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ShortQuests -- individual adventure modules! An all-new collection of digest-sized D&D adventures designed to plug in to your game.

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="KarinsDad" data-source="post: 2746768" data-attributes="member: 2011">I understand your point of view, but you are making an assumption as to why the PCs are doing this.They might not know that a given opponent or group of opponents has an artifact and might not be doing it, just to outsmart the DM once. It might just become a standard party tactic.They might have said "You know, let's not take any chances ever. We know that there is a major penalty for this if the Sorcerer (or Wizard) does it, so let's minimize our chances of ever seeing that penalty. From now on, if we are outgunned with heavy duty opponents who should have magic items, we have the Rogue Disjunction them with a scroll. Sure, we'll lose several items that we might have gained, but we'll only do this in the most severe of situations where we would probably die anyway and never see those items anyway."One of the things about DND is that the risks tend to be fairly minimal in 3E/3.5 compared to 2E (with the exception of tougher monsters now). The reason is that the players tend to understand most of the bad things that could possibly happen to them and can prepare accordingly.How many times does most groups get a curse that Remove Curse does not remove? Well, if the DM has a plot device, it might happen. But for the most part, PCs can counter most bad things.I remember in Second Edition that the players were absolutely scared witless to go into a burrow mound if it had undead that could drain levels. They were so super cautious that it was great. In 3e/3.5 with various Restoration/Heal spells available, it is barely a threat anymore once you get to mid-levels. Our parties tend to take wands or multiple scrolls of helpful spells (Neutralized Poison, Restoration, various Cures, etc.).Even Identify. If you find some magic items in the field, the party Sorcerer can cast it a lot if he has Identify as a spell, or the party Wizard can either pull out some scrolls of Identify, or he can use his Spell Mastery / Signarture Spell Identify to swap out first level spells (if he went that route). Hole up for a few hours and you are back in business.It is becoming increasingly difficult to hinder the PCs with the exception of just throwing more monsters at them. Yawn. Boring.I dislike loopholes and that is what I consider this to be. If there is a penalty for destroying an artifact with Disjunction, then it should apply equally to anyone who destroyed it. And one thing I do like about this particular rule is that mortal magic does not apply. Your Wizard (or Rogue) loses his spellcasting abilities, we are talking major quest to get them back.I like that. It doesn't happen often enough in the game anymore (and yes, I realize that a given DM can force anything he wants, but that's not really what I am talking about).It is not so much that it is penalizing a player and keeping him in check, it's that it is a serious plot device that forces the players to sit up and do something about it.It's like Teleport. If you use it a lot, sooner or later it will bite you.I actually prefer that major spells sometimes have consequences as opposed to keeping it all nice and safe for the PCs.</blockquote>

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