Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="(Psi)SeveredHead" data-source="post: 1690348" data-attributes="member: 1165">Yeah! This is exactly my feeling!According to some GMing articles, you're not supposed to do this:DM: "Okay, you killed the orcs. Upon identifying the items, you find their leader had a +1 greataxe."Players: "We've already got a +2 greataxe. Nothing to see here. We'll put it in our bag of holding and sell it, along with all those twelve +1 rings of protection we pulled off of the last twelve NPCs we faced."The opposite, of course, is also ridiculous.DM: "Okay, after you bind your winds soothe your burns, you identify a +3 flaming greataxe."Players: "Sweet! Um... aren't you going to have a hard time challenging us after this?"DM: "Nah. I'll just give every NPC bigger and badder weapons."The hunt for items leads to "grinding". This is what made me quit playing Baldur's Gate and Angband (and why I'll never play Diablo for more than a few minutes). Because so much of your character's power is item-dependent, you spend a lot of time scrounging through dungeons looking for gold (to buy items) or loot (to sell for cash, to buy items) or the occasional good item - you rarely find better items in treasure than what you have after the first few levels, and because NPCs have less gear than you do they also have worse items... and if they put all their money into a beefy magical sword, they skimp on other areas.PCs who have successfully "grinded" are now a Christmas tree of magic items. I'll dig up someone's character sheet and post it one day.Higher level NPCs, due to lower gear, especially fighter-types, are a lot weaker than players of their level. NPC spellcasters are often more= powerful because they're less item-dependent than other characters and their items suck more, too, and they have the NPC advantage of having to worry about spell slots less than the heroes. Even so, getting an NPC to have saves and DCs competitive with the heroes is very difficult. Players often have a real hard time boosting their low saves, and for NPCs it's even worse.Converting to low-magic is hard, however; I'd like to see a low-magic setting that does all the work for me <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> Midnight, for instance, does the classes for you but, unfortunately, doesn't give much advice on heirloom items (one of the best things in the book) and only has a few monsters. It has suggestions on how to convert monsters for low-magic, which amounts to "boost the CR". IMO this doesn't work - you can't just boost a monster's CR because it's DR is now unbreakable... it's hit points, AC, saving throws, attack bonuses (no magic armor), damage bonuses (likewise... no magic healing, no Con-boosting items, etc) haven't changed.I prefer D20 Modern for a lot of reasons:Mental classes can do things other than making skill checks (looks at the Expert) without magic.The spellcasters are not overly nerfed. I wouldn't want to play in a low-magic setting where I have to make a spellcasting check to cast a spell. You're better off making the spells of an appropriate power level - in D20 Modern, the max spell level is 5th - this is just my opinion, however. There are lots of fantasy novels where casting spells is risky or really costly.You learn how to dodge and parry. Even non-combative characters can make a flying leap (or dive) away from an opponent's weapon. The ever-present (and very tiresome) rings of protection and amulets of natural armor aren't present. You gain a bonus to class Defense instead, and there are even a few defensive feats.</blockquote>

Verification