Why Put magic Items in The PHB?

[Doug McCrae]

Actually, what they said is that buffs have been dramatically reworked/reinvisioned. I don't think they said they're gone.

They said there will be no more 'Xmas tree effect', which was defined as buffs from both magic items and spells. They're as dead as a very dead thing.

The "christmas tree" effect, whereby characters are loaded down with magic items, buff spells and other magical effects was one of the designers' goals to remove (source: Scott Rouse at GenCon 2007).

 

[UndeadScottsman]

Also, am I the only person here who regularly plays games that skip the first levels? My group hardly even plays games from level 1 (Though we're going to try a level 1 game in a week or two). We usually start from anywhere from level 5 to level 20, which means we start off with a decent amount of gold, which has no other purpose but to be spent on magic items.

Plus we're generally very open to letting players buy whatever the heck they want when they take their gold back to town, rather than the DM going "Well, you can buy this, this and this" the players get to pick the items they actually want.

Which means having the magic items the PHB will be a big time saver. Also, it means we can skip the DMG in favor of the monster manual, so rather than waiting three months to get everything we need, we just need to wait two.

 

[Scribble]

They said there will be no more 'Xmas tree effect', which was defined as buffs from both magic items and spells. They're as dead as a very dead thing.

But they already mentioned an energy resistance... But I can see it as a power, instead of a buff...

 

[Mouseferatu]

They said there will be no more 'Xmas tree effect', which was defined as buffs from both magic items and spells. They're as dead as a very dead thing.

No. They said there's less of an emphasis on magic items and buffs. They never said those things were gone.

 

[Varianor Abroad]

Nope. My group routinely skips first level, sometimes second level.

 

[Mercule]

I don't like it.

Of course, I bitched when the to-hit tables moved from the DMG to the PHB. I assume this, too, will grow on me.

 

[drothgery]

Unless they're turning D&D into a Conan-esque game with really rare magic -- and it certainly doesn't look that way -- magic items are things that players use far more often than DMs, and hence belong in the player's book.

 

[hong]

Those aren't rewards, those are choices available through character advancement. The type of system you allude to would be more like the HERO system, where characters may pay character points for permanent items of gear/gadgets/magic, etc.

Character advancement is a reward too.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Even cutting some classes, maybe a race, and a bunch of spells, I don't see how you get the PHB from 320 pages to 288 while still adding in magic items, combat maneuver type-things like Bo9S, expanded racial talents trees, expansion to level 30 ... which aslo means that useful things like stats for summoned monsters definitely won't fit.

I guess you could ditch the index and glossary to save space, but that would make the book a whole lot less usable. And the shift from textbook- to magazine-style design doesn't seem to be one that would save space.

Sounds like 10 lbs of game in a 5 lb book, to me.

 

[Gentlegamer]

Character advancement is a reward too.

Not the kind of reward we are talking about. If magic items are the same kind of thing as those abilities gained through level advancement, then those magic items ought to become permanent items belonging to the character bought through character advancement resources. This has never been the case in any edition of D&D.