Monte Cook: Guidance for Monsters and Treasure

[pemerton]

If you look it like that - the reward is in being able to face more significant ingame challenges - what's the point of having magic items in the game?

Mechanically, none. They may as well be part of the levelling process (as they are, for those who use inherent bonuses).

I don't use inherent bonuses, though, because magic items (i) are a traditional D&Dism, and (ii) are a fantasy trope more generally (LotR is full of items, for example). These are non-mechanical reasons for using items, rather than other mechanical devices, as elements of the PC build system.

 

[pemerton]

However, persuading the orges to join or help, rather than just avoiding the fight, is a different result and as such may warrant a different award.

Isn't a good part of the reward for this being helped by the ogres?

 

[Balesir]

I don't use inherent bonuses, though, because magic items (i) are a traditional D&Dism, and (ii) are a fantasy trope more generally (LotR is full of items, for example). These are non-mechanical reasons for using items, rather than other mechanical devices, as elements of the PC build system.

I agree, and would add that magic items give the players choices to make as a party about types of advantage and where to apply bonuses and advantages that the gains from levelling up don't give. Choices of which the players have a good knowledge of the consequences are a fun element of game play for many people (me included).

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Mechanically, none. They may as well be part of the levelling process (as they are, for those who use inherent bonuses).

I don't use inherent bonuses, though, because magic items (i) are a traditional D&Dism, and (ii) are a fantasy trope more generally (LotR is full of items, for example). These are non-mechanical reasons for using items, rather than other mechanical devices, as elements of the PC build system.

I need to spread XP again after those last two posts of yours.

More powerful items are also a "nod" to simulation--and only a nod in the kind of game you are discussing here. Minnie the Minotaur Fighter with her Lightning Halberd +1 manages to find magic to upgrade the Halberd to +2. If we are keeping things relatively balanced, she was going to get some kind of mechanical improvement one way or the other. The inherent bonus would have worked. Some kind of feat might have done it. But the item upgrade was what happened, and thus, in game, that explains why Minnie now hits a bit harder. Generally, people who want "nods" to simulation don't need much, but they do want those nods.

There is one mechanical bit that items can bring, and they happen to be the way I'm using them now. Items are on a different schedule than other ways to boost characters. This is especially useful in the character builder, where I can under or over power according to the guidelines, whereas it is harder to do with inherent bonuses, feats, etc. I've gotten a slightly different feel in my campaign by banning the various "math fix" feats and then compensating with items--but on an uneven schedule. I like to give out a lot of treasure, rarely. So the characters, not having the "math fixes," tend to run behind, but working hard to finally achieve a big treasure trove means something to them. This is not a small part of how I run a 1E-style game in 4E.

 

[Balesir]

Anyone think this might work?

If the challenges required to meet those success criteria are genuinely and quantifiably more difficult than just fighting the ogres, yeah. Otherwise? No.

Lan-"I don't remember the last time I got experience points for diplomacy"-efan

Well, the last time I handed some out was while running a published, early, WotC D&D 4E adventure (King of the Trollhaunt Warrens), not so long ago. It was for a diplomatic Skill Challenge to "neutralise" a Black Dragon in the trolls' warren, if I recall (i.e. if I haven't run any other such challenges I have forgotten, in the last three weekend sessions).

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Well, the last time I handed some out was while running a published, early, WotC D&D 4E adventure (King of the Trollhaunt Warrens), not so long ago. It was for a diplomatic Skill Challenge to "neutralise" a Black Dragon in the trolls' warren, if I recall (i.e. if I haven't run any other such challenges I have forgotten, in the last three weekend sessions).

My last time was last weekend, as an ad hoc ruling (but per the DMG guidelines), while running parts of Gardmore Abbey. The time before that was the previous session, playing a bit of Gardmore Abbey exactly as written.

Granted to the bigger point, however, that if 4E had launched with Gardmore Abbey as the first adventure (or maybe a rapid second to a smaller introductory adventure), we probably would not be having this conversation.

 

[Balesir]

Shoot - actually, I did forget a discussion/negotiation with a Drider and some Drow in the last weekend session (as part of The Demon Queen's Enclave, the original module that follows Trollhaunt Warrens)!

But, yeah - I have heard Gardmore is good. Maybe I'll run that someday, too. Right now I'm toying with a 4E version of the old Pool of Radiance computer game scenario...

 

[billd91]

I think you may be misunderstanding the nature of magic item rewards in a system like 4e, in which items of a certain "plus" are treated as default elements in PC build.

It is not a "treadmill" in which the players pointlessly run to stay in place while being tricked (by what means?) into thinking they are really earning rewards.

The pleasure that players receive in watching their numbers go up in 4e is certainly not a pleasure in greater real-world power. Which would, I think, be absurd.

Nor is it a pleasure in a greater likelihood of succeeding at the challenges the game throws up, because a GM who follows the published guidelines will respond to bigger PC numbers by boosting the numbers of the NPCs and monsters. In 4e, to the extent that players increase their likelihoods of succeeding at these challenges, it is because they improve their play, not because their numbers get bigger.

The pleasure in numbers getting bigger derives from the the ingame implications, namely, that the PC will now be confronting challenges carrying more ingame signficance, and thereby having the potential to carry more real-world story weight. To put it at its crudest, every +1 to hit or damage takes the PC that much closer to being able to confront Demogorgon and win. That is not a treadmill, and not an illusion - it is a genuine feature of the game. Changes in the numbers mean a change in the story - just as the PHB and DMG explain, the fictional scope and fictional stakes grow together with the PCs' numbers.

I don't dispute that players get better at facing challenges through familiarity with the system. And it's true, in every edition of D&D, gaining better abilities - partly through magical gear - enables the PCs to take on progressively tougher opponents they never could have faced before and that can be viewed as a story trajectory for the PCs.

But I don't think that exempts the game from being a treadmill if it is designed that way. As I pointed out before, it's partly a semantic issue but I think it's an important one for forming impressions. When the assumptions are built in that you need +x items to be able to face your own level of opponents, then I do believe you're looking at a treadmill. You must keep running to stand still.

 

[Mark CMG]

Actually, I don't see it as restrictive in the first place.

To use an analogy, I don't see the fact that 1 + 1 = 2 as restrictive. It just is.

And if I have control over the variables, getting the result I want is just a matter of changing the right numbers.

Right, that's an unfortunate analog, given it's about giving something a plus one bonus and has a single, limited outcome. I get that you *personally* don't feel that all of the restrictions are restrictive. Nevertheless, a game with built in restrictions (even if you don't *personally* call them that) is more restrictive than a game without them. I really don't see much point in having more discussion on this as I think you've made the point that if someone uses a word by it's common definition another person can personalize the context and thus refute the definition.

 

[Mark CMG]

It is not a "treadmill" in which the players pointlessly run to stay in place while being tricked (by what means?) into thinking they are really earning rewards.

The pleasure that players receive in watching their numbers go up in 4e is certainly not a pleasure in greater real-world power. Which would, I think, be absurd.

Nor is it a pleasure in a greater likelihood of succeeding at the challenges the game throws up, because a GM who follows the published guidelines will respond to bigger PC numbers by boosting the numbers of the NPCs and monsters. In 4e, to the extent that players increase their likelihoods of succeeding at these challenges, it is because they improve their play, not because their numbers get bigger.

The pleasure in numbers getting bigger derives from the the ingame implications, namely, that the PC will now be confronting challenges carrying more ingame signficance, and thereby having the potential to carry more real-world story weight. To put it at its crudest, every +1 to hit or damage takes the PC that much closer to being able to confront Demogorgon and win. That is not a treadmill, (. . .)

I realize you don't see it that way but even as you describe it seems to very much support my assertions.