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Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Laurefindel" data-source="post: 7592232" data-attributes="member: 67296">Thinking out loud here, and I’d love to have your feedback. (for a TL;DR version, skip to the second post) I have a new campaign in mind for D&D 5e. It's been cooking for years. For that campaign, I mean to put a bit more emphasis on the mundane and introduce a bit of realism. Before you all get your torches and pitchforks, let me explain what I mean by that. [sblock=realism in D&D]First, I don’t mean to make a realistic game out of D&D. I just want to take the high-magic fantasy “knob” of D&D that is currently on 9 (where 3e was a 10), and dial it down to, let’s say, a 6 or 7. I like to see “realism” as a standard to compare to the game world and a meter to relate to our character. I know what my hungry character feels because I know what hungry is. I know how scary jumping down 20 feet is because I know how falling down 20 feet hurts. I bet you saw that one coming… Second, I want to play D&D. I’m not aiming at modding the <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> out of it to a point where it doesn’t feel or resemble D&D anymore. Players will (99% likely) wield magic, and the world around them needs to able to cope with that. I struggle to find the right balance between enough and too much magic.[sblock=Whoa, a spoiler in a spoiler!]The very definition of magic is to defy reality. I’d like to have magic stand out as, well, magical in this campaign, and for that I need realistic elements to contrast with. A magic healing potion isn’t that extraordinary when it does less than a good night of sleep. If it could spare me 2 months of physio, I wish I could drink one when I fell 20 feet…[/sblock][/sblock] If I learned something about houseruling D&D in the past, is that houserules work best when focused on one aspect of the game. Houserules shouldn’t change the game, they should give that particular campaign a particular colour. Hum, this may sound paternalistic. Let’s just say I want to give this particular campaign a particular colour. So for this campaign, I want to bring out the mundane, heroism more than super-heroism, survival and the hazards of nature and wilderness, camaraderie and friendship between characters, and I aim to add or modify rules to support that. I think a good place to start is the “gritty realism” variant rest from the DMG. Fewer resources mean less instant recoveries. Longer long rests means, among other things, less spell spamming, both from the players and from the world around them. Paranoid high-level wizards may actually make sense when a good fight makes them defenseless for a whole week, because they know other high-level wizards are waiting for that exact opportunity. I’m more of a slow-pace DM when it comes to encounters anyway, so this shouldn’t throw balance out of the window. But there is only so much dragging a DM can do before losing the interest of its players in this high-action movies era. Again, I struggle to find the balance between a slower attrition and too little resources. Ignoring the higher levels would also go far in that direction. However, players like to level up and I understand that. The PHB shines a whole bunch of beautiful class features in your face, and I understand the frustration of ignoring what seems to be half the game, or more. It’s like looking at the hardware store mag with $10 on my VISA. Needless to say, I struggle to find the right balance here too.Thoughts, theories and experiences are welcome.Thanks in advance'findel</blockquote>

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