Is the so called "Christmas Tree" really that big of a problem?

[Dornith]

I've been here only a few days and I've already seen a lot about this "Christmas Tree" which appears to be referring to the quality of magic items players use.

The thing I'm confused about is I've never seen this. I've been DMing for about a year and all my players, while they have some simple magic items, like a +1 Long Bow, they're not decked, head-to-toe in magic. On average, each player only has about 2 or 3 magic items, usually with fairly small and simple abilities. They're all level 6, so I'm not sure if this becomes a problem later, but so far I haven't seen what's the big deal.

[Karnith]

They're all level 6, so I'm not sure if this becomes a problem later
It becomes a problem later. Or, well, it can very well be a problem at that level, and even earlier, but the problem becomes more and more pronounced once you reach higher levels.

As characters reach higher levels, the enemies that they fight grow in power, and have many different abilities. Characters are assumed to have big numerical bonuses (see in particular saving throws and AC, which scale pretty badly without magic items) and various capabilities (e.g. flight, see invisibility/true seeing, teleportation, immunities, etc.) to deal with these greater threats, and many classes, particularly those that don't have access to a subsystem of some sort (e.g. spellcasting, manifesting, maneuvers), simply do proved those things.

Now, obviously, any particular game might not experience the Christmas Tree effect, but it becomes pretty difficult to get along without magic items (or some equivalent) as you get to higher levels; you generally need to change some underlying mechanics, throw out a bunch of existing material (particularly spells and monsters), or both.

[Killer Angel]

"Christmas Tree" it's a nebulous term, because it depends a lot on the style and personal preferences of DMs and Players. Bars can be set on different heights.

There are campaigns with many magic items, and campaigns where magic items are rare, and campaigns with some magic items, that are viewed in different way ("too much", or "too few") from different players.

But of course, you cannot escape too much from WBL.

[Dornith]

As characters reach higher levels, the enemies that they fight grow in power, and have many different abilities. Characters are assumed to have big numerical bonuses (see in particular saving throws and AC, which scale pretty badly without magic items) and various capabilities (e.g. flight, see invisibility/true seeing, teleportation, immunities, etc.) to deal with these greater threats, and many classes, particularly those that don't have access to a subsystem of some sort (e.g. spellcasting, manifesting, maneuvers), simply do proved those things. To keep up with the numbers and abilities that they need, characters rely on magic items to fill in the gaps.

It seems to me that could be easily fixed by using a CR = 0.8*ECL or something like that.

[Alex12]

Magic items can, in many ways, supplement for everything else. I was DMing a 3.5 game where my players managed to obtain a few million gp each, and they went hog-wild with it.
The next session, we had only 3 players there. So, for shiggles, I did an arena fight with them. They're in the arena, stuff appears and tried to kill them, when they kill it, something else appears one round later. They were level 6 or 7, I don't remember which. On the strength of magic items, they managed to take out a Beholder (CR 13) and an Astral Deva (CR 14). I fudged no rolls, and played the opponents in what I believe was an intelligent manner.

So that's the difference.

[Flickerdart]

It seems to me that could be easily fixed by using a CR = 0.8*ECL or something like that.
Not really. That helps with the flat bonuses a little bit, but non-magical classes are expected to fill the gaps in their versatility with wondrous items they can ill afford if they aren't given enough money.

If you look in the DMG, the expected amount of wealth for level 6 is 13,000gp per character. A character will probably still have only a +1 weapon (2300gp) but also have a +2 ability score item (4000gp), a +1 or +2 armor (1150gp or 4150gp), and some trinkets like Anklets of Translocation (1400gp). Additionally, the party should have a healthy amount of scrolls, wands, and potions that helps them respond better to a wider variety of encounters, and reduce the idle time in between. A few shots from a wand of cure light wounds gets the party back up to fighting shape, whereas otherwise they would have to leave the dungeon, go back home, and rest for weeks.

[Karnith]

It seems to me that could be easily fixed by using a CR = 0.8*ECL or something like that.
It's... really not that easy. Take for example AC: it simply does not scale for most characters without magic items. Spellcasters get spells of increasing power, and Monks get a slowly-scaling bonus, but for most characters it will just be 10 + Dex Bonus + Armor/Shield without magic items. It just won't get higher, even though attack bonuses scale (and scale pretty quickly) with levels/HD, meaning that past a certain point characters will just get auto-hit without AC-boosters. Saves function much the same way; minus some spells or abilities (such as Divine Grace), save bonuses, particularly for bad saves, just don't get that high without spells. Beyond a certain point characters are almost certain to fail abilities targeting their bad saves if they don't have recourse to magic items.

And then there's the issue of capabilities. Without flight and/or teleportation, melee characters get to sit out a lot of fights at high levels (or plink away with ranged attacks that they haven't invested in) because they simply don't have a way to engage enemies. Without Freedom of Movement, characters can just get grappled to death by big monsters. Without See Invisibility or True Seeing, they'll get wrecked by invisible monsters, and never be able to land a hit on enemies with miss chances. Without immunities, characters face a numbers game where, even if they have good saving throw bonuses, one bad roll will mean game over. And so on.

As an example, a high-level Fighter could well have enchanted armor, at least one enchanted weapon, an animated shield, a Cloak or Vest of Resistance, an item for flying (I personally like a Feathered Wings graft, though I guess it's not technically a magic item), a Belt of Giant Strength (possibly combined with the effects of a Belt of Battle or Belt of Healing), some Anklets of Translocation, a Ring of Protection, an Amulet of Natural Armor, a Scout's Headband, and some form of extradimensional storage. And she'd still be relying on a friendly spellcaster for some effects, particularly immunities to whatever she might be facing that day.

[Grod_The_Giant]

A lot of the game's numerical scaling depends on items. Take AC, for instance-- your too-hit goes up with level; the only way to improve your defense is to buy magic items.

[Pluto!]

The problem gets bigger the higher level you get. That's pretty much what the WBL tables mean.

You can fix the numbers easily enough, just by advancing characters' attack bonuses, saves, and ability scores a little faster, but the hard part comes from utility items.

This is where the talk shifts to some of these boards' cliches - class imbalance and VoP problems.

Simple numerical compensation doesn't address balance issues, and using it as a replacement for Christmas Tree garb exaggerates balance discrepancies. Magic Items account for most of the cool things that nonmagical classes can do, so spewing fewer of them on the party takes away the most powerful tool there is for keeping Fighters, Barbarians and company in the game as it goes toward higher levels.

[ddude987]

The easiest way I've played with to reduce the Christmas tree is give the players the +x to y items for free as a natural built in bonus for leveling up. Something like +1 to attacks damage armor bonus shield bonus and 3 separate ability scores of their choosing every 3 levels

[Snowbluff]

That depends on what people mean by problem.

Where as a level 5 or so dude will have a weapon and maybe some armor, my high level characters wear a ridiculous combination of Defending Spellblade Ringsword Poison Rings, Dastana, Spiked Gauntlets, Bucklers (Empyreal). I find finding stuff to fit on these is a lot of fun.

This also lets me get away with "chainmail bikinis," if I felt so inclined.

[Grod_The_Giant]

That depends on what people mean by problem.
This is true. The Christmas Tree effect isn't a problem in and of itself; it's merely a characteristic of 3.5. It becomes a problem when:

A group wants to run a low-magic game. (Or a DM forces low-magic onto his players by being grudging with magic item availability).
Items get lost, stolen, or destroyed in-game, and player power takes a major hit.
Players dislike having so much of their character's power stem from bling, instead of their own abilities.
Players get tired of dealing with items (especially when making new characters at high levels), but have no good alternative.
A character concept doesn't involve items
You try to make realistic economic assumptions about the setting

[Frozen_Feet]

Yes, it is, because by the rules mid-to-high level characters get thousands of gold pieces in wealth, or, if using random loot generating tables, will end up with an assortment of magical items equivalent to that sum.

Considering even the most expensive mundane items cost only a few thousand gold pieces, and most everyday conveniences cost less than a single gold piece, this means a smartly-played low-level character can have pretty much any remotely useful mundane item at hand..

Considering the cheapest magic items, like scrolls and potions, only cost a few hundred gold pieces, and can contain some of the most broken abilities in the game, this means a smartly-played mid-to-high level character can have all useful mundane items and then an assortment of spells and other magic abilities that put a mid-level sorcerer to shame.

You can emulate whole classes with enough wealth. In fact, for weakest of classes, like the Fighter and Monk, this is trivial. But the reverse is also true. Through careful selection of items, a straight Fighter can sport a selection of magic effects comparable to a mid-level wizard.

Obviously a lot of people feel that their actual class and character are getting buried under a ton of weird-ass items, and that's true perfectly literally. Now, it's possible for an invidual GM to nail shut the money coffers and play stingy with magic items, but this doesn't improve the play balance much at all. If highly magical classes like Wizards and Socerers are still allowed, reducing magic items will just widen the gap between martial and magical classes, because the latter still have free access to game changing effects while the former do not.

It's possible to play D&D 3.x without the Christmas Tree, but it either requires cutting magical classes and monsters that require magic to defeat them (like anything ethereal, for example), or cutting the lower-powered martial classes like Fighter and replacing them with higher-powered alternatives that gain some amount of magic themselves, like Swordsages.

[Pex]

It's not a problem for existing.

It's only a problem for those who have a problem with it for their own particular aesthetic. Their problem with it is not a universal truth to be taken as standard that needs "fixing".

[Frozen_Feet]

It's a problem for everyone else too, simply for the sake of book-keeping it entails.

That's a solvable problem though, and some of the solutions are quite ingenious. Though I still don't like filling Excell sheets for my characters.

[TypoNinja]

Wealth By Level is a Stat for a reason, the game design assumes you have a certain value of magical goodies augmenting your character, not just for +bonuses either, utility powers, and out of combat healing usually come from WBL as well. A melee fighter with no ability to fly might as well go back to sleep for some encounters, if you lack the ability to see invisible there are a wide range of encounters that will simply ruin you. Weapon augment crystals literally keep a SA build in the fight when undead and constructs come out.

This ends up with the 'Christmas tree effect' characters have a wide variety of magical items hanging off and around them at a given time (more obvious at higher levels), but make no mistake this is necessary unless you have a class feature (usually spellcasting) that emulates these abilities for you.

Limiting access to magic items isn't a solution because certain encounters become nearly impossible without access to magic goodies. The entire game system is built around the idea that powers you don't have you spend money to buy. Money is literally power in D&D.

[jedipotter]

I've been here only a few days and I've already seen a lot about this "Christmas Tree" which appears to be referring to the quality of magic items players use.

It really depends how you play the game. A lot of games won't even notice. If your playing a more classic, relaxed game for fun....you won't notice. It only really comes up if your game is optimized. And even more so if the game 'must' have extreme optimization to have fun.

The Tree is really just nit picking any way. Saying that a X level character 'must' have a +3 in something to 'have fun' is a bit pointless. The game is not really that simple.

[Flickerdart]

classic, relaxed game for fun
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/fe/S1ModuleCover.jpghttp://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/65/TSR1053_Ravenloft_Realm_of_Terror.jpg

Please, tell me all about how classic games were relaxed.

[eggynack]

Please, tell me all about how classic games were relaxed.
I dunno. That vampire looks pretty relaxed to me. He looks so... generally satisfied with himself.

[Flickerdart]

I dunno. That vampire looks pretty relaxed to me. He looks so... generally satisfied with himself.
True, but he's not one of the PCs.

[Faily]

I'm honestly surprised sometimes when I hear people toot the "back in my day, we didn't get magic items", after having played through a majority of the old modules... one was meant for level 1 characters, and the first loot they find is a Bag of Holding.

*Classic* modules are full of all sorts of silly stuff, ranging from characters tripping over powerful magic items to outright horrid railroading, so I don't see what was so nice and relaxing about them. :smalltongue:


As for me, I usually fill in all the body-slots on my character as I go up in the higher levels, but I've never needed a spreadsheet for tracking my christmas tree ornaments. Many character sheets come with a ready body-slot section now for you to fill in without having to worry about looking over long lists.

I personally find it's more of a problem if I feel I don't have the right gear to face the enemies at a certain level, rather than having magic items fall into my lap. A majority of magic items often get sold or traded anyway, in my experience. I've played with GMs who are generous, who are going according to WBL, and those who are so stingy that when you first find loot, it's 1000GP... in copper pieces. And you have no bags of holding to transport all those coins. Or the magic armor of the evil cleric just looks so evil you couldn't possibly want to wear that, right? Did I also mention that it had skulls and flesh incorporated into it? Can't be a champion of good looking like that. By the way, his cloak is magical... and looks really evil.

In the end, just follow the Treasure-outline of the monster's stats + DMG rules.

[Psyren]

This is true. The Christmas Tree effect isn't a problem in and of itself; it's merely a characteristic of 3.5. It becomes a problem when:

A group wants to run a low-magic game. (Or a DM forces low-magic onto his players by being grudging with magic item availability).
Items get lost, stolen, or destroyed in-game, and player power takes a major hit.
Players dislike having so much of their character's power stem from bling, instead of their own abilities.
Players get tired of dealing with items (especially when making new characters at high levels), but have no good alternative.
A character concept doesn't involve items
You try to make realistic economic assumptions about the setting


Basically this, and I'll add one more to the list: "Players (and their DMs) want {interesting item} to be equipped, but feel unable to actually wear it because doing so means giving up one of the attribute/save bonuses that is keeping them competitive."

I listed some solutions to the "christmas tree problem" in a similar thread - I'll quote myself here.


There are a number of ways to avoid the "christmas tree" effect without impacting the assumed game balance as laid out in the WBL table. Here are a couple I've seen:

1) Combining items/slots: You can have fewer items with more effects by combining several items into one. For example, you might have your dwarf fighter find a magical warhammer that strikes with the force of a thunderbolt, but also makes his skin as hard as iron and increases his vitality. Basically this hammer would combine the effects of a +2 shocking warhammer, an amulet of natural armor +2 and a belt of mighty constitution +4. But in order to actually use all three properties, he would need to bind said hammer to his hands, throat and waist slots, using rules like the "bind items to a chakra" rules from MoI (though obviously the chakras would be available much earlier.) You are now free to infuse that item with all the pomp, circumstance, portent and backstory you could want, and functionally it would be no different than the player simply wearing individual items in those slots.

2) Alternate treasure via magical locations: Planar Handbook and DMG2 have the rules for this one - basically, instead of giving out the more pedestrian magic items, you can have the players get many of the same bonuses those items would have provided by visiting a magical location. These can take any form you desire - perhaps they find a fountain of positive energy and drink from it. or a unique tree in the heart of Arborea that produces a feast of enchanted fruit, or perhaps there is a universal library in the midst of Nirvana and the players study the books there. Either way the effects can be exactly the same - enhancement bonuses to various ability scores, their weapons/armor. or resistance bonuses to their saving throws, just as if they had obtained the regular magic items that provide these benefits. You are now free to focus on providing them magic items that really impact the story, as opposed to ones that simply allow them to keep pace with CR appropriate challenges. You can even put a (long) duration on these buffs - perhaps the players have to return once every year or few months. They may even have to protect these locations from attack by the campaign villains or risk losing these powers. (If they fail, you can leave them with the buffs but put a time limit before they go away - adding urgency to defeat the main villain before the party is at even more of a disadvantage.)

3) Grant bonuses automatically: This is basically the second method but without any form of justification. If you know what the ability score buffs, resistance bonuses, AC and other basic increases should be based on the party's wealth, simply give them those bonuses automatically and don't worry about tying them to specific items or events. This is the fastest method though it can break immersion somewhat.

[eggynack]

True, but he's not one of the PCs.
Or is he? Yeah, he probably isn't.

[Firechanter]

Hehe, we're playing an AD&D2 game, and started off with a couple of published entry-level modules. I.e. designed for levels 1-4. Some of the stuff we found (as scripted drops) includes: a +3 Sword with additional powers; a Portable Hole, and a Ring of Invisibility, to name a few. It's not that "Oldschool" wouldn't include magic items, it's that there's no such thing as WBL to tell you "This item is too powerful for this level".

Anyway, back to 3.X:
As others have pointed out, the "Christmas Tree" in and of itself is not a problem; it's just a problem for people who don't like the feel of a game where everyone owns a bunch of magic stuff, particularly if that stuff has a market price that would allow you to live like a king for the rest of your days if you just sold it off. Or conversely, who have a verisimilitude problem with an item costing _literally_ a ton of gold.

Apart from that, from a purely game mechanics standpoint, WBL and the corresponging "christmas tree" are just fine. Games usually don't break by magic items, they break by the lack of them.

Also note that items do play a big role in terms of player motivation. Players love treasure. They love getting better gear. Letting them put their treasure to good use will keep them happy and motivated (because in 3.X, your gear is _never_ complete).


"Players (and their DMs) want {interesting item} to be equipped, but feel unable to actually wear it because doing so means giving up one of the attribute/save bonuses that is keeping them competitive."

Yes, a known problem. Those flat bonus type of items are called "The Big Six": Attack/Damage, Stats, Resistances/Saves, AC, AC and AC (i.e. Armour/Shield, Deflection, Natural). That's why the MIC relaxed the rules on giving magic items multiple properties.
Officially, the Item Familiar feat seems to be the only thing allowing you to "merge" existing items, but it may be smarter to just houserule that anyone who can make the separate items can also merge several such items into one.

[Rubik]

Please, tell me all about how classic games were relaxed.The girl in the vampire's arms seems pretty out of it. Blood-loss comas count as sleep, right?

[TypoNinja]

Hehe, we're playing an AD&D2 game, and started off with a couple of published entry-level modules. I.e. designed for levels 1-4. Some of the stuff we found (as scripted drops) includes: a +3 Sword with additional powers; a Portable Hole, and a Ring of Invisibility, to name a few. It's not that "Oldschool" wouldn't include magic items, it's that there's no such thing as WBL to tell you "This item is too powerful for this level".

Anyway, back to 3.X:
As others have pointed out, the "Christmas Tree" in and of itself is not a problem; it's just a problem for people who don't like the feel of a game where everyone owns a bunch of magic stuff, particularly if that stuff has a market price that would allow you to live like a king for the rest of your days if you just sold it off. Or conversely, who have a verisimilitude problem with an item costing _literally_ a ton of gold.

Apart from that, from a purely game mechanics standpoint, WBL and the corresponging "christmas tree" are just fine. Games usually don't break by magic items, they break by the lack of them.

Also note that items do play a big role in terms of player motivation. Players love treasure. They love getting better gear. Letting them put their treasure to good use will keep them happy and motivated (because in 3.X, your gear is _never_ complete).



Yes, a known problem. Those flat bonus type of items are called "The Big Six": Attack/Damage, Stats, Resistances/Saves, AC, AC and AC (i.e. Armour/Shield, Deflection, Natural). That's why the MIC relaxed the rules on giving magic items multiple properties.
Officially, the Item Familiar feat seems to be the only thing allowing you to "merge" existing items, but it may be smarter to just houserule that anyone who can make the separate items can also merge several such items into one.

There are rules for combining powers in one magic item in the DMG, though the resultant item is more expensive than two separate items since magic item slots are actually valued. The most common two-for-one item at my table is a Ring of Protection//Cloak of resistance combo.

Similarly you can make any power you want as a slotless wondrous item (again more expensive) to free up magic item space.

[Necroticplague]

It really depends how you play the game. A lot of games won't even notice. If your playing a more classic, relaxed game for fun....you won't notice. It only really comes up if your game is optimized. And even more so if the game 'must' have extreme optimization to have fun.

The Tree is really just nit picking any way. Saying that a X level character 'must' have a +3 in something to 'have fun' is a bit pointless. The game is not really that simple.

I've always heard christmas tree effect to refer to the effect mean that adventurers typically end up with obscene amount of magic items, with the name coming from how arcane sight or similar make them light up like chrismas tree. Nothing about how much the system relies on equipment (though it does).

Now, to the related point, how big equipment is in the system comes in regardless of op level. For example, if the party lacks flight-allowing items or decent ranged attacks, you can't use things like ghosts against them without tpks occuring. And it widens gaps between casters and everyone else, since casters can compensate with spells, while the others are mostly screwed.

Also, simply a +3 really sucks. A better example might be "by level 10, you should probably have some way to fly, and by level 3, some way to deal with incorporeal enemies is recommended).

[Jeff the Green]

There are rules for combining powers in one magic item in the DMG, though the resultant item is more expensive than two separate items since magic item slots are actually valued. The most common two-for-one item at my table is a Ring of Protection//Cloak of resistance combo.

Similarly you can make any power you want as a slotless wondrous item (again more expensive) to free up magic item space.

And per MIC you can slap the basic +whatevers on more interesting items for no more than the sum of their costs.

[eggynack]

There are rules for combining powers in one magic item in the DMG, though the resultant item is more expensive than two separate items since magic item slots are actually valued. The most common two-for-one item at my table is a Ring of Protection//Cloak of resistance combo.

Similarly you can make any power you want as a slotless wondrous item (again more expensive) to free up magic item space.
That only applies to sticking abilities on an item, to my knowledge, rather than to taking abilities off of two existing items and cramming them into one. The MIC rules render something like a slotless ring of protection+cloak of resistance pretty irrelevant, as you can just stick those abilities on anything at no premium.

[Snails]

The so-called Christmas Tree effect is not a problem, but how the game was designed to be played at higher levels. In the OD&D and 1e era, it was understood that PCs in their double digits were ready to build a castle, lay claim to a once barbaric land they have tamed by their own effort, and fade into retirement or semi-retirement.

In 3e, PCs do not slow down their adventuring through the teen levels, so their usual arrays of magic items is seen in a different light.

[Firechanter]

There are rules for combining powers in one magic item in the DMG, though the resultant item is more expensive than two separate items since magic item slots are actually valued.

I'm not sure if we are talking about the same thing here. You seem to be talking about creating a new item from scratch. I am thinking of a scenario like: Player A wears a Belt of Giant Strength +4. He then finds a Belt of Battle. What to do? He's a Melee guy so he can't go without the Str bonus, but the Belt of Battle is too awesome to pass up on. So obviously he'll want one belt with both qualities. But how to get it?
I can't find a rule in the DMG for combining items that already have been dropped into the game separately. The only option I see is to sell the Strength belt (for 8K), find a Crafter, and pay him 16K to add the +4 Str to his Belt of Battle (Str is one of the Big Six so as per MIC it doesn't cost extra to add this property to an item). Sure, it works, and if you have a crafter in the party you don't even lose gold, but to me this approach seems unelegant and needlessly complicated. Merging them would be much more elegant.

If I'm being dense and a rule for that has been in the DMG all along, please pardon me and point out the page to me. I sure missed stuff before that was there black on white.

[Psyren]

The only way I can think of by RAW to disenchant/salvage existing items in this way is with the artificer. Beyond that, you would have to sell the old items and use the resources to craft the combined one, or rely on fiat of some kind via wish/miracle/etc.

[Raven777]

This guy explains it better than I (http://www.thealexandrian.net/creations/misc/fetishizing-balance.html), but magic items of the +1 variety are basically hard coded into 3.F's progression design. Hence the Wealth by Level tables. I do not understand either those who argue that items overshadow character abilities. What items enable you to do is part of the abilities your character accumulated over his/her adventures. Items are part your character. Gear is as inseparable from a 3.F character as it is from my World of Warcraft Shadow Priest. The game considers you need it before you can successfully face tougher challenges. Sure, you can raid Icecrown in Tier 7 gear, but it was designed expecting players in Tier 9. There is no Christmas Tree effect. Collecting items to grow stronger is simply part of how the game works.

Yes, it conflicts with some styles (low magic, low wealth), but once again, the game was not designed with these styles in mind.

[Grod_The_Giant]

This guy explains it better than I (http://www.thealexandrian.net/creations/misc/fetishizing-balance.html), but magic items of the +1 variety are basically hard coded into 3.F's progression design. Hence the Wealth by Level tables. I do not understand either those who argue that items overshadow character abilities. What items enable you to do is part of the abilities your character accumulated over his/her adventures. Items are part your character. Gear is as inseparable from a 3.F character as it is from my World of Warcraft Shadow Priest. The game considers you need it before you can successfully face tougher challenges. Sure, you can raid Icecrown in Tier 7 gear, but it was designed expecting players in Tier 9. There is no Christmas Tree effect. Collecting items to grow stronger is simply part of how the game works.

Yes, it conflicts with some styles (low magic, low wealth), but once again, the game was not designed with these styles in mind.
The item-heavy thing doesn't just conflict with low magic/low wealth; the emphasis on magic items conflicts with just about every fantasy story out there, in any form of media. Sure, items are a vital part of Diablo, or WoW, or any number of such video games, but even there, the narrative doesn't revolve around them. There are plenty of characters in fiction with trademark magic items, but 3.5 doesn't even do that-- items can be a part of your character, but not when you have to replace them every few levels, and not when everyone and his brother have the same sort of magic rings and cloaks. It's common, it's crap. It's not yours.

The point of the game is your character, not your build or your loadout. If you can simulate 90% of my power and abilities by giving my gear to a random commoner, then I'm not a hero-- my gear is. And that's not a story I want to tell.

[Psyren]

Yes, it conflicts with some styles (low magic, low wealth), but once again, the game was not designed with these styles in mind.

Totally agreed, but its still worth pointing out that low magic/low gear playstyles can be enabled by simply finding ways to deliver the bonuses that don't rely on tying them inextricably to specific doodads. The beauty of this system is how much we can customize it and this is just one more way for creativity to win the day.

[Snails]

The point of the game is your character, not your build or your loadout. If you can simulate 90% of my power and abilities by giving my gear to a random commoner, then I'm not a hero-- my gear is. And that's not a story I want to tell.

On the nose. In 3e we define the noteworthy abilities of our heroes by our choice of Class Levels and Feats. The stuff is just stuff.

While I recognize default 3e assumptions have drained away some of the specialness of magic items, it also means the Player gains control over their PC'c "career" path, rather than letting it be decided by whatever magical loot so happens to fall into the party's lap.

[Flickerdart]

everyone and his brother have the same sort of magic rings and cloaks
This is a fair thing to say...if you don't look at demographics. Sure, in a campaign world with vastly inflated levels, magic items are going to be common. But when there are literally five other guys that are the same level you are, and all of you are decked out in world-shattering artifacts, things become less commonplace just by virtue of their cost and power. Any king could afford a tomb, but the Egyptian pyramids are a cut above.

Speaking of which, even if you have exactly the same item mechanically, why should it be the same item fluff-wise? Just looking at magic swords in stories, what exactly is the difference between a Valyrian steel weapon, a Kladenets sword, Joyeuse, and Durendal? They're all just really freakin' good swords. Hell, even an ordinary masterwork weapon from history would greatly vary just by region. A damascus steel sword would never be confused with an ulfberht, even though they are essentially the same thing (weapons forged with a process that makes them more resilient).

I'm not saying that every magic item needs to have a history; that would be far too tedious. But they don't come off an assembly line.

[Grod_The_Giant]

This is a fair thing to say...if you don't look at demographics.
I don't care if 99.999% of the world doesn't have the same items as me. I care about the .001% of the world my character interacts with. My partymates, my enemies, the ones I see, the ones whose builds and loadouts matter? They've all got Cloaks of Resistance and Rings of Protection and Amulets of Health and all the rest. (Not to mention that every NPC I've fought for the last 15 levels have had weaker versions of the same items)


Speaking of which, even if you have exactly the same item mechanically, why should it be the same item fluff-wise?

Refluffing is always an option, but D&D is a rules-heavy game-- the crunch plays a huge role in defining things.
Given that all characters buy the same Big 6 items, and almost all magic items get replaced every few levels, refluffing them gets old fast. How many ways can you spin a Cloak of Resistance?
High level characters have silly numbers of magic items. Giving them all interesting fluff and stories starts to overshadow your character's fluff and story.


Sorry, I appear to be feeling bitter tonight.

[Teapot Salty]

My beef with it is simple: 1. You need items to succeed, a warblade without his two aptitude kukris and a scabbard of keen edges can't critfish, a paladin without his +5 holy longsword is only hitting for tiny amounts of damage, I could go on.

2. This is part of an even bigger problem with 3.5, but it makes mundane worthless without magic. Which I think is wrong, they should be able to solo without any trouble, they should come with built in enchantments, all the paladin's weapons should be holy, all the ranger's weapons should cause bleed on crits, all fighter weapons should be keen, etc.

[Flickerdart]

]High level characters have silly numbers of magic items. Giving them all interesting fluff and stories starts to overshadow your character's fluff and story.
Literally the second last sentence in my post says that you don't need to do this. Like, exactly this thing.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Literally the second last sentence in my post says that you don't need to do this. Like, exactly this thing.
My apologies. Late at night is not a good time for reading comprehension.

[Thiyr]

My beef with it is simple: 1. You need items to succeed, a warblade without his two aptitude kukris and a scabbard of keen edges can't critfish, a paladin without his +5 holy longsword is only hitting for tiny amounts of damage, I could go on.

2. This is part of an even bigger problem with 3.5, but it makes mundane worthless without magic. Which I think is wrong, they should be able to solo without any trouble, they should come with built in enchantments, all the paladin's weapons should be holy, all the ranger's weapons should cause bleed on crits, all fighter weapons should be keen, etc.

While I can see those two points, I can't quite agree with them at the same time. I mean, yea, its impressive when somebody's skills obviously eclipse their equipment (and I mean in the real world as well. I'm thinking of Simo Hayha, personally), but good equipment is a thing for a -reason-. Magic items are an extension of trying to improve on a concept, and having people come to rely on the benefits of their equipment just seems a logical extension. Of course there are people that can get around it (That warblade could take improved critical, the paladin could just take power attack, etc), so its a toss-up. I don't necessarily like the idea of giving enhancements as a "this class get this thing on all their weapons", though. Partly because we already have that, just done poorly (see: favored enemy, weapon focus/spec), or because it would start funneling people into all doing the same thing. If every fighter's weapon is keen, you're gonna see a lot more crit-focused fighters instead of other options. It's a use it-or-lose it situation, and if you want to build a tripper? Well, guess that's kinda wasted. I guess you could have it be a versatile kinda thing, but then you're limiting yourself to specific enhancement modifiers for what's open, or people taking things that are a lot better than other options, and it just gets headachey.

I can agree that it's kinda offputting that you can't craft all your stuff yourself if you want, but I can at least accept that if you want to play a dedicated crafter, a true Ironman style "my power is my money", you have the artificer, and if you just want to be the guy who makes his own weapons and armor and fights with them, you do at least have SOME options. I mean, you could refluff Ancestral Relic, you have custom Weapons of Legacy, you have the oft-forgotten Bonded Magic Items in DMG2, heck, you could even go with Item Familiar if you're feeling crazy. It won't cover everything, but between AR and bonded items, you've got weapons and armor or shield covered. And those are usually the ones I see people thinking about when it comes to wanting to make your own stuff. Plus, each of those adds in that "this item is special" fuzzy feeling.

The rest of the stuff, the +numbers knicknacks of stats, I find less attention-grabbing to begin with, so either you could use one of the various things people before have said, or just let those be the bread-n-butter unimpressive utility-gear.

(side note: I very rarely actually buy the +attribute items, which I find kinda interesting. I just try to find cooler things I'll be more excited to have instead. But I like my shinies, so...)

[Spore]

On the nose. In 3e we define the noteworthy abilities of our heroes by our choice of Class Levels and Feats. The stuff is just stuff.

I heartily disagree. A character is NOT the sum of what enemies he can defeat. A character is a sum of decisions made during their adventure, during the story that is told. Gear increases the amount of choice possible for either character.

Take Bilbo Baggins for example. He would've been a useless corpse by the end of the 2. chapter of the Hobbit if it weren't for the ring he finds. Sure his powers (or more likely his saving throw on will) made way for him to help the party defeat Smaug. But if it weren't for Glamdring and the other weapons, the heroes would've bumped into Orcs twice (or more, I don't remember) and this could've easily finished the party off.

Or during the entirety of LotR (the books) the party has been patched up by all sorts of different magic things. Be it lembas, Elven Magic or the help of other items. But back to D&D: The system is Some classes are created too poorly to reflect a great hero without any gear. You can have a great fighter or rogue dominated for DAYS. And being a mindless minion for the villain is not "a display of noteworthy abilities" even if you decimate armies during that period.

But if your Helm of Mind Protection (TM) protects you from the simplest of magic attacks you are safer. There are whole epics written about "quest items". I agree that a character should work on a basic level even without many items. But if you take Jarlaxle from Salvatore - a dangerous leader of a feared mercenary band you BET he is relying on his immunity to mind control and mind reading. You can't go meet a disciple of one of the most active evil godesses of the setting and hope to make fair deals just because it is a nice day outside.

[Flickerdart]

Honestly, there are things (like Ancestral Relic, Kensai/Psychic Weapon Master, and legacy weapons) that do a pretty okay job of fixing the gear thing, at least a little bit. Just like a wizard finds magic scrolls and downloads them into his book, you find magic swords and download them into your sword. Nobody complains that the wizard is too reliant on his spellbook, after all. Although they do get many ways to avoid having one, because of course they do.

The solution, then, is to steal the wizard's abilities that let the avoid having spellbooks. The two I can think of off the top of my head are tattoos and smoking joints. So get magic items tattooed on you by mystic cults (like the protagonist of Mark of the Ninja) or grind up the magic items you find and snort them to gain their powers like, uh...Kirby? There might not be an equivalent one here.

[TypoNinja]

I'm not sure if we are talking about the same thing here. You seem to be talking about creating a new item from scratch. I am thinking of a scenario like: Player A wears a Belt of Giant Strength +4. He then finds a Belt of Battle. What to do? He's a Melee guy so he can't go without the Str bonus, but the Belt of Battle is too awesome to pass up on. So obviously he'll want one belt with both qualities. But how to get it?
I can't find a rule in the DMG for combining items that already have been dropped into the game separately. The only option I see is to sell the Strength belt (for 8K), find a Crafter, and pay him 16K to add the +4 Str to his Belt of Battle (Str is one of the Big Six so as per MIC it doesn't cost extra to add this property to an item). Sure, it works, and if you have a crafter in the party you don't even lose gold, but to me this approach seems unelegant and needlessly complicated. Merging them would be much more elegant.

If I'm being dense and a rule for that has been in the DMG all along, please pardon me and point out the page to me. I sure missed stuff before that was there black on white.

Nope, I'm the dense one, I missed the bit about combining existing magic items, and though we were just talking about combining effects at purchase/creation of the item.

[kalasulmar]

Magic Item Compendium and its use of item sets to grant better abilities was , to me, the coolest addition to my game from any book or source for 3.x. Customizing a complete set of magic gear for my PCs helps make them more unique, fun, and memorable. Sure, that Belt of Giant Strength+6 is awesome, but the Infiltrator's Belt from the Luck of Thieves set really fits the TWF Fighter/Rogue even if more damage is always better from an optimization standpoint. Maybe its just me and my games, but fun and rule of cool seem to always trump Batman and Ubercharger. Goliath barbarian crits for 250 damage is talked about less than the time goliath barbarian failed a jump check and wound up exposing a cheating wife of a random merchant. Game balance, or imbalance, is only an issue if the fun isn't balanced.

[Killer Angel]

the emphasis on magic items conflicts with just about every fantasy story out there, in any form of media.

Excalibur, the One Ring, the Flying carpet in one of the stories in the One Thousand and One Nights...
Fantasy literature is full of magic items as the center of the plot, and this can be done in D&D too.
But I agree that in D&D, magic is usually treated almost as "standard equipment for adventurers".

[Thiyr]

Excalibur, the One Ring, the Flying carpet in one of the stories in the One Thousand and One Nights...
Fantasy literature is full of magic items as the center of the plot, and this can be done in D&D too.
But I agree that in D&D, magic is usually treated almost as "standard equipment for adventurers".

I'll say this. Because it's just standard gear, it DOES raise the bar as far as what you'd consider "impressive". When all you have is plain steel, a glowstick-sword of orcbane is impressive. But when that's standard, you need something a bit fancier. I don't see this as a problem, necessarily, so much as it is an excuse to -find- those untapped niches.

Still disappointed I never got to charge/use that rifle I found that had a blast radius measured in -miles-.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Excalibur, the One Ring, the Flying carpet in one of the stories in the One Thousand and One Nights...
Fantasy literature is full of magic items as the center of the plot, and this can be done in D&D too.
But I agree that in D&D, magic is usually treated almost as "standard equipment for adventurers".
Those are what I called "trademark magic items." They're magic items done right, Big Things that define your character. But the standard magic item system in D&D (disregarding stuff like Ancestral Relic and Weapons of Legacy) is terrible at that. That shiny, powerful magic sword you found and named at 6th level? Too weak to use at 12th. That flying carpet? Everyone has some way of flying by 10th; yours is nothing special. You've got a magic ring? So does everyone else. Magic items can only be plot-centric when they're rare and unique, and D&D is terrible at that.

[Jeff the Green]

Those are what I called "trademark magic items." They're magic items done right, Big Things that define your character. But the standard magic item system in D&D (disregarding stuff like Ancestral Relic and Weapons of Legacy) is terrible at that. That shiny, powerful magic sword you found and named at 6th level? Too weak to use at 12th. That flying carpet? Everyone has some way of flying by 10th; yours is nothing special. You've got a magic ring? So does everyone else. Magic items can only be plot-centric when they're rare and unique, and D&D is terrible at that.

Yeah, that's the bit that's disappointed me too. Since, apart from LotR, my introduction to fantasy literature was David and Leigh Eddings's work, I like the idea of having one trademark really cool item (e.g. Iron Grip's sword, Ehlana's and Sparhawk's rings. That's the feel that a lot of "old-school" DMs are going for (ignoring the fact that many modules from previous editions were absurdly generous with loot) when they run low-wealth campaigns.

The solution, I think, is virtual wealth. You gain a certain amount of "chi points" or whatever you want to call them, and can spend them on abilities you'd normally get from items. So spend 1400 chi points to teleport a short distance 1/day, 4000 to boost your Strength by 2, etc. Granted, this makes for a very high-magic world and a wuxia feel where people are flying and teleporting by virtue of their personal strength, but it works.

[Thiyr]

Those are what I called "trademark magic items." They're magic items done right, Big Things that define your character. But the standard magic item system in D&D (disregarding stuff like Ancestral Relic and Weapons of Legacy) is terrible at that. That shiny, powerful magic sword you found and named at 6th level? Too weak to use at 12th. That flying carpet? Everyone has some way of flying by 10th; yours is nothing special. You've got a magic ring? So does everyone else. Magic items can only be plot-centric when they're rare and unique, and D&D is terrible at that.

Actually, this reminds me of a good counterpoint. It is VERY possible for commonplace, even mass-produced magic items while still having special or plot-centric items. Look at Harry Potter. On the one hand, everyone has a wand. You can buy invisibility cloaks, chests of holding, and flying broomsticks. Magical knickknacks abound. But even so, while anyone can buy an invisibility cloak, there is only one Cloak of Invisibility, of deathly hallows fame. The Nimbus and Firebolt may be store bought, but it holds significance due to their contexts. It can be done. It just takes a bit more effort.

[jedipotter]

Please, tell me all about how classic games were relaxed.

In a classic game, the creation of the rules part of the character only took a couple minutes. And there was not much, often nothing, to build on or from at all. Now the role-playing part of the character takes as long as it does in modern times...depending on the player.

So a classic gamer could make the rules part of the character, and just sit back and play the game. They did not need to worry about how high a plus was, or what feat they would take when they level or hope they might find an item to fit their build. A lot of modern games get way to caught up in the optimized build. They claim they can't ''have fun'' unless they have a super high plus or ability. Then they get all depressed when, after playing for hours, they still don't have it. In short, they are playing to make a better game character, not to role-play or take part in a story or even have fun.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

Basically this, and I'll add one more to the list: "Players (and their DMs) want {interesting item} to be equipped, but feel unable to actually wear it because doing so means giving up one of the attribute/save bonuses that is keeping them competitive."

MIC p234 has the solution to this. Also keep in mind that, "A creator can add new magical abilities to a magic item with no restrictions (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/creatingMagicItems.htm#addingNewAbilities)." There's also the Vest of Resistance in CA, since a vest slot is so seldom used, or you can just buy a Pearl of Power if you already have a party spellcaster using Greater/Superior Resistance on himself every day. Then there's the Belt of Magnificence in Miniatures Handbook, which provides an enhancement bonus to all six ability scores, but only the +6 belt can be considered worth the price, given the cost of six individual stat items with the same enhancement bonus.

My group has an even more elegant solution to this: If you have two or more items that (could) take the same slot, someone who meets the prerequisites to craft each of those items can combine them into one item. If it would increase the item's base price (due to the 50% markup of additional properties not listed on MIC p234) then the normal crafting cost is paid for the difference (or the full difference if done by an NPC). The time it takes is one day per 1,000 gp of base price increase, minimum one day. This actually encourages characters to have a few very important signature items that they continue to improve.

[Psyren]

^ Yep - I mentioned this under "combining items" (solution 1 in my quote.)

I merely wish there were a way to combine two existing items by RAW, or at least "disenchant" one without needing an artificer and put those reclaimed resources towards adding its effects to the other.

[Flickerdart]

In a classic game, the creation of the rules part of the character only took a couple minutes. And there was not much, often nothing, to build on or from at all. Now the role-playing part of the character takes as long as it does in modern times...depending on the player.

So a classic gamer could make the rules part of the character, and just sit back and play the game. They did not need to worry about how high a plus was, or what feat they would take when they level or hope they might find an item to fit their build. A lot of modern games get way to caught up in the optimized build. They claim they can't ''have fun'' unless they have a super high plus or ability. Then they get all depressed when, after playing for hours, they still don't have it. In short, they are playing to make a better game character, not to role-play or take part in a story or even have fun.
Are you joking? Have you never read Tomb of Horrors? It is literally the first D&D module, as classic as you can get, and has not an iota of roleplaying. It's all about murdering your characters in the most brutal and conniving way possible, so the PCs have to tweak out everything they've got or die trying. The goal? Get to Acererak and loot his tomb.

D&D started as a wargame about killing the other guys and taking their stuff, and then using that stuff to kill more guys who have better stuff. This is a very well-recorded history. If you think you can enforce your delusions about what D&D is on the past, you are very much mistaken.

[BRC]

Those are what I called "trademark magic items." They're magic items done right, Big Things that define your character. But the standard magic item system in D&D (disregarding stuff like Ancestral Relic and Weapons of Legacy) is terrible at that. That shiny, powerful magic sword you found and named at 6th level? Too weak to use at 12th. That flying carpet? Everyone has some way of flying by 10th; yours is nothing special. You've got a magic ring? So does everyone else. Magic items can only be plot-centric when they're rare and unique, and D&D is terrible at that.

Yeah.

This is the issue with the "Christamas Tree", at least in my mind. I want magic items that opens up new options for the character.

A lot of Christmas Tree stuff is just getting slightly bigger numbers.

When making any mid-to-high level character, you should pick up something that boosts your primary stat, something that boosts your constitution, something that boosts your AC, and something that boosts your saves. You spend lots of money on a "+1 Sword that behaves exactly like a normal sword only slightly better".

In my mind, a good magic item should be something that opens up new opportunities for the character. Something that lets them do things they couldn't before, rather than simply be somewhat better at doing those things.


Plus, the "Minor Bonus" style magic items mean a lot more paperwork, as you have to walk down your inventory list tallying up bonuses.

Of course, this is partially the fault of the Magic Item Mart. There are some magic items that are just plain good, and so everybody goes and buys those at high levels. Everybody's got that Ion Stone that means you don't need to eat, everybody's got a luckstone, ect.

Hercules wore the Skin of the Nemean Lion, and used arrows dipped in the blood of the hydra.
Which you could probably call +5 Hide Armor and arrows with some poison effect, but it seems less special if everybody in the party has +5 armor and magic arrows.

[Snails]

Excalibur, the One Ring, the Flying carpet in one of the stories in the One Thousand and One Nights...
Fantasy literature is full of magic items as the center of the plot, and this can be done in D&D too.
But I agree that in D&D, magic is usually treated almost as "standard equipment for adventurers".

Sure. Perhaps I overstated my position; I do not want to imply powerful signature items are disallowed. But...

Firstly, the 3e PC "career" development through Classes and Feats makes sense regardless; these can be two parallel tracks.

Secondly, D&D cannot offer any guidance on how to hand "high level" items to "low level" characters, because...

Thirdly, your noteworthy examples imply that a long running camp will be even more "Christmas Tree" than the norms of 1e/2e/3e. You are not going to give one 50,000 gp item to a PC at 3rd level and never give any more magical reward, right?

So, in the context of the OP's question, the Christmas Tree effect is either not a problem or a good thing.

[jedipotter]

has not an iota of roleplaying. .


Just to note, D&D as a game does not have an iota of roleplaying, in the rules. D&D is a combat, adventure game.

[eggynack]

Just to note, D&D as a game does not have has not an iota of roleplaying, in the rules. D&D is a combat, adventure game.
Just to note, D&D 3.5 does not have, "Must spend hours optimizing, and never roleplay," in the rules. D&D 3.5, like earlier editions, is a combat, adventure game.

[Thiyr]

Yeah.

This is the issue with the "Christamas Tree", at least in my mind. I want magic items that opens up new options for the character.

A lot of Christmas Tree stuff is just getting slightly bigger numbers.

When making any mid-to-high level character, you should pick up something that boosts your primary stat, something that boosts your constitution, something that boosts your AC, and something that boosts your saves. You spend lots of money on a "+1 Sword that behaves exactly like a normal sword only slightly better".

In my mind, a good magic item should be something that opens up new opportunities for the character. Something that lets them do things they couldn't before, rather than simply be somewhat better at doing those things.


Plus, the "Minor Bonus" style magic items mean a lot more paperwork, as you have to walk down your inventory list tallying up bonuses.

Of course, this is partially the fault of the Magic Item Mart. There are some magic items that are just plain good, and so everybody goes and buys those at high levels. Everybody's got that Ion Stone that means you don't need to eat, everybody's got a luckstone, ect.

Hercules wore the Skin of the Nemean Lion, and used arrows dipped in the blood of the hydra.
Which you could probably call +5 Hide Armor and arrows with some poison effect, but it seems less special if everybody in the party has +5 armor and magic arrows.

Still, why not both? Why not have the gauntlets of strength alongside, say, your aptitude weapons? Why not have the array of minor stuff boosting your numbers while also getting things that give new options? I mean, sure, part of the problem is that the new-option stuff tends to be a bit more expensive (gut reaction, don't have any numbers to support myself, feel free to show me I'm wrong), but still.

Though the more I think about it, I'm seeing more and more that those iconic magic items in fiction aren't special for what they do typically. Either the base concept is unique (the Flying Carpet, the One Ring), or they're just That Thing But Better (Excalibur, Durendal, the aforementioned Invisibility Cloak). In the case of the former, its because its unique. In the case of the latter, its basically just bigger numbers. Uniqueness is easy to do (Find an effect that people can't buy, put it on an item. Basically, Artifacts). Power is easy to do (If people have a +5 butterknife, give them a +9 steak knife. Normally you can't buy that high pre-epic, so yea, I'd say its legendary). The hard part is making people -care-. the Hide of the Nemean Lion was unbreakable aside from the lion's own claws, making Hercules even more difficult to kill. But that he had to wrestle the lion down, then figure out how to skin it? That makes people care more than if he just was wearing some iron and had a good shield. Hydra-poison arrows are nifty, but we wouldn't care if he stabbed hydras for a morning warm up, or if he just slathered his arrowheads in dung and curare. Its because he had to figure out how to slay the hydra, and because they ultimately backfire on him that we care about the poison.

So in the end, I still go back to the idea that the items themselves are ancillary to the issue most people seem to have. If your items are just piles or numbers, or if they give you new options to play with doesn't matter. If you can swim in your pile of discarded swords like you were some kind of blade-loving scrooge mcduck, if you can buy them at the corner store, or if you only ever find a single magic item ever, it doesn't matter. What matters is the narrative around it.

To pull up a more modern example that got lodged in my head, anyone here watch Supernatural? The Colt is a big, important magic item in the narrative. Its a central point of the plot in early seasons (haven't watched past s3 yet, so can't comment on later). Its obviously something important. But when you get down to it, what is it really? A gun that can kill things. That's it. A old gun that can kill things really well. Now, strangely enough, guns are a fairly single-purpose bit of equipment. Their job is killing things. This gun is nothing special when taken out of context. Hand it to anyone not in the know, and its a normal thing doing what its meant to. Its importance comes from the narrative around it, realizing that supernatural things are difficult to -truly- kill. Its important because of the efforts taken to acquire it, the efforts taken to deny it to the protagonists, the efforts to make it work again, the limits on when its used. It is, in a sense, another character. There are other magic items that show up, but they're treated more like commodities, so we don't care as much. There are mundane things that get more attention than the magic things, because they have their own narratives as well.

Putting it in d&d terms, the importance of an item in this regard, that "trademark item" idea, is a fully separate idea from how many magic items you get or what they do. Its in the narrative of the item, the story given to it, and what the players do with it. If they pick up an item at "Crazy Dave's Pointy Stick Empointium", of course it won't have a narrative. If they find a lonely corpse with an ornate spear lodged in its chest, they might get curious. If in their dying breath, their estranged father gifts to them their ancient ancestral greatclub of smashing, wielded by each seventh son of each generation to do great things, odds are a lot higher they're gonna care more. If you make that specific mundane dagger the key to the entire plot of the campaign, you bet they're gonna treat that dagger like its the most important thing ever (especially if its key to saving the world). And each of those are entirely separate from the overall level of magic items they have or can access.

[Flickerdart]

Just to note, D&D as a game does not have an iota of roleplaying, in the rules. D&D is a combat, adventure game.
Don't avoid the subject. We know for a fact how Gygax, Arnerson, and their friends played D&D, because they wrote it down. Those games are as classic as you can possibly get, and it does not match up to your claims of what a classic D&D game is like. Either back up your claims, or stop making them, but don't try and weasel out of it because I will call you on it every time.

[Psyren]

Not to take any sides in this one, but Tomb of Horrors has plenty of roleplay opportunity. The backstory of the dungeon is actually pretty nifty even if it was retconned in later, and it can lead to plenty of story potential. Do any of the characters know? Are the ones who know keeping it secret from the ones who don't? Is the lich the main reason everyone is there? The treasure? How did they find out about it? Were they sent, and if so, by who? Did the person/deity/entity who sent them know the truth about the dungeon? etc. Even with such a simple premise there's a lot of fertile ground for storytelling.

In other words, it seems to me that saying you can't roleplay in ToH is just as Stormwind as saying that you can't roleplay and optimize.

[Arbane]

Are you joking? Have you never read Tomb of Horrors? It is literally the first D&D module, as classic as you can get, and has not an iota of roleplaying. It's all about murdering your characters in the most brutal and conniving way possible, so the PCs have to tweak out everything they've got or die trying. The goal? Get to Acererak and loot his tomb.

Keep in mind Tomb of Horrors was specifically designed to be run at cons (and to punish people who thought Gygax's regular play-style was 'too easy'(!)).

But one thing about pre-3rd editions of D&D was that they could afford to be generous with magic items, as PCs generally weren't supposed to be able to buy them. <grognard>None of this 'build' nonsense, your character had whatever weird, random stuff they managed to take from ancient ruins and the corpses of their enemies.</grognard>

[Flickerdart]

Not to take any sides in this one, but Tomb of Horrors has plenty of roleplay opportunity. The backstory of the dungeon is actually pretty nifty even if it was retconned in later, and it can lead to plenty of story potential. Do any of the characters know? Are the ones who know keeping it secret from the ones who don't? Is the lich the main reason everyone is there? The treasure? How did they find out about it? Were they sent, and if so, by who? Did the person/deity/entity who sent them know the truth about the dungeon? etc. Even with such a simple premise there's a lot of fertile ground for storytelling.

In other words, it seems to me that saying you can't roleplay in ToH is just as Stormwind as saying that you can't roleplay and optimize.
That's not what I'm saying at all. There are "roleplay opportunities" in everything, but the Tomb was not for roleplay. In its original incarnation, D&D's first module was about horrible murder and not the nonsense jedipotter touts as "classic." You can dance around the actual adventure as much as you want, but once you go in, the infamous statue's mouth doesn't really care why you're there.

[137beth]

Most of the time I don't mind the CTE, but I can understand not liking it. The issue is that you would need to make a lot of changes to the system to get rid of it. I've heard plenty of people suggest giving inherent ability score/save/attack bonuses at various levels, sort of like VoP without the code. But that doesn't cover any of the things high level characters need items for: mind blank, miss chance, tactical teleportation, true seeing, or stun/daze negation. To really get rid of the CTE without destroying what little balance the game has, you need to alter each and every base class to include all of the things items are suppose to do for you.

[Flickerdart]

Most of the time I don't mind the CTE, but I can understand not liking it. The issue is that you would need to make a lot of changes to the system to get rid of it. I've heard plenty of people suggest giving inherent ability score/save/attack bonuses at various levels, sort of like VoP without the code. But that doesn't cover any of the things high level characters need items for: mind blank, miss chance, tactical teleportation, true seeing, or stun/daze negation. To really get rid of the CTE without destroying what little balance the game has, you need to alter each and every base class to include all of the things items are suppose to do for you.
If you're going to go that far, I think it's better to get rid of both immunities and the sort of effects that require them. Sure, it's useful to have mind blank because otherwise you get mindraped, but in a game without both spells an Enchanter is actually a viable class. True seeing is valuable, but if invisibility and miss chance wasn't so damn powerful, it wouldn't need to exist, and Illusionists would be less hosed. Stun negation is important, but if there wasn't an effect that made you not get to play your character, then you wouldn't need it.

If immunities are mandatory to avoid getting hosed, then getting them is just a tax on being able to play, and taxes are bad.

[Thiyr]

If you're going to go that far, I think it's better to get rid of both immunities and the sort of effects that require them. Sure, it's useful to have mind blank because otherwise you get mindraped, but in a game without both spells an Enchanter is actually a viable class. True seeing is valuable, but if invisibility and miss chance wasn't so damn powerful, it wouldn't need to exist, and Illusionists would be less hosed. Stun negation is important, but if there wasn't an effect that made you not get to play your character, then you wouldn't need it.

If immunities are mandatory to avoid getting hosed, then getting them is just a tax on being able to play, and taxes are bad.

Oh, so much this. Can I put Freedom of Movement on the top of the list-to-be-killed?

[Flickerdart]

Oh, so much this. Can I put Freedom of Movement on the top of the list-to-be-killed?
It's definitely up there. A quick fix for the immunity effects might be changing them to give a bonus - if you want to be protected from krakens who can't keep their tentacles to themselves, FoM would boost their Grapple mod to escape, but not deny the kraken a chance outright.

[Psyren]

I don't see what the problem is with "no" buttons. Immunities are binary, it's true, but they can also lull players into a false sense of security by making them overconfidently rely on them.

...Right up until you turn them off. (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0876.html) (Though you would do so with a dispel/disjunction in most cases.)

[Snowbluff]

...Right up until you turn them off. (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0876.html) (Though you would do so with a dispel/disjunction in most cases.)

While this is fine and dandy from a narrative perspective, NEVER DO THIS!

From a DM/player interaction standpoint, this is removing a player from the game and railroading the corpse's interactions with the other PCs.

From a gamist perspective, you just punished a player who came prepared.

Not to mention if you start running disjunctions, odds are your players are just going to get sick of you real fast, or they will start retaliating in kind. As for dispel, dispelling items is a temporary effect, and the vampire wouldn't have been able to make the CL check half of the time against the cleric's spell. 50% is a nice breakpoint (which is typical against equally powerful characters), which is far away from straight up ignoring the rules without telling the players ahead of time that such measures would be effective. This is entirely like the kind of bad mannered play removing knowledge checks is.

3.5 is based around of these kind of binary effects. The reason why the abilities that are easy to become immune to is because they completely cripple a player with few options for defense. Enervation is an easy ranged touch attack followed by 1d4 ounces of shear suck. Other death spells simply kill them. Domination can not only remove a player from a fight, but make them actively detrimental to the group's goal.

EDIT: Also, I'm pretty sure that's an Oberoni Fallacy, anyway. YMMV in this case.

[Psyren]

While this is fine and dandy from a narrative perspective, NEVER DO THIS!

Never dispel a player's buffs? Surely you jest! This is one of the intended disadvantages of fighting an enemy spellcaster. This is one of the key factors that makes relying on a laundry list of buffs instead of innate martial ability or physical resilience dangerous. This is one of the primary differences in kind between fighting a mindless animal and a cunning tactician. It's one of the reasons dispel magic shows up on nearly every caster's list, so that no matter what class your BBEG is he might be capable of throwing one out at the party.

Or did you only mean never disjoin? In 3.5 I agree but it's much less painful in PF.

[Snowbluff]

Or did you only mean never disjoin?

No to "No, that doesn't work" and disjunction. Regular dispels are fine, as noted in the rant. I was specifically referring to what happened in the comic in the quoted bit.

[Malroth]

I've always ruled "Immunity" to mean "half damage before saves, A save to negate if one doesn't already exist and a +10 to the appropiate save if one does exist"

[Snowbluff]

I'd say I'd agree +10 to the saves, and/or a save if there isn't one. Most abilities grant general options for saves, like spells being 10+level+stat.

See the Divine Denial feat.

[137beth]

One of the few changes to the spell system that I liked about pathfinder was that they made Mind Blank give a +8 to saves instead of total immunity. It still gives total immunity to divinations, though, but at least that is just divinations which specifically target the caster.
Annoyingly, the one "no" button they decided to nerf was the one that limited casters to begin with. It would have been much better to start by nerfing the spells that say "no" to martial characters, like FoM and Wind Wall.
For a mixed tier 2-4 game, any nerf to FoM should probably be accompanied by an appropriate nerf to Black Tentacles.

[Jeff the Green]

No to "No, that doesn't work" and disjunction. Regular dispels are fine, as noted in the rant. I was specifically referring to what happened in the comic in the quoted bit.

Eh, I might be in the minority, but I'd be okay with what specifically happened in the comic. What Malak did was entirely in character and could be expected. Now, the DM should give the player a chance to realize this with e.g. Spellcraft, but otherwise I don't see what's objectionable.

[TypoNinja]

Eh, I might be in the minority, but I'd be okay with what specifically happened in the comic. What Malak did was entirely in character and could be expected. Now, the DM should give the player a chance to realize this with e.g. Spellcraft, but otherwise I don't see what's objectionable.

Disjunction is a great spell, and an amazing tactical choice. Its a great opening move almost all the time. By the time you are strong enough to cast it you can be pretty certain anything coming after you has magical goodies and/or buffs protecting them.

Its also a terrible game mechanic. The spell is a game design problem.

By the time your character is high enough level to see 9th level spells pointed at him he relies on magic items. Anything that's not a casting class without their magic items might as well go home and open an tavern. Your character does not exist as an effective combat force without your magical gear. Worse, the classes that need their items the most tend to have will as a bad save, while the classes who need their items the least have will as a good save.

As I noted above WBL is a stat for a reason. You need those items. Especially at that level. You cannot take them from the party without damaging the games basic functions.

Its also a very nasty thing to do to your players who probably viewed their loot collection as their rewards for victory. Erasing their hard earned gains tends to go over poorly.

[Killer Angel]

Those are what I called "trademark magic items." They're magic items done right, Big Things that define your character. But the standard magic item system in D&D (disregarding stuff like Ancestral Relic and Weapons of Legacy) is terrible at that. That shiny, powerful magic sword you found and named at 6th level? Too weak to use at 12th. That flying carpet? Everyone has some way of flying by 10th; yours is nothing special. You've got a magic ring? So does everyone else. Magic items can only be plot-centric when they're rare and unique, and D&D is terrible at that.

I agree on that. With D&D is a very rare thing (weapons of legacy, yadda yadda).
I was merely debating your position about "in media, magic items are not the center of the narrative", because they often are. And this is exactly for the reason that classic stories, are developed in worlds very different from the typical D&D magical setting.



Are you joking? Have you never read Tomb of Horrors? It is literally the first D&D module, as classic as you can get, and has not an iota of roleplaying.

Au Contraire! ToB favors roleplaying.
for example, it's far better to sit down and listen the bard singing a poem, rather than try to advance in the tomb. :smalltongue:

[Psyren]

No to "No, that doesn't work" and disjunction. Regular dispels are fine, as noted in the rant. I was specifically referring to what happened in the comic in the quoted bit.

Ah! Yes I would never have a custom spell include some kind of wonky backdoor to screw the player. If they optimize themselves to resist a dispel then I am going to reward that by rolling the dispel check normally. (Most big bads have a higher CL than the players anyway so the deck is already stacked in the DM's favor.)

PF Disjunction isn't bad though. Not every item is going to fail the will save, and even the ones that do will only be offline for that combat. If need be, the players can flee for a few minutes, giving the BBEG time to escape.

[Frozen_Feet]

That's not what I'm saying at all. There are "roleplay opportunities" in everything, but the Tomb was not for roleplay. In its original incarnation, D&D's first module was about horrible murder and not the nonsense jedipotter touts as "classic." You can dance around the actual adventure as much as you want, but once you go in, the infamous statue's mouth doesn't really care why you're there.

... saying Tomb of Horrors is about horrible murder and looting is just an obtuse way of saying it's about roleplaying a bunch of greedy graverobbers. :smalltongue:

[BRC]

Still, why not both? Why not have the gauntlets of strength alongside, say, your aptitude weapons? Why not have the array of minor stuff boosting your numbers while also getting things that give new options? I mean, sure, part of the problem is that the new-option stuff tends to be a bit more expensive (gut reaction, don't have any numbers to support myself, feel free to show me I'm wrong), but still.

Though the more I think about it, I'm seeing more and more that those iconic magic items in fiction aren't special for what they do typically. Either the base concept is unique (the Flying Carpet, the One Ring), or they're just That Thing But Better (Excalibur, Durendal, the aforementioned Invisibility Cloak). In the case of the former, its because its unique. In the case of the latter, its basically just bigger numbers. Uniqueness is easy to do (Find an effect that people can't buy, put it on an item. Basically, Artifacts). Power is easy to do (If people have a +5 butterknife, give them a +9 steak knife. Normally you can't buy that high pre-epic, so yea, I'd say its legendary). The hard part is making people -care-. the Hide of the Nemean Lion was unbreakable aside from the lion's own claws, making Hercules even more difficult to kill. But that he had to wrestle the lion down, then figure out how to skin it? That makes people care more than if he just was wearing some iron and had a good shield. Hydra-poison arrows are nifty, but we wouldn't care if he stabbed hydras for a morning warm up, or if he just slathered his arrowheads in dung and curare. Its because he had to figure out how to slay the hydra, and because they ultimately backfire on him that we care about the poison.

So in the end, I still go back to the idea that the items themselves are ancillary to the issue most people seem to have. If your items are just piles or numbers, or if they give you new options to play with doesn't matter. If you can swim in your pile of discarded swords like you were some kind of blade-loving scrooge mcduck, if you can buy them at the corner store, or if you only ever find a single magic item ever, it doesn't matter. What matters is the narrative around it.

To pull up a more modern example that got lodged in my head, anyone here watch Supernatural? The Colt is a big, important magic item in the narrative. Its a central point of the plot in early seasons (haven't watched past s3 yet, so can't comment on later). Its obviously something important. But when you get down to it, what is it really? A gun that can kill things. That's it. A old gun that can kill things really well. Now, strangely enough, guns are a fairly single-purpose bit of equipment. Their job is killing things. This gun is nothing special when taken out of context. Hand it to anyone not in the know, and its a normal thing doing what its meant to. Its importance comes from the narrative around it, realizing that supernatural things are difficult to -truly- kill. Its important because of the efforts taken to acquire it, the efforts taken to deny it to the protagonists, the efforts to make it work again, the limits on when its used. It is, in a sense, another character. There are other magic items that show up, but they're treated more like commodities, so we don't care as much. There are mundane things that get more attention than the magic things, because they have their own narratives as well.

Putting it in d&d terms, the importance of an item in this regard, that "trademark item" idea, is a fully separate idea from how many magic items you get or what they do. Its in the narrative of the item, the story given to it, and what the players do with it. If they pick up an item at "Crazy Dave's Pointy Stick Empointium", of course it won't have a narrative. If they find a lonely corpse with an ornate spear lodged in its chest, they might get curious. If in their dying breath, their estranged father gifts to them their ancient ancestral greatclub of smashing, wielded by each seventh son of each generation to do great things, odds are a lot higher they're gonna care more. If you make that specific mundane dagger the key to the entire plot of the campaign, you bet they're gonna treat that dagger like its the most important thing ever (especially if its key to saving the world). And each of those are entirely separate from the overall level of magic items they have or can access.
I suppose you've got the gist of it.

Hercules' arrows are not special because they're really good at killing things, they're special because there is a story behind them. He slew the Hydra and dipped his arrows in it's blood.

The Christmas Tree effect, in my mind, is a problem because it makes it harder for those signature magic items to stand out among the stuff you picked up from Mage-Mart.

Dnd 3.5 makes no real distinction between "This was the blade of an ancient dragonslayer, retrieved from his tomb at great peril!" and "I had a bunch of gold lying around, so I picked up a +2 Dragonsbane Greatsword".

Yes, the first sword is more special, but the game dosn't really account for that. And within a few levels you can find enough gold to get something better.

"This is WyrmsBane, The legendary blade of the dragonslayer king, me and my companions retreived it from his lost tomb...and this is my Bow, it's just as good. That tomb had a ton of gold in it, so I was like "Hey, might as well get myself a bow", which if you think about it makes a lot more sense as a way to kill Dragons, seeing as they can fly and all."

I suppose one way to do it would be to make the magic-mart available for basic bonus stuff. You can get +X weapons and armor, plus the basic stat boosters, but other stuff you need to quest for, or at the very least buy from a mysterious traveling merchant that you encounter.

[georgie_leech]

When I first thought about this issue, I considered it from the perspective of games (video and otherwise) where I didn't notice the Christmas Tree effect, figuring I'd use them as examples of what it looks like to not have it. On reflection though, most of the games I've played did use items and other magical doodads as a large part of player power. So I tried to figure out why it bugged me more in D&D than it did in games like Final Fantasy or Diablo, and it occurred to me that the way it's presented is fairly different. In most games, equipping a new item changes your stats in some way, and it's displayed as such: Maybe your attack stat goes up by 20 when you equip that new sword, or an enchanted set of armor raises your HP total. The game runs a bunch of calculations under the hood, and then presents you with a new stat total. To me, this mechanically suggests that the item is enhancing the character's natural abilities; rather than providing the power on its own, it enhances what is already there.

In contrast, the stacking rules in D&D force you to keep track of all the bonuses to make sure nothing is overlapping and stacking when it should. You need to be aware of that the bonus type of your Ring of Protection +2 stacks with the Amulet of Natural Armor +3, which necessitates that you be aware of the bonus being granted in the first place. When I need to spend time doing so, it's harder for me to stop noticing that, say, my AC total is 30 because it starts at 10 and gets +3 from DEX, +4 from that Monk's Belt, +3 Deflection from the ring, +4 Natural Armor from the amulet... In other words, the system itself forces you to pay attention to how much power is coming from your items.

Of course, I could just be massively overthinking this. :smallbiggrin:

[BRC]

When I first thought about this issue, I considered it from the perspective of games (video and otherwise) where I didn't notice the Christmas Tree effect, figuring I'd use them as examples of what it looks like to not have it. On reflection though, most of the games I've played did use items and other magical doodads as a large part of player power. So I tried to figure out why it bugged me more in D&D than it did in games like Final Fantasy or Diablo, and it occurred to me that the way it's presented is fairly different. In most games, equipping a new item changes your stats in some way, and it's displayed as such: Maybe your attack stat goes up by 20 when you equip that new sword, or an enchanted set of armor raises your HP total. The game runs a bunch of calculations under the hood, and then presents you with a new stat total. To me, this mechanically suggests that the item is enhancing the character's natural abilities; rather than providing the power on its own, it enhances what is already there.

In contrast, the stacking rules in D&D force you to keep track of all the bonuses to make sure nothing is overlapping and stacking when it should. You need to be aware of that the bonus type of your Ring of Protection +2 stacks with the Amulet of Natural Armor +3, which necessitates that you be aware of the bonus being granted in the first place. When I need to spend time doing so, it's harder for me to stop noticing that, say, my AC total is 30 because it starts at 10 and gets +3 from DEX, +4 from that Monk's Belt, +3 Deflection from the ring, +4 Natural Armor from the amulet... In other words, the system itself forces you to pay attention to how much power is coming from your items.

Of course, I could just be massively overthinking this. :smallbiggrin:
You're not.
One of the big downside of the Christmas tree is the massive amount of paperwork involved, especially when situations call for the character to be separated from their gear, or for their gear to not work, or when they switch out one piece of gear for another.

In a video game, the computer can handle all that for you. In a tabletop, changing your boots can lead to a lot of erasing, re-writing, and calculating as you figure out your new stats.

[Jeff the Green]

Disjunction is a great spell, and an amazing tactical choice. Its a great opening move almost all the time. By the time you are strong enough to cast it you can be pretty certain anything coming after you has magical goodies and/or buffs protecting them.

Its also a terrible game mechanic. The spell is a game design problem.

By the time your character is high enough level to see 9th level spells pointed at him he relies on magic items. Anything that's not a casting class without their magic items might as well go home and open an tavern. Your character does not exist as an effective combat force without your magical gear. Worse, the classes that need their items the most tend to have will as a bad save, while the classes who need their items the least have will as a good save.

As I noted above WBL is a stat for a reason. You need those items. Especially at that level. You cannot take them from the party without damaging the games basic functions.

Its also a very nasty thing to do to your players who probably viewed their loot collection as their rewards for victory. Erasing their hard earned gains tends to go over poorly.

Yeah, I never said I liked disjunction. The only time I think it's okay is in a Tippyesque game where you can use wish traps to replace your lost equipment.

I was talking about the backdoor. If you give the player ample opportunity to notice and suspect it and then they fail all that (both rolls and role playing opportunities, ideally), then I think it's absolutely okay.

[Thiyr]

I suppose you've got the gist of it.

Hercules' arrows are not special because they're really good at killing things, they're special because there is a story behind them. He slew the Hydra and dipped his arrows in it's blood.

The Christmas Tree effect, in my mind, is a problem because it makes it harder for those signature magic items to stand out among the stuff you picked up from Mage-Mart.

Dnd 3.5 makes no real distinction between "This was the blade of an ancient dragonslayer, retrieved from his tomb at great peril!" and "I had a bunch of gold lying around, so I picked up a +2 Dragonsbane Greatsword".

Yes, the first sword is more special, but the game dosn't really account for that. And within a few levels you can find enough gold to get something better.

"This is WyrmsBane, The legendary blade of the dragonslayer king, me and my companions retreived it from his lost tomb...and this is my Bow, it's just as good. That tomb had a ton of gold in it, so I was like "Hey, might as well get myself a bow", which if you think about it makes a lot more sense as a way to kill Dragons, seeing as they can fly and all."

I suppose one way to do it would be to make the magic-mart available for basic bonus stuff. You can get +X weapons and armor, plus the basic stat boosters, but other stuff you need to quest for, or at the very least buy from a mysterious traveling merchant that you encounter.


I agree that it can make things hard to stand out, but again, I don't think that's the CTE's fault, or even the 'Mart's fault. It's the DM. As I brought up earlier in the thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=17706858&postcount=51), even in fiction where there is a magic mart, things can still stand out. To use your example, if you can get the exact same thing elsewhere, of course it'll lose the impact. Unless that tomb got a lot of buildup beforehand outside of the quick one-off descriptor of "dragonslayer tomb", it pretty much is the same. But if that sword is the result of a campaign's worth of questing, because it's the only weapon that can take down the Dragon King of the Searing Peak, who is threatening to plunge the world into a new age of fire and stone, it carries more weight. But the item has to match its descriptor, or if it doesn't, that needs to be addressed in game. If Wyrmsbane is a +1 dragonbane short sword, and you have a +3 sudden stunning magebane falchion, people will just laugh off the importance of it. It'd be like if the One Ring was just a hunk of iron with a hole in it, no magic or anything. Maybe it needs to be reawakened (like a legacy weapon), or maybe the stories were just made up. Or, alternatively, wyrmsbane is a cut above. It has unique properties. dragons need to make a hard save or be paralyzed when hit or something. Where a ring of invisibility lets you use invis at will, the one ring is a no-action constant greater invis. At the very least, "if you aren't using this, the final boss can't drop below X HP" or something.

But you can't just say "hey, this sword is magic and legendary" without considering the world around it. That's the DM's -job-. Again, my example of The Colt. It's a gun. Guns kill things. If killing demons was easy, any gun could fill that role. But because things are hard to kill, and the Colt, that one specific legendary item, does it anyway, its important. Similary, if any Joe Moneybags can buy that dragonbane greatsword, it -won't- be legendary, no matter who's grave you robbed for it. But if only Facesmasher, Smasher of Faces, the legendary greatclub can destroy the phylactery of the omni-lich before he unleashes hyperdoom on the megaverse, it gains something for that.


Actually, georgie's bringing up diablo is a good point. I agree, part of the "issue" is that our attention is drawn to it. It takes more active work on our part, so we -see- the numbers more. Book keeping being an issue or no (i have an easy time with it, but i admit others might not), it's a lot easier to see right away. But take diablo 2 for an example. There are four quest-weapons I can think of that you need to have throughout the game. Of them, there was a funny dichotomy. Two of them, the Horadric Staff and Kahlim's Will, are actually decent items the first time you find them. Not great, you could have better, but they are at least magic items, and they have decent stats for a normal-mode character at that point. Further, you at least can recognize their importance, given you -can't progress- if you don't have them. Then there are two others. Side-quest fodder. They're built up as important, but you get them and say "man, this is a legendary weapon"? The Gibbdin is a completely normal dagger. It underwhelms from a use standpoint, its quest doesn't give you much, and it basically feels like a waste of space. You never need to do the quest, and I never do. Because they give it this cool build-up, and then you get something you could've carved out of a rock two acts ago. And the hellforge hammer, which at least has the benefit of not being meant to be a weapon, not having the buildup, and basically being something you use and forget about. Its the forge itself that they build up for the quest, and it does what it's said to do in flashy, fancy fashion, so it feels okay. In the same game, it shows each of the sides of legendary items being done well or poorly.

Then there are your regular items, which you equip and discard regularly. But I've found that at least I am hesitant to ditch any unique item I find. Usually they're pretty useful, and I'll frequently keep them just becuase of their unique effects. When any item can have mana leech at around ~2-8%, finding a staff that gives 100% -feels- big. when they build up a sword in lore, they make sure that it lives up to the hype (even if they dont' get it right at first.) Azurewrath, sword of the Archangel Tyrael, the B.A. angel that's been sending you around to kill Diablo. Found on the corpse of some random mook. But it feels impressive because it's a -really good weapon-. You have to actively look at the lore beyond what's in the game, but it lives up to the hype if you know its there. If any random rare sword was that good, why would I care? heck, that's why it always felt weird to me that Cruel Colossus Blades were a thing when that was discovered. Helps cover the "let the item live up to the legend" end of my bit.



(As a side note: Bookkeeping for stats/items gets a lot easier if you keep good notes on your sheet. Also, I'm a big fan of electronic charsheets. Spreadsheets are great for both of those, especially if you take the time to use some formulas to auto-tally bonuses. Don't think I could play what I am at the moment without spreadsheets, and not even because of items. DMM Persist cleric archer. Buffs out the patoot.)

[Flickerdart]

Dnd 3.5 makes no real distinction between "This was the blade of an ancient dragonslayer, retrieved from his tomb at great peril!" and "I had a bunch of gold lying around, so I picked up a +2 Dragonsbane Greatsword".
It also makes no distinction between "I am General Amazo, a swordsman with a storied history of warfare and service to the crown" and "I dunno, level 20 fighter or something".

[jedipotter]

Don't avoid the subject. We know for a fact how Gygax, Arnerson, and their friends played D&D, because they wrote it down. Those games are as classic as you can possibly get, and it does not match up to your claims of what a classic D&D game is like. Either back up your claims, or stop making them, but don't try and weasel out of it because I will call you on it every time.

Ok, I said: If your playing a more classic, relaxed game for fun....you won't notice the Christmas Tree effect. You gave the Tomb of Horrors as a classic game module. I said classic D&D was rules light and you could make the crunch of a character in just a couple of minutes.

So you make a character, go on an adventure and have fun. Simple, easy, classic and relaxing. Now compare to the modern optimizer: Well, it can take hours, if now days, to sift through the tons and tons of crunch is see if a build is even viable, let alone get to the part where a character is created. I can take a lot of time to find that one feat, of ability to base a build around(though you can save time by cheating: if you find a feat that is perfect for your build but it can only be taken by elves and your race is human then you can just cheat and say ''my character high fived an elf once so he can take elven only feats''). And making a character over 1st level can take hours.

So the classic type players have their characters ready in, say ten minutes. Then they wait another hour for optimizer player to finish his character and find that ''one more thing that will give him one more +1 so he can have fun''. Then the game starts. The classic gamers are just having fun gaming and playing their characters in the adventure. The optimizer player only cares about becoming ''more powerful'' so he can ''have more options'' and be ''more versatile'' and ''have more fun.''

So while the classic players are relaxed and are happy to find loot from time to time, the optimized player is obsessed with it. He can't ''have more options'' and ''have more fun'' unless he ''has more pluses''. So he rushes through the adventure, looking for loot...looking for ornaments for his Christmas Tree.

[Flickerdart]

Ok, I said: If your playing a more classic, relaxed game for fun....you won't notice the Christmas Tree effect. You gave the Tomb of Horrors as a classic game module. I said classic D&D was rules light and you could make the crunch of a character in just a couple of minutes.

In what possible universe does "quick character creation" have anything to do with "relaxing gameplay"? You really need to stop redefining words, brah.

Also, you keep insisting that optimizers take a long time to build characters...but system mastery makes it faster, not slower. It doesn't take any more time to pick Power Attack over Weapon Focus. In fact, I'm pretty sure that I could build three optimized characters in the time it takes you to churn out one of your terrible ones.

Also, just as an aside, why in the world are you building characters at the table? That's just a waste of everybody's time.

[eggynack]

Also, you keep insisting that optimizers take a long time to build characters...but system mastery makes it faster, not slower. It doesn't take any more time to pick Power Attack over Weapon Focus. In fact, I'm pretty sure that I could build three optimized characters in the time it takes you to churn out one of your terrible ones.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure I'd be reasonably capable of churning out a pretty powerful character in about 10 minutes. Really, the only barrier to doing that is all of the little knobs you have to work with, like determining a spell list, assigning skill points, or kitting the character out. If I want the character to actually be interesting and well thought out, then I'm probably going to need more than 10 minutes, but if we're just talking about a basic character which can do its job capably, it'll be out there in the world rather fast.

[NickChaisson]

Ok, I said: If your playing a more classic, relaxed game for fun....you won't notice the Christmas Tree effect. You gave the Tomb of Horrors as a classic game module. I said classic D&D was rules light and you could make the crunch of a character in just a couple of minutes.

So you make a character, go on an adventure and have fun. Simple, easy, classic and relaxing. Now compare to the modern optimizer: Well, it can take hours, if now days, to sift through the tons and tons of crunch is see if a build is even viable, let alone get to the part where a character is created. I can take a lot of time to find that one feat, of ability to base a build around(though you can save time by cheating: if you find a feat that is perfect for your build but it can only be taken by elves and your race is human then you can just cheat and say ''my character high fived an elf once so he can take elven only feats''). And making a character over 1st level can take hours.

So the classic type players have their characters ready in, say ten minutes. Then they wait another hour for optimizer player to finish his character and find that ''one more thing that will give him one more +1 so he can have fun''. Then the game starts. The classic gamers are just having fun gaming and playing their characters in the adventure. The optimizer player only cares about becoming ''more powerful'' so he can ''have more options'' and be ''more versatile'' and ''have more fun.''

So while the classic players are relaxed and are happy to find loot from time to time, the optimized player is obsessed with it. He can't ''have more options'' and ''have more fun'' unless he ''has more pluses''. So he rushes through the adventure, looking for loot...looking for ornaments for his Christmas Tree.

Boy am I getting tired of listening to you complain about optimization. Optimization is not evil. Its a part of the game. If you don't like it that's fine but god stop insulting everyone who does.

[TypoNinja]

Yeah, I never said I liked disjunction. The only time I think it's okay is in a Tippyesque game where you can use wish traps to replace your lost equipment.

I was talking about the backdoor. If you give the player ample opportunity to notice and suspect it and then they fail all that (both rolls and role playing opportunities, ideally), then I think it's absolutely okay.

Well if your game is played at that kind of power scale, sure, pull out all the stops, everybody else is. But I get the impression most games are a lot lower down the scale than that.

As for the player noticing, you have to be careful with that. My players ended up getting the cosmos invaded by an elder evil because they didn't notice what I thought were obvious clues.

[Alex12]

Ok, I said: If your playing a more classic, relaxed game for fun....you won't notice the Christmas Tree effect. You gave the Tomb of Horrors as a classic game module. I said classic D&D was rules light and you could make the crunch of a character in just a couple of minutes.

So you make a character, go on an adventure and have fun. Simple, easy, classic and relaxing. Now compare to the modern optimizer: Well, it can take hours, if now days, to sift through the tons and tons of crunch is see if a build is even viable, let alone get to the part where a character is created. I can take a lot of time to find that one feat, of ability to base a build around(though you can save time by cheating: if you find a feat that is perfect for your build but it can only be taken by elves and your race is human then you can just cheat and say ''my character high fived an elf once so he can take elven only feats''). And making a character over 1st level can take hours.

So the classic type players have their characters ready in, say ten minutes. Then they wait another hour for optimizer player to finish his character and find that ''one more thing that will give him one more +1 so he can have fun''. Then the game starts. The classic gamers are just having fun gaming and playing their characters in the adventure. The optimizer player only cares about becoming ''more powerful'' so he can ''have more options'' and be ''more versatile'' and ''have more fun.''

So while the classic players are relaxed and are happy to find loot from time to time, the optimized player is obsessed with it. He can't ''have more options'' and ''have more fun'' unless he ''has more pluses''. So he rushes through the adventure, looking for loot...looking for ornaments for his Christmas Tree.

Uh huh. Okay. Maybe you play that way.
Personally, I'll admit I'm not a great optimizer. I've read a few handbooks, and I consider myself to have a fair bit of system mastery (certainly at least the equal of anyone playing in my group) though I'll admit there's some things I just don't get (I don't understand Incarnum stuff at all, for example), but I enjoy optimization because I like being able to contribute to the party.
My basic goal of optimization is that I want to be quite good at one or two things, decent at a few other things, and generally not incompetent. Obviously, there'll be specific situations where I'm incompetent or useless (a Dwarf Crusader with heavy armor probably isn't gonna be making many Jump or Spellcraft checks), but there'll be others where I shine (that same Dwarf Crusader is going to be a way better bet than the party arcanist if it comes down to "pick a champion for the sword duel against the orc warchief")
I'm not looking to be Pun-pun, and I'm certainly not going to cheat (using the actual definition of cheating. I can't take a feat that requires BAB of +5 if I'm only level 3, because that actually is cheating. I absolutely can and will take Stone Power over Skill Focus (Martial Study) for that Dwarf Crusader because that's a legit choice made for good and sensible reasons). But I want my character to be more competent at what he does than some guy of the same level who just decided yesterday that what I'm doing looked cool, and he wants to try it out.

[Doug Lampert]

Well if your game is played at that kind of power scale, sure, pull out all the stops, everybody else is. But I get the impression most games are a lot lower down the scale than that.

As for the player noticing, you have to be careful with that. My players ended up getting the cosmos invaded by an elder evil because they didn't notice what I thought were obvious clues.

And in the particular case in question, "I rolled spellcraft to DESIGN the spell, what else do I need to do to know what it does?" would be a perfectly reasonable question for Durkon's hypothetical player to ask. My impression is that Malack was doing an "aid another" on the spellcraft and Durkon was making the spell, I'd be very upset if told a spell my character actually invented had a backdoor that I didn't know about and that backdoor got my character killed.

[Arbane]

And in the particular case in question, "I rolled spellcraft to DESIGN the spell, what else do I need to do to know what it does?" would be a perfectly reasonable question for Durkon's hypothetical player to ask. My impression is that Malack was doing an "aid another" on the spellcraft and Durkon was making the spell, I'd be very upset if told a spell my character actually invented had a backdoor that I didn't know about and that backdoor got my character killed.

I'd be surprised if Durkon has a very high Spellcraft check. Stupid 2 + int skill points.
But yeah, a DM who pulled that in an actual game without a REALLY good excuse had better be ready to dodge thrown books.

[Alex12]

I'd be surprised if Durkon has a very high Spellcraft check. Stupid 2 + int skill points.
But yeah, a DM who pulled that in an actual game without a REALLY good excuse had better be ready to dodge thrown books.

Yeah, but what else is he going to spend it on? Concentration is obviously one of the big ones, since it seems he can pretty reliably cast spells without provoking AoOs. But other than that, Clerics don't really need much. Granted, his hatred of undead probably means he put at least 5 into K(religion) for the synergy bonus, but the fact that he couldn't hit the DC to know that Hilda was a cleric of the primary antagonist of his own god implies he doesn't know much more than that.

So really, aside from some kind of Craft or Profession skill or something, what else has he got?

[Snowbluff]

I think he has no ranks in Know: Religion.

[Malroth]

I'd be surprised if Durkon wasn't sporting an INT penalty dropping his 2 skillpoints per level to 1.

[Rubik]

I think he has no ranks in Know: Religion.The DC to identify an outsider is 10+HD, yes? How many HD do gods have, again?

[SiuiS]

I'm not sure if we are talking about the same thing here. You seem to be talking about creating a new item from scratch. I am thinking of a scenario like: Player A wears a Belt of Giant Strength +4. He then finds a Belt of Battle. What to do? He's a Melee guy so he can't go without the Str bonus, but the Belt of Battle is too awesome to pass up on. So obviously he'll want one belt with both qualities. But how to get it?
I can't find a rule in the DMG for combining items that already have been dropped into the game separately. The only option I see is to sell the Strength belt (for 8K), find a Crafter, and pay him 16K to add the +4 Str to his Belt of Battle (Str is one of the Big Six so as per MIC it doesn't cost extra to add this property to an item). Sure, it works, and if you have a crafter in the party you don't even lose gold, but to me this approach seems unelegant and needlessly complicated. Merging them would be much more elegant.

If I'm being dense and a rule for that has been in the DMG all along, please pardon me and point out the page to me. I sure missed stuff before that was there black on white.

I've only seen a second party fix; a Rokugan spell that takes the enchantments from one item and moves them to another. Otherwise,yeah. Can't be done.


This guy explains it better than I (http://www.thealexandrian.net/creations/misc/fetishizing-balance.html), but magic items of the +1 variety are basically hard coded into 3.F's progression design. Hence the Wealth by Level tables. I do not understand either those who argue that items overshadow character abilities. What items enable you to do is part of the abilities your character accumulated over his/her adventures. Items are part your character. Gear is as inseparable from a 3.F character as it is from my World of Warcraft Shadow Priest. The game considers you need it before you can successfully face tougher challenges. Sure, you can raid Icecrown in Tier 7 gear, but it was designed expecting players in Tier 9. There is no Christmas Tree effect. Collecting items to grow stronger is simply part of how the game works.

Yes, it conflicts with some styles (low magic, low wealth), but once again, the game was not designed with these styles in mind.

Not all DMs play it straight. I can think of one, only one DM I've ever played with who used either the random tables that generate WBL or WBL itself; me. Literay no one else I've ever played with has.

That it's hard coded Into the game but is so easy to mess up and actively detracts from some of the fun is the problem.


Well if your game is played at that kind of power scale, sure, pull out all the stops, everybody else is. But I get the impression most games are a lot lower down the scale than that.

As for the player noticing, you have to be careful with that. My players ended up getting the cosmos invaded by an elder evil because they didn't notice what I thought were obvious clues.

Ooh, that's a story. Share?

[Harrow]

How much of a problem ignoring the Christmas Tree Effect is depends not only on level, but party make-up.

For example let's say 2 parties of 9th level adventurers. One party is a Wizard, a Druid, Cleric, and a Bard. The other has a Fighter, a Rogue, a Monk, and a Truenamer.

To start, the parties started at a low level and the DM hasn't been giving out proper loot. The parties have found 2-3 +1 items for each person, with maybe 10,000 raw gold between each entire party.

The first party doesn't mind much. Magic items are mostly used to either replace spell effects or give bonuses (which can be replicated with spells) to things casters largely don't care about. Demand for Pearls of Power and Lesser Rods of Extend Spell has been high and on the rise since day 1, so at level 3 the Wizard took Craft Wondrous Item (he already had Scribe Scoll, so why not?) so the party has a couple rods and a handful pearls, with the rest of party wealth mostly being spent of scrolls of spells the party may need any day, but no one wants to prepare every day.

The second party has only gotten this far because they've been fighting increasingly large hordes of kobolds/goblins/orcs/ogres. Any fight against non-skeletal/zombie undead lead to a near TPK followed by days of downtime, either to heal ability damage naturally or to go to the nearest town and pay a cleric to fix something. Any time a single large beatsick monster is used, it auto-hits and does massive damage. Anything that flies, is invisible, uses ranged attacks from an inaccessible position, or casts spells brings the party to its knees. The magic items they have are a godsend, and every last gold piece they find is met with cheers, as every bit of extra armor or healing is necessary for the party to make it through each day.

Now let's look at some CR 9 encounters. A Young Adult Black Dragon, a Frost Giant, a Bone Devil, a Spirit Naga. If the second party has a chance of killing any of these, it would be the Frost Giant. Any of the others could escape at will through flight, invisibility, or teleportation, and that's if it can't 'escape' more successfully by simply killing the party. Let's face it, a particularly cross Pixie would wipe the second party with little risk to itself. The first party has any number of spell combinations to wreck these encounters, if they don't choose to bypass them entirely, and if the encounter does manage to escape, they can track it down.

The casters don't need the items, the mundanes do. Now, let's switch things up. The DM realizes he hasn't given out any treasure in months, and barely any before that, so he dumps an AD&D style dragon hoard on them. Millions of gold, and with a 3.5 magic mart to spend it in. The first party goes wild. Enough Pearls of Power that they practically never run out of low level spells (though, this was true before the hoard, they now throw out spells for any minor inconvenience). They need a handy haversack specifically for carrying their stack of metamagic rods, and an entire filing cabinet to keep all of their situational scrolls in order. If there was anything of proper CR that could challenge them before, there isn't now, and probably not for the next several CRs up, either. The second party (finally) catches up on AC, to-hit, damage, miss chance, and saves. They probably even end up noticeably ahead, capable of beating not only hordes of mundane melee enemies, but taking beatsticks on toe-to-toe. They also have the magical support to fight more magical enemies, with each of the party members now having ghost-touch, flight, and some method of beating invisibility. If the rogue has ranks in Use Magical Device, or other party members have cross-class ranks, (and if no one does, then they certainly will after their next level up) then they can grab up an item that grants bonuses to it and start up their own collection of scrolls and wands for situations they can't handle with their more permanent magical items. Speaking of magical skill bonuses, the Truenamer can finally start doing things (much to the party's surprise, they'd forgotten they had a Truenamer 5 levels ago), which compounds the "we have magic now" situation. They'll still have trouble against casters and monsters like the Spirit Naga that get near full racial casting, but it's not the death warrant it was before.


tl;dr Non-casters need magic items to keep up with monsters at mid-high levels, but have trouble using money to break the game at these levels. Casters don't strictly need magic items, but the ones they get tend to be better and more numerous, so they can use money to break the game, at any level.