D&D 5E Why I'm grateful for our current magic item system.

[Nebulous]

You know, I never once used the pricing or creating guidelines throughout 3.x, nor did my players. It's not the kind of game we enjoyed. If they ever bought or traded something I just made some crap up and we rolled with it.

 

[Barantor]

I guess I am an easy dm, because I always replaced whatever weapons were in the adventure we were playing with something the characters could find useful.

Why give the party a greatsword if nobody is going to use it?

 

[KarinsDad]

I guess I am an easy dm, because I always replaced whatever weapons were in the adventure we were playing with something the characters could find useful.

Why give the party a greatsword if nobody is going to use it?

Once in a while for plausibility reasons, I would throw in an item that nobody wanted. But since I had ways for PCs to get rid of unwanted items, it allowed the players to handle it. This made the campaign seem a bit more organic and not totally revolving around the PCs. Course for similar reasons, I had stuff behind secret doors (or hidden via plot or whatever) that if found, great. If not found, that was fine too. Some DMs won't create a secret door (or a mystery) without ensuring that their players find it.

 

[CM]

In 4e I make custom items that are more useful/powerful than the default to distribute to the party.
From the looks of things, in 5e I will likely be making custom items that are less useful/powerful than the default to distribute to the party. Most of the well-known items are very rare or legendary.

 

[thalmin]

Borrowing a page from the playtest, I plan to make many of the "standard" + weapons and armor semi-attunable. For example, at first the sword is merely a +1 sword usable without attuning. But when conditions are met (level, race, class, bloodline, whatever) the item can be attuned to yield more powerful abilities or increased +'s. Also, some seemingly mundane equipment might also be attunable after conditions are met

 

[chriton227]

I guess I am an easy dm, because I always replaced whatever weapons were in the adventure we were playing with something the characters could find useful.

Why give the party a greatsword if nobody is going to use it?

When I was running 3.x, it was pretty common once the players got to higher levels for them to find weapons that they couldn't use because that is what the enemies used. For example, noble salamanders use large +3 longspears. Nobody in the party used longspears, and nobody was large, but after fighting through a couple groups of noble salamanders they had plenty of them. Likewise they would occasionally run into small opponents with magic weapons and armor that nobody in the party could use effectively.

 

[Werebat]

You know, I never once used the pricing or creating guidelines throughout 3.x, nor did my players. It's not the kind of game we enjoyed. If they ever bought or traded something I just made some crap up and we rolled with it.

<Boggle>

Your group is *QUITE* different from mine.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

When I was running 3.x, it was pretty common once the players got to higher levels for them to find weapons that they couldn't use because that is what the enemies used. For example, noble salamanders use large +3 longspears. Nobody in the party used longspears, and nobody was large, but after fighting through a couple groups of noble salamanders they had plenty of them. Likewise they would occasionally run into small opponents with magic weapons and armor that nobody in the party could use effectively.

in the first 3.5 game I played as a player, the DM had stated out the troops of the evil empire as Fighter level X with Y equipment... so after multi fights we went back to our kingdom and decided to open a store call "craft's Man swords" we sold +1 short swords for 100gp with a life time warrenty, if they break, or rust come back and we will replace them no cost. the +1 longswords where 250gp each...

when we started fighting his war casters that all had ring of wizardry level 1 and pearl of power of each level they could cast he told us we didn't have the balls to sell them that cheap... we sold the rings for 50gp, and the pearls for 10gp per level of spell they could recall...


edit: to put in perspective at one point around level 7 we fought 1 encounter with 200 level 2 fighters all with MW/chain shirts, a +1 short sword and a cloak of resstance +1, they were broken up into squads of 20 guys each, and each squad had a 3rd level fighter with a +1 longsword, +1 breast plate, and +1 cloak of res... so after that one fight we had enough to open the store

 

[trentonjoe]

Borrowing a page from the playtest, I plan to make many of the "standard" + weapons and armor semi-attunable. For example, at first the sword is merely a +1 sword usable without attuning. But when conditions are met (level, race, class, bloodline, whatever) the item can be attuned to yield more powerful abilities or increased +'s. Also, some seemingly mundane equipment might also be attunable after conditions are met

I am in this camp as well. I am starting to write a story line based on "Grandpa's axe" a magical trinket that gets stolen from the one of the PC's. The axe will be just a nice axe from level 1-3 (+1 damage) and full blown +1 axe at 4 and 5 and then start unlocking powers every couple levels or so.

 

[Nebulous]

<Boggle>

Your group is *QUITE* different from mine.

Well, yeah. From being on ENworld a while I've learned we all approach this hobby in pretty different ways