D&D 5E Treasure Rolls & "a typical campaign"

[DaveDash]

I would have quite happily done away with pages on sanity & honor, lazer rifles, etc in favour of better magic item crafting /economy rules, even if it was just a "variant". Even better rules on scribing scrolls and brewing potions would have been something at least.

 

[Jester David]

Magic item prices.... I have trouble believing it's even possible to accurately have absolute prices for magic items.

First having set prices makes it easier for players to expect to buy items at that price. Because that's what's in the book.
But more importantly, the relative power of items varies based on the campaign.

The value of a sword of dragonslaying varies dramatically if a campaign has rare or regular dragons. Boots of flying are arguably better than slippers of spiderclimb, but in a dungeon heavy campaign the latter might be more valuable than the much more rare wings or flying. Ditto boots of water walking in an aquatic campaign. A ring of invisibility is solid, but in a party with a rogue it's even more valuable. And a belt of giant strength is if completely different worth when a fighter is a Dexy swashbuckler versus a great weapon fighter. And how do you price something like a holy avenger? Do you assume paladin or not?
And there are all the "odd" items like alchemy jugs. That's pricey by the numbers but no one would buy one, and it's worth far more sold for half price.

Too many assumptions have to be made, so hard pricing is useless, and pretty much comes down to one developer's opinions and values.

 

[Reynard]

I would have quite happily done away with pages on sanity & honor, lazer rifles, etc in favour of better magic item crafting /economy rules, even if it was just a "variant". Even better rules on scribing scrolls and brewing potions would have been something at least.

page 128: "Magic items are the DM's purview, so you decide how they fall into the party's possession. As an option, you can allow player characters to craft magic items."

What follows are all the necessary guidelines for that process, including costs, time required, prerequisites and rules for combining effort. It even directs you to the guidelines for creating new items.

Notice how I used "guidelines" instead of "rules" above? That is because that is what 5E is really working toward and why it is, IMO, the best version of the game to come out in a very long time. D&D is not like chess or Monopoly or even Warhammer (or Chainmail, for that matter). Because it is a game that ultimately centers around stories (some people plan those stories out, others allow those stories to emerge, and most everyone does something between the two extremes) D&D suffers when encumbered by endless hard coded rules. Even Gygax, who is often associated with a my-way-or-the-highway attitude, wrote explicitely in the 1E DMG that everything in the gamebooks was a suggestion and a guideline.

If you want tight item creation rules and rules for the adventuring economy, implement them. It is too bad that WotC has not introduced an OGL or similar license because it would make finding such rules to implement much easier. But even as it is, searching message boards and blogs will invariably turn up those rules -- and there is nothing saying whatever official rules WotC might have come up with would have been any better than what dedicated fans can produce. Moreover, those kinds of rules don't fit within the framework of 5E as it is written. This is a version of the game that goes back to interpretation and adjudication on the part of the DM in many cases, even spells and class abilities (and not to even mention the definition of "hidden" -- oops, I did mention it). That is the game it is. So your options are to tweak the game to get it the way you want it (huzzah, I say!) or to choose a game that better fits what you are looking for (huzzah, I say, also!).

What really is not a viable option is grousing about how the design team failed because they put in a system that meshes absolutely perfectly with their design intent.

 

[DaveDash]

I don't want guidelines, I want rules. 5e may be the best edition yet but the DMG is the worst DMG yet.

"Just make it yourself" doesn't fly with me AT ALL. I am not a game designer. I want to pay a competent game designer to do this for me then put it through play tests for me.

Not good enough.

It's not like a magic item economy is a niche demand (like some of the stuff that made it into the DMG), and bring "too hard" to balance is not an excuse. Better them then me, since they have significantly more Experian e than I.

 

[SirAntoine]

There is another solution for those that are incapable of operating using intentionally broad guidelines for treasure and the magic item economy: both the 3.5 and Pathfinder SRDs are readily available. Just import the item creation rules and item pricing whole cloth. Over time you 'll find inconsistencies and have to tweak them, but that's no different than converting adventures or monsters.

The idea that 5E somehow failed because of the lack of detailed item creating and pricing are missing the key fact that the game is not designed that way and you are just as likely to create problems for yourself trying to treat it like 3.x in that regard.

I suspect they would take the criticism to heart. If I were CapnZapp, I would expect an apology at the least if not a special article to provide the information ASAP.

 

[Reynard]

I don't want guidelines, I want rules. 5e may be the best edition yet but the DMG is the worst DMG yet.

"Just make it yourself" doesn't fly with me AT ALL. I am not a game designer. I want to pay a competent game designer to do this for me then put it through play tests for me.

Not good enough.

It's not like a magic item economy is a niche demand (like some of the stuff that made it into the DMG), and bring "too hard" to balance is not an excuse. Better them then me, since they have significantly more Experian e than I.

They did design the game -- they just did not design the game you wanted. Would you say FATE was not a finished design because it is expressly built around player-DM negotiation and essentially no equipment rules?

As to the magic item economy jot being niche: it is niche to the obvious target audience of 5E which is a lot of lapsed players who left during 3E and 4E (for various reasons). We come back again to the idea that you have a couple choices: mod 5 E to your tastes or play a different game. And these have always been the choices, with every edition and even more broadly every game.

It is actually pretty tiresome to read the same entitled complaints over and over again. The designers do not owe you anything. They produced the game they produced. If that game is not one you want to play, don't. Many of us felt that way with 4E and left D&D, as did people at 3 E and 2E and 1E and BECMI and B/X and the Holmes Basic rules. In fact, I get there were players that dropped the game with 0E because it changed things from what they experienced in Gary's basement.

Choose a game that is fun and makes you happy.

 

[SkidAce]

I don't want guidelines, I want rules. 5e may be the best edition yet but the DMG is the worst DMG yet.

"Just make it yourself" doesn't fly with me AT ALL. I am not a game designer. I want to pay a competent game designer to do this for me then put it through play tests for me.

Not good enough.

It's not like a magic item economy is a niche demand (like some of the stuff that made it into the DMG), and bring "too hard" to balance is not an excuse. Better them then me, since they have significantly more Experian e than I.

What if the expert game designers make one that you don't like? (honest question)


The way it is currently, you are not tied to any one method.

IMO.

 

[Kikuras]

I don't think it's necessarily unreasonable to want access to a set of rules, and to allow deviation from those rules on the part of the DM, as needed. For example, the system for XP is there, yet a lot of (if not most) DMs say to hell with the rules and do it their own way.

Mind you I really don't have a horse in this race, I just want to show a little support for those who like a little more crunchiness to their Fruity Dyno Bites.

 

[SkidAce]

Oh, I agree [MENTION=6790771]Kikuras[/MENTION], good example with the XP system.

 

[Reynard]

I don't think it's necessarily unreasonable to want access to a set of rules, and to allow deviation from those rules on the part of the DM, as needed. For example, the system for XP is there, yet a lot of (if not most) DMs say to hell with the rules and do it their own way.

Mind you I really don't have a horse in this race, I just want to show a little support for those who like a little more crunchiness to their Fruity Dyno Bites.

It depends on whether the rules in question serve the overall design goals of the game, which crunchy item creation and economy rules apparently do not for 5E. You would not expect core 5E to include detailed rules regarding sanitation and disease transmission because 5E is not a game about gritty low fantasy. You might expect an article to appear in Dragon (if we had Dragon) or a supplement from a third party publisher (if we had those either). The things you include and exclude from the core rules, as well as those things you note as optional, define the tone and intent of the game. Despite some poor arguments to the contrary over the years, some even by designers, D&D is not and never has been a universal fantasy game engine. There is an overarching "D&D fantasy" genre and each edition has modified that genre through focusing on some things over others. 5 E is not the highly detailed crunchy game 3.x was (or is, including Pathfinder) and it seems strange to demand it be that game when those rules are still out there in perpetuity.