Open Call for Rarity Fixes

[jimmifett]

Just saw this on my twitter:
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Short version: Fixing rarity, moving more things to common from uncommon. Big list of changes, want input of things to add/remove. Speak now or forever houserule your rarity.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

Ignoring it has worked just fine for my campaign.

 

[Incenjucar]

Very nice to see them asking for feedback on this.

 

[Dice4Hire]

I have managed to ignore this silly subsystem for a year now.

Why WOTC waited A YEAR to do this is beyond me. Pure laziness, I would say.

Things like this annoy me to no end, where someone changes the way everything works, and does not make the next step of doing the donkeywork needed to really implement it.

 

[blalien]

Why WOTC waited A YEAR to do this is beyond me. Pure laziness, I would say.

People are lazy. Companies are abstract entities that cannot be personified as such.

A group of playtesters needed to sift through over three thousand items and determine a rarity for each one. And they had to do this without slowing down Wizards' release schedule. I'm impressed they got it done this quickly.

 

[Dice4Hire]

People are lazy. Companies are abstract entities that cannot be personified as such.

Whatever dude.

 

[WalterKovacs]

Basically, MME was delayed, and as a result, it delayed useful implementation of the rarity system. With that book now out, there are some legitimate rare items, and a solid number of common items. They could have made a bunch of items common early on, but without rares, it would have just been a case of "things to deny your players", and to a lesser extent "here is some stuff you can sell for more money, not that there is anything you can buy with it anyway". Now that there are at least enough items to have a clear indication of what types of items warrant what level of rarity, it enables a DM to be able to adjudicate it themelves (since, most of the books with those rarities won't get updated even if they are errata'd). In the long run, it will be nice to get the compendium/character builder updated with that stuff, but having standards that can be assigned independently, vs. just assigning the rarities, at least gives people an explanation, and the tools to decide for themselves (maybe they don't feel iron armbands of power can be common in their game).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I have managed to ignore this silly subsystem for a year now.

Why WOTC waited A YEAR to do this is beyond me. Pure laziness, I would say.

Things like this annoy me to no end, where someone changes the way everything works, and does not make the next step of doing the donkeywork needed to really implement it.

Lest you consider this an easy task I would suggest following the link and reading the thread. I do believe that one thread has had more mod action on it over there than any 10 average threads combined. There have been probably 100 different opinions on each of a dozen or more of the more controversial items, with every possible rarity suggested. This is in a thread which started out right at the beginning stating flatly what the only acceptable criteria were for each category and simply asking for help checking and interpreting items to determine which one they fall in.

Now, multiply this little nightmare by the number of items there are out there, and you'll VERY quickly have to conclude that this categorization is one of the toughest tasks that they've yet taken on. I'd heavily bet on the main reason for MME being delayed by many months. It is just a really large job that is way easy to get wrong, way hard to get right, and highly subjective as to which is which.

 

[Dice4Hire]

Lest you consider this an easy task I would suggest following the link and reading the thread. I do believe that one thread has had more mod action on it over there than any 10 average threads combined. There have been probably 100 different opinions on each of a dozen or more of the more controversial items, with every possible rarity suggested. This is in a thread which started out right at the beginning stating flatly what the only acceptable criteria were for each category and simply asking for help checking and interpreting items to determine which one they fall in.

Now, multiply this little nightmare by the number of items there are out there, and you'll VERY quickly have to conclude that this categorization is one of the toughest tasks that they've yet taken on. I'd heavily bet on the main reason for MME being delayed by many months. It is just a really large job that is way easy to get wrong, way hard to get right, and highly subjective as to which is which.

There is a HUGE difference between getting a herd of cats in line and a few designers.

Saying it is hard because forum postes cannot agree is a very odd statement.

I think 2-3 designers could do most of this in a short period of time. It really is not that hard, fort he first 95% or so, if you have good guidelines. The final 5% or so could be harder.

Ask a forum to do it and it is downright impossible.

 

[S'mon]

I'm doing 'core book - PHB 1 & 2 - Common' 'Adventurer's Vault - Uncommon' and 'Anything Else - Rare'. Sticking with 1 Daily per milestone & Inherent bonuses, it works great!