D&D 5E Stuff from your favorite edition you DON'T want in Next

[DEFCON 1]

Exponential costs for buying/selling/creating magic items.

A magic sword +2 shouldn't cost 4 times as much as a magic sword +1. It's illogical and it creates a completely unfathomable economic situation within the game world.

Those prices are put there for no other reason than to save players and DMs from themselves. Because apparently if a +1 sword costs 1,000 gold and a +5 sword costs 5,000 gold... suddenly every DM will give/buy/allow players to create +5 weapons willy-nilly and screw up the balance numbers in their own game without realizing it.

 

[n00bdragon]

4e here

I want ability scores to actually mean something. In 4e you have your attack stat and your effect stat. It doesn't matter what they are. If you pick the right class you can punch a guy with your intelligence. Attack and damage are always tied to whatever your attack stat is. Then how strong your powers are is always tied to your effect stat, and almost all classes present you with two (or maybe three) different effect stats you can use so you just max out one of them and only pick powers that use that effect stat. You could literally just drop the six ability scores and just have "Hittiness" and "Effectyness" and it would work out much better.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

A magic sword +2 shouldn't cost 4 times as much as a magic sword +1. It's illogical and it creates a completely unfathomable economic situation within the game world.

It isn't illogical.

Lets look at RW consumer goods we can find data on easily: cars.

Cars that go from 0-60mph in 10-15 seconds are usually what we would call econoboxes. Not very expensive- typically under $25k.

Cars that do 0-60 in 5 seconds typically cost $40-75k.

Cars scoring a 4 second or less in that test usually go for around $150k+, with no upper limit to price. The Bugatti Veryon, with 1001 HP does the 0-60 in 3.1 seconds, for a pice of $2,250,000.

(Yes, there are exceptions, which is why I'm using weasel words like "typically".)

There's more to the price of an item than its "performance numbers". Sometimes, it takes extra engineering to wring out that marginal increase in power. My old $11,300 Pontiac Grand Am could do 104mph- barely!- and it had 90HP. By your logic, a car capable of 208mph would only need 180 HP and cost about $25k, and that just isn't the case.

To bring full circle, a wizard might be able to do a +1 weapon for 1kGP, but the magic required to make it a +2 weapon isn't necessarily linearly more difficult to make.

 

[billd91]

It isn't illogical.

Lets look at RW consumer goods we can find data on easily: cars.

<snip>

There's more to the price of an item than its "performance numbers". Sometimes, it takes extra engineering to wring out that marginal increase in power. My old $11,300 Pontiac Grand Am could do 104mph- barely!- and it had 90HP. By your logic, a car capable of 208mph would only need 180 HP and cost about $25k, and that just isn't the case.

To bring full circle, a wizard might be able to do a +1 weapon for 1kGP, but the magic required to make it a +2 weapon isn't necessarily linearly more difficult to make.

The difference here is that magic item costs, and the difference between weaker and more powerful items, is a perfectly arbitrary system. Does it increase linearly? It sure can. I don't have to worry about real principles of engineering internal combustion engines.

 

[Jeff Carlsen]

The difference here is that magic item costs, and the difference between weaker and more powerful items, is a perfectly arbitrary system. Does it increase linearly? It sure can. I don't have to worry about real principles of engineering internal combustion engines.

Diminishing returns is a practical consideration in any type of engineering, and having magic reflect that gives is some extra believability. But, there is a practical limit and a point where throwing money at a problem won't solve it. Third Edition didn't feel believable.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Prestige Classes
Challenge Ratings
XP
Base Attack/Save Bonuses
Hit Points

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

The difference here is that magic item costs, and the difference between weaker and more powerful items, is a perfectly arbitrary system. Does it increase linearly? It sure can. I don't have to worry about real principles of engineering internal combustion engines.

True, but that doesn't make ever-escalating costs illogical or even undesirable.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Whacky double-postitude

 

[Derren]

Prestige classes bloat. The original idea for them was good (representing membership in certain organizations), but their implementation was not (had to be build for, were a nearly mandatory power up for non casters, etc.).

And mandatory magical items.

 

[DEFCON 1]

True, but that doesn't make ever-escalating costs illogical or even undesirable.

I find it completely illogical that a +6 magical item costs more than some barony's gross national product. All to just get an extra 5 points of attack bonus and damage... both of which (in 4E) you can get by taking the right powers and feats. The correlation between extra points of attack and damage from a magical weapon versus the extra points of attack and damage from all the other possible sources IS illogical. Especially when it costs hundreds of thousands of gold pieces to get.

Which is why your car analogy breaks down. We have no other source to get those extra MPH except to buy the better car... whereas we can get +6 to attack and damage in any number of ways besides a magic weapon. And to arbitrarily choose one of those ways to cost insane amounts of money does not make any logical sense, because those bonus points are exactly the same as bonus points you can get elsewhere. The only real difference is bonus stacking... and that's where the designers have put up the barrier for entry on those "magic weapon" attack and damage bonuses... because for some reason it's here that they feel they can't trust the players not to go nuts and grab those bonuses at times in their PCs career when they really shouldn't have them. And they completely screw around the economies of lands where these supposed weapons and items are meant to be bought and sold.