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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pawsplay" data-source="post: 4989979" data-attributes="member: 15538">Perhaps. Then again, maybe cold iron should just mean "weapons made of steel or iron," as the phrase is often used. PCs are exterminators, among other things. They begin as dire rat exterminators and end up as pit fiend exterminators. For the most part, a PC is going to use his best weapon. He is likely to reach into the toolkit only when he needs a special tool for a special job. For instance, a barbarian with a +2 flaming greatsword is probably going to keep using it against low DR opponents, because the damage and to-hits bonuses compensate. On the other hand, the lich may be less impressed.Correct, but a D&D adventurer encounters this sort of problem several times a year. They don't have the task of hunting the last known great dragon in Europe, they line in a world where a dragon might move in any time local heroes or giants move out.First of all, because those tropes are well known through D&D. Second, those tropes have expanded and magnified thanks to the CRPG industry and then the MMO world. Third, those tropes are not unique to Vance, they are simply present in Vance while less present in Lewis's Narnia. As the trope of specialized magic items appears in Vance's Dying Earth, Tolkien's The Hobbit and LOTR, Watt-Evans Esthshar books, and the mythological stories of Perseus and Hercules, they are pretty well-grounded.The "golfbag" trope is less common in works like Lackey's romantic fantasy, the Arthurian tales, and the like. But those aren't swords-and-sorcery stories, so it's not surprising that the tropes of swords-and-sorcery are less prominent in other kinds of high fantasy.In the People of the Black Circle, Conan fights a spell-hurling sorcerer and survives because of a spell-absorbing belt or vest he finds by happenstance. Dunansy's stories are practically monty haul campaigns.You are correct that Lieber's Lankhmar has less magic and fewer monsters. That would be because of different campaign assumptions, rather than because the concept itself is illogical. If the Gray Mouser had and needed more magic items, he would certainly use them.4e changes some things, but remains much the same. In fact, in some ways it is, in my view, worse. The idea that there is +2 starleather and such lying here and there reminds me too much Final Fantasy and its item slots and sockets. "Golfbags", while cumbersome in some ways, are reasonable in a world where magic turns the pages of history.</blockquote>

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