The Magic Items that WotC cannot publish

[hailstop]

Whoops! Browser Settings Incompatible

I disagree with him. I'd certainly buy a 'cool Magic Item' book. It could be a book on 'Lesser Artifacts'. The items wouldn't be full on Artifacts, but still could be controlled by the DM.

At the very least, it's worthy of a DDI article.

 

[Mercurius]

I was expecting this thread to include items such as "Rod of Furious Thrusting" and "Whoopi's Odoriferous Cushion".

On a serious note, as the article itself says there is nothing stopping a DM from introducing an "Orb of Dragon Control", but the problem is when PCs can design and create them--it sort of makes it pointless (reminds me of when I played under a very inexperienced DM who set us up against a dragon; my character had a vorpal sword--AD&D style--and decapitated the dragon in the first round). Of course DM's Fiat should always have veto power. Always. It is just up to the DM to come up with a good reason to nix a player's idea.

On the other hand, this allows for an interesting re-defining of artifacts simply as unique items that cannot be reproduced (for whatever reason). They could range from very minor to world-shaking, from a letter opener that glows a different color depending upon the mood of the letter, to Changeling in CJ Cherryh's Morgaine books or Elric's Stormbringer, to even more powerful items, like an orb that the gods used to magnify their powers when creating the world, etc.

How to differentiate a garden-variety magic item from an artifact? How about this: sentience. Every artifact has sentience, some kind of individuality and consciousness. A magic item can, in a sense, "ascend" and become an artifact through acquiring sentience. Think of artificial intelligence...actually, it is an interesting analogy, if I may say so myself.

 

[FireLance]

I think what Peter is saying is that WotC can't publish them as regular magic items because they would be head and shoulders above any other regular magic items.

At the same time, they don't quite fit the mold of artifacts because they aren't as complex (possibly no concordance) or because of the built-in assumption that artifacts will only be with the PCs for a few levels before moving on.

If WotC ever publishes such items, they will probably need to add disclaimers (e.g. "DM discretion is advised because this might unbalance your game") and possibly exit strategies (e.g. "These are some things you can do if the item isn't working out in your game").

Without such statements, take the reaction to iron armbands of power and multiply that by every single instance of such items - that's the kind of furor you're going to get.

 

[Destil]

I'm fine with this book not existing.

If anything items are the single biggest power creep 4E has already seen. The original PHB items actually followed the rules (weak properties and daily item powers almost entirely). And everyone hated them. In a recent EN world poll only 1 person out of several dozen was interested in daily item powers vs. properties or encounter powers. And that was me, I like my items low-powered. Getting rid of the Christmas tree effect was a good thing.

I don't have a problem with items that beak this power level, but it's the sort of thing DMs would generally customize and that should fall well outside of the normal magic item economy. But they'd be rare enough that I can't imagine an entire book being useful. My players just found such a 'lesser artifact' and I'm wondering how they'll use it, it's pretty potent for 4E...

 

[RangerWickett]

I appreciate the goal of defining PCs by their own powers, not that of their gear, so I have to ask . . .

Why can't PCs do any of that cool stuff?

If 4e let players turn invisible constantly (like Bilbo's ring), or mind control a dragon (like the Dragon Orbs in Dragonlance), or control the four winds for more than a single attack an encounter, I think I'd be less inclined to complain about the crappy magic items.

For instance, let's consider an epic destiny, Avatar of Death.

You are, according to the flavor text, 'not simply a cleric;
you are the Raven Queen incarnate.' At this point in the game you are perhaps the most powerful mortal servant of the god of death, and so you'd obviously expect some unnatural power over life and death. Well, let's see:

• You ignore necrotic resistance. Mechanically useful.
• You don't die very easily. Well, that's actually kinda cool, but by this point you've probably popped up from unconsciousness mid-combat a hundred times, so it's not really epic.
• You kill weak things in an aura.
• You keep people from healing occasionally, for a few little while.

It's all combat stuff, and not very epic. C'mon, toss us a bone here. How about some flavor, like, you can look at a dead creature and know its name and how it died. Or you can use the ritual speak with dead at will. You can will a creature that would die to hover at death's door, denying it its judgment as long as it serves you. You can summon the spirits of all the creatures that have died nearby in the past few minutes, and set them upon your foes.

Sure, from a cost perspective, most players won't reach epic levels, so devoting large page counts to awesome abilities they'll never use might seem like a waste. But hey, you could include some of that stuff at paragon, couldn't you? Heck, most of that stuff doesn't even affect combat balance. You could give it to 1st level characters if you wanted to.

I'm just saying, there is a paucity of compelling magic in this game. Saying that you can't have cool things because it would unbalance the game is a weak excuse.

 

[Engilbrand]

To RangerWickett: I would advocate adding some of that stuff into your game. None of that would really break the system, so I don't know that it specifically needs rules. Do you not reflavor everything? I know that I like the ideas you presented and would allow them in a game.

My favorite Epic Destiny is the Undying Warrior. He literally can't die. That's absolutely awesome to me. I know that I'll be using that in future games as a DM and, hopefully some day, as a PC.

 

[RangerWickett]

I personally don't need books to give me those sorts of ideas, but I like those kinds of ideas, and I'd like to see more of them.

 

[Umbran]

If WotC ever publishes such items, they will probably need to add disclaimers (e.g. "DM discretion is advised because this might unbalance your game") and possibly exit strategies (e.g. "These are some things you can do if the item isn't working out in your game").

Well, that's the thing, really. The statement they cannot publish them is... bogus. In the extreme. They darned well could publish them - put a big honkin' warning label on them saying, "These are dangerous to your game's balance, DMs may introduce these into their games at their own discretion".

This would violate their "all things are core" philosophy. Big whoop. Standing on principle here is not a virtue, if it prevents them from publishing things that inspire DMs.

 

[FireLance]

It's all combat stuff, and not very epic. C'mon, toss us a bone here. How about some flavor, like, you can look at a dead creature and know its name and how it died. Or you can use the ritual speak with dead at will. You can will a creature that would die to hover at death's door, denying it its judgment as long as it serves you. You can summon the spirits of all the creatures that have died nearby in the past few minutes, and set them upon your foes.

...

I'm just saying, there is a paucity of compelling magic in this game. Saying that you can't have cool things because it would unbalance the game is a weak excuse.

I think D&D has struggled with the issue of powergaming creative rules lawyers players attempting to turn flavor text into a mechanical advantage from day 1. It didn't help that in earlier editions, there was little to no way to distinguish the flavor text from the (balanced, at least in intent) mechanical effects.

Many flavorful powers also tend to be open-ended, which makes it difficult for the DM to adjudicate their effects. Take the proposed "know the name and manner of death of a dead creature" power. It is flavorful, it can be useful on occasion, but a player who uses it often might significantly tax the DM's ability to come up with stuff on the fly (some DMs can do this easily, but others can't - if it's not too obvious a statement, different DMs have different strengths). On the other hand, if he doesn't use it often, why have it as a power in the first place? I suspect that the difficulty of adjudicating open-ended abilities is the reason why some DMs subtly discourage the use of rituals in their game.

I wonder if there might be a couple of solutions to this, though:

First would be for DMs to be more flexible about allowing the player to do stuff that isn't a codified power or ability. If it is important for the Avatar of Death to find out how somebody died, maybe the DM could just ask for a Perception check to represent her ability to discern stuff related to death. If she wants to send the spirits of the dead against her foes, treat it as an improvised stunt.

Second would be to actually codify some "Flavor powers" for each magic item, epic destiny, etc. with the upfront understanding that these are not intended to grant any mechanical advantages whatsoever, e.g. a sword that causes a cool breeze to blow on the wielder. Of course, the DM may make the ability occasionally useful (or be persuaded that it could be useful), but that would be entirely up to him, and he can always make the argument that they are not intended to give any mechanical advantages if he doesn't want them to.

 

[Destil]

Well, that's the thing, really. The statement they cannot publish them is... bogus. In the extreme. They darned well could publish them - put a big honkin' warning label on them saying, "These are dangerous to your game's balance, DMs may introduce these into their games at their own discretion".

This would violate their "all things are core" philosophy. Big whoop. Standing on principle here is not a virtue, if it prevents them from publishing things that inspire DMs.

Actually, I'd think they can't publish them because they would end up as 'DM Only'. Thus for the cost of production they have a smaller audience than a Player/DM supplement. And I have a feeling their willingness to publish such material, at leas in book form, doesn't go much beyond monster manuals and DMGs.

Though it would be a good sort of ideas for a Dragon article, since that's how they're splitting them these days.