New Monte Cook article Magic and Mystery

[Ainamacar]

Now imagine that the ruleset takes that baseline to zero. You can play the game without magic and it will work. It WILL work!
BUT if you want heaps of magical items in your game it will also work. In other words, wherever on the magical item spectrum you sit for a particular campaign, it will work!

THAT is a brilliant design goal and challenge!

I'm in complete agreement. To my mind the best thing about decoupling magic items from assumed wealth and character advancement is it enables essentially all styles of play (and manner of story) to work better than they did before. In fact, it enables multiple styles of play within the same campaign if the need or desire arises. My other thoughts on the matter are in an older post.

(I would XP you but I need to spread it around first.)

I think most arguments about the magic item economy arise from conflict over what the market for these items should logically look like starting from the assumption that the items 1) exist and 2) the PCs have access to them. I think those are necessary and non-controversial assumptions in D&D, but they also aren't sufficient to tell us much about the economy for magic items. There have been attempts to make guidelines in various settings (like a gp limit for towns of various sizes) but they don't work terribly well with wealth by level mechanical assumptions. It's not hard to see why: the personal wealth of PCs is coupled to their personal power quite directly, but geographic guidance is usually an attempt at verisimilitude within the setting rather than making sense in terms of the existing wealth by level guidelines. Getting rid of wealth by level means we can set economies (or ignore them) in a way which serves the setting and story, without adverse mechanical implications.

In this case I think a useful idea to apply is that of liquidity. The economic rather than magical decanter sort, naturally. That is, roughly speaking, how well and often and item can be bought and sold without appreciable changes in price. After all, the value of a magic item in the game is usually intended to be representative of its utility in a very general sense when compared to other items. However, we typically measure it in "gp", which I think can give us the wrong idea. In settings with liquid markets it is fine, since that means lots of buyers and sellers, and a price settled based on those their needs and interactions. In the world of magic shoppes, one can simply proceed as normal with the exchange of items for gold or direct bartering. In a world of low liquidity, however, the "value" of a magic item has very little to do with gold, but is still very useful for comparing items for the game's purposes.

Furthermore, liquidity is not the same as wealth. The king might be worth a million gold pieces, but if 95% of his wealth is wrapped up in his palace he still might not be able to afford a holy avenger, except theoretically. (Like a modern company, a more useful measure of financial health is often cash flow rather than market capitalization.) A setting of relatively low wealth (with respect to the "value" of magic items) but high liquidity within that wealth might have cheap and freely available minor magic items, perhaps comparable to Eberron. The high wealth and high liquidity setting is monty haul. The low wealth and low liquidity game is Dark Sun. And the high wealth but low liquidity setting might be Forgotten Realms.

4e introduces some serious schizophrenia into the equations with the sell for 20% rule to encourage players to hold onto their stuff. I'm no economist, but that implies a pretty illiquid market for magic items. Nonetheless, the number of such items a character would go through over a campaign to meet wealth-by-level guidelines suggests to me the opposite. The common/uncommon/rare system is a salve, but I don't think it addresses the fundamental problem.

I guess my point is I think the notion of liquidity vs. wealth is a helpful perspective when considering the economy of a setting. Decoupling wealth from character advancement could let it become a useful tool as well. I have some ideas about that, but I need to ponder them some more.

 

[Stormonu]

What I want from magic items is as follows:

1) I do want a GP value or some other method to rate how valuable/difficult it is to make an item, or if you were to be trading magic items, what their relative values generally are. I missed not having some sort of relative idea of the value of magic items back in 2E, and made figuring out what I should be putting into treasure hordes difficult, not to mention what to do when PCs wanted to dispose of unwanted magic items (seriously; I had a player with a ranger character who had several +1 and a +2 sword he wanted to get rid of because he only used his +3 sword).

However, just like you couldn't go down to Walmart and buy an RPG (Rocket-Propelled Grenade, not D&D*) off the shelf just because you had the cash on hand, buying/selling magic items shouldn't be something done offhand.

2) Magic items should be interesting, and not all of their effects should be positive. "Quirky" items should be common - from the potion you gag on quaffing because it tastes so awful (Fort save or nauseated 1d4 rounds), to the +1 sword that hums "Ride of the Valkries" when drawn (let's see you sneak up on the hobgoblin guard with that one). I wouldn't mind seeing the return of cursed items - especially those with some beneficial effects (like a Berserker Blade - you gain the benefit's of a barbarian's rage, but you don't stop fighting just because the last enemy drops).

Part of the issue with magic items is they've become mass-produced items cranked out from the same boring die press. Each +1 sword is like every other +1 sword in existence - While characters have grown in being individually unique, magic items have remained cookie-cutter facsimiles of power boosts.

And I'm not just talking about making flames tongue weapons instead of +X weapons (which I have no issue with, except if they are an expected part of the math). I'm talking that each flames tongue sword is like every other flames tongue sword, two cloaks of the arachnae have exactly the same properties (even if one is made by a drow and the other an aranae) or all belts of strength +2 are exactly the same.

Instead, if one character had Ember, a flames tongue that was wreathed in billowing smoke that could obscure attacker and defender whereas another had Magmabite that dripped a burning fluid that splashed adjacent targets on a hit, that would make each item unique, and give the item a unique personality. Perhaps when donning the drow cloak one hears the whispers of the Spider Queen revealing the dark desires of those the wearer gazes at, while the aranae's cloak crawls with tiny spiders who can be coaxed to scout for the wearer. A cursed version might cause the cloak to dissolve into a spider swarm when hit, only to revert back to its normal form a few rounds later.

You might even see some folks turn down or put away an item because the item's quirks may be unsuitable for a situation.

* Though honestly, walking into Walmart and buying the 4E PHB would be just as impossible.

 

[Ainamacar]

James Ward, on the other hand, argued that the amount and power of items wasn't important, so long as the GM increased the challenges the characters faced. If the characters were running around with holy avengers, staves of the magi, and rings of wishes, you don't throw ogres and trolls at them. You through golems, demons, dragons, and even worse things at them. So long as the encounters are challenging and fun, it doesn't matter if a group plays low-magic or high-magic. Ward's "Monty Haul" articles were excellent examples of this style of play.

As I read it, Monte is suggesting moving back to such a model. Design the rules so that characters can be challenged regardless of the level of magic, so each group can play the kind of game they want. If that's where he's going with this, I support the idea wholeheartedly.

Did those old articles provide inexperienced DMs the tools to make those judgments well enough to run that sort of game? (This is an honest question, I only know about these articles secondhand.) If not, then the real issue isn't whether we're pursuing something new, but whether the game gives us the tools to succeed. If they do, it will be brilliant. I'm encouraged that they are thinking about this.

What if you added a downside to every magic item? The more powerful the item, the greater the risk. Your +5 holy avenger is powerful, but it also attracts demons like moths to a flame. Stormbringer causes you to kill your friends on occasion. Your ring of invisibility has the dark lord looking for it.

In general it's a bad idea to balance the mechanical power of something with non-mechanical limitations. What level should the ring of invisibility be if the dark lord doesn't exist? Stormbringer is the 3e frenzied berserker problem all over again, and that class was an absolute disaster: either you find out how to limit the downside it was ridiculously overpowered, or you didn't and it 1) ruined a campaign with a random rampage or 2) just wasn't worth using due to the risk of 1.

These story or roleplaying limitations are perfectly fine to add for a specific campaign/adventure path, a game with a very narrow roleplaying or story focus, or as a houserule, but that is where they should stay. The idea of adding a power/risk tradeoff is still perfectly worthy, however. It is a classic trope, even.

 

[Anselyn]

.Furthermore, liquidity is not the same as wealth. The king might be worth a million gold pieces, but if 95% of his wealth is wrapped up in his palace he still might not be able to afford a holy avenger, except theoretically. (Like a modern company, a more useful measure of financial health is often cash flow rather than market capitalization.) A setting of relatively low wealth (with respect to the "value" of magic items) but high liquidity within that wealth might have cheap and freely available minor magic items, perhaps comparable to Eberron. The high wealth and high liquidity setting is monty haul. The low wealth and low liquidity game is Dark Sun. And the high wealth but low liquidity setting might be Forgotten Realms.

This is helpful analysis but does assume that magic is a technology that can be used by the owner, any owner. Another question about the worlds involved must be: is there a market of viable users of the items. What use is a holy avenger to a King who isn't a paladin? [1]

Equally, if the characters are one-in-a-million then it's hard to imagine who the brokers in the market are who wait to juggle king's ransoms for the few days on which the kingdom's heroes want to upgrade their smiting technology.

[1] Yes, there are lots of story answers here but I mean in the - oh here's a +5 sword way!

 

[Nagol]

<snip>

Equally, if the characters are one-in-a-million then it's hard to imagine who the brokers in the market are who wait to juggle king's ransoms for the few days on which the kingdom's heroes want to upgrade their smiting technology.

<snip>

Just like the housing market today, the brokers never take possession of the item. It remains in the hands of the owner until transfer can be arranged. Presumably, the owner can protect the item well enough in the meantime. The broker is just offering the service of finding the opposite end of a potential deal.

 

[prosfilaes]

Baumi. Yes, he is talking about removing the +X bonuses from the leveling math, but he is not talking about removing +X items from the game.

Currently 4e D&D uses a formula similar to the following to determine the expected attack bonuses for PCs:

Expect Attack Bonus = (1/2 Level) + (Weapon Proficiency Bonus) + (Primary Stat Modifier) + (Magical Item Bonus equal to 1/5 Level rounded up to the nearest whole number)

Monte's article talks about changing the expected attack bonus math to something like this:

Expect Attack Bonus = (1/2 Level) + (Weapon Proficiency Bonus) + (Primary Stat Modifier)

By doing so and then designing monsters based on that formula to be hit when a characters a roll of 11 or higher, when wielding a +X weapon a character would have a 10% greater chance of hitting per plus.

Either way, a +X weapons adds 2X levels to the party for the purposes of expected attack bonus. I don't really see how this helps things; at some point, if there are magical weapons, you have to factor that into the player's power.

Most fun monsters will have ACs that are a challenge but not impossible to hit, will have hitpoints that don't disappear in one attack but don't force the players to spend all night whittling down one creature, be able to frequently but not always hit the PCs and be able to do noticeable, not insignificant or overwhelming damage to the PCs. To plan for that, you have to know what the ACs, attack bonuses, damage dealt and hit points the party will have. Ignoring magic is just burying your head in the hand.

If you have a party armed with +5 weapons, ignoring spellcasters, you'll have a party that can take down creatures of their own level trivially. Any creatures they can attack and survive will be easier to hit then the system plans for. Any creatures they can't just chop through will just chop through them. You've totally changed the dynamics of the system against what you're planing for.

So let's suppose you have a +5 holy avenger to sell. Who can afford to buy it? Gavin down the street might offer you his life's savings of 30gp for it, while Dave over the road is going to offer 15gp plus discounts at his pleasure palace.

There better not be anybody selling full plate (1,500 GP) in this world then.

 

[Anselyn]

Just like the housing market today, the brokers never take possession of the item. It remains in the hands of the owner until transfer can be arranged. Presumably, the owner can protect the item well enough in the meantime. The broker is just offering the service of finding the opposite end of a potential deal.

Good point. Then, (ignoring costs to operate) if you take 1% commission you have to sell 100 items a year of a price equal to your salary - or 10 (say one a month) at a cost of 10 times your salary to survive. (etc.). We could guess the brokers salary from item costs. Is it worth it?

That gets very granular if heroes/items are rare.

Also, I guess, you could have a sytem where you rent out your +3 swords at an appropriate rate, considering the risk of loss, until your adventurer customer is ready to upgrade to their +4. Then they need never pay the full cost of ownership. Of course, they only need a credit note (say one of those new "plastic" ones) from a moneylender to use the broker services.

Full economic sense but not very heroic. What do we value more?

 

[Hussar]

I'll agree with one point - the whole "Plussed" magic weapon thing should have a gun put in its ear. That, right there, is one of the biggest sensawunda killers in the game. Wahoo, I got me a magic sword... Fantastic... great... oh, it's plus one to hit and damage... so... it's magical, wonderous and funky, and... no? ... huh.

The idea of inherent bonuses is one I really support. Then you ignore the "plus" of the weapon and focus on the rider effects. Does anyone really care if the flaming sword is +1 or +2? I'd argue a big Hell No! It's cool because it's a freaking SWORD MADE OF FIRE!

Magic items should have special effects, not just a 5% change on a die roll.

 

[Croesus]

Did those old articles provide inexperienced DMs the tools to make those judgments well enough to run that sort of game? (This is an honest question, I only know about these articles secondhand.) If not, then the real issue isn't whether we're pursuing something new, but whether the game gives us the tools to succeed. If they do, it will be brilliant.

IIRC, the early articles didn't give a lot of specific guidance - at that time, everyone was still figuring out how to GM and all of us tended to get it wrong more often than not. EGG would give general advice that giving out too much treasure would make it too easy for the players, which would lead to a game that wasn't challenging or fun. Or he would complain that players bragging about their 30th level characters clearly weren't playing the game correctly, because no one in his (EGG's) campaign was even close to that level. And so on. James Ward was just a dissenting voice, contending that a game could be "Montie Haul" and still be challenging and fun.

I'm less concerned that any new version has specific guidance for GM's on giving out treasure than I am that the new version not require a certain level of treasure for the math to work. I fully expect a lot of GM'ing advice in the new version, but that advice isn't much help if I want to play a particular style of game, one which the rules simply do not support.

I'm encouraged that they are thinking about this.

Me too, though I remember thinking the same thing about pre-4E when so much of the talk was of making GM prep much easier. 4E succeeded with that, but still didn't turn out to be a game I wanted to play. I hope 5E will be one that I want, but we'll see - until then, I won't get excited about it one way or the other.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Either way, a +X weapons adds 2X levels to the party for the purposes of expected attack bonus. I don't really see how this helps things; at some point, if there are magical weapons, you have to factor that into the player's power.

It was hinted at a couple of times by earlier posters, but one way to do it is to simply make the equipment a different measurement for power.

Take the 4E way now. Each character gets a level. The DM can use the XP budget and the character levels to determine a standard challenge (or an easy one or a tough one). If the PCs overcome it, they get set XP for that challenge, divided by the number of characters.

So consider a very overt way to include this measurement. Your "effective character level" (ECL) is your character level + "equipment level", where equipment level is determined by the amount of gear that you have. When the DM wants to make a standard challenge, he looks at ECL, instead of character level. This naturally means that "standard" encounters for a party with a lot of treasure grant more XP than "standard" encounters for a party with little to no treasure--because they are built on a bigger XP budget. However, each encounter should be relatively tough (and thus challenging and fun) compared to what the party can handle.

Or you can modify that to take into account a strange simulationist/gamist mindset. Namely, the ECL is considered somehow in the XP gain and/or XP character leveling chart. So when you get a +1 sword, this gain in power is reflected in your overall power, and thus it takes that much more to level. This is similar to the racial levels in 3.*, as suggested by an earlier poster.

Taking to its logical conclusion, I doubt many would consider the full version of that last modification very fun. There would be all kinds of edge cases where characters got penalized for finding good magic equipment, which is right out of any form of D&D I'd ever want to play.

Still, there is something to be said, from both the game play and simulation perspective, for a modest feedback brake of that nature. Perhaps if equipment reaches a certain critical threshold, it gives a -5% XP penalty, or some such, because the characters are relying on the equipment, not their own abilities. They'd rather have the equipment than not, because the raw XP from the greater challenges is more than the 5% penalty. Conversely, an equipment poor group is getting a modest boost.

Then you give the DM guidelines on how to adjust the penalties and thresholds to fit the kind of game they want. I think it can safely be said that for the vast majority of games, there is some point where there can be too little and/or too much equipment reliance. So once set, magic is still useful and helpful, but beyond a certain point, it just isn't worth the effort anymore.