Stocking up on cheap magic

[Staffan]

I do think wands in the core rules are underpriced, I restrict them to 20 charges which makes the base price/charge 37.5gp, midway between scroll (25 gp) and potion (50 gp).

That kinda misses the point of wands, though. The idea of a wand in 3e is that it's like getting 50 scrolls at once, at a discount because, well, you're getting 50 at once. That, in turn, is because in most cases the fiftieth copy of something isn't as useful as one or two, it's called diminishing returns (the first lesser restoration you have is more likely to be used than the twentieth).

 

[Staffan]

One gold could feed a fief based family for a LONG time.

Not in D&D. From the DMG (page 130):
[bq]Self-sufficient: Cost 2 gp per month. Even if you own your home (or live with someone else), raise your own food, make your own clothes, and so on, you occasionally need to purchase a new pair of shoes, pay a road toll, or buy staples such as salt. Common laborers earn about 3 gp per month, so they usually have to be self-sufficient just to survive.[/bq]

In other words, one gp will last a single person for about two weeks, at most. Gold in D&D is significantly less valuable than it was in the real world.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Not in D&D. From the DMG (page 130):
[bq]Self-sufficient: Cost 2 gp per month. Even if you own your home (or live with someone else), raise your own food, make your own clothes, and so on, you occasionally need to purchase a new pair of shoes, pay a road toll, or buy staples such as salt. Common laborers earn about 3 gp per month, so they usually have to be self-sufficient just to survive.[/bq]

In other words, one gp will last a single person for about two weeks, at most. Gold in D&D is significantly less valuable than it was in the real world.

Coins in general are undervalued. 1 pence (copper piece) could buy an awful lot of bread, or several chickens even in Victorian times. (More in the country, less in London.) They were often broken into pieces like ha'pennies.

The Auld Grump

 

[Arc]

As a player, I'd be very annoyed if a DM severely reduced the availability of magic or magic items, but only if he didn't take that into account when calculating CR's and encounter difficulties. The expected wealth levels are there for a reason, and if I'm not getting the magical items I need to survive a fight, then I'm going to expect to make up for it with significantly more experiance rewards.

Of course, it all comes down to DM fiat, but after a certain point, minor tweaking and play styling devolves into fullblown houserules, and if those go too far, then I'd rather play something else. 3.5 DnD is fairly flexible the way it is, but I'd rather go to an enitrely different system (GURPS, FUDGE, or what-have-you) than try to keep tweaking it and patching it.

 

[Tatsukun]

I’m playing in a fairly low magic game right now, and let me tell you; as the front line fighter, it sucks. Tanks NEED healing and magic items. At low levels a non-spellcasting-PC (NSPC) stands in front of the bad guys and trades blows. The Spellcasters (SC) lob magic from the back row. At later levels, the SC are more powerful (new spells, higher DCs), the monsters are more powerful (better attacks, more damage, more HP better AC), and the NSPC are better at attacking (higher BAB).

BUT, the NSPC’s have NOTHING new for protection other than marginally more HP. They can’t boost their AC by themselves, they need items. They can’t heal themselves, they need healing.

I guess what I’m saying is that I hate DM’s who say “Well, in MY world, magic items are holy relics only given out when the DM wants.” because it absolutely trashes the balance between the classes. The clerics and druids become even more powerful, while the NSPC’s become even more useless. Can you imagine playing with a DM who told you “Clerical spells are rare, and even if you went up cleric levels you probably wouldn’t be able to gain access to them”? Can you imagine playing a cleric in that world? Randomly deciding to nerf the cleric by severely limiting cleric spells is the same as nerfing the fighters by limiting magic items/healing.

Now, I must confess, I have been guilty of this in the past, when I was a ‘young DM’. I made a system of training for skills, making the PC’s role-play where they were learning whatever they took for skills at each levels (and finding a teacher, Etc.). When the party rogue finally stopped yelling, I realized he was 100% right.

So would I allow my PCs to buy a town out of healing, or buy a city out of healing? Of course, just as I would allow them to buy a city out of chickens if they really wanted to. It’s not like a CLW wand is a useful thing in most battles at the levels we’re talking.

Would I send thieves after them or something vengeful like that? No, I try not to make this a competition DM vs. Player.

-Tatsu

 

[BullMarkOne]

Wait, they have 3rd level spells at 5th level? How is that munchkin? That's what you get by default with a Clr/Wiz/Drd.

And how is them going "hog wild" a problem? They need money (or whatever the mage/church wants--land, service, resources, piety, etc.) to get the items.

As a player, if I don't have access to magic, I feel extremely vulnerable. Magic is powerful, you can fly, you can levitate, you can survive the elements, you can escape enemies, you can

I might not have been clear enough with that post, what I meant, is that they have magical equipment equivalent in value to approximately what a 3rd level character would start with, according to the chart on pg. 127 of the DMG.

As for going 'hog wild' that was also probably a poor choice of words. It's not their equipment that makes them munchkin, it's their playstyle and knowledge (or creative ignorance) of the rules. This knowledge allows them to seriously min-max their characters, causing these two characters to overshadow the other five, whose play styles and skill levels differ. Limiting magic in this campaign is one of the means I use to keep these two from dominating the game at the expense of the other five players.

IMHO, if you want garunteed access to magic, play a class that has access to that magic. I'm pretty accomidating when it comes to what my players want. I want my players to enjoy the game, but I dont want the fun of some of them to come at the expense of others.

 

[BullMarkOne]

I’m playing in a fairly low magic game right now, and let me tell you; as the front line fighter, it sucks. Tanks NEED healing and magic items. At low levels a non-spellcasting-PC (NSPC) stands in front of the bad guys and trades blows. The Spellcasters (SC) lob magic from the back row. At later levels, the SC are more powerful (new spells, higher DCs), the monsters are more powerful (better attacks, more damage, more HP better AC), and the NSPC are better at attacking (higher BAB).

BUT, the NSPC’s have NOTHING new for protection other than marginally more HP. They can’t boost their AC by themselves, they need items. They can’t heal themselves, they need healing.

Ahh, but you're assuming a 'normal' progression of enemy power, where the PC's 'graduate' from one set of monsters to the next to the next. Not all campaigns work like that and a good dm, in any setting, will tailor the challenge to the party.

 

[Tatsukun]

Ahh, but you're assuming a 'normal' progression of enemy power, where the PC's 'graduate' from one set of monsters to the next to the next. Not all campaigns work like that and a good dm, in any setting, will tailor the challenge to the party.

Right, but if the spellcasters are all progressing normally, and you have nerfed all the non-spellcasters, how do you do that? Do you start to use only monsters that can hurt your now-even-more-uber spellcasters while not hurting your handicaped fighter-types?

It seems silly to throw intra-party balance out the window, then work your proverbial but off trying to kepe it all from crashing down.

-Tatsu

 

[BullMarkOne]

Right, but if the spellcasters are all progressing normally, and you have nerfed all the non-spellcasters, how do you do that? Do you start to use only monsters that can hurt your now-even-more-uber spellcasters while not hurting your handicaped fighter-types?

It seems silly to throw intra-party balance out the window, then work your proverbial but off trying to kepe it all from crashing down.

-Tatsu

Two words, Spell Resistance. Although I'll admit that my current party doesnt make this too huge a problem for me, since the only single-class spellcaster in the group is a cleric, and the other casters are splitting levels fairly evenly.

 

[Ranes]

The thief who successfully steals 30 wands of CLW can afford to make himself pretty difficult to catch, even in a world with divination magic.

Also, I'm with others who've pointed out the time and effort it would take to acquire those 30 wands. They have to be commissioned, probably from a number of sources which first have to be located. Then they have to be manufactured. And there may already be a waiting list.