Mordenkainens Magnificent Emporium saved by last minute adventurers?

[Peraion Graufalke]

Hey, if you didn´t disable xp, you would get a lot of the from me now

I do receive xp, they're just not displayed. I can see them on my settings page.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

No, you misuderstood me...

the christmas tree of ADnD was ok, as all items were given out by the DM... it started to get problematic, when PCs could create their Magic items themselves, cherry picking from all possible DM suplements...

I like magic items and I don´t want them gone...

And i have no objections to the majority of items that give small little benefits beeing common...

but i want uncommon and rare items that have actual magical effects...
I remember the times, when you got a flame tonge weapon or even a sword of sharpness... those were no artifacts, but magic weapons you can´t buy in the next item shop...
Of course you as a player always wished to buy some items you really wanted to have, but getting those rare things at will makes the game boring... IMHO

And I no only don´t use inherent bonuses, I inherently don´t like them. I think those don´t belong to D&D... I think magic items belong to D&D.

But i prefer a D&D where you are excited if you find a magical weapon, even if it has a different special ability as the one you´d prefer...

So common should be items with just a little bonus, a bland magical weapon +3. Something you can create yourself, but you are still excited if you find a +3 weapon when you can only make +2 weapons yourself.

Uncommon should be items like flaming weapons, or flame resistant scale armor. Weapons you are very excited about, having powers that can once in a while turn the tide in a battle... thing you could create yourself if you just get the phoenix feathers... or the scales of a red dragon...

Rare items are weapons like flamme tongue weapons, weapons you heard of in legends, but usually won´t get, as there are so few people who actually are capable and willing to create those items... requiring very very rare components (you could also call them minor artifacts)

If you are willing to have minor artifacts, make them rare items, which can´t be created anymore.

Artifacts are items of great power with story reasons to be there. Usually with a will of their own....

I am not opposed to the christmas tree, but I am clearly of the opinion, that character should not be able to build a character around a certain weapon (farbond spellblade fullblade or cold weapon) knowing for sure they could get it anywhere or create it themselves...
which does not mean, that you could tweak your character around a magic weapon you found... (like maybe finding an intelligent longsword and retraining your feats to make best use of it)

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I do receive xp, they're just not displayed. I can see them on my settings page.

I still can´t give you xp, as I need to spread them around first...

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

No, you misuderstood me...

the christmas tree of ADnD was ok, as all items were given out by the DM... it started to get problematic, when PCs could create their Magic items themselves, cherry picking from all possible DM suplements...

I like magic items and I don´t want them gone...

And i have no objections to the majority of items that give small little benefits beeing common...

but i want uncommon and rare items that have actual magical effects...
I remember the times, when you got a flame tonge weapon or even a sword of sharpness... those were no artifacts, but magic weapons you can´t buy in the next item shop...
Of course you as a player always wished to buy some items you really wanted to have, but getting those rare things at will makes the game boring... IMHO

And I no only don´t use inherent bonuses, I inherently don´t like them. I think those don´t belong to D&D... I think magic items belong to D&D.

But i prefer a D&D where you are excited if you find a magical weapon, even if it has a different special ability as the one you´d prefer...

So common should be items with just a little bonus, a bland magical weapon +3. Something you can create yourself, but you are still excited if you find a +3 weapon when you can only make +2 weapons yourself.

Uncommon should be items like flaming weapons, or flame resistant scale armor. Weapons you are very excited about, having powers that can once in a while turn the tide in a battle... thing you could create yourself if you just get the phoenix feathers... or the scales of a red dragon...

Rare items are weapons like flamme tongue weapons, weapons you heard of in legends, but usually won´t get, as there are so few people who actually are capable and willing to create those items... requiring very very rare components (you could also call them minor artifacts)

If you are willing to have minor artifacts, make them rare items, which can´t be created anymore.

Artifacts are items of great power with story reasons to be there. Usually with a will of their own....

I am not opposed to the christmas tree, but I am clearly of the opinion, that character should not be able to build a character around a certain weapon (farbond spellblade fullblade or cold weapon) knowing for sure they could get it anywhere or create it themselves...
which does not mean, that you could tweak your character around a magic weapon you found... (like maybe finding an intelligent longsword and retraining your feats to make best use of it)

I pretty much agree with you Unspeakable

The problem with 'players can make anything' is you simply have no flexibility. Either an item is on the menu for players to make, or it is an artifact level object. While you COULD simply call unusual and potent items all 'artifacts' and you could then assign ways for PCs to make certain ones as part of the story it is pretty useful to be able to create a category of items which are potent but not at the level of story items which artifacts rise to and which the DM can control the construction of. It isn't necessary for every unusual item to have concordance etc. Some very classic items like vorpal weapons are nice things to be able to slot into an in-between category.

Now, could there be one less category than there is now? Perhaps. We could have common, rare, and artifact. Still, what's the harm in having the uncommon category? It allows the developers to provide more guidance to DMs where they can say "this is an item that it is OK to give away pretty casually, it won't cause any problems if the PCs find one now and then" vs the rare items "you probably only want this to show up once in your game". Generally you might allow the possibility that anyone might craft an uncommon too. They're hard to find, not generally on sale, and you probably need something more than just Enchant Magic Item and some residuum to make them, but it does happen. Even rare items might be Enchanted now and then under unusual circumstances that don't show up often.

As for the notion that it is somehow 'patronizing' when certain specific things the players want to do have to go through the DM, that strikes me as ridiculous. There are ALWAYS going to be some things that the players don't have unlimited access to. Is it patronizing that the players can't decide to have a rule that lets them get 2x more than normal amounts of powers? Of course not. Nor is it patronizing that the DM controls artifacts. The whole argument doesn't work. As written the rarity system allows players to create items that they actually mechanically need. Beyond that there's no coherent argument that they have to be able to make other things automatically.

The inevitable "any bad DM" argument that will be advanced next doesn't work either. It is no better than the "any good DM" argument. Bad DMs will be bad DMs, good DMs will be good DMs and regardless of where you draw the line on what can and can't be created you won't turn one into the other.

All of these arguments also fail to address the extreme constraints on item design that the old crafting system created. Clearly having a broader range of potential item design choices in the hands of the developers is a plus and I don't see any compensating benefit to the old way of doing things.

As for the 'Christmas Tree' thing... First of all 3.x and it's "go ahead and make anything" theory is an anomaly in the history of D&D. It clearly had negative consequences too. In AD&D there effectively was no crafting at all. Characters got what the DM gave them, period. If characters were decked out with items left and right that was a game style choice, it wasn't inherent to the rules in AD&D. 4e has a middle ground. If you want to deck people out with stuff, you certainly can. If you don't you now have a choice to not do that which is supported by the rules. In either 4e or AD&D the default treasure distribution rules will produce a fair number of items but at least there's a way to tweak that now, which didn't exist at all in 3.x or earlier in 4e unless the DM was willing to take away game elements that the players normally had access to.

 

[mudbunny]

I still can´t give you xp, as I need to spread them around first...

Gotcha covered.

 

[mneme]

Bracers of Mighty Striking -should- be common. Or should not exist at all, but if item bonuses to damage are in the game, they're fine.

Iron Armbands of Power should also be common. Same reasoning as BoMS -- they aren't problematic if you have a lot of them, and aren't problematic if everyone in the party who wants one has one.

The issue with those items isn't one that rarity can solve -- it's that they're just better for most characters than most other items, because item bonuses to damage (particularly ones that scale with or near weapon bonus) are fairly hard to get (um. there's Staff or Ruins, the Bracers/Armbands, Radiant Weapons, Subtle Weapons, and what?).

The right answers aren't to make item bonuses to damage rare items, but instead some combination of:

Provide item bonuses to damage rolls as common items in multiple slots.
Provide higher level and uncommon/rare items with item bonuses to damage rolls that also have powers in slots that provide item bonuses to damage rolls.
Provide real alternatives to static item bonuses to damage -- in the form of really conditional item bonuses (eg, not charging or combat advantage; bloodied and after you kill something are probably ok) to damage rolls that scale better than normal item bonuses to damage rolls. If you have a +8 item bonus to damage rolls against bloodied enemies, that +4 item bonus to damage rolls is less tempting.

Rarity for this kind of item (eg, one functionally providing a basic bonus beyond the Big Three) just lets the GM play favorites; it simply doesn't address the power disparity.

To reiterate -- the problem uncommon rarity is intended to solve is that some items retain their value as their price drops to a negligable one, whereas other items become obselete once you can afford or find their next version. Making the former category uncommon stops players from powering their characters up with large quantities of low level items n the first category. The problem rare rarity is intending to solve is that the game is more fun with some over the top items, but giving out too many will distort the power curve of the game; marking an item "rare" is a sign that it is of this category.

Neither rarity is best used to solve "this item is just better than other items in its category," particularly when the "just better" item is rather boring.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Bracers of Mighty Striking -should- be common. Or should not exist at all, but if item bonuses to damage are in the game, they're fine.

Iron Armbands of Power should also be common. Same reasoning as BoMS -- they aren't problematic if you have a lot of them, and aren't problematic if everyone in the party who wants one has one.

The issue with those items isn't one that rarity can solve -- it's that they're just better for most characters than most other items, because item bonuses to damage (particularly ones that scale with or near weapon bonus) are fairly hard to get (um. there's Staff or Ruins, the Bracers/Armbands, Radiant Weapons, Subtle Weapons, and what?).

The right answers aren't to make item bonuses to damage rare items, but instead some combination of:

Provide item bonuses to damage rolls as common items in multiple slots.
Provide higher level and uncommon/rare items with item bonuses to damage rolls that also have powers in slots that provide item bonuses to damage rolls.
Provide real alternatives to static item bonuses to damage -- in the form of really conditional item bonuses (eg, not charging or combat advantage; bloodied and after you kill something are probably ok) to damage rolls that scale better than normal item bonuses to damage rolls. If you have a +8 item bonus to damage rolls against bloodied enemies, that +4 item bonus to damage rolls is less tempting.

Rarity for this kind of item (eg, one functionally providing a basic bonus beyond the Big Three) just lets the GM play favorites; it simply doesn't address the power disparity.

To reiterate -- the problem uncommon rarity is intended to solve is that some items retain their value as their price drops to a negligable one, whereas other items become obselete once you can afford or find their next version. Making the former category uncommon stops players from powering their characters up with large quantities of low level items n the first category. The problem rare rarity is intending to solve is that the game is more fun with some over the top items, but giving out too many will distort the power curve of the game; marking an item "rare" is a sign that it is of this category.

Neither rarity is best used to solve "this item is just better than other items in its category," particularly when the "just better" item is rather boring.

I don't really understand why you assume these are the only issues that rarity was intended to solve. I doubt any of us are privy to the thinking of the developers. Maybe there's place where they have plainly stated this, but I would observe:

1) We're all apparently in agreement that an item with a fixed property of general utility like a damage bonus is more useful to a character than most other sorts of properties/powers would be.

2) Said items, if freely available, will displace pretty much any other item in the given slot.

I'd venture that simply making such items uncommon is the most direct, reliable, and simplest way to deal with these 2 points. I can think of no reason why a quirk of the way that some items are implemented, property vs power, should have any bearing on their appropriate level of availability. WotC stated a rule of thumb indicating that powers generally make an item less common, but they never claimed this was a hard and fast rule. Stating it as a rule of thumb rather indicates it is something which may be generally true but may also be false in some situations.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Actually the idea to actually gove more options for a +2 tem bonus is a reasonable one...

why call something an item bonus which does not stack, if there are no items that can compete, as they all need to be worn in the same spot...

common, ok... but please still nerf it to +1/tier then...

 

[Balesir]

the christmas tree of ADnD was ok, as all items were given out by the DM... it started to get problematic, when PCs could create their Magic items themselves, cherry picking from all possible DM suplements...

In OD&D/AD&D the whole system philosophy was different; magic items and gold were player rewards, because gold gave xps and magic items gave character power by means other than level. It was a problematic mechanism because there was no set pacing (that anyone used) and it was easy (and usual) to play favourites.

In 4E magic items serve a different purpose; they are part of character design with a definite resource cost (money). Take that away and you create knock-on issues; money becomes useless if it can't buy magic items. A little of the old "special treat" aspect survived because of the limit on item manufacture at character level; receiving higher level items is cool because you can't make them (yet).

but i want uncommon and rare items that have actual magical effects...
I remember the times, when you got a flame tonge weapon or even a sword of sharpness... those were no artifacts, but magic weapons you can´t buy in the next item shop...

True - but by level 8 or 10 you would have one, if you desperately wanted one, because you would badger the DM into at least creating a quest or other means by which you might get one. If you ever played until level 16 or so the flametongue was pretty meaningless, because by then all melee weapons were meaningless.

This same mechanism applies in 4E. At level 1-4 a flaming weapon is cool because you can't make it or buy it. At level 5+ it's nice, but fairly commonplace. Thanks to the weapon bonus scaling and the fact that it works on weapon powers it never really becomes obsolete, in the way it did in AD&D.

Of course you as a player always wished to buy some items you really wanted to have, but getting those rare things at will makes the game boring... IMHO

And in 4E there are some items that are only available at Paragon tier, or with bonuses or 2+/3+/whatever. And there are artifacts.

But i prefer a D&D where you are excited if you find a magical weapon, even if it has a different special ability as the one you´d prefer...

The problem I have with this is that it always amounted to the DM dictating your character, in part. I can see why some DMs might like this - and how some might even make good creative use of it - but for the type of game I want to play with D&D, I prefer my players to have control of their own characters. I am content to control the setting that surrounds them and the challenges that setting provides.

So common should be items with just a little bonus, a bland magical weapon +3. Something you can create yourself, but you are still excited if you find a +3 weapon when you can only make +2 weapons yourself.

Which is exactly what happens in 4E - except that players are not arbitrarily restricted to the "bland" items. Seriously, by Paragon levels, with only the capability to make common items, what the heck are the PCs going to do with all the money the standard treasure system gives them? The only function has in the system is as resource to control the acquisition of magic items. Anything else they might do with it - buying "strongholds", for example - is just colour; it has no effect on the adventuring game at all.

Uncommon should be items like flaming weapons, or flame resistant scale armor. Weapons you are very excited about, having powers that can once in a while turn the tide in a battle... thing you could create yourself if you just get the phoenix feathers... or the scales of a red dragon...

Now, this use of the "uncommon" item category I can relate to. I certainly see the weakness of having an Enchant Item ritual that gets better with every item book published, and having special ingredients and rituals specified in the rulebooks for these items seems a promising idea. The items remain under the players' control (with specified restrictions, so they know what they need to do to get them) and the requirements serve as drivers for adventures - usefulness all round!

Rare items are weapons like flamme tongue weapons, weapons you heard of in legends, but usually won´t get, as there are so few people who actually are capable and willing to create those items... requiring very very rare components (you could also call them minor artifacts)

Flaming swords are common in fantasy stories - to turn them into ultra-rare myths would be unneccessary, IMO, but whatever.

Having them as artifacts if they are unbalanced is exactly what I'm suggesting.

If you are willing to have minor artifacts, make them rare items, which can´t be created anymore.

Why "minor" artifacts? In 4E artifacts can be Heroic Tier as well as any other tier. The idea of Artifacts as being, like 10th level spells or a volume knob with a setting of eleven, "magic items that are really, really powerful" is a hang-over from earlier editions - and not a useful one, IMO. In 4E, Artifacts are not "very powerful items", they have a specific role. They are items that may very well shortcut an encounter, or render a hard encounter easy (or even just "possible"). They have plot significance; there is little point in including a "Sword of Dragon Slaying" in the campaign if there are no powerful dragons that need slaying.

In 4E, an "uber-powerful item" is a 30th level magic item. An item that is generally wielded by low-heroic tier characters but relates to a low-level quest or campaign arc is an artifact, albeit a "minor" (i.e. low level) one.

Artifacts are items of great power with story reasons to be there. Usually with a will of their own....

Story reasons to be there and an agenda of their own - sure. Great power, though, is relative. A 30th level Ring of Greater Spell Storing is powerful - but it isn't an artifact. An Amulet of Passage, on the other hand, is not so obviously powerful - but is an artifact.

I am not opposed to the christmas tree, but I am clearly of the opinion, that character should not be able to build a character around a certain weapon (farbond spellblade fullblade or cold weapon) knowing for sure they could get it anywhere or create it themselves...
which does not mean, that you could tweak your character around a magic weapon you found... (like maybe finding an intelligent longsword and retraining your feats to make best use of it)

So, it's OK for a character to be themed around a magic item, as long as the DM, and not the player, gets to decide what item it is??? What is wrong with players having some control over the character they play? Sure, the "bad player" arguments can be wheeled out, but they are no more persuasive than the "bad DM" ones are, in the end.

The problem with 'players can make anything' is you simply have no flexibility. Either an item is on the menu for players to make, or it is an artifact level object.

Yes, all "item" class objects need to be balanced - but I don't agree that making them "restricted" really changes that. As for "artifact level" - as I keep saying, artifacts were very deliberately changed in 4E to have a specific function, not to have a specific power level. This was one of the best hidden, but most brilliant innovations in the system, IMO.

While you COULD simply call unusual and potent items all 'artifacts' and you could then assign ways for PCs to make certain ones as part of the story it is pretty useful to be able to create a category of items which are potent but not at the level of story items which artifacts rise to and which the DM can control the construction of. It isn't necessary for every unusual item to have concordance etc. Some very classic items like vorpal weapons are nice things to be able to slot into an in-between category.

If an item does not have some link to the setting/the story, then the DM has no business monopolising them, as I see it. Any item belongs either to the setting or to a character; if it belongs to the former it's the DM's business, but if it belongs to the latter it's the players' business.

Having said that, I can see the value of having restrictions laid down in the rules for certain items - specific ingredients or rituals, for example, that are needed to make them.

Now, could there be one less category than there is now? Perhaps. We could have common, rare, and artifact. Still, what's the harm in having the uncommon category? It allows the developers to provide more guidance to DMs where they can say "this is an item that it is OK to give away pretty casually, it won't cause any problems if the PCs find one now and then" vs the rare items "you probably only want this to show up once in your game".

Any item that will break the game if "given away casually" is a broken item; any amount of DM fudge, designer warning or arbitrary restriction is not going to fix that. The item needs to be redesigned, period.

As for the notion that it is somehow 'patronizing' when certain specific things the players want to do have to go through the DM, that strikes me as ridiculous. There are ALWAYS going to be some things that the players don't have unlimited access to. Is it patronizing that the players can't decide to have a rule that lets them get 2x more than normal amounts of powers? Of course not.

You are comparing apples with coconuts. Players can't decide that their characters have twice the number of powers as normal - but neither can the DM pick their powers for them (which is much more comparable to the magic item case). A reasonable parallel to the "twice the number of powers" would be players deciding that their gold should buy twice the normal number of magic items - and they never could do that (within the rules), either.

Nor is it patronizing that the DM controls artifacts.

Of course not - because artifacts are (by their 4E definition) not aspects of the character design. They are aspects of the world and/or scenario design. If the game designers have wandered away from this (brilliant, IMO) initial conception, it is not a flaw in the original conception - merely a flaw in it's execution.

As written the rarity system allows players to create items that they actually mechanically need. Beyond that there's no coherent argument that they have to be able to make other things automatically.

Apart from "what is the function of money in the system, if it is not currency for controlling player resources in the form of magic items?" This is the only meaning that money has in the game; without it you will need to justify money treasure in some other way.

The inevitable "any bad DM" argument that will be advanced next doesn't work either. It is no better than the "any good DM" argument. Bad DMs will be bad DMs, good DMs will be good DMs and regardless of where you draw the line on what can and can't be created you won't turn one into the other.

True - but, as I said above, the "any bad player" is equally bogus as an argument.

All of these arguments also fail to address the extreme constraints on item design that the old crafting system created. Clearly having a broader range of potential item design choices in the hands of the developers is a plus and I don't see any compensating benefit to the old way of doing things.

The only flaw with the old system in this regard was that it conflated "power level" and "power breadth" into one value. In other words, both the strength of an item's powers and the number or breadth of use of an an item's powers were subsumed under a single variable - "level". Add in "minor" and "major" (or even "uncommon" and "rare", if you must) items that stay at the same level but have multipliers on cost and the problem is fixed.

It's a bit like the monsters; an Elite Level 3 monster is not equivalent to a Standard Level 7 monster, even though the experience value of the two are the same. The reason is that the level 3 elite has worse defences and ToHit modifiers, so that it suits opponents of around 3rd level rather than opponents of around 7th level. The same can be true of a magic item; an item well suited to use by level 3 characters may have much more breadth of use and number of powers than another, but neither will be really comparable with an item best suited for use by 7th level characters.

As for the 'Christmas Tree' thing... First of all 3.x and it's "go ahead and make anything" theory is an anomaly in the history of D&D. It clearly had negative consequences too. In AD&D there effectively was no crafting at all. Characters got what the DM gave them, period. If characters were decked out with items left and right that was a game style choice, it wasn't inherent to the rules in AD&D. 4e has a middle ground. If you want to deck people out with stuff, you certainly can. If you don't you now have a choice to not do that which is supported by the rules. In either 4e or AD&D the default treasure distribution rules will produce a fair number of items but at least there's a way to tweak that now, which didn't exist at all in 3.x or earlier in 4e unless the DM was willing to take away game elements that the players normally had access to.

"Taking away access to game elements that the players normally had access to" is exactly what you are doing with "rarity" - you're just not announcing it up front.

Not that I see declaring that some game elements simply don't exist in a specific campaign world as a problem, provided it's done up front as part of the campaign design.

The issue with those items isn't one that rarity can solve -- it's that they're just better for most characters than most other items, because item bonuses to damage (particularly ones that scale with or near weapon bonus) are fairly hard to get (um. there's Staff or Ruins, the Bracers/Armbands, Radiant Weapons, Subtle Weapons, and what?).

The right answers aren't to make item bonuses to damage rare items, but instead some combination of:

Provide item bonuses to damage rolls as common items in multiple slots.
Provide higher level and uncommon/rare items with item bonuses to damage rolls that also have powers in slots that provide item bonuses to damage rolls.
Provide real alternatives to static item bonuses to damage -- in the form of really conditional item bonuses (eg, not charging or combat advantage; bloodied and after you kill something are probably ok) to damage rolls that scale better than normal item bonuses to damage rolls. If you have a +8 item bonus to damage rolls against bloodied enemies, that +4 item bonus to damage rolls is less tempting.

Now, this is a much better solution to the IAOP problem. And maybe make it +1/+2/+3 by tier.

To reiterate -- the problem uncommon rarity is intended to solve is that some items retain their value as their price drops to a negligable one, whereas other items become obselete once you can afford or find their next version. Making the former category uncommon stops players from powering their characters up with large quantities of low level items n the first category.

And this is a(nother) reason for item restrictions that actually makes sense. And it would be excellently remedied by having specific ingredients and so forth required to make these "problematic" items. Hunting monsters for their (magical) organs is a time-honoured tradition in D&D, because it promotes adventure and controls item production. Let's see that, rather than some lazy "let the DM fix it" kludge.

The problem rare rarity is intending to solve is that the game is more fun with some over the top items, but giving out too many will distort the power curve of the game; marking an item "rare" is a sign that it is of this category.

And marking them "artifact" is even better - even though they won't be the full contents of the artifact class - IMO. And, if it isn't, the item is simply set at too low a level.

 

[Balesir]

1) We're all apparently in agreement that an item with a fixed property of general utility like a damage bonus is more useful to a character than most other sorts of properties/powers would be.

If they are set at too high a value, yes. Granted, the granularity of the system may mean there is no usable value between "too high" and "too low".

2) Said items, if freely available, will displace pretty much any other item in the given slot.

Unless the (non-stackable) bonus is also available in other slots.

The only real alternative to this is not allowing the specific type of bonus (e.g. no Item bonus to damage). Just as, with the "Expertise" feats, you either disallow Feat bonuses to hit, or you have the "feat tax" problem. The difference with feats is there are no alternative "slots" to open up the option in. DM rationing strikes me as no useful remedy for this at all.