D&D 5E Unfortunate Wording

[Gradine]

I hope not.

There is a huge verisimilitude hit if there are magic items, but no way to craft them. Where the heck did they come from?

DM: "Well, they could be crafted before the Sundering, but no longer."

That's totally lame.

Not that I want PCs creating a ton of items, but if the group decides that they want or need some minor scroll, that should be doable without some major quest to get the butt cheek of a gargoyle.

The DMG should have good item crafting rules. It's not that the game should have a ton of crafting, but it should allow the players to do so if that is the direction where they are spending their resources.

And the "this is not 3E" argument is a bit weak as well. One of the goals of 5E was to get back to some of the 1E, 2E, and 3E roots. That should include magic item crafting. IMO.

PS. If you have read the first Sundering book, some spell casters in it are cheering that magic is back to the way it was before the spellplague. So if magic is back to the way it was, so should magic item creation. Or at least that seems logical. Granted, spells are not identical to 3E, but they are pretty darn close. They feel like 3E spells (with some buffing and other limitations, along with revised Vancian).

I'm intrigued what direction 5e DMG goes with magic item crafting, but I personally would not want to see 3e levels of magic item prevalence. It simply wouldn't make sense given the direction this edition has taken so far with regards to magic items.

But we're not debating the relative merits of various magic item crafting systems. We're debating whether giving everyone the ability to cast spells from scrolls is dangerously broken. If this were 3e, and casters could pump out scrolls with few resources, then it very well could be. But it's not 3e, and they can't, so it's probably not broken at all.

It is most likely, as has been pointed out, that crafting in 5e is likely to be much more difficult and require much more in the way of resources. Scrolls may or may not be just as easy to produce as before. If they are, and you adopt that (optional) rule, then maybe yeah, you may want to houserule who can read scrolls. In the absence of that, scrolls are nothing but treasure, and in the absence of an easy way to sell unwanted magic items, it makes sense to have a rule for non-casters to cast spells from scrolls.

 

[KarinsDad]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but in 2e I recall magic item crafting to be: The DM will make something up, but it should involve a quest involving impossible materials and probably multiple sessions. Then they would cast Permanency and lose a point of Constitution forever.

And that got changed in 3E because it was nonsensical.

How is it that PCs can find many dozens of magical items (including potions and scrolls) over 15 levels if it requires major quests to acquire the materials? How is it that NPCs would ever create magical items if it cost a permanent point of Constitution?

The same would apply for NPCs and magical items would be super rare. They were not super rare in 1E and 2E.

In 1E and 2E, item creation rules were bad (1E required a Wish spell for many items). It's as if the designers said "Ah, I don't know. Let's just make it tough and handwave it away.".

3E came in with actual decent design rules. 4E made this super simple with a ritual.

The 4E solution worked fine because it was limited by PC level and the DM controlled it via gold allocation and he could always rule that a specific material component was needed.

So we have 1E (nonsensical nearly impossible to accomplish detailed rules), 2E (nonsensical nearly impossible to accomplish detailed rules with a chance to fail), 3E (detailed rules), and 4E (super simple rule).

Since the first two were really really really bad sets of rules, I'm hoping that the options range from 3E to 4E.

1E and 2E purposely put so many road blocks into the magic item creation process that even NPCs would almost never create them. Totally nonsensical and lacking in verisimilitude unless the campaign was set in a really low magic world.

 

[charlesearth]

And that got changed in 3E because it was nonsensical.
How is it that PCs can find many dozens of magical items (including potions and scrolls) over 15 levels if it requires major quests to acquire the materials? How is it that NPCs would ever create magical items if it cost a permanent point of Constitution?

The same would apply for NPCs and magical items would be super rare. They were not super rare in 1E and 2E.

Don't say I like the rules in 1E and 2E, but those questions have answers. Magical items usually aren't destroyed or lost, so they get accumulated over thousands and thousands of years, so the items players find, are not only the items created during their generation, but also those created during ages.
Also, the constitution point could be recovered by magical means and/or and the benefits provided by it's creator can overcome the costs.

Ultimately everything depends on the setting's magic level, and it's magical items rarity, which varies greatly between the most common D&D worlds.

 

[KarinsDad]

Don't say I like the rules in 1E and 2E, but those questions have answers. Magical items usually aren't destroyed or lost, so they get accumulated over thousands and thousands of years, so the items players find, are not only the items created during their generation, but also those created during ages.
Also, the constitution point could be recovered by magical means and/or and the benefits provided by it's creator can overcome the costs.

Unfortunately, those types of answers are unsatisfactory. Difficult is difficult. Even regaining the constitution point is difficult and other resource depleting.

And over thousands of years, if the items last forever, then why are they not in the hands of the Royalty, Temples, Military, and Nobility? Why were these items not found within those thousands and thousands of years by thousands and thousands of other adventurers? How come low level PCs can find these items easily in a cave, but nobody else could over those long time frames?

These types of rationales just become vicious circles of discussion with no good answers.

If magic item creation is tough, they should be rare.

If magic item creation is easy, they should be common.

Multiple magic items (typically in most campaigns, but not always) were found by PC adventurers because it is fun at a table to gain a magic item. A level 1 to 10 campaign with 5 PCs would probably often see 10 to 30 (not including potions and scrolls, 2 to 6 per PC) magic items in 1E and 2E, but the magic item creation systems did not really allow for that. It flies in the face of plausibility.

3E and 4E overcame those plausibility issues (course, 4E was hand out 4 magic items to a 5 man party every level, so it was a bit monty haul in that respect).

Ultimately everything depends on the setting's magic level, and it's magical items rarity, which varies greatly between the most common D&D worlds.

Agreed.

My only take is, if you are going to have magic items in a magical world, allow both NPCs and PCs to create them and do not make it so difficult that neither NPCs nor PCs would ever try. It just doesn't make sense.

 

[Agamon]

My only take is, if you are going to have magic items in a magical world, allow both NPCs and PCs to create them and do not make it so difficult that neither NPCs nor PCs would ever try. It just doesn't make sense.

I can agree with this. I'd rather it's difficult enough that it's a tough decision rather than an automatic dumb idea.

 

[rastus_burne]

Does anyone have a page number/book for that 'lose 1 point of con' rule when creating magic items? I can't remember it, and I can't locate it in my 2e books.

 

[Agamon]

Does anyone have a page number/book for that 'lose 1 point of con' rule when creating magic items? I can't remember it, and I can't locate it in my 2e books.

Permanency (pg 224, PHB) cause a the loss of a Con point when cast on crating a magic item, but only 5% of the time.

 

[charlesearth]

Unfortunately, those types of answers are unsatisfactory. Difficult is difficult. Even regaining the constitution point is difficult and other resource depleting.

And over thousands of years, if the items last forever, then why are they not in the hands of the Royalty, Temples, Military, and Nobility? Why were these items not found within those thousands and thousands of years by thousands and thousands of other adventurers? How come low level PCs can find these items easily in a cave, but nobody else could over those long time frames?

These types of rationales just become vicious circles of discussion with no good answers.

If magic item creation is tough, they should be rare.

If magic item creation is easy, they should be common.

Multiple magic items (typically in most campaigns, but not always) were found by PC adventurers because it is fun at a table to gain a magic item. A level 1 to 10 campaign with 5 PCs would probably often see 10 to 30 (not including potions and scrolls, 2 to 6 per PC) magic items in 1E and 2E, but the magic item creation systems did not really allow for that. It flies in the face of plausibility.

3E and 4E overcame those plausibility issues (course, 4E was hand out 4 magic items to a 5 man party every level, so it was a bit monty haul in that respect).

I don't find it so implausible. Those items were probably in the hands of others adventurers, some of them fell fighting against monsters and foes so players find them in their lairs or keeps. In 1E and 2E frequently players built keeps and castles, and ruled over feuds, and when retired (if they lived long enough) they were wealthy men. So many times high nobles and clerics were just adventurers, that may find magical items as a reasonable pay for mercenaries and other adventurers needed in their intrigues. Items are stolen by thieves and then sold, or other adventurers get them after defeating their previous evils owners. Waging war makes big changes, so items and gold get back on circulation. Maybe a wizard, a successful adventurer in his youth, transforms himself in a Lich hungry for power, and gets defeated by the PCs, who find his treasure.
On the other hand, low level PCs shouldn't find magical items easily in a cave. There should be a reason for that. In old Monster Manuals, habitat and ecology explained why a certain creature could have magical items. In most adventures I have played players got magical items because it was reasonable to find them.

Still, I agree. It probably was too hard to create magical items.

 

[KarinsDad]

I don't find it so implausible. Those items were probably in the hands of others adventurers, some of them fell fighting against monsters and foes so players find them in their lairs or keeps. In 1E and 2E frequently players built keeps and castles, and ruled over feuds, and when retired (if they lived long enough) they were wealthy men. So many times high nobles and clerics were just adventurers, that may find magical items as a reasonable pay for mercenaries and other adventurers needed in their intrigues. Items are stolen by thieves and then sold, or other adventurers get them after defeating their previous evils owners. Waging war makes big changes, so items and gold get back on circulation. Maybe a wizard, a successful adventurer in his youth, transforms himself in a Lich hungry for power, and gets defeated by the PCs, who find his treasure.

Yeah, this is a bit of a typical explanation for it.


But, it has some holes. For example, if a 10th level party with 10 or 15 total magical items (including potions and scrolls) died in a Gorgon's lair last month or year, why doesn't the next party to the Gorgon's lair find 10 or 15 total magical items?

This never happens. Why? Well, because it is a game. A game where the DM is only going to hand out 1 or 2 magical items in any given encounter (shy of a massive treasure haul like a dragon).


Or alternatively, if there is this super powerful super intelligent high level evil wizard, why isn't he making/stealing magical items for all of his henchmen/allies and then going and killing/stealing to gain items out of far away towns (so that he does not get blamed)? He could deck out his allies in tons of magical items within a year or so. When the PCs come knocking, there are 112 magical items in his lair / spread out in his forces.

Why would he be worried about other high level NPCs? He has a small army, possibly with various monsters in it.


Ditto for evil adventuring groups. They could more or less take over a town, set themselves up as the legal local authorities, and use their spells and skills to raid magical items and gold from other places. The richer they get, the more then can afford building up their forces and the town. If they still wanted to go adventuring (and that is no longer required for them to make wealth), they could go to a city, hire some slightly lower level men at arms, beef them up with some magic items, and then go adventuring, using the men at arms as cannon fodder.


Or something as simple as the party of good PCs face off against the party of similar level evil NPCs. Shouldn't the winner of that fight get to loot the bodies of the others and gain a lot of magical items, possibly double what they already have that way (which btw, I often do this in my campaigns if I think that the PCs are getting behind a little in the magic item quantity/quality that I think they should currently possess, I throw an evil NPC party fight at them and let them loot some more items off the bodies). Wouldn't this be an easy way for the evil NPC groups to gain more and more magic items, ambushing other adventuring groups?


The bottom line is that a lot of stuff like this is just handwaved away and the real explanation is that people are playing a game and non-plausible things become more plausible if one does not think about it too much.

 

[rastus_burne]

Permanency (pg 224, PHB) cause a the loss of a Con point when cast on crating a magic item, but only 5% of the time.

Thanks for that. 5% is a minor chance. I don't see what the fuss is about personally. a 05% or lower on a d100 or a 1 on a d20. That's is certainly not unreasonable odds.