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

Jester David · Jan 22, 2014

steeldragons said:
Me? I've got nothing to say on the matter as my entire view of this is: If you're too stupid, dense and/or unimaginative to be able to see how/when adding magic items in your own low/average/high magic campaign works for your table or not, then you shouldn't be in the proverbial "big chair."

There is no reason, whatsoever, that I -or any DM- need to be told 'PCs should receive 6-8 permanent magic items over 20 levels. That makes the 'default' D&D game work. But if you want a lower magic game, then just give 'em 3-5. And if you want higher magic, give 'em 9-12."

They need to have some baselines for advice. So they can say "in the average game PCs will gain this much magic and you can account for that by doing Y". So things stay balanced. Which also helps for organized play, where they can say that "this campaign is Average Magic, so at level 10 you need to make X adjustments and at level 20 you need to do Y" to their campaign staff.

It's also very helpful for new DMs who might need a little advice on what is expected and what impact it has on the game.

GX.Sigma · Jan 22, 2014

Two things come to mind:

1. The article talked about "permanent" magic items, and mentioned "wands with only a few charges left" as examples of non-permanent items. I wish they would bring those back--it's weird that every wand in the playtest automatically recharges itself.

2. I really hope they revise the items themselves. The Flame Tongue in particular has pretty much destroyed any balance in my campaign (broken at low levels, broken at high levels).

Savage Wombat · Jan 22, 2014

Plenty of magic shops in games before 3.0 - usually because such things existed in other games, such as computer games. It was common enough that "PCs robbing the magic shop" was a known problem for clueless DMs.

Plaguescarred · Jan 22, 2014

My preference is for a PC to find 6-8 magic items over the course of a standard campaign, fewer than 5 for low magic campaign and up to 20 for high magic one.

I also like the idea of some monsters taking only full damage from certain weapons (magic, cold iron, silver etc..)

am181d · Jan 23, 2014

Mistwell said:
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?

Yeah, I went back and checked and realized I was thinking of the accompanying "Experimental Rules" for attunement, not attunement itself. I will also retract my comment that Wizards have spoken unfavorably of the rule until/unless I can find where I originally read that.

I'm A Banana · Jan 23, 2014

I do know the article doesn't mention attunement at all. Which is a positive as far as I'm concerned, since I'm not a big fan of it (though I wouldn't be surprised to see it in the final game in some form). If they've abandoned the idea of artificial, arbitrary magic item limits, I'm a fan!

Mistwell · Jan 23, 2014

Kamikaze Midget said:
I do know the article doesn't mention attunement at all. Which is a positive as far as I'm concerned, since I'm not a big fan of it (though I wouldn't be surprised to see it in the final game in some form). If they've abandoned the idea of artificial, arbitrary magic item limits, I'm a fan!

In a world where spellcasters have an artificial, arbitrary limit on the number of spells they can know and cast, why not for magic items too? Seems consistent. Maybe base it on level, like spells?

Sound of Azure · Jan 23, 2014

Mistwell said:
In a world where spellcasters have an artificial, arbitrary limit on the number of spells they can know and cast, why not for magic items too? Seems consistent. Maybe base it on level, like spells?

Did anyone else read that in the "movie trailer guy" voice?

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As for the topic, I think it's great to have advice for new/inexperienced DMs, even if it's just guidelines. It can also be good to have a baseline for such things, so as to know what the designers are expecting. Makes it far easier to drift things when the details are laid out fairly straightforwardly, rather than needing to be inferred. I've been moving away from the "truckloads of magic items" paradigm of late, so that's definitely a plus in the D&D next column for me.