions are part of the gp economy, then magic swords and wands of fireballs would be part of some, IDK, 'mana economy' and there's no exchange rate between the two (for some arbitrary laws-of-magic reason).

Another question you'd have to confront is the relative balance of 'assuming' magic items at a given level. Do you pull back the power-level of the classes to keep it balanced - for instance, fewer daily slots on the assumption that the difference will be made up by items - or do you seek a new balance, upgrading challenges across the board?

Why are you trying to reinvent the wheel?

It's not like this issue is new. It was the same questions faced by 3E.

And since 5E has a similar gold to level ratio compared to 3E (reverse-engineered DMG treasure guidelines can be found at Bag of Holding; essentially and roughly saying you can expect 1 GP per XP except for tier IV) that's all you need to implement a similar experience to d20: A level 20 character can trivially easy buy hundreds of level 1 items.

That is, if you want to.

Anyway: your questions are valid, but they are after all only part of the job needing to be done. There's no reason we need to commit to specifics in order to even agree the job can be done or should be done.

 

[werecorpse]

Addressing the OP's question I would keep away from equipping npc's with items equivalent to pc's. This happened a bit in 3e and when it did the treasure gained from defeating a random party of bad adventurers was way above that for defeating a similar monster threat. In one game I played where most enemies were human we very quickly ended up in monty haul territory.

For the most part npc's don't need magic to function either as a tenable bad guy or as a threat, (they did in 3e) so you don't need to give it to them. Therefore the issue of it not making sense for them not to have magic items is resolved. (I am not counting healing potions here. IMO given they are readily available and cheap any sensible NPC of wealth would be carrying -and using- some of these and to do so makes sense in the 5e paradigm). If you accept they are not needed that deals with that issue.

However if you decide the NPC has a lair you absolutely should allow the NPC to treat their treasure sensibly - and tailor the treasure to the NPC. Give the wizard a wand not a magic shield. Make the PC's earn it.

As for the argument about getting a 3e style treasure cost list - I'm For it. I find the rarity one pretty useless. While I found the 3e magi market thing not to my liking it does make sense to me that commodities available for sale and in demand would have a price based more on their individual nature.