D&D General What *is* D&D? (mild movie spoilers)

[Micah Sweet]

Honestly, without magic items as treasure, the only meaningful rewards you can give out in 5E are all story-based.

This is why my version of 5e has more varied awards, so you can spread it around.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Honestly, without magic items as treasure, the only meaningful rewards you can give out in 5E are all story-based.

Yeah 5E finally managed to make gold/money basically totally meaningless, because there's essentially nothing to spend it, and no overheads.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

It works really well in 5e too. In fact, I would argue that 5e works better with low magic.

How so? You can have a fully functional, diverse party in 4e (Fighter, Rogue, Warlord, Ranger, arguably a few of others can be trivially refluffed to be entirely nonmagical, e.g. Barbarian), where literally no player ever sees so much as a potion let alone a magic item, and no one ever casts a single spell of any kind, not even the opposition. That's essentially impossible in 5e, not least because you don't get enough daily healing from nonmagical sources to survive 5e.

If 4e fully supports a literally zero-magic campaign, how can 5e work better with low magic?

 

[Minigiant]

I don't see your point. Where was I arguing against the existence of magic items?

I'm not saying the the spectrum is a false spectrum in the "This isn't my D&D" argument.

Even at the old edition tables and in OSR games, 99.99% of the time past level X your adventurers are getting magic items. And that's what the movie did.

The movie even portrayed a less magical version of D&D. Especially a much much much much less magical version of FR which even in older editions was littered magic items, magic users, and magic beings.

One could complain the movie didn't have enough magic.

 

[dave2008]

How so? You can have a fully functional, diverse party in 4e (Fighter, Rogue, Warlord, Ranger, arguably a few of others can be trivially refluffed to be entirely nonmagical, e.g. Barbarian), where literally no player ever sees so much as a potion let alone a magic item, and no one ever casts a single spell of any kind, not even the opposition. That's essentially impossible in 5e, not least because you don't get enough daily healing from nonmagical sources to survive 5e.

If 4e fully supports a literally zero-magic campaign, how can 5e work better with low magic?

Yet another misunderstanding. 5e works better with low magic than 5e with high magic. I was not comparing it to 4e, but to itself.

Though in one sense I do think 5e is better at low magic than 4e.

First, I need to clarify that I love 4e. It is the edition that brought me and my group back to D&D. It is the edition I used to teach my children D&D. Except for PF2 it is probably the best designed version of D&D. I just wanted to be clear that I am not a 4e hater.

4e just feels more magical/ super heroic than 5e. Though by the rules many things are not called magic, well they still feel magical. Maybe in more of superhero type of way, but to me, magical nonetheless. With 5e I can get a grittier game a little bit more easily and a lot of that has to do with the math. Not saying you can't do gritty in 4e, just explaining the 4e feel to me.

 

[dave2008]

Yeah 5E finally managed to make gold/money basically totally meaningless, because there's essentially nothing to spend it, and no overheads.

I hear people say that and I am sure it is true in some sense, but it definitely doesn't need to be played that way. Gold is a precious commodity in our 5e game.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

The rules have never supported that though - even back when there where only four classes, half of them where spellcasters.

And yet a party of four fighters, a thief, a cleric, and one wizard was and is still a good party in OD&D. It's only the WotC versions of D&D that skew caster-heavy below 10th level.

(And I guess maybe a certain subset of AD&D games with a lot of multiclassing and players who are very good at working around armor limitations on wizard spells.)

 

[Minigiant]

Yeah 5E finally managed to make gold/money basically totally meaningless, because there's essentially nothing to spend it, and no overheads.

Gold went from the XP market to the Magic Item Market to the Ritual Market. 5e took away the market and offered a nonXP progression model.

So the only Treasures left as magic items and story rewards.

Yet another misunderstanding. 5e works better with low magic than 5e with high magic. I was not comparing it to 4e, but to itself.

Though in one sense I do think 5e is better at low magic than 4e.

5e works best in "slightly below standard" magic like the movie.

 

[DND_Reborn]

It sounds like the vast majority of D&D isn't D&D to you.

It really hasn't been since WotC took over...

But enough people are already engaging in the "this vs. that" discussion, so to each their own.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Which settings do you consider not high magic worlds?

Dark Sun is low-magic enough that people finding out you're a wizard could lead directly to your death at the hands of essentially a mob of peasants wielding crummy stone pitchforks. Clerics and druids are less unpopular but some of the stigma surely still attaches, especially given the reputation of the templars.

The sorcerer kings are above that sort of persecution, and in order to make the setting work economically a DM actually has to either raise the magic level enough to let them grow more food per square mile, or stretch out the geography by a factor of 10 or more (100+ times more prime farmland per city-state). But Dark Sun as written is low-magic, high-mysticism (via psionics).