D&D General Weapons should break left and right

[Staffan]

Edited to add, you also don't look like some silly cartoon witch with the boots.

I'd be careful about that kind of talk around Ms Weatherwax.

 

[AlViking]

IME the immediate and obvious risk of having variable pricing on magic items is that the players, in character as their PCs, will see and exploit the opportunity to buy low here and sell high there; and when it comes to making a very good living, trading in magic items that way is far less painful than field adventuring.

And if it's what the characters would do, then you gotta let 'em do it.

Solution, though admittedly very arbitrary: universal pricing on items. If a +1 longsword costs 2000 here, it costs 2000 everywhere.

So sorry sir/madam you have to sell at half of what you paid and you need to pay a commission to the seller. Of course you can show proper provenance and history of sales? No problem, that will just be a small fee for a title search check. Oh, and are you part of the MIRU (Magic Item Resale Union)? No? That's going to be an extra charge as well. So let's see, add all that up and it's going to cost you 5,000 GP to sell that sword. What? Why yes we do follow HMA (Hollywood Movie Accounting) practices!

 

[AlViking]

Harry Potter and various other Quidditch players would beg to disagree.

Most brooms don't come with stirrups.

 

[James Gasik]

Most brooms don't come with stirrups.

Shouldn't be hard to rig up a seat and stirrups for someone's Broom of Flying. Would give a player something to do with all those Tool proficiencies they end up with due to their Backgrounds that hardly ever matter.

 

[Lanefan]

Nah, the solution is simple: Pawn-Shop rules. If the PCs sell, they sell for half the price or less, if they buy, they buy at full price.

Which is fine until the PCs try to assign values within their own treasury while dividing it. We used to use a system like this - we called it "high-low value" as each item had a high value (to buy) and a low value (to sell) - and it caused no end of headaches in treasury division because every time an item was sold off (at the low value) rather than claimed from treasury (at the high value, to maximize the share amounts), everyone's share amount changed.

End result was that players trying to sort out their characters' finances and determine what said characters could afford to claim were faced with a constantly-changing share amount to work with. Worse, everything had to be recalculated every time which meant someone was glued to a calculator all ngiht (one of our players spent ages trying to design a computer program to do this for us, with mixed results).

Eventually we just said screw this, and went to a single-value system.

 

[Lanefan]

My PCs don't have the power of movie plot and special effects behind them. Harry can disagree all he wants.

I see it as similar to riding a bike - yes it's a good idea to keep your hands on the handlebars but some people are good enough (or daring enough) to successfully ride "no hands".

 

[Lanefan]

Shouldn't be hard to rig up a seat and stirrups for someone's Broom of Flying.

I had a character once do something almost just like this: she rigged up a harness that in effect tied her to the broom and also built in some cushioning. Why? Because she was about to go on a two-day-long flight across a small ocean and didn't want to fall off if she fell asleep in the air (the broom had "cruise control", if given no new instructions it just kept going in the same direction and speed, though wind could blow it off course).

 

[Maxperson]

I see it as similar to riding a bike - yes it's a good idea to keep your hands on the handlebars but some people are good enough (or daring enough) to successfully ride "no hands".

Yep. And some of those are badly injured or killed doing it. If you want to let go and try to fly a thin stick, controlling it's movement, while casting a spell, you're going to be making a check to see if you fall 10's or 100's of feet. If you are dumb enough to actually try and swing a weapon while on that stick, that check will be really hard.

 

[AlViking]

I see it as similar to riding a bike - yes it's a good idea to keep your hands on the handlebars but some people are good enough (or daring enough) to successfully ride "no hands".

Ride? Maybe. Use a bow? That requires a whole lot of training to do even on a horse. I see casting a spell with somatic components just as hard.

But that's just my take, having some of the characters flying around on brooms is just not something I want to have to account for on a regular basis.

 

[James Gasik]

A thing to keep in mind is that there's no reason to perform tasks on a Broom of Flying at high speeds. You can perform actions before or after you move, with the Broom remaining still, as it doesn't have a minimum speed to remain aloft.

I can understand not wanting to make using a Broom of Flying an easy task, given it's unlimited flight and superiority over other options. By default, however, it really doesn't seem like it's difficult to use, as it doesn't require any proficiency, unlike controlling a vehicle. You could, however, enforce a downtime activity to learn to ride the Broom (or allow one to "master" it with the same). Lacking this training, imposing disadvantage on attack rolls seems perfectly fair.

What's interesting is that no special checks or ability has ever been required to use the Broom. I went back and checked my AD&D DMG and and the only real difference is that it's weight limits and speed reduction were much harsher. It still offered limitless flight, when the Wings of Flying did not, though said item was certainly faster.

*As an aside, since I'd never had the reason to use a mount in 5e, I was surprised to learn there is no proficiency required to ride a horse, though Animal Handling does mention controlling a mount.

I'm not sure why no one has ever thought this item needs balancing before. Checking my 3.5 DMG, I was surprised to note the following facts:

The Winged Boots cost 16,000 gp and only allow the use of the Fly spell 3/day for 5 minutes.

The Broom costs 17,000 gp and allows for effectively permanent Overland Flight. It has more stringent creation requirements, but it only being 1000 gp more is quite nice.

The Wings of Flying offer unlimited 60' flight as per the Fly spell, but cost a whopping 54,000 gp, though arguably is easier to create than the Broom (it's caster level is set at 10th, instead of 9th, but the Broom requires Overland Flight and Permanency, instead of simply Fly).

I think it's safe to say that the 5e Broom's rarity should be upshifted to at least Rare, and possibly even Very Rare due to it not needing attunement. Though I suppose that brings up it's one true flaw, as I see it: once someone hears it's command word, anyone could attempt to take it from you, especially if you send it off somewhere (it would be amusing to see a duel between multiple individuals armed with that knowledge vying for control of the Broom, lol)!