D&D General Passive Power Budget: Balancing Magic Item Attunement, Concentration and Everything Else Properly (or Die Trying)

[Zardnaar]

I like current rules tbh.

Let each table sort it out to their preferences.

 

[SableWyvern]

The "balance" here seems to be hyper-focused on combat-effectiveness; I have no need for that kind of balanced combat in my D&D. Additionally, the way magic items were handled in 4e is something I never desire to go back to. So, it's a no for me -- but I get the sense that this is really a 5e discussion, rather than a D&D General one.

 

[Silam]

I really oppose this on principle.

I wonder if I expressed myself poorly, and you are reacting to some surface-level phrase rather than to the core idea itself. I would like to find a clearer way to describe the idea, if that is indeed the issue, because it does not seem actually opposed to your thoughts based on what you say right after:

Magic items are great, but the baseline assumptions of the game should never ever require magic items for pcs to be balanced at their level.

That is exactly the goal of this proposed system!

Obviously, this is a playstyle preference, but it's far easier to add magic items to a game than to remove them from one where they are built in balance elements (see: 3e and 4e).

Correct me if I’m wrong (I have played a ton of 3e and very little 4e, so our mileages may vary).

In 3e, the balance of classes and items roughly looked like this:

1. If no one has items, traditional martials (those using weapons) are in very bad shape, Monks are doing pretty good, spellcasters too.

2. If everybody has items of roughly balanced value, everybody is doing ok (though the Monk might be among the least improved, since they don’t rely on weapons, except some rare amulet of mighty fist or whatever it was called, if you even count that as a weapon at all).

3. If some characters have strong items and others lack them (or the items they have are strong in abstract but a bad fit for their build, which is roughly equivalent to it being a weak item in the end), then the game is absolutely NOT balanced, except if one of the characters with no items took the Vow of Poverty feat which gave a bunch of inherent bonuses to almost everything (and again, that strategy disproportionately favored Monks, since they naturally tended to do better than others without gear).

So… while the details of which feats or items exist may vary, pretty much all three scenarios exist across all editions.

Scenarios 1 and 2 are fairly straightforward to balance. No one gets any, or everybody gets some. The issue is when there are subtle power imbalances between items or how they interact with certain specific classes, then scenario 2 devolves into scenario 3.

The goal of my proposal is to make it so that even scenario 3 maintains a semblant of balance (at least as far as max power is concerned, though staying power will probably always favor geared up characters).

This is already, IMHO, kind of problematic. Allowing multiple concentration spells defeats the purpose of having concentration as a meaningful limit. I'd be very wary of it. In my game, it costs an 8th level spell to concentrate on two effects at once. Others may value it differently, but that's the level of cost I feel it should impose.

That part can be tweaked. I think it’s fine for there to be a "multi-tasking tax". Or even a hard limit of one concentrated spell at a time. Though it would still matter how big of a fraction of the concentration budget that one spell took up, as that would impact what other passive abilities can be used in the same round.

I like the idea of concentration based martial effects. However, I'm not sure this would improve the game. The fact is, martial characters get hit almost every round in many fights, sometimes more than once. Tying their abilities to concentration means they would lose those abilities mid-fight very often. I'm not sure what to suggest on that; making it easier to maintain concentration defeats the purpose of having it in the first place.

So how does this interact with having your concentration broken? Or is the assumption that it can't be broken anymore? Because breaking concentration is a major element of balancing spells.

A fighting style is like a cantrip. You can re-initiate it at will. It is no different than Bladeward. If a Monk takes a stance where their legs are in Iron Horse (e.g., bonus against tripping) and their wrists are twisted into the crane style (e.g., bonus to disarm opponents or whatever), and they get hit straight in the face by an ancient dragon’s tail that is 10 times their size, wouldn’t you think they’d risk losing their stance? And if they do, so what? Let the dragon pounce on them with their claws while they’re down. They can always do a kip up and resume their stance next round. Fighting is dynamic, not static.

I don't know, I'm not trying to be negative

Thanks! I appreciate the effort and the back and forth.

- there are some elements in here that I like- but I feel like you're trying to tie together disparate elements under one system that might not be well suited to all the things you're trying to do here.

It may be that this is tying up too much. My undercurrent here is basically this:

• I actually like the concentration mechanic as a balancing element, BUT…
• I often wonder why some spells are concentration-free while others aren’t?
• And why a 17th level Wizard can concentrate on one 9th level spell or on one cantrip, but not on two cantrips? If that is how the laws of magic work, fine… but the concrete consequence is that there is never a reason to use that concentration cantrip ever again except if you are fully out of slots. And I’m not sure that’s the greatest design.
• I see a lot of effects that are concentration-like except they don’t actually use up the concentration slot. The aforementioned high level Wizard can’t possibly concentrate on two low level spells, but they could concentrate on a spell and a fighting style, and unarmored defense, and and and (assuming they had those abilities from multiclassing, obviously).
• The attunement slots make no sense to me. I understand the need for it in terms of balance, but there are so many jagged edges to the design, I hate it.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk

 

[Maxperson]

Did you play Basic or AD&D? Dumping lesser weapons and armour was standard.

AD&D. You didn't dump weapons unless you found a good magical non-proficient weapon that overcame the penalty to hit or else you were facing a creature you couldn't hit unless you were using a magic weapon. Otherwise you used one of the few weapons you were proficient with.

Also, AD&D and Basic switching weapons and armor wasn't a treadmill. The treadmill is when the game math assumes magical plusses at specific levels and accounts for them, so the PCs MUST find items of those plusses or fall behind on the treadmill. AD&D and Basic didn't do that.

 

[Maxperson]

2. If everybody has items of roughly balanced value, everybody is doing ok (though the Monk might be among the least improved, since they don’t rely on weapons, except some rare amulet of mighty fist or whatever it was called, if you even count that as a weapon at all).

Not quite. The math of 3e assumed that martials were getting magical arms and armor that increased at certain levels. For example, and I'm making up the levels because I can't remember which levels they were, the game would assume a +1 weapon by level 3, a +2 weapon by level 7, a +3 by level 11, etc. The same with magical armor and shields.

That meant that the monsters were getting harder to hit at those levels and rolling higher numbers at those levels to compensate for those increases in magic arms and armor. If everyone were getting roughly balanced value magic items, the martials were just treading water while the spellcasters were getting improvements. In order for everyone to be doing okay, you needed to give the martials better magic items.

 

[kigmatzomat]

A variant of the constraint exists in 5e with Attunement. Weaker/basic items can be used at will but more powerful items require attunement. 3e and prior there were few constraints beyond physical layering (2 rings, 1 shield, 1 armor, 1 set bracers, 1 footwear, 1 set gloves, 1 legging, 1 headgear, 1 neck wear, 1 brooch, etc)

3e had expectations of standard gear. Magic items had costs, PCs had a wealth per level, encounters had a median gp value per CR, there were percentage chances for magic items of various power by treasure CR, and there were sample NPCs from 1st-20th with combat stats & gear on pages 113-128 which provided a robust set of exemplars without doing a lot of statistics to see when different items were supposed to appear.

The wealth levels let you tell if you (or the dice) were running hotter or cooler than RAW as well as which PCs were individually over/underpowered, and the exemplars helped you recognize if you had too much "irregularity" in gear, such as a 20th level fighter with a +1 sword, +1 armor and 200 potions.

Games like Earthdawn make items part of your power level as it requires a skill to attune, which sets the number of attunement, and it is possible to fail attunement (which can only be tried once per skill rank). ED is a point buy" system with levels you buy into to gain access to more abilities, so this mean items draw from the same pool used to improve combat abilities.

I believe 4e borrowed a lot of these concepts. Which is fair, ED was an attempt to make all the 1e ad&d rules be completely consistent in-game meta.

 

[Silam]

Games like Earthdawn make items part of your power level as it requires a skill to attune, which sets the number of attunement, and it is possible to fail attunement (which can only be tried once per skill rank). ED is a point buy" system with levels you buy into to gain access to more abilities, so this mean items draw from the same pool used to improve combat abilities.

That’s interesting, I hadn’t heard of it. It sounds pretty similar to what I’m proposing. I should check it out. Thanks!

 

[Silam]

Not quite. The math of 3e assumed that martials were getting magical arms and armor that increased at certain levels. For example, and I'm making up the levels because I can't remember which levels they were, the game would assume a +1 weapon by level 3, a +2 weapon by level 7, a +3 by level 11, etc. The same with magical armor and shields.

That meant that the monsters were getting harder to hit at those levels and rolling higher numbers at those levels to compensate for those increases in magic arms and armor. If everyone were getting roughly balanced value magic items, the martials were just treading water while the spellcasters were getting improvements. In order for everyone to be doing okay, you needed to give the martials better magic items.

I’ll admit that what you’re describing might have flown over my head at the time. While I liked min-maxing my own characters, I did not reflect deeply on the inter-class balance math back then. I always assumed that, ultimately, the responsibility for game balance rested in significant part on the DM, but I had not noticed that balancing the power levels required unbalancing the item values.

At any rate… I think there is something to this idea of adding an opportunity cost to carrying magic items, that can balance against other effects besides just magic items…

 

[DEFCON 1]

At the end of the day... the problem ends up being that every table is completely different in what "balance" both means and requires. So any set of rules that gets instituted in an effort to "solve" the problem only ends up solving it for a small handful of people. The other predominant and huge group of players will have things be just as "imbalanced" from their point of view as it was when the game didn't take magic items into account.

I know a lot of people have an issue with the whole "Let the DM solve their own problem" way of looking at roleplaying game design... but the entire range and gamut of player needs is so wide that it's really the only thing that truly works. And I personally believe WotC also knows this, which is why they went with the whole "Rulings, not Rules" mindset in the first place.

So if a DM comes up with some sort of system for themselves to take magic items into account when trying to figure out "the math" of how their D&D game runs most effectively and so they can "build encounters" to get the exact results from them that they want... that's great! But it's not something that needs to be a universal system, because no other tables are going to see that same math, nor want/ask for the same results.

 

[overgeeked]

It’d be nice if magic items were a built-in part of the power balance.

Well...

Fourth edition has entered the chat

Exactly.

5E isn't a well-balanced game in most respects, nor is 5.5. Trying to balance magic items is a losing proposition.

I'd suggest going the opposite direction. Stop giving out +1s and +2s, instead give out more powerful limited-use magic items. Let the players break the game with their magic items, but limit how often they can do so. A wand with one charge that has a higher level spell than anyone in the party can cast. A ring with one charge that has some cool monster ability tucked inside. Etc.