D&D 5E Magic items in D&D Next: Remove them as PC dependant?

[FireLance]

My point still stands. In fact you brought up one of the arguments that lead to the Oberoni fallacy being formulated: Crit Immune creatures are not a problem for Rogues, because the DM doesn't have to use them.

Admittedly, it isn't a perfect analogy, because I believe that the Oberoni fallacy tends to deal with intra-party, PC to PC balance issues, while the lack of magic items for the party as a whole is more a matter of party vs challenges balance. In addition, I believe that not using crit-immune creatures is probably more restrictive than not using high-level creatures, since it includes several classic opponents such as undead, elementals and constructs. The lack of magic items might prevent you from challenging the most powerful demon lords and archdevils, but that seems more "logical".

Pre-3.X characters, especially Fighters, had a lot more power than most people realize, even excluding followers, and pre-2e monsters were much weaker. Outside of the first couple of levels magic items did not factor into character power nearly as much.

What I meant by "inadvertent" was the scale of the effect not that the effect itself existed. In other words the fact that magic items were a major determinant of character power instead of a medial determinant.

Fair enough, although the lack of magic weapons in pre-3e D&D was a significant limiting factor for fighters in encounters with creatures that could only be hit by magic weapons.

Superficially that is true. In actuality? Far from it. Those 5 levels grant the characters 5 levels worth of hp and abilities. A substantial bonus, often enough to significantly tilt the battle even more in the party's favor than it would be between equivalent level opposition.

On the basis of absolutely no evidence or playtesting whatsoever, I think the difference is close enough that it would not be noticeable at the table. If it is, just raise the monsters' challenge one level at a time until you get to the desired state of balance. Mathematics and theorycrafting will only get you so far. After that, you need to use actual play experience and an iterative trial and error process to get closer to what you want. Yes, I know that in an ideal world, this should ship with the game. However having to do the work yourself does not make the game unplayable.

I would rather D&D Next not need a work around in order to accomplish no magic item campaigns.

You can't have it both ways. Either 5e will need a workaround for no magic item campaigns, or it will need a workaround for campaigns with plenty of magic items. The only difference is whether you subtract from the party's effective level for the lack of magic items, or add to it for their presence.

 

[Savage Wombat]

Either 5e will need a workaround for no magic item campaigns, or it will need a workaround for campaigns with plenty of magic items. The only difference is whether you subtract from the party's effective level for the lack of magic items, or add to it for their presence.

When phrased that way, I think it's pretty obvious that it would be easier to balance for no magic and adjust up. The only question then is how to make it as convenient and straightforward as possible to tell how much to adjust.

 

[Mokona]

If you separate armor and shield, and take into consideration that some characters would want to boost more than one ability score, the "big six" might actually be seven, eight or more individual items.

4e narrowed down that "big six" into three, as stated in the first article: weapon, armor, and neck slot, and you don't even need those if you use the inherent bonus rule.

<snip>

"Completely ineffective" compared to what? If the definition of "completely ineffective" is dealing a few points of damage less per round, I think the 4e team did an excellent job.

Taking the last first, you see around these forums that people don't want one PC to be always overshadowed by another PC. Put a ranger side-by-side with warlock; you'll see the ranger out-striker her fellow striker obviously. Since their jobs are "do damage" and the gap between them is highly noticeable the one player will feel kind of left out. He didn't go into picking a warlock with the play-against-type goal of being worse than his striker peers. He assumed that the "math worked". Further, once he found some magic items that let him catch up with his peer that was nice...until the carpet was yanked out from under him. There were also a lot of feat taxes that a warlock paid just (to try) to keep up with damage from a rather vanilla ranger.

Inherent bonuses turned out to be a failed patch. If I recall you get +1 to hit at 2/6/11/16/21/16 and +1 defenses at 4/9/14/19/24/29? That doesn't make sense. Look at treasure parcels: PCs receive their first +2 item at 2nd level. By 6th level, when the party gets +2 to one aspect, the party should already have ten (10) +2 items. That's enough for every party member to have already had a +2 weapon for over a full level and on top of that each should have +2 to either armor or non-AC defenses. Official inherent bonuses are so far behind the magic item curve it doesn't make sense to say that one is designed as an alternative to the other. I'm not even counting cash which could be used to buy additional +2 items at the start of 6th level and liquidating useless +1 items once you've replaced them with +2 items.

Wizards R&D wanted magic items to feel special. They tried to accomplish this by making DM magic item rewards above the PC level. This meant that getting your items from the DM in treasure was vastly superior to spending treasure to get what you wanted. The 1/5 resale value also played strongly into this. The outcome of this hamfisted approach was worse than the original problem. "Wish Lists" were a direct outgrowth of the fact that you could not buy the items that fit your build and could not effectively convert treasure into the items that fit your build.

Possible solutions?

• Make characters builds independent of magic items (which the vast majority in this poll support)
• Let characters easily turn treasure into the items that they want
• Remove magic items from the game

Which is best? Assume no items (in the "math") and provide fast guidelines to "scale up"? Or assume +X items and provide guidelines to "scale down"? 1) Addition is easier for humans than subtraction, therefore scaling up is better than scaling down. 2) Fighting weaker opponents feels less heroic. 3) Make those monty-haul games filled with magic items feel like they're overpowered by sending them up against overpowered opponents (it's logical ).

 

[FireLance]

When phrased that way, I think it's pretty obvious that it would be easier to balance for no magic and adjust up. The only question then is how to make it as convenient and straightforward as possible to tell how much to adjust.

I wouldn't be surprised if 5e actually took this approach. However, my main point has been that the difference is psychological and the underlying math is still the same. In no version of D&D have the PC ever been dependant on magic items because they can always take on challenges appropriate the magic items they have (if any).

 

[kitsune9]

There is a middle road where the PC's can be quasi-dependent on magic items. For example at the highest levels of play, if you don't have magic items, your chances of defeating the ancient red wyrm is going to be far more difficult than if you're decked out with bling. So game design can be, "What iconic battles can we have where you need a lot more than just character resources in order to succeed?" Dragons, liches, beholders, etc.

Magic items can be single-purposed to, providing only a mechanical benefit to a particular encounter, but completely nothing in any other use. An example is a dragon bane feature where you got extra damage against dragons, but not against anything else. 1e had longsword +1/+3 vs. giants and such.

There are other approaches too, but this one is one suggestion off the top of my head.

 

[FireLance]

Taking the last first, you see around these forums that people don't want one PC to be always overshadowed by another PC. Put a ranger side-by-side with warlock; you'll see the ranger out-striker her fellow striker obviously. Since their jobs are "do damage" and the gap between them is highly noticeable the one player will feel kind of left out. He didn't go into picking a warlock with the play-against-type goal of being worse than his striker peers. He assumed that the "math worked". Further, once he found some magic items that let him catch up with his peer that was nice...until the carpet was yanked out from under him. There were also a lot of feat taxes that a warlock paid just (to try) to keep up with damage from a rather vanilla ranger.

Inherent bonuses turned out to be a failed patch. If I recall you get +1 to hit at 2/6/11/16/21/16 and +1 defenses at 4/9/14/19/24/29? That doesn't make sense. Look at treasure parcels: PCs receive their first +2 item at 2nd level. By 6th level, when the party gets +2 to one aspect, the party should already have ten (10) +2 items. That's enough for every party member to have already had a +2 weapon for over a full level and on top of that each should have +2 to either armor or non-AC defenses. Official inherent bonuses are so far behind the magic item curve it doesn't make sense to say that one is designed as an alternative to the other. I'm not even counting cash which could be used to buy additional +2 items at the start of 6th level and liquidating useless +1 items once you've replaced them with +2 items.

Are we still talking about the difference of a couple of points of damage per round and a +1 bonus to attack rolls and damage rolls here? I'm all for balance, but throwing around words like "overshadowed", "failed patch" and "so far behind" makes me think that the focus is on the theoretical mathematics instead of the actual play experience at the table, or that the knowledge of the lack of exact mathematical equivalence is tainting the play experience at the table.

 

[drothgery]

When phrased that way, I think it's pretty obvious that it would be easier to balance for no magic and adjust up. The only question then is how to make it as convenient and straightforward as possible to tell how much to adjust.

The thing is that you want the most common case to be the one that needs no adjusting. And outside of Dark Sun, D&D without a fairly high level of magic items is really, really unusual.

 

[Savage Wombat]

The thing is that you want the most common case to be the one that needs no adjusting. And outside of Dark Sun, D&D without a fairly high level of magic items is really, really unusual.

True. But I wonder how easy it is to come up with a "standard" for magic item ownership that everyone agrees with. I use 3E/Pathfinder's recommended totals as a DM, but I'm not really happy with it.

 

[Mouseferatu]

The thing is that you want the most common case to be the one that needs no adjusting.

While you'd think that would be the case--and indeed, it often is--it's not universal. Ease of adjustment has to play a factor as well.

If, for instance, it's much easier to adjust up than to adjust down (I'm not saying it is, just offering it as an example), then the designers need to strongly consider designing the game to adjust up--even if that means more people actually have to adjust from baseline.

It's not nearly as obvious a call as you'd think.

And outside of Dark Sun, D&D without a fairly high level of magic items is really, really unusual.

Is it?

That's true if you go by D&D as written. But as played?

Obviously, all I have is anecdote. All any of us has is anecdote. The only people who might--I stress might--have more are those companies that have gotten comprehensive and widespread feedback. But I know that, in my personal case, I have played in far more campaigns that differed from the written standard than I have those that followed it. And in every case where a campaign differed, it differed by lowering the amount of magic.

And that, really, is the crux of this whole discussion. "Low magic" and "high magic" mean different things to different players--but the fact is, so does "standard magic."

Far more important than "This is how it's most often been written" is "This is how it's most often been played." And I don't think any of us have nearly as strong a grasp on that as we think.

 

[Recidivism]

The thing is that if you want the classic D&D feel of fairly common magic items (any but the lowest-level characters will have magic weapons and armor) and you want +N weapons and armor to exist (and have effects similar to what they did in previous versions of the game) then you have to build the assumption that PCs will have them into the math behind system, and if you don't want DMs to just guess on when they should hand out +N items then you need some guidelines for that.

There are lots of RPGs where magic / exceptional equipment is far less important. But those games are not D&D.

I disagree on pretty much every count.
First off, it may be your experience that the "classic D&D feel" is for fairly common magic items. But what that means is pretty much defined by your DM and your early experiences gaming in it. My classic D&D experiences never involved my characters becoming walking trinket repositories.

As for whether it's built into the system or not, I think it's a good idea to provide the guidelines for how to adjust the game, but it simply makes more sense to start at a baseline level, i.e. none, and detail what should commonly be adjusted based on the frequency at which the DM decides to hand out the items. It just makes sense given that a stated goal of 5E is to provide for modular design.

It's also pretty silly to argue that the prevalence of magic items has any great bearing on what you consider D&D. I really don't care what you consider D&D or not, as long as I can play D&D in a way that I find enjoyable.