Parties screwed without an Int-based PC?

[Herschel]

Look at it this way: The character I play most is a Swordmage (Assault) with Wisdom as his "dump stat". The only thing he perceives is that he's wearing shoes fairly often. This leads to some fun (and funny) occurances.

For your party, it can too. In order to get the magic items, they may now have to find ways to cart stuff around in order to have a better chance of examining it before just dismissing it as "mundane junk". There's a whole lot of potential fun there, especially with NPCs and baddies running around. Think about chasing a rogue who stole that nifty sword from the loot only to find out later it wasn't magic.

Also-

There is no more "all of the above", and a major complaint about 3E was that there was. If all players want is uber characters, play video games and buy magazines for the cheat codes so you can "win" all the time. There's a lot of interesting things that can happen when everyone can't do everything and sometimes nobody can do something. It opens doors to creativity far larger than just houseruling what's essentially a "cheat" code.

 

[James McMurray]

You continue to jump to conclusions, so there's no real point in coninuing this. We've found a solution that the group likes, but thanks for your input.

 

[Herschel]

I am not really "jumping to conclusions" I'm simply pointing out observations and fun options that can come from characters not being able to do something that you are not pointing out from your side. Nobody is saying you have to use it, but some of us are simply pointing out the other way to look at it.

In this case, you used an absolute and are icorrect. The party isn't "screwed" but I agree they are very challenged in this case. You chose to fix it for them, that's cool.

 

[Ryujin]

In practise, it can't. If the prime consideration is "I gotta have a 20", then everything else suffers.

 

[CapnZapp]

Is it safe to say then that yes, PCs are screwed without an int based character, but most people either haven't experienced that in a party or have ignored the rules that cause the problem?

Not really, because the rules say that spending 5 minutes with everything they see find the magic automatically.

That you feel this is "screwed" only means you're effectively setting up a house-rule disallowing your party from having found everything there is to find at the end of each encounter and its associated short rest.

Which in turns forces you to add additional house-rules.

This does in no way mean I have a problem with you saying there is no automatic detection in your game. Allowing characters to base their chance of detection on other skills than Arcana is certainly not unbalanced - you're effectively only allowing what Wizards, Warlocks & Co could do already. So go ahead!

But please don't try to make it out to be a general problem with the rules.

 

[Plane Sailing]

I can certainly understand the "sacrew the bastards" school of thought, and used to be that kind of GM. I decided a while back that I'd rather everyone have fun though, so it doesn't work for me anymore.

Are you characterizing everyone who doesn't agree with you as a "screw the bastards" style DM?

It seems to be a strange binary approach you are taking in the discussion, and is moderately discourteous to denigrate other approaches - especially since D&D has traditionally always been about choices and tradeoffs... nobody can be great at everything, so what are you going to be good at (as a party) and what are you going to be less good at.

Regards,

 

[Ryujin]

Not really, because the rules say that spending 5 minutes with everything they see find the magic automatically.

That you feel this is "screwed" only means you're effectively setting up a house-rule disallowing your party from having found everything there is to find at the end of each encounter and its associated short rest.

Which in turns forces you to add additional house-rules.

This does in no way mean I have a problem with you saying there is no automatic detection in your game. Allowing characters to base their chance of detection on other skills than Arcana is certainly not unbalanced - you're effectively only allowing what Wizards, Warlocks & Co could do already. So go ahead!

But please don't try to make it out to be a general problem with the rules.

That isn't quite the case. It's not that you "find" the magic items, so much as you determine the identity abilities of what you've found. A strict interpretation might well be that you have to know that what you're examining has special properties, in order to determine what those properties are. As "you can identify one magic item per short rest" if the character doesn't know what he's examining is magic, could he end up spending his whole short rest trying to identify a mundane soup ladle?

Are you characterizing everyone who doesn't agree with you as a "screw the bastards" style DM?

It seems to be a strange binary approach you are taking in the discussion, and is moderately discourteous to denigrate other approaches - especially since D&D has traditionally always been about choices and tradeoffs... nobody can be great at everything, so what are you going to be good at (as a party) and what are you going to be less good at.

Regards,

I understand what he means about the players enjoying themselves, but I wonder how far the game needs to be "bent" in order to accommodate a poorly designed party? If they don't have a Warlord or Cleric does the GM create more Healing Surge magic items? Give them a NPC Cleric? More long rests per adventure? AC boosts? If there are no Defenders does the opposition get stupid and let ranged Strikers roam freely on the outskirts of the grid?

... or do you give them the opportunity to either adjust their play to the realities of the game, perhaps even having someone draw up a new character with no penalties?

 

[James McMurray]

Are you characterizing everyone who doesn't agree with you as a "screw the bastards" style DM?

It's just a colorful phrase. No insult was intended.

 

[Runestar]

If you create a character that is all about the hack and slash, and not about what comes between, then be it on your own head. I see it as a means of mitigating against the power gamers. If they don't find all the treasure possible, then they end up being more in balance with the power of unoptimized characters.

Just curious - if your party fails to find the treasure you prepared for them, is it deemed lost forever (and is thus taken out of their wealth guidelines), or do you simply find a way to throw it in their faces more blatantly the next time around.

At the end of the day, if one PC remarks that they seem to be getting far less gear than what their level would otherwise suggest, are you going to tell them that too bad, they missed out on a whole bundle of loot way back?

To me, that just seems like the players will simply go to extremes to work around their perceived shortcomings, such as taking 20 on the appropriate skill checks, or playing pack-rat by hauling everything that isn't nailed down back to town to identify.

I dunno, seems like the greater of 2 evils here.

 

[Ryujin]

Just curious - if your party fails to find the treasure you prepared for them, is it deemed lost forever (and is thus taken out of their wealth guidelines), or do you simply find a way to throw it in their faces more blatantly the next time around.

At the end of the day, if one PC remarks that they seem to be getting far less gear than what their level would otherwise suggest, are you going to tell them that too bad, they missed out on a whole bundle of loot way back?

To me, that just seems like the players will simply go to extremes to work around their perceived shortcomings, such as taking 20 on the appropriate skill checks, or playing pack-rat by hauling everything that isn't nailed down back to town to identify.

I dunno, seems like the greater of 2 evils here.

I'll start by saying that I don't GM 4e, though I've run a couple of dozen other RPGs of various sorts over the last few decades.

There's never a guarantee that the party will find everything in any adventure. The only time that I would consider "throwing it in their faces" would be if some specific item was key in exposition. Other than that, tough nuggies. They can save up whatever gold they may have gained and buy the requisite items. All that they'll likely be short of are the extra "nice to haves."

I don't tend to hide treasure in an illusion covered pit, behind a secret door, at the bottom of a well. It's usually there to be found. If they don't, then it's likely that they've missed an easy bet. The ordinary looking sword in the velvet lined wooden box isn't likely ordinary.

As to going to great lengths, that happens regardless of party composition. In most games I've played I'm known for having a rather extensive armoury of mundane weapons and armour, regardless of class.

In one situation our Wizard feather fell off of a platform and was subsequently hauled to safety by 3 other members, because I spotted a couple of magic items on an opponent who was laying 70 feet down below. This triggered events that resulted in us doing away with an impatient Paladin, because he triggered events prematurely and risked our Wizard's life. Can't think of much greater lengths than that.