D&D 5E (2014) The Case for a Magic Item Shop?

[Kaychsea]

You had four points?

RAW from reading and counting would say yes.

 

[Scorpio616]

You know, you cannot sneak attack if you have disadvantage in the attack roll, evne if you have a source of advantage....

OP can still sneak attack creatures in lit areas as long as the character has nearby allies.

But Sneak Attack wasn't the OP's issue, just "scouting / recon".

Currently now that we're in the underdark, I still use stealth, but I have to travel with the "light pack" of other characters that need light to see, while others who can see in the dark, but aren't as adept at stealth, do the scouting. At best, this just gives me an edge in the first combat round when we're attacked, but I cannot do the scouting / recon that I'm good at.

Heck I'm kinda thinking this situation may be an improvement for the party since it forces the characters to stick together... rather than having characters burning rounds of actions just to catch up.

 

[Hussar]

I suppose Goldmoon should have told her companions to sod off she was staying home because she was gimped because the true gods had been forgotten.

This is a very bad example [MENTION=66434]ExploderWizard[/MENTION]. The Goldmoon character in the modules was an NPC, typically, AND had spells provided to her through a magical staff from the very first session. At no point was Goldmoon bereft of clerical magic. By the end of the first adventure (and it's actually earlier than that) she has full clerical abilities.

Slightly different than being stripped of your class schtick for extended periods of time through no fault of your own.

 

[Hussar]

I have played in many games over the years where sometimes your class abilities get nerfed for a couple of sessions. We were tapped in a dead magic zone for two sessions so none of our casters or magic weapon worked including magical healing. We were once trapped in hell and the clerics were cut ff from their gods the only spells they had to access were the ones they had when we went in and third level and below. I have to disagree I have major fun when I have been nerfed because it requires thinking outside the box to accomplish things.

This player is not in this situation at all he can still do sneak attack and other things the only thing he can't do is stealth and scout. It is tough but hardly the end of the world.

That underlined part is the important bit. A couple of session? Sure, suck it up and move on. But, that's not the case here. We're talking about multiple sessions. And, clerics limited to only third level and lower spells? Yeah, that's a limitation, sure, but, hardly on the same level as having disadvantage on EVERY action and everyone else having advantage on you.

 

[Hussar]

OP can still sneak attack creatures in lit areas as long as the character has nearby allies.

But Sneak Attack wasn't the OP's issue, just "scouting / recon".

Heck I'm kinda thinking this situation may be an improvement for the party since it forces the characters to stick together... rather than having characters burning rounds of actions just to catch up.

I'm assuming you mean unlit here. But, not quite. You cannot sneak attack ever if you have disadvantage. You'd need to have an ally within 5 feet of the target and a way to gain advantage as well. Sorry, been going over the whole sneak attack while blind/invisible thing recently.

Thing is, I can see his point here. He's done this for a significant amount of time in the campaign and that's his schtick. And, it's a pretty good schtick. A party should be scouting like this an not all bunched up. The scout should not be attacking anything and should never be starting a fight. He goes up, sees the enemy, and either waits for the party or goes back and reports. If the combat has already started and the rest of the group is catching up, that's a bad scout and probably a very short lived one as well.

And, the thing to remember here is, he was doing it already. This isn't a new character. This is an established character who had been capable of doing the stealth thing for a number of levels and presumably a number of sessions as well, all without needing dark vision. Comments about, "Oh, well, you suck as a ninja" kind of miss the point. He already was being ninja. However, the DM has thrust the party into a new situation (good) for an extended period of time (no problem) without providing any means for the player to mitigate the difficulties that the DM has thrust them into (bad). It's not that providing challenge is a bad thing, but, what's the point of providing a challenge without having any means for resolving that challenge?

It's like stripping all the spells from the wizard, stealing his spell book and then telling him that for the next eight sessions, he cannot find another spell book. Would anyone really find that fun? Would you accept this graciously and just soldier on? One or two or maybe three at the outside sessions? Sure, ok, no problem. Eight or more? Yeah, no thank you.

 

[the Jester]

It is a question of wanting your players to enjoy the game. You don't need to describe where they get the magic item, it is like downtime, they say they are going shopping for X you tell them to subtract Y amount of gold. Then move on to something that matters, what something that is depends on the story you are telling, they should know which npc's to go talk to from the previous bits of the story, you should never have the players going around town clicking on random people like some video game hoping to find the right conversation. You as a DM guide them to the next important npc.

Paraxis, over and over again, in thread after thread, I see you making these absolute statements about how D&D should run, how "you should never" this and how that is unfun.

I know I'm repeating basically what others have said in this thread, but your way is not the objectively correct, proper, One True Way to play D&D. It isn't; it's a playstyle choice. In fact, there was a huge amount of discussion about a passage in the 4e DMG that said, basically, "Skip talking to the guards and the city gates and get to the fun stuff"- a lot of people said, "Wait, what? Talking to the guards is fun." Which sounds a lot to me like some of the exchanges you're involved in in this thread- you're insisting that certain things simply aren't fun, but they are to some groups. I wish you'd try to understand that you aren't doing it right and they aren't doing it wrong, but you are both just doing it different.

I understand people don't like ACME Magic Artifact Co or Spellmart, but you don't have to have those in your world to handwave shopping. The characters still get the items from commissioning wizards, thieves guilds, general stores, alchemists, dwarven smiths, temples, etc... you just don't need to spend time talking about all of that.

But a lot of groups enjoy that. And a lot of DMs don't want to handwave that kind of thing; it's important or fun enough that they do want it as part of the game.

There is a story, running around clicking on every npc in the village seems more like a video game to me than going and talking to just the few that move that story forward.

Nope. Not all games have a 'story' at all, at least not until the players are recounting what happened in the game. And your description of pcs interacting with npcs is pretty insulting to the camp that likes roleplaying out those interactions.

Look, you might not know who's important in a given town. The people who are important might be different depending on what you want to do, so if you decide to enter politics, the town council is the important group, but if you decide to go seek out the missing horses, maybe the local stabler, groom and farrier. On the other hand, if you're looking to connect with the local fey, maybe you need to talk to the town's kids or the local druid. Heck, the important ones might end up being the farmer who you were nice to (he hides you when the assassins come looking for you!) and the traveling merchant. And exploring that community is tons of fun for some of us.

That underlined part is the important bit. A couple of session? Sure, suck it up and move on. But, that's not the case here. We're talking about multiple sessions. And, clerics limited to only third level and lower spells? Yeah, that's a limitation, sure, but, hardly on the same level as having disadvantage on EVERY action and everyone else having advantage on you.

But he doesn't. He only has disadvantage/grants advantage if he insists on sticking to the darkness without anything to compensate his senses.

Sure, that means that in this situation he can't go scout very far ahead of the party. Well, maybe the solution is not to count on his scouting skills in situations where he can't really make use of them. IMHO a pc that is so much of a one-trick pony that he or she can't deal with one of the most common situations in the game - darkness - needs to either plan better or find a secondary set of skills/tools to fall back on. "Let's throw magic shoppes into the game!" is a poor solution for someone who isn't the DM and whose DM isn't interested in doing that; all that leads to is an extended period of being unhappy.

My advice to the pc in question? "Stay just ahead of the light. Accept that, instead of being the bitchin' scout you wanna be, you're a bitchin' scout with light and a poor one in the dark, and stick to things you can be good at. Or take any of the many, many, MANY solutions that people have offered in this thread- things like multiclassing, friendly spellcasters using darkvision, etc.- instead of either throwing a fit or continuing to attempt your works-in-the-light shtick when you don't have light."

 

[Paraxis]

Paraxis, over and over again, in thread after thread, I see you making these absolute statements about how D&D should run, how "you should never" this and how that is unfun.

Welcome to the internet, if you need someone to post IMHO before everything they type you'll be getting very frustrated because that doesn't happen.

My way is the right way for my group, I have never implied that others have to play any game the way I do, I just recommend it to people because I have a lot of fun that way or I wouldn't run my games the way I do.

 

[Scorpio616]

I'm assuming you mean unlit here.

No I said Lit and I meant lit.

 

[Hussar]

Wow. Scout is a one trick pony character? Filling one of the most important roles in a group - information gathering - makes him a one trick pony? Funny how you Jester, take Paraxis to task for one true wayism and then tell the op that he's playing wrong and should either suck it up
Or make a different character.

Because, after all, suggesting the DM display any flexibility is right off the table.

As usual.

 

[Tony Semana]

Question: how do we know that the DM hasn't been providing a means (or at least hooks) to mitigate these difficulties?? All we know is that the player can't SCOUT anymore, and asking for magic shops in-world as the way to mitigate it? No. Why not just ask that 'Underdark' is just a figure of speech and it's in actuality under-dim?

FWIW, it's NOT like stripping spells from wizard. Which class actually HINGES on being able to scout? Which one actually has SCOUTING abilities that are invalidated by darkness? What is the actual class of this character? The discussion has assumed rogue (sneak attack discussion), but is that even confirmed?

Does it take away the character's 'shtick', yes. Does it take away the character's class features? No.. Given, as has been pointed out, the character has been doing this 'shtick' for 7 levels, do people really think that's all they've done for seven levels? And is that really the only thing they can contribute moving forward? Also, is it really that heinous to give other members of the party the opportunity to shine in that department? Sorry for the rant, but turning this into a DM issue thing is ridiculous considering all better suggestions than 'there should be magic shops'.
[MENTION=8277]epochrpg[/MENTION]: what does your DM expect you to do? Have you talked to him? Have you asked?