Where is my Freaking Mule?!

[Mistwell]

How about a 3 masted ship? Or a 12 bedroom estate? How much does a moathouse cost?

Sure the GM can make up this stuff. But alot of GMs don't want to deal with that sort of thing.

Pretty sure all three of your examples are in the books. I know the ship is in the Adventurer's Vault. I don't recall which book had the buildings, but one of them does.

What I don't understand is why would anyone oppose a book like this? It does nothing but give players and GMs tender to kindle the fires of inspiration.

For the really minor stuff, it's an artificial crutch that makes games worse in my opinion. You don't want people feeling like they need to look every little thing up before they can use it in their game. For a certain basic level, it's best if people get in the habit of just doing it on the fly. And believe me, it really is a crutch. You don't need the stats for the little stuff, you just think you do because you have a habit of looking to a source to tell you what to do when you could just be coming up with this stuff as you go with almost no effort and better impact on your game.

 

[Mistwell]

For all the people who think I should just ad-lib all this during the game:

I could just make it up myself. I could also make the whole freakin game up myself too. I would even get the math right.

I lack both time (I should be working on my PhD dissertation not my game), and desire to do it.

This response frustrates me, because it tells me you're not listening to some really good advice in this thread.

There isn't a time factor involved. Once you get in the habit, it will take you LESS time than looking this sort of stuff in a book. Some of us are trying to explain that to you, but you're still responding as if you need to prep this stuff in advance or explain a lot on the fly - you don't need to do either. You're sweating the small stuff too much.

As for desire - I assume you do have the desire to hone your ability to run a smooth, seemless, compelling game. Learning to do this stuff on the fly is an important aspect of doing that.

I'm just talking about developing a habit here, and like any new habit it takes time to get used to it. Just...trust me, it's worth it. Your game will get better when you no longer feel the need to look up mules and 10 foot poles in books.

That way, I can support my FLGS, I can support WOTC, and I can get a much nicer looking product than I could generate myself.

You're still talking like you need to prep in advance things like mules. Why? Why do you feel the need to have this stuff in hand before it comes up in a game?

 

[TarionzCousin]

Gary Gygax killed your mule with a gelatinous cube.

Try to keep up!

 

[Orius]

2Ed had Aurora's Whole Realms' Catalog full of "role-play" gear, some of which had real in-game impact...and not all of it good! (Some items were, essentially, snake-oil.)

Aurora's came to mind yesterday when I was reading this. Every single time a "must-have 2e suppliments" thread comes up, a half dozen people at least mention Aurora's. It's up there with the Tome of Magic and World Builder's Guidebook. So maybe something like this would be popular.

Why I chose sheep as my preferred trap-springing livestock is hard to reconstruct, but seemed to make sense at the time.

I dunno, but trap springing sheep just feel right. Just as cows are the perfect living ammo for catapults.

4E economics turns the simple act of buying a mule into a complex exercise that scales with level:

A heroic tier mule costs 10-15 gp and can carry loot and gear as an at-will ability.

A paragon tier mule costs 5000-7500 gp, and has the same abilities as the heroic tier mule. In addition, the paragon tier mule can fly a number of squares equal to its move each turn. The paragon tier mule answers the age old question: when donkeys fly?

The epic tier mule costs 45000-60000 gp, has the same abilities as the paragon tier mule and can also perform overland flight. If anything is added to, or removed from the mule's pack during flight (a minor action) the mule crashes.

As El Madhi and others have pointed out, those are properly refered to as heroic/paragon/epic donkeyhorses.

Agreed. When I just "guess" at a price on the fly I always get something wrong. D&D economics has enough issues without the DM creating a new set due to random bad guesses as to the costs of items.

That's my biggest take on the issue of making stuff up that 4e's missing; i don't want to half-ass the game balance.

Complete AD&D Items List: Miscellaneous Equipment

That list is neat and there are other lists for other things at the bottom of the page.

One of my long unfinished projects is a huge master equipment list that has every piece of equipment in every D&D product I have. Looking back I started that monster 11 or 12 years ago and it was loaded with everything I could find in 2e rulebooks, splats and Dragon articles. It's still mostly in 2e form, I was going to eventually get around to trimming down the weapon list to 3e standards (I do not need tons of minor variants of the same weapon, really), and do some other 3e based streamlining. Such as simplifying clothing to the outfits listed in the PHB, with various cultural variants like the standard set in the PHB, the sets in OA, etc.

That page looks like a partial version of my list.

Wildmind Braybeast.

DARKER AND EDGIER people, come on!

I think a compromise is in order. Wildmind Donkeyhorse sounds just about perfect.

 

[bouncyhead]

There isn't a time factor involved. Once you get in the habit, it will take you LESS time than looking this sort of stuff in a book. Some of us are trying to explain that to you, but you're still responding as if you need to prep this stuff in advance or explain a lot on the fly - you don't need to do either. You're sweating the small stuff too much.

As for desire - I assume you do have the desire to hone your ability to run a smooth, seemless, compelling game. Learning to do this stuff on the fly is an important aspect of doing that.

I'm just talking about developing a habit here, and like any new habit it takes time to get used to it. Just...trust me, it's worth it. Your game will get better when you no longer feel the need to look up mules and 10 foot poles in books.

You're still talking like you need to prep in advance things like mules. Why? Why do you feel the need to have this stuff in hand before it comes up in a game?

If one of my players wants to buy a WildMind BrayBeast, or a mirror, or a chicken (GimletBeak EggVault?) I just tell them to look it up in the book. Much quicker than ruling on-the-fly.

 

[roguerouge]

I think the answer lies in the inherent bonuses system in the DMG2. If you no longer need magic items in order to be powerful than you can go ahead and buy that house. Sure your buddy might have a new flaming axe but other than turning his attacks to fire damage he doesn't gain that much benefit. Personally that's what I would do before introducing any sort of mundane items (and don't get me started on hirelings, as soon the PCs can hire torchbears mine just want a torchbearer army).

I'd probably have the house scale in value, either as an investment or in the skill bonuses it provides or both.

You'll be eating those words when a PC sees the commercial possibilities in that spoon, corners the market, and builds a multi-million-gold-piece fake ice cream empire on magic spoons and gruel.

Exactly. I had a player once who basically wanted to play a merchant. Ad-libbing costs for things without any understanding of supply and demand would have lead to very bad imbalances fairly quickly.

 

[Mark Chance]

I've always had a policy of giving fairly generous in-game bonuses for investment in stuff that isn't technically magical: the expensive soft boots that give +2 to move silently, the fearsome helm that gives +2 to intimidate, the ball gown that gives +4 to diplomacy at the Royal Ball, etc.

That only makes sense because clothing matters.

 

[GnomeWorks]

Exactly. I had a player once who basically wanted to play a merchant. Ad-libbing costs for things without any understanding of supply and demand would have lead to very bad imbalances fairly quickly.

For some people, the 10-foot pole is an extraneous, unimportant detail, not even worthy of having a cost.

For others, the 10-foot pole is the most important thing in the world, and makes all the difference for their character.

Feel free to replace "10-foot pole" with any other relatively mundane, non-combat item. Believe it or not, there are gamers out there who want to "sweat the small stuff," because it forms the foundation for our games.

 

[TerraDave]

this...

the 4E version will not actually be called a mule, but rather a Donkeyhorse

and this...

Surely you mean a Warbearing Donkeyhorse.

and also this...

I think the balance is already built into the treasure reward system. By the time the powergamer can afford that really powerful magic item he will have something better. It would take the whole party putting all of their money into buying one item for one member to keep up with the normal magic item placement. So by the time we are finding 10k in gold we have magical weapons worth five times that. So there should really not be an issue about spending the money on non-essential things like donkeyhorses or harlot blightcarriers.

and not least this....

Hasn't this been the case in all editions of D&D? XP for GP.

Bullgrit

The marginal value of gp in 4E is grossly overstated in some of these threads.

Especially since you can't buy a mule with it.


EDIT: Ok, I was a little late to the thread, but still.

 

[Dausuul]

This response frustrates me, because it tells me you're not listening to some really good advice in this thread.

There isn't a time factor involved. Once you get in the habit, it will take you LESS time than looking this sort of stuff in a book. Some of us are trying to explain that to you, but you're still responding as if you need to prep this stuff in advance or explain a lot on the fly - you don't need to do either. You're sweating the small stuff too much.

As for desire - I assume you do have the desire to hone your ability to run a smooth, seemless, compelling game. Learning to do this stuff on the fly is an important aspect of doing that.

I'm just talking about developing a habit here, and like any new habit it takes time to get used to it. Just...trust me, it's worth it. Your game will get better when you no longer feel the need to look up mules and 10 foot poles in books.

Speaking as a DM, if that data is in a book, I don't look up squat. I let the players do it. It may take longer for them, but from my point of view it's harder to get faster than zero time.

Furthermore, the OP's stated desire was for a book of mundane items. I don't know about him, but for me a large part of the reason for wanting such a book is for ideas. Yeah, if a player wants a ten-foot pole, I can bash up some stats (whatever stats a ten-foot pole requires). But the player might not even think to want a ten-foot pole without the book suggesting, "You know what helps for dealing with traps in a dungeon? A ten-foot pole!"

More generally, a list of mundane equipment does a lot to flesh out a world IMO. Looking back, one of my favorite things about the 2E Player's Handbook is that big list of gear, with everything from house cats to fancy clothes, just because it gave me a sense that there was a whole world here, not just a dungeon full of monsters to kill. After working out my character's combat stats, I got to picking equipment and started thinking, "What sort of clothes does this character wear? Does he have any pets? Man, it would be cool to have a ship... I better save up my gold."