Magic Items...

[Ultimatecalibur]

I do not get some posters dislike of Magic Weapons granting accuracy bonuses, but want to give them damage bonuses. My understanding has it that an accuracy bonus is better than a damage bonus from a game stability perspective.

In most editions of D&D, monster lifespans can be simplified down to the rough number of hits they can take. In other words, a 1 Hit Die monster can take 1 hit, a 2HD monster can take 2 hits, a 3HD monster can take 3 hits, etc.

An accuracy bonus increases the frequency of a hit occurring with out decreasing the number of hits a monster can survive. On the other hand, a damage bonus decreases the number of hits a monster can survive while maintaining the frequency of hits.

An accuracy bonus alone will maintain the minimum length of the fight while decreasing the expected maximum length(the theoretic maximum length of a fight is infinite) making the game more stable.

A damage bonus alone will decrease the minimum length of the fight without decreasing the expected maximum length of the fight making the game more swingy.

 

[slobster]

I do not get some posters dislike of Magic Weapons granting accuracy bonuses, but want to give them damage bonuses. My understanding has it that an accuracy bonus is better than a damage bonus from a game stability perspective.

No, because damage and accuracy don't scale in the same way.

Think about it like this: every +1 to attack is a +5% chance to hit. Assuming 50% chance to hit is the standard to-hit rate (it's usually a bit higher, but this simplifies the math) that means a +1 bonus on top of that makes your new hit chance 55%. It increases your damage expectation per round by 10%, regardless of how much that damage is. If your damage potential per round was 2 previously, it is now 2.2. If it was 200 previously, it is now 220.

A +1 damage bonus only increases your damage by 1, ever, and that's only on a hit. To extend our numbers from the previous example, +1 to damage when you have 50% to-hit and an average of 2 damage per round gives you a new expected damage of 2.5. If you had 200 damage per round and 50% to hit, your damage per round is now is 200.5.

That's what people mean when they say attack bonuses scale but damage bonuses do not. A 20th level character wants +1 to attack just as much as a 1st level character does. But a 20th level character doesn't care much about a +1 damage bonus, whereas a 1st level character might find it valuable indeed.

 

[Ultimatecalibur]

No, because damage and accuracy don't scale in the same way.

Think about it like this: every +1 to attack is a +5% chance to hit. Assuming 50% chance to hit is the standard to-hit rate (it's usually a bit higher, but this simplifies the math) that means a +1 bonus on top of that makes your new hit chance 55%. It increases your damage expectation per round by 10%, regardless of how much that damage is. If your damage potential per round was 2 previously, it is now 2.2. If it was 200 previously, it is now 220.

Have you every looked at why this damage increase happens and how it influences the minimum and average/expected life spans of opponents?

Lets keep this simple. Your average, minimum and maximum damage are the same. You deal 10 damage per hit and you have a 50% chance to hit; therefore you have a dpr of 5. You are fighting a monster with 11 hp. The minimum life span of the monster is 2 rounds and the average life span is 4 rounds.

Given a +5% bonus to hit, the dpr is now 5.5 and the monsters average lifespan is now 3.63 rounds, but the minimum has not changed from 2 rounds.

A +1 damage bonus only increases your damage by 1, ever, and that's only on a hit. To extend our numbers from the previous example, +1 to damage when you have 50% to-hit and an average of 2 damage per round gives you a new expected damage of 2.5. If you had 200 damage per round and 50% to hit, your damage per round is now is 200.5.

Continuing my example. Given a +1 bonus to damage instead of a +5% bonus to accuracy, the dpr is still 5.5 and the monster's lifespan is still 3.63 repeating rounds, but now the monster's minimum lifespan is one round.

That's what people mean when they say attack bonuses scale but damage bonuses do not. A 20th level character wants +1 to attack just as much as a 1st level character does. But a 20th level character doesn't care much about a +1 damage bonus, whereas a 1st level character might find it valuable indeed.

I wasn't asking why people say attack bonuses scale and damage bonuses don't. I was asking why people want damage bonuses in D&DNext over accuracy bonuses when damage bonuses cause the game to be less stable and more swingy.

 

[slobster]

I wasn't asking why people say attack bonuses scale and damage bonuses don't. I was asking why people want damage bonuses in D&DNext over accuracy bonuses when damage bonuses cause the game to be less stable and more swingy.

Then the reason isn't found when we look at low bonuses, but when we look at the higher ones. +1 or +2 accuracy bonuses are all right. +3, +4, and higher bonuses are bad because they become required. They are so good that any character who has them won't trade them in for a lower bonus. Any character who doesn't have them will be so much worse at attacking than characters who do that it noticeably affects fun at the table. 50% success is very different from 75%.

As a result, we got to the 3.5 and 4E systems which tried to solve this problem by assuming everyone got a +4 weapon by a certain level, and so on. Once it got built into the system for PCs, it got built into the system for monsters, leading a lot of people to wonder why we even bothered anymore. A +3 longsword no longer felt special, it felt like a math patch to your level 13 character.

Damage bonuses are not nearly so disruptive, for the reasons I've covered. A +6 damage weapon is nice, but not so overwhelmingly powerful that a fighter with one will outclass into irrelevancy a fighter without at every level in the game.

That's why I oppose +x weapons that apply to accuracy, but am merely ambivalent about similar bonuses to damage.

 

[Sadras]

Define Magic: First one needs to define Magic (where it comes from, how it is harnessed) in their setting before they can even attempt to deal with Magical Items.

Cost: WotC must provide a multiplier for common, uncommon and rare settings. In my opinion 4E got the economics wrong completely. Most of the magical items were rediculously priced for poor powers - costing thousands and hundreds of thousands of gold. I mean compare that too historical records of how much a fortress or keep costs in florins and you will see what I'm talking about.
And I know that D&D land is rich in gold, but the costs in 4E were just plain excessive. No excuses.

Creation: Creation of magical items should be a separate module. In some settings wizards create magical items, in others deities enchant items of their most loyal followers or give them gifts, perhaps others gain their powers through great feats (slaying a dragon, absorbing some of its magical essence)...
Perhaps magical items can be broken easily or disenchanted, perhaps their powers wane over time (week, month, year, decade) without the costly Permanence spell being cast. Perhaps thats what defines Relics/Artifacts - items whose magical powers do not wane.

"Power" Templates: Templates should exist for magical items, for the inexperienced DM, acting as both a guide and for ease of use. DMs who want to create their own magical items have always been able to do it for any edition, so there is no reason to remove the template from the books.

Identification: Identify, Lore, Augury, Sage consultation and exploration through use...etc should all be available to determine the properties of the magical item. And just because one knows of the properties of the magical item doesnt mean one knows how to use it effectively first time.
Perhaps a Flametongue Longsword requires more than the command word which would do +1d6 fire damage, but if the user is burns with anger this enhances the flames enhancing its effect to +2d6 fire damage. Perhaps this could only be learned over time - through use.

Expanded Definition of Magic: Then we have magical auras, how many magical items can one activate on oneself at one time, how many potions can one drink before it becomes harmful - so many thoughts and ideas could go into this.

Magical Items (creation,cost, powers) require an entire book to do them any justice not a single chapter in the DMG - they are linked to the setting affecting the economics, history and the magic of a world. I for one would welcome a book of ideas and mechanics on the subject.

 

[Li Shenron]

It's three assumptions about these enchantments that wreak much harm in D&D Land:

1) The accuracy bonus is always the same as the damage bonus, and:

2) These "+X" enchantments are the vanilla in the magic item flavor world, and (related):

3) Every magic weapon - no matter what it does - is expected to have an underlying "+X" on it.

Why on earth can't you have a sword that gives +3 accuracy, but only +1 extra damage, or none at all? Why can't you have a sword that bursts into flame, but doesn't make it any easier to hit anything?

Absolutely!! Those 3 assumptions are just plain nonsense.

I don't know exactly what I want from magic items... I love campaigns where magic items are rare, powerful, with limitations and side-effects. But I totally understands that "magic as technology" is a valid playing style, even tho I dislike it.

I do know what I don't want from magic items:

- I don't want magic items to be required for the game to stay balanced at certain levels
- I don't want magic items shopping [BUT this one should be a DM's campaign decision]
- I don't want magic items to be regularly discarded (i.e. sold) by the PCs

The last point I really hate... but it's quite a regular presence in 3ed games, because not only the PCs must have magic equipment to match their level, but the NPCs also must! So once you're at least mid-levels, every time you fight NPCs instead of savage creatures, the DM must equip them with magic trinkets, and after the fight the PCs end up with the usual bunch of +1 rings of protection, +1 cloaks of resistance, +1 weapon... They are forced to pick them up (because otherwise they lose $) but then they can only sell them to buy something else they will actually use. Boring as hell...

I think that the 5e flatter math will seriously change the availability of major magic items, especially the +X ones (with the current flatter math a +3 weapon is already freakin' powerful), but OTOH it might have no effect on the availability of minor magic items.

 

[Ultimatecalibur]

Then the reason isn't found when we look at low bonuses, but when we look at the higher ones. +1 or +2 accuracy bonuses are all right. +3, +4, and higher bonuses are bad because they become required. They are so good that any character who has them won't trade them in for a lower bonus. Any character who doesn't have them will be so much worse at attacking than characters who do that it noticeably affects fun at the table. 50% success is very different from 75%.

That lack of fun at a table only happens if those characters are not doing comparable damage. If the character with a 50% accuracy deals 20 per hit and the character with the 75% chance of hitting is only doing 8 damage per hit, the player liable to be having less fun is the character with 75% accuracy.

You are also assuming that the base expected chance of hitting for everyone is 50%. Currently the base expected chance of hitting seems to be 60% to 65%(87.75% with advantage) for Fighters, Wizards and Warlocks and 55%(79.75% with advantage) for everyone else. The Rogue is an oddball currently, it starts advances to 60%(84% with advantage) at 5th level and seems to be designed to get advantage every other turn. And this does not take into account that some monsters can have ACs 2 to 3 points lower than the average and others can have higher than average ACs.

As a result, we got to the 3.5 and 4E systems which tried to solve this problem by assuming everyone got a +4 weapon by a certain level, and so on. Once it got built into the system for PCs, it got built into the system for monsters, leading a lot of people to wonder why we even bothered anymore. A +3 longsword no longer felt special, it felt like a math patch to your level 13 character.

And you just brought up one of the biggest problems of expected wealth by level: It makes bonuses no longer bonuses. That is not the fault of accuracy bonuses.

Damage bonuses are not nearly so disruptive, for the reasons I've covered. A +6 damage weapon is nice, but not so overwhelmingly powerful that a fighter with one will outclass into irrelevancy a fighter without at every level in the game.

It is less that +6 damage was not as disruptive and more that there were so many damage bonuses that the influence of magic item damage bonuses were drowned out by other bonuses. +6 isn't as noticeable when you are doing 6d6+24 before including the magic items damage bonus.

 

[slobster]

That lack of fun at a table only happens if those characters are not doing comparable damage. If the character with a 50% accuracy deals 20 per hit and the character with the 75% chance of hitting is only doing 8 damage per hit, the player liable to be having less fun is the character with 75% accuracy.

It's both, but in my experience it's more frustrating to swing and miss than it is to swing and hit, but to negligible effect. It's a psychology thing that the designers seem to agree with me on (see high to-hit chances in 5E, various columns and articles discussing both 5E and 4E, damage on a successful save, reaping strike etc.). I'm not saying that you're wrong for having the opposite experience, but that is down to personal preference (unlike the math discussions we've been having).

You are also assuming that the base expected chance of hitting for everyone is 50%. Currently the base expected chance of hitting seems to be 60% to 65%(87.75% with advantage) for Fighters, Wizards and Warlocks and 55%(79.75% with advantage) for everyone else. The Rogue is an oddball currently, it starts advances to 60%(84% with advantage) at 5th level and seems to be designed to get advantage every other turn. And this does not take into account that some monsters can have ACs 2 to 3 points lower than the average and others can have higher than average ACs.

True, and I mentioned that before. It was for simplicity. The core of my argument still holds.

And you just brought up one of the biggest problems of expected wealth by level: It makes bonuses no longer bonuses. That is not the fault of accuracy bonuses.

Magical accuracy (and defense) bonuses are one of the major driving factors for certain levels of equipment being "required" by the system for characters at a certain level. If enemies are going to be designed under the assumption that PCs hit them with a certain frequency (65%, for the sake of argument), then it follows that you need to have a pretty good idea what the PCs' attack bonuses are before you assign an AC for your monster. Magical bonuses to attack screw up that calculation if you don't plan for it, so monsters have to assume certain magical bonuses are available to PCs at certain levels. Now that it's built into monster math it becomes required for PCs; after all, if the monster is designed to be hit at 65% if you have a +5 weapon, then characters without will be hitting at 40%, which is seriously no fun at all. And the monster that should be hitting them at 50% if they had +5 defensive equipment is hitting them at 75%, which becomes very deadly.

I hope that is a clear explanation of why, in my opinion, magical bonuses to attack and defenses (especially those that the system forces to appear on every magical weapon and piece of armor) lead inevitably to equipment-by-level guidelines.

It is less that +6 damage was not as disruptive and more that there were so many damage bonuses that the influence of magic item damage bonuses were drowned out by other bonuses. +6 isn't as noticeable when you are doing 6d6+24 before including the magic items damage bonus.

Assuming that we really are dealing with a flatter math system in 5E, then attack bonuses will increase slowly over the range of character progression, but damage and hp will still increase steadily. That leaves room for low level magic items to grant small (+1 to +3) bonuses to damage, only to replaced at higher levels with larger bonuses. These bonuses are nice to have but not so good that they become de facto necessary, which I believe is healthier for the game and opens up design space for more interesting magic items.

 

[Ultimatecalibur]

It's both, but in my experience it's more frustrating to swing and miss than it is to swing and hit, but to negligible effect. It's a psychology thing that the designers seem to agree with me on (see high to-hit chances in 5E, various columns and articles discussing both 5E and 4E, damage on a successful save, reaping strike etc.). I'm not saying that you're wrong for having the opposite experience, but that is down to personal preference (unlike the math discussions we've been having).

You are right

True, and I mentioned that before. It was for simplicity. The core of my argument still holds.

No it doesn't. 50% is the borderline of accurate(more likely to hit than miss) and inaccurate(more likely to miss than hit). Depending on whether a person is a Pessimist or an Optimist can influence whether a player considers 50% good odds or bad, which influences how the player reacts to other characters with greater accuracy. The mental gulf on accuracy tends to be greater between 50% and 75% than 60% and 85%

Magical accuracy (and defense) bonuses are one of the major driving factors for certain levels of equipment being "required" by the system for characters at a certain level. If enemies are going to be designed under the assumption that PCs hit them with a certain frequency (65%, for the sake of argument), then it follows that you need to have a pretty good idea what the PCs' attack bonuses are before you assign an AC for your monster. Magical bonuses to attack screw up that calculation if you don't plan for it, so monsters have to assume certain magical bonuses are available to PCs at certain levels. Now that it's built into monster math it becomes required for PCs; after all, if the monster is designed to be hit at 65% if you have a +5 weapon, then characters without will be hitting at 40%, which is seriously no fun at all. And the monster that should be hitting them at 50% if they had +5 defensive equipment is hitting them at 75%, which becomes very deadly.

I hope that is a clear explanation of why, in my opinion, magical bonuses to attack and defenses (especially those that the system forces to appear on every magical weapon and piece of armor) lead inevitably to equipment-by-level guidelines.

Actual that is the logic used to rationalize the occurrence and need of wealth-by-level guidelines by scapegoating accuracy bonuses. The actual source of wealth-by-level guidelines is the want of players (and designers who prefer to be players) to have rule based guarantees that they will get what they want at a time acceptable to them.

Assuming that we really are dealing with a flatter math system in 5E, then attack bonuses will increase slowly over the range of character progression, but damage and hp will still increase steadily. That leaves room for low level magic items to grant small (+1 to +3) bonuses to damage, only to replaced at higher levels with larger bonuses. These bonuses are nice to have but not so good that they become de facto necessary, which I believe is healthier for the game and opens up design space for more interesting magic items.

Sorry, but that is very naive. Bonuses that increase character effectiveness will always be preferred (by a decent percentage of the player-base) over more interesting effects if given a choice. When players using those bonuses begin to complain that the monsters/opponents are to easy, and designers start making monsters/opponents that take those damage bonuses into account those bonuses will become de facto necessary.

Also the lack of accuracy bonuses will not increase the amount of existing design space. The amount of design space available has remained constant throughout the all editions of D&D, but the amount of design space focused on and utilized has shrunk severely since the introduction of wealth-by-level guidelines and player controlled crafting in 3rd edition as players became the ones in control of how magic items appeared in game.

 

[slobster]

Bonuses that increase character effectiveness will always be preferred (by a decent percentage of the player-base) over more interesting effects if given a choice.

Bonuses to damage aren't overwhelmingly powerful, though. Bonuses to accuracy are. A +4 bonus to accuracy is pretty much better than any other +4 enhancement that was available in 3E (possible exception was brilliant energy, which was itself a massive accuracy booster, so the point still stands).

A +4 bonus to damage, however, is not so powerful. Players will start choosing to swap it out for other abilities precisely because there are so many of a comparable power, so you open up the range of viable magic items which can compete for player attention, including items that are "more interesting" in a fictional sense as well as items that are simply different.