D&D 5E Wandering "Monsters": Magic Items

[Uller]

I thought it was a very good article. Now, I might be too stupid, dense and/or unimaginative but I like having guidelines to fall upon, but heck I've only been DMing for 20 years so what do I know...

Warder

phththt....noob.

 

[Uller]

Well TBH this was kind of an unofficial rule for many 4e GMs.

In a game where gold can buy magic items, players will use gold to buy magic items.

Right. Interesting that you used the words "too much". To me, that's where the treasure per PC level guidelines were infinitely useful because it tells DMs what is too much or too little for a standard campaign. As a campaign progresses I periodically look at how much treasure the PCs have and if they are significantly off the guidelines I find ways to adjust ("you need to hire a ship and crew to get you to so-and-so-city, it's a particularly dangerous passage so it will cost you around 1000gp."...)

As other's mentioned, the new math will probably significantly reduce the between game magic item fire sales since there is no longer a need to continually upgrade items that are no longer useful...this is a good thing. But I still see no reason (for me, YMMV) for the seemingly arbitrary directive that magic items can only be acquired through adventuring...that seems to me to be just as (or more) artificial than Magic-Items-R-Us store in every town.

Here is a real world example...at least as real as what you get from the History Channel...A few months ago I watched a documentary about Ulfberht swords. Here is a wiki about them: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulfberht It is my understanding that these swords were prized by Vikings for their armor piercing capabilities but the secrets of their production was likely known only to a few craftsmen (who may have actually been Frankish and not Nordic at all). They were so valuable in fact that fakes are commonly found in burial sites, indicating that these weapons were likely bought and sold in some sort of market for a very high price. They became status symbols as much as weapons. To me, that's pretty much the equivalent of adventuring PCs being able to spend some gold on a magic weapon....like you said, they probably shouldn't be allowed to buy/sell/trade to the point that it breaks the power curve. But that's the point of the guidelines, I think. As a DM, when I give out treasure I want my players to think "cool...this will be useful"

Edit: and if not, then they know they can probably sell it later on and use the cash for something they do find useful. What do I care? I'm the DM...They have fun, I have fun. If trading treasure makes things a little more fun for them and I have some guidelines to keep it reasonable (plus the power of DM fiat to say "No") then they change their character sheet and the game goes on without be worrying if the changes are going to throw the game off significantly.

Again...this might just be me I suppose.

 

[Klaus]

Count me among those who liked the article. Lots of people are overlooking the actual numbers James mentions: a 20th level character will have acquired maybe a single magic item per four levels of play! That is a very low baseline, specially when compared to adventures from the past three editions, where pretty much every adventure had five or six magic items!

Also, this thread has some aggressiveness and snark that is completely unlike EN World's tradition.

 

[Savage Wombat]

I don't know - I can't see WotC publishing modules exclusively designed to make sure the PCs aren't getting more than a single permanent magic item every 3-4 levels. I wonder if they're assuming more "trade-ins" are involved.

Either that or rust monsters. Lots of rust monsters.

 

[the Jester]

One of the things that is a bit of a paradigm shift from previous editions that keeps coming up around magic items is that magic items are not something you can buy/sell.

Actually, before 3e, magic item shops were never the assumption, item creation was difficult and time-consuming and magic items were almost exclusively controlled by the DM. It's only 3e and 4e that have the "item shop" culture, at least in my experience. Certainly, 3e is the first edition that encouraged such things and actively gave item creation power to the players instead of making it a PITA.

Nonetheless, you bring up some interesting points here...

Assuming a typical D&D campaign setting where magic is a reasonably common thing and while it might be rare for an individual to be able to produce permanent magic items, certainly the history of the setting is long, magic items are very valuable and rarely destroyed and the people who make magic items that are useful for fighting horrible monsters are probably rarely the same people who use them for such purposes (or at least that is my operating assumption). So while I agree there isn't some vast magic industrial workshops producing +1 longswords for the local magic box store, what is the mechanism by which items get distributed from magic item producers to magic item users?

I think that typically, at least in my campaign (and this is absolutely a matter of setting and playstyle preference), the producers either are, or are companions of, the end users. There are few item creators who aren't mid to high-level adventurers. The vast majority of npcs are the equivalent of the 'commoner' npc class, in 3e terms; most of the rest are other npc classes. Only a tiny number are pc classes, fewer still spellcasters and yet fewer capable of item creation.

Again, though, this is a setting choice.

What do PCs do with items they find not very useful?

4e has an elegant answer to this: you break it down for raw residuum that can be used to make other magic items (or in rituals).

...as a DM I want magic items I place in the game to either have a specific reason for being there or make sense (in the game world). I also want non-magical treasure to seem like an actual reward that the players find useful and I don't really want them to have to use it in ways outside of adventuring and/or influencing the game world. I don't think offering a reward of 1000gp for completing some quest means much of the players don't feel like they can do something cool with it and the most cool thing they can do is get that magic item they've been saving up for.

That's absolutely reasonable. Personally, I'm inclined to have maybe one or two npc casters of note in a city, and let the pcs go to them with that 1000 gp and see if they can negotiate to have the item in question crafted, rather than handwaving that bit; but there certainly is the occasional magic item for sale, especially in bigger cities or richer npcs. In effect, I think the difference in our approaches, in practical terms, is that you handwave the details while I make the players take that extra bit of time and effort.

 

[MarkB]

I think that's doable. The reason that fighter-types depended more on magic equipment in earlier e's was because that was essentially a big part of their class power: they get to use that cool magic sword or neat magic axe or awesome magic suit of armor, and the wizard doesn't. I think time has shown that this isn't a great trade-off, both because it relies on DM handing out candy, and because everyone likes finding magic loot (and probably for a few other reasons).

Fighters in 5e shouldn't depend on magic items to make them on par with spellcasters, IMO. At least not as a default.

I rather like 4e's approach to the issue, with implements that are as big a part of casters' arsenal as weapons are for warriors. I like the Harry Potter / Gandalf style wands and staves that actually help characters do magic.

 

[am181d]

It's so far a max +1 to AC (at the moment no +1 shield is listed), and a max +1 to attack, and a max +1 to damage. I don't think a +1 in any of those categories is going to break anything. And, you're limited to 3 total attuned items.

This is not correct. There are named weapons and armors that exceed a +1 bonus in the current rules.

Also, I believe that attuning items is presented as optional in the rules and early word from WotC was that it was unpopular and likely to be dropped.

 

[Uller]

In effect, I think the difference in our approaches, in practical terms, is that you handwave the details while I make the players take that extra bit of time and effort.

I do. Table time is limited for me. 3-4 hours every 2-3 weeks if I'm lucky. So we want to get to the meat of an adventure. Unless it is a city based adventure, time in town is generally spent resting, resupplying and gathering information to move the story along.

I've found that having the players RP the buying and selling of magic items tends to be a distraction.

Sometimes I do as you do but not too often. For instance my players killed a hatchling white dragon in a 4e game. They took it's hide and commissioned the manufacture of a shield that imparted cold resistance to the one who uses it. So I basically allowed them to trade the hide and a few weeks of game time for the shield at a much reduced price (because they provided the key raw material for the shield). These kind of things are generally limited to when my players are feeling a bit creative.

 

[Mistwell]

This is not correct. There are named weapons and armors that exceed a +1 bonus in the current rules.

Yes, four specifically named weapons, and one specifically named armor. The weapons all require attuning to get those bonus (you specifically don't get those higher bonuses without attuning), all are listed as "very rare" or "legendary", and two of the four have race/class limits. The armor isn't an issue, as it's +2 bonus is limited to chain mail only.

The specifics:

[sblock]Weapon: Defender (Very rare magic item, specifically named as requiring attuning, up to +3); Dwarven Thrower (Very rare magic item, specifically named as requiring attuning, up to +3 as a Dwarf); Hammer of Thunderbolts (Very rare magic item, specifically named as requiring attuning, up to +2); Holy Avenger (Very rare magic item, specifically named as requiring attuning, up to +3 as a Paladin); Vorpal Sword (Legendary magic item, specifically named as requiring attuning, up to +3)

Armor: One named armor, the Efreeti Chain (+2). And since it is limited to Chain Mail only, it does not hamper bounded accuracy.[/sblock]

Also, I believe that attuning items is presented as optional in the rules and early word from WotC was that it was unpopular and likely to be dropped.

It is not presented as optional, and is in fact called out as mandatory for the weapons you mentioned. I have seen nothing from WOTC that it is unpopular and likely to be dropped. Do you have a link for that?

 

[XunValdorl_of_Kilsek]

When I ran games back in 3rd edition and currently in Pathfinder, I always controlled the magic items. There were no character builds reliant on magic items in my games. When you found an item, it meant something. There were no "magic item shops" in my games and I was very strict with the creation of magic items.

I don't need advice on what to do because I am dead set on doing it my way anyway.