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Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
Why Put magic Items in The PHB?
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<blockquote data-quote="Imp" data-source="post: 3738017" data-attributes="member: 40094"><p>:: stares blankly ::</p><p></p><p>Yes. Yes, we will instead build mystery and wonder out of things the players know by heart. You step into a cave. It is shiny and sparkly.</p><p></p><p>It's not even that awesome mystery and wonder will reside in every magic sword the players find, of course it won't. Or that even mystery and wonder are that necessary and important. It's more of a genre thing. It's that the entire point of "magic" is that it <em>can</em> (if it is interesting) behave in unexpected ways, which is, yes, dependent on player ignorance, and if a person is so wedded to the idea of magic as technology, isn't he really better off playing with imaginary spaceships instead? You can come up with a much neater upgrade system, have all the technology information available to the players, and making "optimized builds" out of equipment setups actually fits in perfectly with the assumptions of the genre. </p><p></p><p>Whereas in a fantasy game really the only kind of build-optimizing that fits are things like, the expert spear-fighter of the group really ought to get to wield a magic spear of some kind. Yeah, that is pretty nice.</p><p></p><p>Now, outlining some magic items in the PHB doesn't have to be a bad thing (because magic is magic, and the spells are described there too) as long as it doesn't create the expectation that everything the players are going to come across will be built to a factory standard. Actually, it would be interesting if the DMG listed some alternate attributes for both magic items <em>and</em> spell effects, just to make that sort of thing a tiny bit unpredictable.</p><p></p><p></p><p>It's kind of iffy, and possibly irrelevant to 4e, but prestige classes aren't.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Imp, post: 3738017, member: 40094"] :: stares blankly :: Yes. Yes, we will instead build mystery and wonder out of things the players know by heart. You step into a cave. It is shiny and sparkly. It's not even that awesome mystery and wonder will reside in every magic sword the players find, of course it won't. Or that even mystery and wonder are that necessary and important. It's more of a genre thing. It's that the entire point of "magic" is that it [i]can[/i] (if it is interesting) behave in unexpected ways, which is, yes, dependent on player ignorance, and if a person is so wedded to the idea of magic as technology, isn't he really better off playing with imaginary spaceships instead? You can come up with a much neater upgrade system, have all the technology information available to the players, and making "optimized builds" out of equipment setups actually fits in perfectly with the assumptions of the genre. Whereas in a fantasy game really the only kind of build-optimizing that fits are things like, the expert spear-fighter of the group really ought to get to wield a magic spear of some kind. Yeah, that is pretty nice. Now, outlining some magic items in the PHB doesn't have to be a bad thing (because magic is magic, and the spells are described there too) as long as it doesn't create the expectation that everything the players are going to come across will be built to a factory standard. Actually, it would be interesting if the DMG listed some alternate attributes for both magic items [i]and[/i] spell effects, just to make that sort of thing a tiny bit unpredictable. It's kind of iffy, and possibly irrelevant to 4e, but prestige classes aren't. [/QUOTE]
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Why Put magic Items in The PHB?
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