PDA

View Full Version : Best item creation system



Shinizak
2020-06-08, 02:16 AM
I don't really like D&D's item creation system. In your opinion, what's the best magic item creation system you've seen?

Quertus
2020-06-08, 07:13 AM
I don't really like D&D's item creation system. In your opinion, what's the best magic item creation system you've seen?

Hmmm… here's the item creation systems I remember off the top of my head, and the things I like / remember about them.

I love that, with 2e D&D's item creation system creating items was a pain, meaning that items were rare and special; creating items took actual materials, and cool ones at that.

Also, 2e Psionicists had to make their items out of formerly-living things. None of this 3e crystal aesthetic.

Older D&D has Huptzeen.

I liked that item creation in Rifts had up-front pricing; was as completely unbalanced as the rest of the system.

WoD Mage item creation was hecka expensive, and couldn't expand your character's capabilities: oh, look, 52 XP for an item to cast a spell I already can. :smallfrown: Such items made great gifts for others, and didn't cost XP if you traveled back in time to… dark ages? The other one? So, that was kinda neat.

WoD Mage also had the semi-auto cad-cam, at something like Matter 5, Correspondence 5. It was one of my favorite powers to take on a starting relic. Combine two things, with the properties of one, and <successes> properties from the second. Then nWoD made it a Matter 3 power, "Jury Rig".

Other WoD spats had almost no rules for creating items… except the absolutely crazy awesome Thaumaturgy 8 ritual Blade of the Forbidden Flower - the closest thing to a Snap Blade I've found outside of Tactics Ogre.

Mutants & Masterminds made items significantly cheaper than inate powers, and had the concept of "mundane items", so that was nice. Heroes/Champions… gave great discounts for items the XP for which were lost if the item was destroyed. :smallannoyed:

Marvel facerip was a train wreck, and their item creation system was a… highly exploitable (and not in a fun way) train wreck, as well.

Scion… has some rules, but they seemed boring.

I'm pretty sure Exalted had some crazy item creation rules, but I never used them.

Battletech, of course, has Mech construction rules, and I'm rather fond of those. :smallwink:

-----

End result: I like making items in 2e D&D (and Battletech, but they're not *magical* items). And I often force other items (especially WoD) to have 2e's cool aesthetic.

Zhorn
2020-06-08, 08:08 AM
Last time I was talking with someone about this, the concept of the 'production triangle' came up

Things can be
High Quality
Cheaply Affordable
Fast to Produce
And you can only have 2.

If you want something to be higher quality; it will either cost more to make, or take longer to produce.
If you want it to be cheaper; it will either be a lower quality, or take longer to produce.
If you want it to be made faster; it will either be a lower quality, or cost more to make.

Sliding scales of coarse, so it can be part of one and part of another, but the general principle holds. Sliding one of the scale affects the other two, so holding one scale still while slide another will send the last drastically in an opposing direction.

When talking about crafting in game, the same general concept is what I look at. There' no single locked in time and cost element, a player should be able to scale up or down elements of cost/speed/quality to suit what they are able to do within the bounds of the campaign they are playing.

Have long stretches of downtime; you can do the minimal progress rate and produce it as a lower price.
Need something in a rush, throwing more resources into it to up the production rate should be an option.

Kaptin Keen
2020-06-08, 01:59 PM
I'll just post the counterpoint:

Item creation is basically the tool that takes control away from the game master, and places it in the hands of the players, with mostly disastrous results. Although a given value for disastrous results may be a tremendous amount of fun, and precisely what you aimed for.

And then someone is going to say 'something something player agency something something'. And that's not wrong, but there needs to be GM agency to balance things, and in order for an RPG to be anything but a free-for-all, wilder-faster-higher rocket tack-y murderfest, there needs to be more GM agency.

So in my games, items can be crafted only by the greatest effort, and not bought at all. Not everyone likes that, but it does a wonderful job of shifting the focus away from items.

Tvtyrant
2020-06-08, 02:01 PM
I don't really like D&D's item creation system. In your opinion, what's the best magic item creation system you've seen?

I like the 5E artificer system, I had something similar for E6 where characters could make "masterpieces" and get items above the set limit at different epic markers. If I was making a system something like the 5E artificer where they make magic items as they level up and the items are attached to them, and then make a permanent magic "artifact" 1-2 in their career would be my approach.

Quertus
2020-06-08, 04:14 PM
I'll just post the counterpoint:

Item creation is basically the tool that takes control away from the game master, and places it in the hands of the players, with mostly disastrous results. Although a given value for disastrous results may be a tremendous amount of fun, and precisely what you aimed for.

And then someone is going to say 'something something player agency something something'. And that's not wrong, but there needs to be GM agency to balance things, and in order for an RPG to be anything but a free-for-all, wilder-faster-higher rocket tack-y murderfest, there needs to be more GM agency.

So in my games, items can be crafted only by the greatest effort, and not bought at all. Not everyone likes that, but it does a wonderful job of shifting the focus away from items.

Player Agency? I'll be that someone! :smallwink:

(Of course, I *like* the idea of items being crafted with great effort, and not (really) being able to be purchased, so… despite my love of Player Agency, I may not exactly be your "target audience".)

(And I'm bothering to go into this because I think it's actually germaine to the thread.)

So, first, you have this strange notion implicit in your statements that something - presumably wealth and more specifically the existence and exact distribution of magical items - is, by default, inherently in the hands of the GM.

Even in D&D, that is not the case. In the editions I've played, by default, magic item distribution resides primarily in the hands of Arangee. Secondarily, it resides in the hands of the module writer (who may happen to be the same person as the GM, but they are still technically different hats). Only once you reach at least the tertiary level does the GM access item distribution, as a balancing tool.

So, sure, if somebody brings a Fighter to a Wizard's duel (or a low-op Wizard to an übercharger duel), then the party is not balanced. If balance is actually a problem, you *could* solve this by giving the weaker PC(s) pity artifacts.

But, personally, I'm a lazy GM. Why would I put forth effort solving this problem when, instead, I could look at my players and say, "fix it"?

So, in the hands of players who follow my "balance to the table" mantra, item creation, like *any* Player Agency, leads to a better-balanced game, not the "wilder-faster-higher rocket tack-y murderfest" you inaccurately guaranteed.

And, I certainly agree, in groups that don't care about the stranglehold of tight balance, increased agency can, indeed, lead to "tremendous amount(s) of fun".

-----

So, obviously, what kind of game your group enjoys will impact what item creation systems are suitable for them. 2e gives you "rare", "hard work", and "high fluff". Rifts gives you "balance? Lol, what?". 3e gives you a commodity. WoD Mage gives you "are you insane?!". Etc etc.

NigelWalmsley
2020-06-08, 04:55 PM
There is no "best item creation system". How the system should work depends on what you want it to do. How much should having a particular magic item define a character? How common should magic items be? How much time do you want to spend in downtime activities? Should magic items be unique and special, or cheap and interchangeable? There are lots of different things you could want from a magic item system, and there's no way to say which is best absent some criteria.

Jorren
2020-06-08, 05:05 PM
I'll just post the counterpoint:

Item creation is basically the tool that takes control away from the game master, and places it in the hands of the players, with mostly disastrous results. Although a given value for disastrous results may be a tremendous amount of fun, and precisely what you aimed for.

And then someone is going to say 'something something player agency something something'. And that's not wrong, but there needs to be GM agency to balance things, and in order for an RPG to be anything but a free-for-all, wilder-faster-higher rocket tack-y murderfest, there needs to be more GM agency.

So in my games, items can be crafted only by the greatest effort, and not bought at all. Not everyone likes that, but it does a wonderful job of shifting the focus away from items.

In 40 years of playing rpgs, I have never seen a disastrous result as a function of item creation rules. Disastrous results were 100% the result of giving out an item out in treasure, not in allowing a pc to build one.

In almost every case where an item was made, it was with DM oversight and working with the player to balance the item. The items that I saw made were almost universally low-power utility items, not powerful ones. Almost all creation systems allow for such oversight in the form of legality, scarcity of resources, and just flat DM vetoing items based on discretion.

LordCdrMilitant
2020-06-08, 05:29 PM
In 40 years of playing rpgs, I have never seen a disastrous result as a function of item creation rules. Disastrous results were 100% the result of giving out an item out in treasure, not in allowing a pc to build one.

In almost every case where an item was made, it was with DM oversight and working with the player to balance the item. The items that I saw made were almost universally low-power utility items, not powerful ones. Almost all creation systems allow for such oversight in the form of legality, scarcity of resources, and just flat DM vetoing items based on discretion.

Well, one time we were playing Traveller, and we designed our own ship(s) at the start. That was where it started to go wrong, and why A: players are no longer allowed to design their own ships and B: why players must all contribute their ship shares towards one ship. [That short event is also why space pirates are no longer a thing, now and for forever.]


As for item creation, I like creating cars in Car Wars and ships in Traveller. That said, I wouldn't really call them item creation systems. Most of the time I use Pathfinder's.

Kaptin Keen
2020-06-08, 06:03 PM
In 40 years of playing rpgs, I have never seen a disastrous result as a function of item creation rules. Disastrous results were 100% the result of giving out an item out in treasure, not in allowing a pc to build one.

In almost every case where an item was made, it was with DM oversight and working with the player to balance the item. The items that I saw made were almost universally low-power utility items, not powerful ones. Almost all creation systems allow for such oversight in the form of legality, scarcity of resources, and just flat DM vetoing items based on discretion.


Disastrous results were 100% the result of giving out an item out in treasure, not in allowing a pc to build one.

Like I said: For a given value of disastrous.

Sometimes the item creation systems are just bad. A player of mine in a Shadowrun game way back in the day used the crafting rules to build an off-road bike. While slow on the road (like 120kmh - I dunno, this was in the 90's), by the rules it could do 320 kmh in rugged terrain. While not in itself overpowered, it's just incomprehensibly dumb. It was OP for other reasons tho.

But the point of my post is that your mileage may vary: A lot of players hate the games I GM, where item economy simply doesn't exist, gold can frankly best be spent buying a home, you cannot create any items by any means except story - just as I actively avoid games as soon as I see other players start bargaining back and forth about 'can I pre-craft this and that and the other thing.'

Again, it's right in my post: Counterpoint.


Player Agency? I'll be that someone! :smallwink:

(Of course, I *like* the idea of items being crafted with great effort, and not (really) being able to be purchased, so… despite my love of Player Agency, I may not exactly be your "target audience".)

(And I'm bothering to go into this because I think it's actually germaine to the thread.)

So, first, you have this strange notion implicit in your statements that something - presumably wealth and more specifically the existence and exact distribution of magical items - is, by default, inherently in the hands of the GM.

Even in D&D, that is not the case. In the editions I've played, by default, magic item distribution resides primarily in the hands of Arangee. Secondarily, it resides in the hands of the module writer (who may happen to be the same person as the GM, but they are still technically different hats). Only once you reach at least the tertiary level does the GM access item distribution, as a balancing tool.

So, sure, if somebody brings a Fighter to a Wizard's duel (or a low-op Wizard to an übercharger duel), then the party is not balanced. If balance is actually a problem, you *could* solve this by giving the weaker PC(s) pity artifacts.

But, personally, I'm a lazy GM. Why would I put forth effort solving this problem when, instead, I could look at my players and say, "fix it"?

So, in the hands of players who follow my "balance to the table" mantra, item creation, like *any* Player Agency, leads to a better-balanced game, not the "wilder-faster-higher rocket tack-y murderfest" you inaccurately guaranteed.

And, I certainly agree, in groups that don't care about the stranglehold of tight balance, increased agency can, indeed, lead to "tremendous amount(s) of fun".

-----

So, obviously, what kind of game your group enjoys will impact what item creation systems are suitable for them. 2e gives you "rare", "hard work", and "high fluff". Rifts gives you "balance? Lol, what?". 3e gives you a commodity. WoD Mage gives you "are you insane?!". Etc etc.

Ahh, but from my post you might realise RNG has nothing to do with magic items - and I don't run modules, I run only my own stuff. But magic items aren't solely in the hands of the GM in my games. If a player wants something, and it's a reasonable request, they can have it. For, like, the price of a song, or a kiss, or a promise of a future favor, or a lock of hair, or ... you know?

It's not about denying players power - or agency. It's about removing the automatic 'oh, I have my 45.000 gold, I'll pop down to Ye Olden Magic Item Shoppe for my Holy Avenger I've been saving for!' In my games, that's never going to happen.

I've played the occasional rocket tag game, and it's a lot of fun, I have no objection to it, even if it fails to hold my attention for very long. And not saying that item creation automatically leads to rocket tag either - just I've seen that happen, on occasion.

In DnD, something as basic as scrolls and potions can destroy game balance. It's just a question of where you want that balance to be. The truth hides somewhere in the space between 'no, mages are meant to have all their spells available at all times forever with no restrictions' and 'you can cast 3 first level spells, and 1 second level spell per day.'

Anonymouswizard
2020-06-08, 06:57 PM
I like superhero-style gadgeteering: you can whip up a 'power' in a few minutes/hours, but it'll serve it's purpose and be gone again soon. If you want it to hang around you or a party member can buy it with XP.

Then again, I've yet to have a GM who's allowed the combat engineer/ritualist build in M&M (with stacking your skill fairly high, buying Inventor, Artificer, or Ritualist, and then stacking Quickness (Limited to item/Ritual creation) you can get to the point where you can semi-reliably create a 30 point power in a combat round or less*, it's pretty much the only viable buffer I've come up with).

But yes, my general rule is 'if a PC is going to be hanging onto it, and especially if they can get make or get a new one fairly easily during downtime, then it should cost permanent character resources'. I think of it as the 'Cleric's holy symbol' principle, while a Cleric can't cast their spells without one if they lose it they can get a properly blessed one at almost any temple for a donation of treasure or act of penance (world-building element from a setting I have lounging around somewhere).

* After the 'one attempt per round' build was vetoed I didn't even try the one who did it in Time Rank -5.

PairO'Dice Lost
2020-06-09, 01:15 PM
It's not about denying players power - or agency. It's about removing the automatic 'oh, I have my 45.000 gold, I'll pop down to Ye Olden Magic Item Shoppe for my Holy Avenger I've been saving for!' In my games, that's never going to happen.

I've played the occasional rocket tag game, and it's a lot of fun, I have no objection to it, even if it fails to hold my attention for very long. And not saying that item creation automatically leads to rocket tag either - just I've seen that happen, on occasion.

In DnD, something as basic as scrolls and potions can destroy game balance. It's just a question of where you want that balance to be. The truth hides somewhere in the space between 'no, mages are meant to have all their spells available at all times forever with no restrictions' and 'you can cast 3 first level spells, and 1 second level spell per day.'

Personally, I find all the attempts to enforce "magic items are super rare and valuable and can't be purchased for any amount of gold because reasons, but NPCs will buy them off you just fine because more reasons" and similar to be much more immersion-breaking than any kind of magic item shop. There's a market for super-yachts and private jets for the super-rich in the real world, after all, and neither of those can even teleport or turn invisible! :smallamused:

Also, note that the "shop o' endless magic items" idea is just anti-buying-items hyperbole; no edition ever says that any sort of magic item Wal-Mart exists, just that magic items can be bought and sold at all and gives guidelines as to where one might do so. The idea is much more reasonable and thematic if you assume, as I do, that you can pick up potions at the local apothecary, buy scrolls from the local wizards' guild, commission a magic sword from the temple of the local god of crafting, and so forth rather than getting everything in a one-stop shop.

If players being able to buy or create potions and scrolls is a game balance issue, the problem there is with the potions and scrolls, not with buying items or item creation. After all, if having 10 scrolls of teleport or whatever is game-breaking then it doesn't matter whether they were bought, crafted, placed in a module treasure hoard, or rolled up by the DM, the PCs still ended up with them and the problem is the same. Much better to change or restrict the "broken" items in that case than prevent the PCs from accessing them proactively.

Kaptin Keen
2020-06-09, 04:06 PM
Personally, I find all the attempts to enforce "magic items are super rare and valuable and can't be purchased for any amount of gold because reasons, but NPCs will buy them off you just fine because more reasons" and similar to be much more immersion-breaking than any kind of magic item shop. There's a market for super-yachts and private jets for the super-rich in the real world, after all, and neither of those can even teleport or turn invisible! :smallamused:

Also, note that the "shop o' endless magic items" idea is just anti-buying-items hyperbole; no edition ever says that any sort of magic item Wal-Mart exists, just that magic items can be bought and sold at all and gives guidelines as to where one might do so. The idea is much more reasonable and thematic if you assume, as I do, that you can pick up potions at the local apothecary, buy scrolls from the local wizards' guild, commission a magic sword from the temple of the local god of crafting, and so forth rather than getting everything in a one-stop shop.

If players being able to buy or create potions and scrolls is a game balance issue, the problem there is with the potions and scrolls, not with buying items or item creation. After all, if having 10 scrolls of teleport or whatever is game-breaking then it doesn't matter whether they were bought, crafted, placed in a module treasure hoard, or rolled up by the DM, the PCs still ended up with them and the problem is the same. Much better to change or restrict the "broken" items in that case than prevent the PCs from accessing them proactively.

Um, well - I didn't mention immersion. Or market economy. I didn't claim any edition ever presented it's economy as anything like a magic item wallmart. But you're inaccurate assumptions aside, I see your point. I'm just not sure you see mine?

It's not about any of that. It's about taste. You like a californian cabernet, and I like an italian barolo. And neither is wrong, or right, or inherently better than the other.

Now, what it is about is creating a magical story. And a magical story is different things to different people. To me, nothing is less magical than a magic item convenience store. Most certainly, if anything is less magical than a magic item convenience store, it's crafting magical items like they're goddamned muffins.

But I'm not saying that's the right way, or the only way - just that it's my way. Also, as I stated at the outset: This is the counter point. And I feel it should be mentioned, for the sake of completeness.

LordCdrMilitant
2020-06-09, 04:53 PM
Um, well - I didn't mention immersion. Or market economy. I didn't claim any edition ever presented it's economy as anything like a magic item wallmart. But you're inaccurate assumptions aside, I see your point. I'm just not sure you see mine?

It's not about any of that. It's about taste. You like a californian cabernet, and I like an italian barolo. And neither is wrong, or right, or inherently better than the other.

Now, what it is about is creating a magical story. And a magical story is different things to different people. To me, nothing is less magical than a magic item convenience store. Most certainly, if anything is less magical than a magic item convenience store, it's crafting magical items like they're goddamned muffins.

But I'm not saying that's the right way, or the only way - just that it's my way. Also, as I stated at the outset: This is the counter point. And I feel it should be mentioned, for the sake of completeness.

This gets into the realm of the threat about "is magic no longer magical", and I think that a world feels more magical if magic items are more common and more available.

Having magic and exploring how the world uses it is what gives the world a magical air and makes it fun and fantastic as opposed to just a generic medieval world with one party member who can break reality randomly.



As for item creation, I as the GM usually make the most use out of item creation systems. Players are happy to receive what I hand out to them.

Kaptin Keen
2020-06-10, 02:24 AM
This gets into the realm of the threat about "is magic no longer magical", and I think that a world feels more magical if magic items are more common and more available.

Having magic and exploring how the world uses it is what gives the world a magical air and makes it fun and fantastic as opposed to just a generic medieval world with one party member who can break reality randomly.

As for item creation, I as the GM usually make the most use out of item creation systems. Players are happy to receive what I hand out to them.

Well ... clearly, the more common magic is, the less magical it becomes. But that discussion is a sharp right turn from the topic of item creation. Although item creation systems are a huge help in making magic into muffins, of course.

Martin Greywolf
2020-06-10, 05:09 AM
There are two facets to this really, and one of them tells you why a generic system can't really handle it all that well.

Facet 1, Setting Options

Your setting dictates what you can or can't do. As an example, I have a character in Harry Potter setting, and I managed to replicate the Itachi of Naruto fame turning into a flock of ravens. This was only possible by a clever combination of in universe things: an enchanted item that uses conjuring to create a flock of ravens, triggered by my character's animagus transformation.

This sort of system is pretty good because it requires you to create interesting solutions to problems the exact same way your character does, there is no outside of game knowledge of +1 bonuses or anything of the sort. It's almost independent of system.

Some systems handle it better - FATE is generic enough to have no problem - but it is based almost entirely on agreement at the table, and what's worse, estimating how difficult or costly an item is is problematic. (The example above was managed by someone in his 6th year fairly easily, but it was for a joke, how better to respond to a prank war challenge than with "Foolish little otoutou")

Facet 2, Systems Blanace

Second facet is system-specific. The issue here is that, should you have a sword of better swording, you need to translate it into mechanics somehow, and having a thorough grasp of probability is needed to understand what that +1 really means. And no, it's not 5% more likely to hit in DnD 3.5, it's a lot more complicated than that. Demanding your DMs and players to understand it is... kind of too much, so rules exist to give you an idea of what numbers are appropriate for what levels, especially when related to monsters you will be fighting.

Problem is, this gives you hard lmimits that are often arbitrary, and while the designers are hopefully better at design than you, they aren't better than all of us, so odds are they overlooked something, and broken combos are possible, especially in splatbook-rich environment.

Conclusion

Probably the best approach is to combine both, use the mechanical item creation as guidelines, especially when considering what an ability is mechanically worth, but don't get too bogged down in it.

Ideally, you'd come up with an interesting way to combine it with in-universe system, which brings us to the original question. A recommendation for good item creation ruleset.

Contestant one, FATE

Sadly, you can't cannibalize it easily, FATE has something called FATE fractal, which to put it simply means you can use the same ruleset to describge everything - PCs, nations, items. So an item can have skill, FATE's equivalent to HP and so on. This also gives you a good gauge to tell how powerful an item is, because it's essentially an NPC (that may or may not act on its own).

Contestant two, Items of Legacy

Splatbook for DnD 3.5, the idea is that if an item was used for something important, it gets magic on its own, affected by what exactly it was used for. It gets more powerful as you go along, and you need to learn its history in more depth to unlock its powers. Some mechanics are a tad too feat-tax-heavy, but it's an easy thing to fix, and it keeps magic items more magical, even if there is more of them, because everyone has its own story you need to uncover.

NigelWalmsley
2020-06-10, 07:18 AM
Well ... clearly, the more common magic is, the less magical it becomes.

That's just not true. Avatar isn't "less magical" than The First Law. If anything, it's more magical precisely because magic is more common. Really, which setting feels more fantastical: one where your next door neighbor might be a spirit, or one where there's a guy you've never met who is a wizard?

Quertus
2020-06-10, 07:45 AM
Well ... clearly, the more common magic is, the less magical it becomes. But that discussion is a sharp right turn from the topic of item creation. Although item creation systems are a huge help in making magic into muffins, of course.

If I walked out my front door, and found that my neighbors had a flying carpet parked in their garage, had polymorphed their dog into a Dragon with a Wand/Potion, were wearing Bracers of Gardening +4 and a Hat of Endless Shade while using Flaming Frost Shock Dancing clippers… I think that that would make the world *more* magical than the 0 magical items I perceived them using yesterday.

As far as "muffins" go - have you looked at 2e item creation? For an example…

Once upon a time, a party of PCs were all abducted from their individual home worlds. My character, Armus, collected soil samples from everyone's boots, and got a GP (from their home realms) from each PC. As he adventured, Armus collected various components he thought might be useful, including sand from a moving island, an Angel's hair, Dragon scales, and a shard of… something let's pretend is analogous to a TARDIS.

Eventually, I presented Armus' recipe to the GM. It involved creating red glass from the sand and gold, imbedding the Angel's hair, using the TARDIS shard to etch runes for each destination, making a paste of powdered Dragon scales and Archmagi blood & combining it with the corresponding soil sample to "paint" each world rune. Or something like that. This was… quite some time ago.

The end result was a custom, "not so cubic" Cubic Gate, keyed to 10 different prime material worlds.

Does that sound like a muffin to you?

Kaptin Keen
2020-06-10, 08:38 AM
Allow me to reply thusly:


If I walked out my front door, and found that my neighbors had a flying carpet parked in their garage, had polymorphed their dog into a Dragon with a Wand/Potion, were wearing Bracers of Gardening +4 and a Hat of Endless Shade while using Flaming Frost Shock Dancing clippers… I think that that would make the world *more* magical than the 0 magical items I perceived them using yesterday.

Muffins. Common as muck, not magical. It's no more magical than a powertool or a dishwasher. 100 years ago, we had neither. Did the world become magical with their advent? No - it got more muffins.


Once upon a time, a party of PCs were all abducted from their individual home worlds. My character, Armus, collected soil samples from everyone's boots, and got a GP (from their home realms) from each PC. As he adventured, Armus collected various components he thought might be useful, including sand from a moving island, an Angel's hair, Dragon scales, and a shard of… something let's pretend is analogous to a TARDIS.

Eventually, I presented Armus' recipe to the GM. It involved creating red glass from the sand and gold, imbedding the Angel's hair, using the TARDIS shard to etch runes for each destination, making a paste of powdered Dragon scales and Archmagi blood & combining it with the corresponding soil sample to "paint" each world rune. Or something like that. This was… quite some time ago.

The end result was a custom, "not so cubic" Cubic Gate, keyed to 10 different prime material worlds.

Does that sound like a muffin to you?

Not a muffin.

You seem to have missed the point where I stated that magic, in my games, relies on story - and little else. No gold, not necessarily any work or checks. Just story. So were you playing a game of mine, your cubic gate might very well be an acceptable item.

Look. Magic is not the act of casting a fireball. Magic is the act of doing something extraordinary. Any time - the very instant - it's no longer extraordinary, it also ceases to be magical. Instead, it's just convenience.

We are so off track in terms of the topic of item creation.

PairO'Dice Lost
2020-06-11, 02:42 AM
Um, well - I didn't mention immersion. Or market economy. I didn't claim any edition ever presented it's economy as anything like a magic item wallmart. But you're inaccurate assumptions aside, I see your point. I'm just not sure you see mine?

I do see yours. The bit about immersion was responding directly to your point about getting a magic item for a song or a favor being somehow better than getting it for gold pieces. "Magic items are so rare and valuable they're only swapped for other items or intangibles, not mere gold" is a common trope, and that conceit makes very little sense in-setting when item creation is possible at all. D&D magic items are well below private-jet-and-super-yacht territory, and they all have their price. It can make sense for un-creatable and irreplaceable items like artifacts, maybe, but even then a bunch of minor artifacts like the talisman of Al'Akbar or hammer of thunderbolts could easily have a price put on them 'cause they're really not all that impressive.

And you did at least invoke a "magic Wal-Mart" setup with the Ye Olden Magic Item Shoppe bit, which is again a tired trope and, as you say yourself, isn't actually how any edition handles buying or selling items.


Look. Magic is not the act of casting a fireball. Magic is the act of doing something extraordinary. Any time - the very instant - it's no longer extraordinary, it also ceases to be magical. Instead, it's just convenience.

We are so off track in terms of the topic of item creation.

"Magic" in the sense you're talking about has two meanings, as far as fantasy RPGs go. You have things that are extraordinary relative to the in-game reality and things that are extraordinary relative to the real world but mundane relative to the in-game reality, and either or both can be labeled as "magic" depending on how you want to flavor things. For instance, the Hulk is the first kind of magical in the MCU because "can tank artillery shots with his manly chest" is something that needs superpowers to justify, while high-level fighters and barbarians are the second kind of magical in D&D because "can fall from orbit and walk it off" is a thing that just happens when you reach a certain level.

Dragons and fireballs and +1 swords are magical in the latter sense, mundane in-setting despite their magical flavor, and in D&D that kind of magic is not and cannot be magical in the former sense; it's immediately rendered pedestrian by the very fact that every group of PCs ends up half magic-users or thereabouts and every monster you face past the low levels is magical to some degree. You might as well complain that interplanetary starships aren't extraordinary in Star Wars when part of the setting conceit is that they're so common and easy to pilot that a 16-year-old can buy a used one with his allowance.

And that's very relevant to the topic of item creation, because when you're talking about what makes the "best" item creation system, what's "best" for each type of magic is very different. In LotR, Sting is a legendary weapon with unique powers and centuries of history, and in D&D it's a +1 orc-bane short sword, and the kind of system you want to use to create the exact same item is going to vary dramatically based on which setting you're talking about. A system that requires you to jump through hoops and go on three different story sidequests to craft a basic magic weapon that every fighter will want in their repertoire is completely inappropriate for D&D, and a system that lets you hand Celebrimbor a watermelon-sized chunk of gold and get a magic sword back two days later is completely inappropriate for LotR.

Kaptin Keen
2020-06-11, 01:14 PM
I do see yours. The bit about immersion was responding directly to your point about getting a magic item for a song or a favor being somehow better than getting it for gold pieces. "Magic items are so rare and valuable they're only swapped for other items or intangibles, not mere gold" is a common trope, and that conceit makes very little sense in-setting when item creation is possible at all. D&D magic items are well below private-jet-and-super-yacht territory, and they all have their price. It can make sense for un-creatable and irreplaceable items like artifacts, maybe, but even then a bunch of minor artifacts like the talisman of Al'Akbar or hammer of thunderbolts could easily have a price put on them 'cause they're really not all that impressive.

And you did at least invoke a "magic Wal-Mart" setup with the Ye Olden Magic Item Shoppe bit, which is again a tired trope and, as you say yourself, isn't actually how any edition handles buying or selling items.

I'm not saying immersion isn't part of the issue, but it's not the point I'm after. I'm a notoriously un-immersed player, a problem-solver and meta-gamer of the worst type. So I'm not likely to hit others over the head with the immersion hammer.

The value and common-ness of magic items is up to the GM. Since any magic item is uncreatable (at least in the traditional sense - and excluding potions and scrolls), it does make sense. Also, keep in mind that the average income is something like ... a silverpiece a week. Making the yearly income of Joe the Commoner 52 silver a year (with living expenses propably around 40-50 silver), placing even the most mundane longsword +1 pretty squarely in the Private Space Yacht territory.

And yea - Ye Olden Magic Item Shoppe does invoke market economy, though I intended it simply to show how anything you can trade in bulk is about as magical and special as .. muffins. It's the yawing gulf between The Maiden holding aloft Excalibur in the lake .. and buying a 3-for-the-price-of-2 special on detergent at Walmart. I aim for the former.

But I doubt you'll find any place I'm saying one is better than the other. I have my preference, sure. But I'm not trying to tell anyone they're doing it wrong. Only different.


"Magic" in the sense you're talking about has two meanings, as far as fantasy RPGs go. You have things that are extraordinary relative to the in-game reality and things that are extraordinary relative to the real world but mundane relative to the in-game reality, and either or both can be labeled as "magic" depending on how you want to flavor things. For instance, the Hulk is the first kind of magical in the MCU because "can tank artillery shots with his manly chest" is something that needs superpowers to justify, while high-level fighters and barbarians are the second kind of magical in D&D because "can fall from orbit and walk it off" is a thing that just happens when you reach a certain level.

Dragons and fireballs and +1 swords are magical in the latter sense, mundane in-setting despite their magical flavor, and in D&D that kind of magic is not and cannot be magical in the former sense; it's immediately rendered pedestrian by the very fact that every group of PCs ends up half magic-users or thereabouts and every monster you face past the low levels is magical to some degree. You might as well complain that interplanetary starships aren't extraordinary in Star Wars when part of the setting conceit is that they're so common and easy to pilot that a 16-year-old can buy a used one with his allowance.

And that's very relevant to the topic of item creation, because when you're talking about what makes the "best" item creation system, what's "best" for each type of magic is very different. In LotR, Sting is a legendary weapon with unique powers and centuries of history, and in D&D it's a +1 orc-bane short sword, and the kind of system you want to use to create the exact same item is going to vary dramatically based on which setting you're talking about. A system that requires you to jump through hoops and go on three different story sidequests to craft a basic magic weapon that every fighter will want in their repertoire is completely inappropriate for D&D, and a system that lets you hand Celebrimbor a watermelon-sized chunk of gold and get a magic sword back two days later is completely inappropriate for LotR.

See - this I disagree completely with.

If you're playing with me as your GM ... there is only one +1 orc-bane sword. You will never - ever - see a dublicate of any magic item. And I play 3.5 D&D almost exclusively (although not by choice). Oh, and DH.

But I do discard most of the D&D assumptions out of hand. There's that. No monster I run is ever as presented in the MM - and mostly I don't run monsters anyone else came up with, I make my own.

ExLibrisMortis
2020-06-11, 04:40 PM
See - this I disagree completely with. [...]
But I do discard most of the D&D assumptions out of hand.
I think you're disagreeing with PairO'Dice based on different uses of "D&D". We might safely say that you're not playing "D&D--the setting" (since you explicitly reject some of its core assumptions that POD is talking about), though you are using "D&D--the system version 3.5".

I think you're also using a bit of a narrow definition of "magic". It seems that for you, magic must be extraordinary, unrepeatable, even in-universe--basically, magic must be miraculous as well as magical. Generally speaking, that is not required for something to be "magic". Magic rituals are a reliable way to do things*, and they are common as dirt, historically speaking. For example, warding your house by placing a horseshoe on the door is something that just works. It's a commonly accepted technique, people know that it works, and many people will even know why it works (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe#In_culture). Requiring that magic be miraculous is a pretty specific restriction on magic. Which, I should stress, I have no problems with whatsoever, but it is worth bearing in mind that your statement "clearly, the more common magic is, the less magical it becomes" is not the default.

*We may not agree that there's cause or proof to believe this, but the people who perform(ed) these rituals certainly do (did).

InvisibleBison
2020-06-11, 04:55 PM
Also, keep in mind that the average income is something like ... a silverpiece a week

Not if you're playing 3.5 it isn't. There's nothing stopping average people from using the Profession skill, which means that your typical human farmer is going to have an annual income somewhere between 260 and 442 gp.

Kaptin Keen
2020-06-11, 05:07 PM
I think you're disagreeing with PairO'Dice based on different uses of "D&D". We might safely say that you're not playing "D&D--the setting" (since you explicitly reject some of its core assumptions that POD is talking about), though you are using "D&D--the system version 3.5".

I think you're also using a bit of a narrow definition of "magic". It seems that for you, magic must be extraordinary, unrepeatable, even in-universe--basically, magic must be miraculous as well as magical. Generally speaking, that is not required for something to be "magic". Magic rituals are a reliable way to do things*, and they are common as dirt, historically speaking. For example, warding your house by placing a horseshoe on the door is something that just works. It's a commonly accepted technique, people know that it works, and many people will even know why it works (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe#In_culture). Requiring that magic be miraculous is a pretty specific restriction on magic. Which, I should stress, I have no problems with whatsoever, but it is worth bearing in mind that your statement "clearly, the more common magic is, the less magical it becomes" is not the default.

*We may not agree that there's cause or proof to believe this, but the people who perform(ed) these rituals certainly do (did).

I still 100% disagree.

We do many many things that are entirely mundane, and do nothing. Hanging horseshoes, blowing on dice, knocking on wood, hanging dreamcatchers, throwing salt over our shoulders. There are non-magical things we do for non-magical reasons, we all know they don't do any damned thing - but we do them regardless. It's like a pacifier (except babies might actually think milk may eventually come out of them - I dunno, my baby isn't answering questions).

If you want a definition of magic - and I'm still not going into semantics - it's when you do something, anything, that really shouldn't be possible, but you do it anyways. That's magic. Whether reading minds, casting fireballs, speaking with the dead. No matter.

Now, in D&D, magic is not impossible. Magic is like electricity: If you know how to use it, it's basically as common as muck. A fireball is essentially no more magical than a hand radio or a remote control.

That's ... the system. That's 3.5. Or you know, any of the others.

I don't want that. So in my games, there are certain things you can rely on. There are very few characters with class levels. There are no dublicate magic items. You will never fight the same monster twice. And some other things, less relevant to our discussion here - you cannot play elves or dwarves, and they're nothing like the PHB races - there are strictly no dragons ... and so on.

For having less magic, my world is more magical. And by giving a lot less direct player control - player characters are substantially more powerful. Although it's generally a problem for me to convey that fact: If you have three levels of fighter, and a bit of magical gear, five of the King's Men aren't much of a challenge to you.

ExLibrisMortis
2020-06-11, 07:27 PM
If you want a definition of magic - and I'm still not going into semantics - it's when you do something, anything, that really shouldn't be possible, but you do it anyways. That's magic. Whether reading minds, casting fireballs, speaking with the dead. No matter.
Sorry, you're involved in semantics already :smalltongue:. But it's a useful to clarify what words mean, so don't despair.


We do many many things that are entirely mundane, and do nothing. Hanging horseshoes, blowing on dice, knocking on wood, hanging dreamcatchers, throwing salt over our shoulders. There are non-magical things we do for non-magical reasons, we all know they don't do any damned thing - but we do them regardless. It's like a pacifier (except babies might actually think milk may eventually come out of them - I dunno, my baby isn't answering questions).
That doesn't change my point. For the purpose of our discussion (which is about the meaning of the word), magic is something that works, not because there's an objective physical reality that confirms it (we don't need to refer to any external reality, objective or not, because we're talking about the meaning of the word, not the reality of the referent), but because people treat it as such. It's a technology--it gets used, taught, people get it wrong, and so on. A magical ritual is a reliable way to get something supernatural done, and that has been the general use for millenia (literally--the word can be traced back to Old Persian, with very little change to its general meaning (though exact practice varied quite a bit, I imagine)). Magic is not "something that really shouldn't be possible"--generally speaking, people don't assume that one-off exceptions to natural laws are a thing. If it worked once, it'll work again, as long as you follow the exact same ritual steps, say the exact same words, and so on. This ancient concept (tradition, cultural quirk, whatever) is what D&D magic--and typical fantasy magic in general--is based on.

Again, I don't have a problem with your setting and the supernatural events that occur in it. I am, however, disagreeing with your assumption that magic is "obviously" rare, unique, non-reproducible, and so on. That's a very non-standard approach to magic, and if you're saying that D&D magic is not "magical" because of it, you're misunderstanding how the word gets used. I suggest using "miracles" for what you call "magic" instead.

Tvtyrant
2020-06-11, 08:34 PM
Sorry, you're involved in semantics already :smalltongue:. But it's a useful to clarify what words mean, so don't despair.


That doesn't change my point. For the purpose of our discussion (which is about the meaning of the word), magic is something that works, not because there's an objective physical reality that confirms it (we don't need to refer to any external reality, objective or not, because we're talking about the meaning of the word, not the reality of the referent), but because people treat it as such. It's a technology--it gets used, taught, people get it wrong, and so on. A magical ritual is a reliable way to get something supernatural done, and that has been the general use for millenia (literally--the word can be traced back to Old Persian, with very little change to its general meaning (though exact practice varied quite a bit, I imagine)). Magic is not "something that really shouldn't be possible"--generally speaking, people don't assume that one-off exceptions to natural laws are a thing. If it worked once, it'll work again, as long as you follow the exact same ritual steps, say the exact same words, and so on. This ancient concept (tradition, cultural quirk, whatever) is what D&D magic--and typical fantasy magic in general--is based on.

Again, I don't have a problem with your setting and the supernatural events that occur in it. I am, however, disagreeing with your assumption that magic is "obviously" rare, unique, non-reproducible, and so on. That's a very non-standard approach to magic, and if you're saying that D&D magic is not "magical" because of it, you're misunderstanding how the word gets used. I suggest using "miracles" for what you call "magic" instead.

I don't think I agree here. It is about as common as magic being standardized science. Magic as a kind of art vs. magic as a science are both fairly common approaches to the genre.

Elbeyon
2020-06-11, 09:15 PM
I like apocalypse world style crafting


Choose which of the following your workspace includes. Choose 3: a garage, a darkroom, a controlled growing environment, skilled labor (Carna, Thuy, Pamming, eg), a junkyard of raw materials, a truck or van, weird-ass electronica, machining tools, transmitters & receivers, a proving range, a relic of the golden age past, booby traps.

When you go into your workspace and dedicate yourself to making a thing, or to getting to the bottom of some ****, decide what and tell the MC. The MC will tell you “sure, no problem, but…” and then 1 to 4 of the following:

• It’s going to take hours/days/weeks/months of work.
• First you’ll have to get/build/fix/figure out —— .
• You’re going to need —— to help you with it.
• It’s going to cost you a ****ton of jingle.
• Thee best you’ll be able to do is a crap version, weak and unreliable.
• It’s going to mean exposing yourself (plus colleagues) to serious danger.
• You’re going to have to add —— to your workplace first.
• It’s going to take several/dozens/hundreds of tries.
• You’re going to have to take —— apart to do it.

The MC might connect them all with “and,” or might throw in a merciful “or.”
Once you’ve accomplished the necessaries, you can go ahead and accomplish the thing itself. The MC will stat it up, or spill, or whatever it calls for.

Tyrrell
2020-06-12, 08:53 AM
I don't really like D&D's item creation system. In your opinion, what's the best magic item creation system you've seen?
It sounds like you're looking for something different to drop in to your D&D campaign. Is that right? Because as far as your question, which item creation system is the best, my suggestions would be impractical to use for D&D.

I believe the best item creation system (IMO) is in Ars Magica 5. This is because creating an enchanted device in that game takes into account the creator's understanding of the specific magical arts for the effect that they're trying to enchant, it takes into account the creator's understanding of fundamental magic theory, it incorporates their relevant virtues and flaws, it works in the aura of the location where the device is created and the virtues and flaws of the laboratory where the work is done. The commonly used (and cool) concept of a specific object or phenomena that you need to acquire in order to craft your device is flipped on its head, rather than saying I need to gather the eyes of storm eagle to enchant my crystal ball, characters end up in the situation where they're asking , we've got the eyes of a storm eagle, what should we make from them?. It's really flexible, but not so flexible as Hero system where you say I'm dumping these points into an obvious accessible focus - it has less flexibility because it demands that the player use their character to provide the tools to make the item, the crafted item is an outgrowth of the character.

Although it's a different conversation I believe that the best magical items are in exalted 3rd edition.

ExLibrisMortis
2020-06-12, 08:15 PM
I don't think I agree here. It is about as common as magic being standardized science. Magic as a kind of art vs. magic as a science are both fairly common approaches to the genre."Art" and "science" aren't two totally different ways of doing things. As anyone who went to art school will tell you, there's a lot of set techniques to learn, even if you're very creative. As any scientist will tell you, coming up with the right experiments requires a great deal of creativity, even if you understand a lot of theory. The difference between the two is more a matter of function/goal than a fundamentally different approach.

Now, I understand that when people say "it's more art than science" they're basically saying there doesn't seem to be a good way to figure out what works and what doesn't, but there's still people who are just "better" at it, implying that there's something to be figured out, even if it's only understood to a limited degree or even just subconsciously. It's a matter of incomplete knowledge of how magic works, not a matter of fundamental limits on the understanding of magic.

Kaptin Keen
2020-06-13, 04:15 PM
Sorry, you're involved in semantics already :smalltongue:. But it's a useful to clarify what words mean, so don't despair.


That doesn't change my point. For the purpose of our discussion (which is about the meaning of the word), magic is something that works, not because there's an objective physical reality that confirms it (we don't need to refer to any external reality, objective or not, because we're talking about the meaning of the word, not the reality of the referent), but because people treat it as such. It's a technology--it gets used, taught, people get it wrong, and so on. A magical ritual is a reliable way to get something supernatural done, and that has been the general use for millenia (literally--the word can be traced back to Old Persian, with very little change to its general meaning (though exact practice varied quite a bit, I imagine)). Magic is not "something that really shouldn't be possible"--generally speaking, people don't assume that one-off exceptions to natural laws are a thing. If it worked once, it'll work again, as long as you follow the exact same ritual steps, say the exact same words, and so on. This ancient concept (tradition, cultural quirk, whatever) is what D&D magic--and typical fantasy magic in general--is based on.

Again, I don't have a problem with your setting and the supernatural events that occur in it. I am, however, disagreeing with your assumption that magic is "obviously" rare, unique, non-reproducible, and so on. That's a very non-standard approach to magic, and if you're saying that D&D magic is not "magical" because of it, you're misunderstanding how the word gets used. I suggest using "miracles" for what you call "magic" instead.

Well. We could go around the block once more on this, but it seems pointless. You define magic as 'a thing that gets a thing done' and I define it as 'something extraordinary'.

My point is: A rainbow is magical. A thousand rainbows are meh.

You point is: A rainbow is magica. A thousand rainbows are a thousand rainbows. They are all magical.

I don't think there's a reason to debate that any further.

And I appologise if you don't feel I hit the nail on the head with the rainbow thing. It just feels like a somewhat humorous way of describing the difference in our points of view.

Tvtyrant
2020-06-13, 05:29 PM
"Art" and "science" aren't two totally different ways of doing things. As anyone who went to art school will tell you, there's a lot of set techniques to learn, even if you're very creative. As any scientist will tell you, coming up with the right experiments requires a great deal of creativity, even if you understand a lot of theory. The difference between the two is more a matter of function/goal than a fundamentally different approach.

Now, I understand that when people say "it's more art than science" they're basically saying there doesn't seem to be a good way to figure out what works and what doesn't, but there's still people who are just "better" at it, implying that there's something to be figured out, even if it's only understood to a limited degree or even just subconsciously. It's a matter of incomplete knowledge of how magic works, not a matter of fundamental limits on the understanding of magic.

Science is in a sense of the art of recreating conditions. In some magic systems this also applies, but in many a spell is unique to the caster and cannot be imitated by someone else.

Zarrgon
2020-06-13, 06:29 PM
I don't really like D&D's item creation system. In your opinion, what's the best magic item creation system you've seen?

Well, the system I still use: A mix of the BECMI D&D Principalities of Glantri system and the 2E system.

The basic idea is that rare materials are needed that must be found on an adventure, some just like the blood of a dragon, but some like the blood of a dragon king that has just been betrayed.

And the item must be created on an adventure. No sitting in a room and making an item. You have to cover the item in dragon's blood and have it be struck by lightning on a high mountain peak on New Years Day.



Now, in D&D, magic is not impossible. Magic is like electricity: If you know how to use it, it's basically as common as muck. A fireball is essentially no more magical than a hand radio or a remote control.


I agree mostly and don't like that view of magic. I dislike the dull view that magic is just a thing to be used, like technology. I like magic to be weird, strange, dangerous and unknowable.

Though I separate magic into common, uncommon, rare and unique. So something like a Everburing Candle is common and takes "little" magic, but a Portable Hole is rare and take great magic. I also love unique magic: when someone makes an item unique. The Everburing Candle can summon an elemental fire fly once a minute that the candle holder can direct around and sheds light in a 5' radius, lasts 1-3 rounds and can explode to light something like a candle.

Quertus
2020-06-13, 06:51 PM
First things first:


We are so off track in terms of the topic of item creation.

Not at all! Hopefully, if the OP rejoins us, they will have a great muffin recipe… er… a good example of how to explain what it is here wants out of a magic item creation system. :smallwink:


If I walked out my front door, and found that my neighbors had a flying carpet parked in their garage, had polymorphed their dog into a Dragon with a Wand/Potion, were wearing Bracers of Gardening +4 and a Hat of Endless Shade while using Flaming Frost Shock Dancing clippers… I think that that would make the world *more* magical than the 0 magical items I perceived them using yesterday.



Allow me to reply thusly:



Muffins. Common as muck, not magical. It's no more magical than a powertool or a dishwasher. 100 years ago, we had neither. Did the world become magical with their advent? No - it got more muffins.

Ah. I think I follow you, and know what you meant by muffins. However, I think you failed to follow me: yesterday, they had no items; today, suddenly, they (and maybe no-one else in the world - I don't know, I just stepped out my front door) have items.

Now, how many items do I have to see before the world starts becoming less magical? Well…


My point is: A rainbow is magical. A thousand rainbows are meh.

I don't think there's a reason to debate that any further.

And I appologise if you don't feel I hit the nail on the head with the rainbow thing. It just feels like a somewhat humorous way of describing the difference in our points of view.

For this specific example, I have to strongly disagree: the N+1st rainbow is still magical, and seeing it makes the world more magical than if the Nth rainbow had been the last I'd seen, for all values of N thus far in my life. Senile as I am, I still even explicitly remember the last… 3 rainbows I've seen.

I strongly suspect that magic items have a similar(ly high) "still magic" number for me.

But 3e's construction method? Yeah, it's as much grey muffins as all of 4e, IMO.

Kaptin Keen
2020-06-18, 04:48 AM
I agree mostly and don't like that view of magic. I dislike the dull view that magic is just a thing to be used, like technology. I like magic to be weird, strange, dangerous and unknowable.

Though I separate magic into common, uncommon, rare and unique. So something like a Everburing Candle is common and takes "little" magic, but a Portable Hole is rare and take great magic. I also love unique magic: when someone makes an item unique. The Everburing Candle can summon an elemental fire fly once a minute that the candle holder can direct around and sheds light in a 5' radius, lasts 1-3 rounds and can explode to light something like a candle.

It's my experience that all RPG's are best when you're just learning them. When everything is new and surprising and wondrous. Over time, everything becomes just a tool, or a prop. There's nothing scary about any monster once you know it's stats and how to fight it - and even the most amazing magic ceases to amaze eventually, and becomes just a thing you do to achieve a goal.

These forums are a prime example - there's not a thread in here without someone assuming high level magics for every situation.

So that's what I'm trying to create: A game experience where you don't yet know everything - because none of the standard information really applies (except the obvious, I don't go around changing how the players spells or stats work - just the world, which is the prerogative of the GM).


First things first:

Not at all! Hopefully, if the OP rejoins us, they will have a great muffin recipe… er… a good example of how to explain what it is here wants out of a magic item creation system. :smallwink:

Ah. I think I follow you, and know what you meant by muffins. However, I think you failed to follow me: yesterday, they had no items; today, suddenly, they (and maybe no-one else in the world - I don't know, I just stepped out my front door) have items.

Now, how many items do I have to see before the world starts becoming less magical? Well…

For this specific example, I have to strongly disagree: the N+1st rainbow is still magical, and seeing it makes the world more magical than if the Nth rainbow had been the last I'd seen, for all values of N thus far in my life. Senile as I am, I still even explicitly remember the last… 3 rainbows I've seen.

I strongly suspect that magic items have a similar(ly high) "still magic" number for me.

But 3e's construction method? Yeah, it's as much grey muffins as all of 4e, IMO.

Rainbows retain a certain magic precisely because they're rare. If there were a thousand of them, that would wear off (I feel - maybe, just maybe, I've chosen a poor example).

Here's perhaps a better example:

When I was young, and I wanted my players to be impressed by the power and quality of the Kings 1st Lancers, I gave them levels and magic items, I added mages and clerics to their ranks to bolster them. You can propably imagine.

Now, that's not at all what I do. Now, the Kings 1st Lancers - like almost everyone else in the game world - are level 1 warriors. They have quality equipment, but no better than MW. I still want them to be a credible threat to the players (and the various threats a unit such as they must be expected to fight), but I do that via tactics, numbers, high morale, leadership but still no magical support.

And it helps a bunch that the players aren't decked out in magic items from tip to toe.

And then, when someone comes along who has actual class levels, the players know they face someone dangerous. Someone as powerful as they are.

Or a monster, of course. I used a metal bull at one time. Unsurprisingly perhaps, they took several steps to fight a gorgon. But ... it was a bull-shaped iron golem. So that was good fun.

PairO'Dice Lost
2020-06-18, 01:52 PM
It's my experience that all RPG's are best when you're just learning them. When everything is new and surprising and wondrous. Over time, everything becomes just a tool, or a prop. There's nothing scary about any monster once you know it's stats and how to fight it - and even the most amazing magic ceases to amaze eventually, and becomes just a thing you do to achieve a goal.

These forums are a prime example - there's not a thread in here without someone assuming high level magics for every situation.

So that's what I'm trying to create: A game experience where you don't yet know everything - because none of the standard information really applies (except the obvious, I don't go around changing how the players spells or stats work - just the world, which is the prerogative of the GM).

Conversely, in my experience RPGs are best when you have a solid handle on how things work. When you're just starting out with D&D you're not quite sure what tactics work best in melee, what classes are supposed to be doing, how to create the character you want with the right mix of classes/feats/skills/etc., and so on, but once you're more experienced everything flows much more naturally and intuitively. And that's not just a D&D thing or even a rules-heavy-RPG thing; even something like Fate takes a surprisingly long time to grok due to its philosophical differences from other games.

And monsters can in fact be scarier once you know exactly what they are and can do. If I'm running a campaign for new players and they're wandering through the Underdark and come upon an underground lake with a tentacled magical fish thingy in it, that's scary, sure, but it's pretty much exactly as scary initially as the magical dark-skinned elves with a spider fetish they ran into a few sessions ago and the the dark and edgy dragon they're going to run into a few sessions later, because that, the drow, and the shadow dragon are all equally unknown.

If, however, I'm running a campaign for my existing players and they're wandering through the Underdark and come upon an underground lake with a tentacled magical fish thingy in it, they go "Ohhhh crap, it's an aboleth!" and flash back to all the terrible things that happened the last time they ran into an aboleth (which was also one of my campaigns, sorry guys :smallamused:) and take it very seriously even if in theory they know exactly how one should fight it.


When I was young, and I wanted my players to be impressed by the power and quality of the Kings 1st Lancers, I gave them levels and magic items, I added mages and clerics to their ranks to bolster them. You can propably imagine.

Now, that's not at all what I do. Now, the Kings 1st Lancers - like almost everyone else in the game world - are level 1 warriors. They have quality equipment, but no better than MW. I still want them to be a credible threat to the players (and the various threats a unit such as they must be expected to fight), but I do that via tactics, numbers, high morale, leadership but still no magical support.

And it helps a bunch that the players aren't decked out in magic items from tip to toe.

And then, when someone comes along who has actual class levels, the players know they face someone dangerous. Someone as powerful as they are.

Or a monster, of course. I used a metal bull at one time. Unsurprisingly perhaps, they took several steps to fight a gorgon. But ... it was a bull-shaped iron golem. So that was good fun.

Here's the thing: in a world where magic-users exist and are common (not necessarily one on every street corner, but much more than LotR's "there are exactly five wizards in the world and that's it") and monsters and bad guys with magic exist and are common, an organization actively not having magical support just makes them look like idiots. Yeah, it might be just fine against the Queen's 2nd Lancers of the neighboring nation, but against, say, a dragon, they're SOL; it's like an infantry battalion trying to fight an attack helicopter without modern technology, it's not going to work out well for the infantry and there's no reason why they would want to try. And if you have some other anti-dragon spec-ops team somewhere to handle that case, well, the PCs should consider them and not the Lancers to be the more credible threat.

And if you've set your world up such that magic is rare, monsters are rare, classed NPCs are rare, and so forth so that a bunch of dudes on horses with pointy metal sticks are a threat to anything you care about...why they heck are you trying to fit a square D&D peg into a round playstyle hole instead of running a low-magic low-power everyone's-a-mook game like Runequest or low-point-value GURPS or Warhammer Fantasy that has those assumptions built in?

Kaptin Keen
2020-06-18, 04:15 PM
Conversely, in my experience RPGs are best when you have a solid handle on how things work. When you're just starting out with D&D you're not quite sure what tactics work best in melee, what classes are supposed to be doing, how to create the character you want with the right mix of classes/feats/skills/etc., and so on, but once you're more experienced everything flows much more naturally and intuitively. And that's not just a D&D thing or even a rules-heavy-RPG thing; even something like Fate takes a surprisingly long time to grok due to its philosophical differences from other games.

And monsters can in fact be scarier once you know exactly what they are and can do. If I'm running a campaign for new players and they're wandering through the Underdark and come upon an underground lake with a tentacled magical fish thingy in it, that's scary, sure, but it's pretty much exactly as scary initially as the magical dark-skinned elves with a spider fetish they ran into a few sessions ago and the the dark and edgy dragon they're going to run into a few sessions later, because that, the drow, and the shadow dragon are all equally unknown.

If, however, I'm running a campaign for my existing players and they're wandering through the Underdark and come upon an underground lake with a tentacled magical fish thingy in it, they go "Ohhhh crap, it's an aboleth!" and flash back to all the terrible things that happened the last time they ran into an aboleth (which was also one of my campaigns, sorry guys :smallamused:) and take it very seriously even if in theory they know exactly how one should fight it.

See - without in any way trying to tell you how you play the game, or whether that's right or wrong - regardless, what you're saying maps precisely onto the utilitarian view of the game I'm actively trying to get away from.

I can make drow far far scarier by hinting at their abilities than they would ever be by the players knowing exactly what to expect. Or an aboleth. I never use dragons - in part because everyone knows exactly what to expect from them, but more importantly because they're boring muffins.

Basically, you're not going to move me - and I realise I'm not going to move you. I can inform you that what I do works wonderfully, always has. I achieve my stated goal of creating something that feels new by simply doing away with all ingrained assumptions. Not everyone likes it - I'm guessing you wouldn't - but then I never said they would, or that I want them to.



Here's the thing: in a world where magic-users exist and are common (not necessarily one on every street corner, but much more than LotR's "there are exactly five wizards in the world and that's it") and monsters and bad guys with magic exist and are common, an organization actively not having magical support just makes them look like idiots. Yeah, it might be just fine against the Queen's 2nd Lancers of the neighboring nation, but against, say, a dragon, they're SOL; it's like an infantry battalion trying to fight an attack helicopter without modern technology, it's not going to work out well for the infantry and there's no reason why they would want to try. And if you have some other anti-dragon spec-ops team somewhere to handle that case, well, the PCs should consider them and not the Lancers to be the more credible threat.

And if you've set your world up such that magic is rare, monsters are rare, classed NPCs are rare, and so forth so that a bunch of dudes on horses with pointy metal sticks are a threat to anything you care about...why they heck are you trying to fit a square D&D peg into a round playstyle hole instead of running a low-magic low-power everyone's-a-mook game like Runequest or low-point-value GURPS or Warhammer Fantasy that has those assumptions built in?

Go back and check if I've at any point tried to tell you which game you ought to be playing. You'll find I haven't. I'll thank you for returning that favor. I'll happily continue to do D&D wrong by your estimation.

My preferred game world (it's homebrew, obviously) has precisely one elf. There's another, but the players generally don't know about him. And possibly a third, depending on timeline. There are precisely three cities, although there's a fourth that I've yet to bring into play. There are a set number of grimoires of high level spells (that's anything above spell level 3).

Because magic users aren't some sort of rank-and-file support troopers (basically the equivalent of a first-aid kit or an LMG) dragons - if there were any - are credible threats. Yes, they quite literally can wipe out the kingdom. Except there are tactics to deal with them. Admittedly not particularly attractive ones, but then at least there are no dragons in my games, so it all works out.

But fact that I loathe dragons is fairly irrelevant. There are no dragons, but there are all manner of other things. There are however very few damage sponges. A diverse group of monsters are - generally, to my mind - a far more engaging challenge than a single, super powerful pile of hitpoints.

Now, I propose we give it a rest. Neither is going to magically convince the other - I'm totally ok with agreeing to disagree.

Aeson
2020-06-18, 05:35 PM
We do many many things that are entirely mundane, and do nothing. Hanging horseshoes, blowing on dice, knocking on wood, hanging dreamcatchers, throwing salt over our shoulders. There are non-magical things we do for non-magical reasons, we all know they don't do any damned thing - but we do them regardless.
I would dispute that these are non-magical things done for non-magical reasons; all of these are practices arising from magical thinking. They don't - or, if you're feeling generous to the superstitious, then there's no scientific evidence that they - do what they're supposed to do in the real world, but that doesn't make engaging in these practices a nonmagical activity.

I would also comment that the people who engage in such practices usually do believe, at least on some level, that it does something even if they acknowledge that they have no logical reason for doing it, and if not then they're often accommodating or humoring someone who does hold such beliefs.

PairO'Dice Lost
2020-06-19, 02:55 AM
Go back and check if I've at any point tried to tell you which game you ought to be playing. You'll find I haven't. I'll thank you for returning that favor. I'll happily continue to do D&D wrong by your estimation.
[...]
Now, I propose we give it a rest. Neither is going to magically convince the other - I'm totally ok with agreeing to disagree.

I'm not saying you shouldn't be playing D&D the way you are, just pointing out that your points in the thread about things feeling magical and level of magic in the setting and so forth are pretty much diametrically opposed to the default D&D setting assumptions regarding item creation (and pretty much everything else) and wondering why you're doing a ton of houseruling to make D&D into another game when there are other games out there that match what you like much more closely.

If I was running a game of Shadowrun but removed the Matrix, cybernetics/bionics, Essence, spirits, magical traditions, the megacorps, and all the other defining features and flavor of Shadowrun because I wanted a gritty low-tech no-magic alternate future setting, I'd expect the same kind of "Why the heck are you doing that when you could be running GURPS or d20 Modern?" question.

It's an honest question: do you houserule D&D to Baator and back because there are parts of the system you actively love that are worth chopping off a bunch of the rest, or because your group only wants to play things with "D&D" in the name, or...?


I would dispute that these are non-magical things done for non-magical reasons; all of these are practices arising from magical thinking. They don't - or, if you're feeling generous to the superstitious, then there's no scientific evidence that they - do what they're supposed to do in the real world, but that doesn't make engaging in these practices a nonmagical activity.

I would also comment that the people who engage in such practices usually do believe, at least on some level, that it does something even if they acknowledge that they have no logical reason for doing it, and if not then they're often accommodating or humoring someone who does hold such beliefs.

More importantly, even if people nowadays only knock on wood/wear lucky socks/etc. ironically (or "ironically") or as a courtesy, all of those superstitious behaviors originated in a time when the majority of people did really sincerely believe that they worked. Magic as practiced in the real world isn't stuff that someone just made up one day as a lark and stapled onto an existing scientific worldview, it was originally viewed (and still is viewed by modern practitioners) as legitimate, mundane, logical, and replicable behavior, and the idea of magic as something special and wondrous and separate from the natural world is very much a historically-recent take on things that is highly unlikely to be shared by anyone who actually used magic.

Kaptin Keen
2020-06-19, 05:17 AM
It's an honest question: do you houserule D&D to Baator and back because there are parts of the system you actively love that are worth chopping off a bunch of the rest, or because your group only wants to play things with "D&D" in the name, or...?

There is literally no where in the rules that dictates D&D should be high magic.

There is no where it says that 'a goblin must always be this, all of this and nothing but this'.

Sure, there are some guidelines for WBL and expected gear and prices for magic items and so on - but there's quite literally no place in any book I've read (and I've read at least 5) that tells you the density and stock of Ye Olden Magic Shoppe franchises.

I do house rule a few things. For instance that barbarian rage can break certain types of debuffs. I generally remove Teleport entirely. But otherwise, I play reasonably close to RAW. It's a flavor thing, not a system thing. And then, to be frank, almost universally RPG systems are crap. I've played Shadowrun (2e, 3e, 4e), Dark Heresy, Earthdawn, Warhammer RP, Call of Cthulhu, Mythos, Cyperpunk, and many more besides, and from a technical standpoint, only Dark Heresy and Call of Cthulhu work. That's not to say they're better systems, more like they're made simply enough to be mechanically sound - but for the same reason, often limited.

So I take what I can work with and leave the rest be. Dark Heresy (and WHFRP to a degree, but I've never GM'd that) are systems that work, but they're very locked into their respective game worlds, and hardly useful for playing anything else.

So ... in the final outcome, I play D&D because it's simple, it kinda works for it's given purpose, it's flexible enough to do whatever I want it to do, and everyone knows it.

Zarrgon
2020-06-19, 06:19 PM
It's my experience that all RPG's are best when you're just learning them. When everything is new and surprising and wondrous. Over time, everything becomes just a tool, or a prop. There's nothing scary about any monster once you know it's stats and how to fight it - and even the most amazing magic ceases to amaze eventually, and becomes just a thing you do to achieve a goal.

These forums are a prime example - there's not a thread in here without someone assuming high level magics for every situation.

So that's what I'm trying to create: A game experience where you don't yet know everything - because none of the standard information really applies (except the obvious, I don't go around changing how the players spells or stats work - just the world, which is the prerogative of the GM).

I mostly agree and run much the same game. I keep everything surprising and wondrous. Players don't get used to things in my game.

I use endless new (and old) things to keep everything new and fresh.

And that is why I like the BECMI/2E magic item creation: The character needs to discover a new secret formula for each item each time they make one AND then they have to go on a quest to get the materials AND then go on a quest to make the magic item.

In my own house rules, I let all classes take magic item creation feats and make magic items. I like the idea that anyone can imbue an item with magic(similar to the idea of artifacts from Warehouse 13).

Kaptin Keen
2020-06-20, 04:53 AM
I would dispute that these are non-magical things done for non-magical reasons; all of these are practices arising from magical thinking. They don't - or, if you're feeling generous to the superstitious, then there's no scientific evidence that they - do what they're supposed to do in the real world, but that doesn't make engaging in these practices a nonmagical activity.

I would also comment that the people who engage in such practices usually do believe, at least on some level, that it does something even if they acknowledge that they have no logical reason for doing it, and if not then they're often accommodating or humoring someone who does hold such beliefs.

And my argument would be that people do not generally - really - believe horse shoes, or ladders, or salt, or the numbers 3, 7, 9 or 13 hold any sort of special significance.

I was a manager at a fancy restaurant a few years ago, and we had a woman who'd come regularly, and use our venue for sessions with her clients. She was a numerologist - and while I appologize to any believers in that particular brand, that's utter nonsense and quackery to me - and she'd charge in the amount of a thousand USD pr. session, pr. client, usually 4-6 pr. session.

What I'm saying is she'd make, on average, 5000 dollars each session, spouting nonsense related to numbers - and I'm convinced to the very marrow of my bones that neither that woman nor her clients had any real faith that it actually worked. Not a single on of them would resort to numerology should they be facing any sort of real challenge. If they did numerology russian roulette, and the stars and numbers said the first five chambers were empty - not a single one of them would ever even remotely consider pulling the trigger, not once, not ever.

We are comfort or convenience superstitious. There is zero actual faith behind it.


I mostly agree and run much the same game. I keep everything surprising and wondrous. Players don't get used to things in my game.

I use endless new (and old) things to keep everything new and fresh.

And that is why I like the BECMI/2E magic item creation: The character needs to discover a new secret formula for each item each time they make one AND then they have to go on a quest to get the materials AND then go on a quest to make the magic item.

In my own house rules, I let all classes take magic item creation feats and make magic items. I like the idea that anyone can imbue an item with magic(similar to the idea of artifacts from Warehouse 13).

I used item creation feats in the same way, for a while. And stopped again, because only casters picked them, and also because feat economy doesn't equally allow classes to pick those feats. If I'm ever making a high magic campaign, I may instead just give them as bonus feats.

Vahnavoi
2020-06-20, 11:51 AM
I haven't ever seen a particularly good item creation system in a tabletop RPG. All the really neat ones exist in video games and tend towards such complexity that you kinda need a computer for them to work properly - trying to do the same via hand would be too slow.

Quertus
2020-06-20, 01:18 PM
So, I find this discussion of "novelty" vs "experience" quite interesting.

Myself, I find the game most fun… hmmm… when the *character* - and, thus, the rules surrounding the character - are well known, and the rest of the game has a mix of familiar and unknown.

I (mostly) agree that, when *everything* is unknown, *nothing* feels inherently special. You need to understand how dirt farmers, basic economy, basic gameplay, etc work, before "the unknown" can feel, you know, any more unknown than the strange creature pushing food into your mouth, trying to coerce you into saying "mommy".

It's a great feeling when you roll up on ghouls, and realize that your party consists of 2 Elves, a Warforged, and a Necropolitan. You don't get that when you don't know how ghouls work.

On the other hand, Exploration is my favorite. So, *not* knowing what the strange, emaciated, "look like they ought to be dead" creatures are? It can lead to awesome "dread gazebo" moments.

So, I like a mix.


I haven't ever seen a particularly good item creation system in a tabletop RPG. All the really neat ones exist in video games and tend towards such complexity that you kinda need a computer for them to work properly - trying to do the same via hand would be too slow.

Can you explain what about "computer item creation systems" you find "good"?

Zarrgon
2020-06-20, 03:05 PM
I used item creation feats in the same way, for a while. And stopped again, because only casters picked them, and also because feat economy doesn't equally allow classes to pick those feats. If I'm ever making a high magic campaign, I may instead just give them as bonus feats.

Feat economy? Well, you can always change it.

I find it does balance out.

Because it takes 2-5 adventures just to make a single magic item, there is not a huge "race" to take magic item creation feats. Even most spellcasters don't want to "waste" a feat.

But they will want them sooner or later.




Myself, I find the game most fun… hmmm… when the *character* - and, thus, the rules surrounding the character - are well known, and the rest of the game has a mix of familiar and unknown.

I (mostly) agree that, when *everything* is unknown, *nothing* feels inherently special. You need to understand how dirt farmers, basic economy, basic gameplay, etc work, before "the unknown" can feel, you know, any more unknown than the strange creature pushing food into your mouth, trying to coerce you into saying "mommy".


Well, I like the general knowladge that characters would have. They know about undead, and the couple of types and the General Theory of Undeath....but they DON"T know every rule mechanical detail about every undead encountered with a roll of DC Easy.

But the character....and even better the player...can use that general knowledge for benefit once they figure things out.

Vahnavoi
2020-06-20, 03:09 PM
Can you explain what about "computer item creation systems" you find "good"?

Let's take some specific examples:

In Throne of Darkness, any mundane items you loot from enemies can be given to a smith for raw materials, which then can be used for making whatever other mundane item of equal or lower material value. This takes variable amount of time, with higher quality taking more.

Each item has variable amount of slots. These can be filled with various monster parts and jewelry, which vary in size and hence slot usage. Inventory space is likewise counted in slots. Each such component has its own effect and combinations of components can also have additional effects. Depending on rarity, potency and size of the arrangement alongside material qualities if the base items, a price is paid. The price is not linear, it's combinational, so you can't (for example) spam same small component for ridiculous modifiers without hitting diminishing returns.

The database of base items is at least as largr as number of items you'd find in d20 SRD, as is the amount of possible magical modifiers - probably larger by significant amount, haven't checked the game's libraries for a while.

Now, the rules and lists would be easy to put on paper. The difference is in processing speed. Turning items into raw materials and then to new items requires two table lookups, roughly a minute's work for a living GM - for a computer, it takes a split-second, and available results are visually presented. Crafting time would take a minute of calculations with a calculator or several minutes by hand for a human GM, and then the GM would need to keep track of time - the computer does the first part in a split-second, and the latter part is done in real time on the background, making the process fire-and-forget. Gathering components and arranging them into slots would require a human player to play Tetris with tokens, or laboriously draw and redraw their inventory - the computer auto-arranges. Calculating component effects would require multiple table lookups for a GM, taking minutes - again, the computer does this in a split-second. The prices likewise, and the non-linear parts would make it pretty difficult to calculate - the computer game has built-in spreadsheet, once again making the process trivial.

Second example: in Terraria, you have a vast, tiered database of building materials which can be turned into proper items at the proper crafting workshops. Some of the resulting items can then be combined and recombined to create more complex items, creating some rather tall and wide trees if craftable stuff. Again, the rules and lists would be easy to put on paper - again, the difference is that since the computer autotracks and autostacks the raw materials and does all the table lookups in a split-second, it's convenient to use, as opposed to a massive pain for a living GM.

EDIT: another thing I sometimes see in computer games, is dynamic price lists, updating based on supply and demand and occasionally, random events. (MULE and TZ-Colony come to mind at least.) A massive hassle to do algorithmically by hand, especially if the amount of articles is larger than a handfull, but fairly trivial for a computer game with built-in spreadsheet functions.

Psyren
2020-06-20, 03:57 PM
I don't really like D&D's item creation system. In your opinion, what's the best magic item creation system you've seen?

As this thread proves, "best" means a lot of things to a lot of different people - so it might help if you elaborate a bit on what you don't like about D&D's take on it. For example, there are several things about item creation in D&D (3.5) that I don't like, such as:


You need to be a caster to make any magic items (and for some reason, even alchemical items).
The specific raw materials you need to make something are heavily abstracted, when they're even mentioned at all. Very little consideration is given to unique or rare materials and the effects they might have on an item.
Crafting items, especially mundane items, takes a ridiculous amount of time unless you cheat the system magically.
Material quality/adequacy is measured in gold pieces, which implies a game world where prices are fixed in every locale. (For example, 1500gp worth of ruby dust gets you the same quantity of ruby dust - enough for a Forcecage - whether you're purchasing it in a human city, the dwarven capital, the drow black market in the Underdark etc.)
There is little to no system for quality variance - either for cheap items (might be less effective but could be useful for low-wealth or low-level campaigns) or for signature items (those from a particularly skilled master-smith.) In general, every +2 flaming longsword is the same as every other +2 flaming longsword.


Pathfinder helped alleviate a number of these but it didn't fix all of them, and those that were "fixed" still have some gaps - in part because fixing all of them would have resulted in a system that is either not backwards compatible with 3rd edition, or more cumbersome to play than the gains in fidelity may have accounted for.

Quertus
2020-06-20, 06:40 PM
In Throne of Darkness … slots.

in Terraria, … crafting… trees

dynamic price lists, … MULE and TZ-Colony.

Thanks for the detailed reply. I don't know your references, but…

Slots? Sounds like Battletech to me, works fine for a P&P RPG.

Crafting trees? Sounds like Minecraft to me. I know plenty of people who have memorized most of the build trees. I don't think that I would personally enjoy that in an RPG, but I don't see why it couldn't work.

Dynamic price lists? Yeah, unless it's "we have X, we want Y", that could be a pain.

Vahnavoi
2020-06-20, 07:30 PM

Slots? Sounds like Battletech to me, works fine for a P&P RPG.

If I remember Battletech right, its slots are "you can install X guns on spot Y" while ToD's are "you have 4x3 grid shape which you can fill with 2x2, 2x1, 1x2 and 1x1 shapes".


Crafting trees? Sounds like Minecraft to me. I know plenty of people who have memorized most of the build trees. I don't think that I would personally enjoy that in an RPG, but I don't see why it couldn't work.

From what I remember, Minecraft's system is nearly the same in structure (even if the particular materials and items are different). Again, you can put those trees on paper, you can even memorize them if your brain can fit N+1 units of mostly useless information (the sort of people who memorize Minecraft's crafting trees, play way too much Minecraft). A computer just does it better.


Dynamic price lists? Yeah, unless it's "we have X, we want Y", that could be a pain.

Dynamic price lists mean that there's a changing demand, causing the prices to adjust as the players change the supply. For example, everyone needs some amount of food to survive, so if food is low, it will become very expensive. If there is a surplus of food, it will become cheaper. At extreme ends you can get situations where no-one is selling (because they'd starve) or no-one is buying (massive surpluss means everyone already has storages full, you'd have to pay them to take any more food out of your hands).

It's opposite approach to static price lists, such as those in most version of D&D.

ExLibrisMortis
2020-06-20, 07:48 PM
And my argument would be that people do not generally - really - believe horse shoes, or ladders, or salt, or the numbers 3, 7, 9 or 13 hold any sort of special significance.

I was a manager at a fancy restaurant a few years ago, and we had a woman who'd come regularly, and use our venue for sessions with her clients. She was a numerologist - and while I appologize to any believers in that particular brand, that's utter nonsense and quackery to me - and she'd charge in the amount of a thousand USD pr. session, pr. client, usually 4-6 pr. session.

What I'm saying is she'd make, on average, 5000 dollars each session, spouting nonsense related to numbers - and I'm convinced to the very marrow of my bones that neither that woman nor her clients had any real faith that it actually worked. Not a single on of them would resort to numerology should they be facing any sort of real challenge. If they did numerology russian roulette, and the stars and numbers said the first five chambers were empty - not a single one of them would ever even remotely consider pulling the trigger, not once, not ever.

We are comfort or convenience superstitious. There is zero actual faith behind it.
I think you're being unfair on the numerologist and her clients, and a lot of history besides. You're confusing your own (modern-standards-of-proof) view of magical practices with the perspective held by the people who actually practice(d) them. Even if you can prove that a given ritual doesn't accomplish what it claims to do (to be clear: I think you can, and I think numerology doesn't work), you can't project modern scientific standards of evidence back in time as if magic not working should've been obvious all along. I'll quote an actual historian on this, so you know it's not just me:


The common temptation as moderns reading history is to assume that everyone in the past was just stupid (as if we don’t believe similarly ridiculous things!) or that all of the ‘smart’ ones (and so often ‘smart’ is unthinkingly equated with ‘rich elites’) viewed this all cynically. As I have said before, and I will say again, it is generally safe to assume that people in the past believed their own religion.
I recommend reading his blog posts on polytheism (https://acoup.blog/2019/10/25/collections-practical-polytheism-part-i-knowledge/). You will notice a huge overlap with D&D magic (which, after all, includes divine magic).

Kaptin Keen
2020-06-21, 12:31 AM
I think you're being unfair on the numerologist and her clients, and a lot of history besides. You're confusing your own (modern-standards-of-proof) view of magical practices with the perspective held by the people who actually practice(d) them. Even if you can prove that a given ritual doesn't accomplish what it claims to do (to be clear: I think you can, and I think numerology doesn't work), you can't project modern scientific standards of evidence back in time as if magic not working should've been obvious all along. I'll quote an actual historian on this, so you know it's not just me:

I'm not confusing anything. I may be wrong, sure. But I know exactly what I'm saying, and why.

Also, since you're already bringing up religion, I think we should let this little sidetrack alone =)

Vahnavoi
2020-06-21, 06:12 AM
The sidetrack about religion reminds me of another neat trait of Throne of Darkness item system:

Making items magic also makes them sacred. You cannot trade a magic item back for raw materials, components or money; you can only offer them to gods. This serves a function in the game's character development system, but I want to focus on what it means for created items: you cannot infinitely recycle limited resources for new items. If you aren't happy with your magic item, you cannot straightforwardly trade it for what you want, you have to go looking for more raw materials and components, creating incentive to keep moving forward in the game. Furthermore, there is a way for magic items to be removed from circulation. They don't accumulate in magic marts, they are consumed by gods or relocated to shrines. In a tabletop game, this'd mean that acquiring them without divine permission invokes the wrath of gods - a classic trope on its own (or at least, I learned pretty fast that taking anything from an altar is dangerous in my early days of playing), but this ties it all together, explaining why you'd go adventuring in ancient temples, and why it's so important to bring a cleric with you.

Quertus
2020-06-21, 06:56 AM
If I remember Battletech right, its slots are "you can install X guns on spot Y" while ToD's are "you have 4x3 grid shape which you can fill with 2x2, 2x1, 1x2 and 1x1 shapes".

Y spots, each of which has their own (different) value for slots. So, there's definitely some Tetris involved, at times. Also, different locations change the "value" of the weapon (most trivially, as damage is tracked by location, but also because firing arcs (and "fire when down" rules) vary by location).

So, sounds reasonable equivalent complexity, and fine for pencil & paper gaming.


From what I remember, Minecraft's system is nearly the same in structure (even if the particular materials and items are different). Again, you can put those trees on paper, you can even memorize them if your brain can fit N+1 units of mostly useless information (the sort of people who memorize Minecraft's crafting trees, play way too much Minecraft). A computer just does it better.

Flip that: play it a lot, and you'll naturally memorize the parts that are important to you.

Agreed that it's easier to just let the computer track it.


Dynamic price lists mean that there's a changing demand, causing the prices to adjust as the players change the supply. For example, everyone needs some amount of food to survive, so if food is low, it will become very expensive. If there is a surplus of food, it will become cheaper. At extreme ends you can get situations where no-one is selling (because they'd starve) or no-one is buying (massive surpluss means everyone already has storages full, you'd have to pay them to take any more food out of your hands).

It's opposite approach to static price lists, such as those in most version of D&D.

Only care about one resource - like "food" - and it *might* be playable.

ExLibrisMortis
2020-06-21, 12:23 PM
I'm not confusing anything. I may be wrong, sure. But I know exactly what I'm saying, and why.
...

Your answers suggest otherwise. You're clearly not understanding any point I've made. I once again suggest you read that blog. Maybe you'll finally see what you're misunderstanding. Other than that, I'm done here.

Kaptin Keen
2020-06-21, 12:32 PM
...

Your answers suggest otherwise. You're clearly not understanding any point I've made. I once again suggest you read that blog. Maybe you'll finally see what you're misunderstanding. Other than that, I'm done here.

No see - I just don't agree with you.

PairO'Dice Lost
2020-06-21, 09:08 PM
There is literally no where in the rules that dictates D&D should be high magic.
[...]
Sure, there are some guidelines for WBL and expected gear and prices for magic items and so on - but there's quite literally no place in any book I've read (and I've read at least 5) that tells you the density and stock of Ye Olden Magic Shoppe franchises.

There are, in fact, lots of things in D&D pointing to ubiquitous high magic. Looking at the 3e core books in particular, the WBL rules say they're about the number and power of magic items possessed by PCs, not oodles of mundane gear; the gold limit rules say that PCs can buy any magic item below the settlement's gold limit in any settlement with no "Oh, sorry, no potions today because the alchemist is sick" caveats; the NPC level rules say that every single small town has at least 6 1st-level-or-higher spellcasters in it and on average you get many more casters and much higher levels (especially with the "+10 for druids in thorps and hamlets on 96+%" thing); the monster rules say that monster abilities basically advance in conjunction with PC magic (petrification and stone to flesh come online at similar levels, DR/magic and magic weapon come online at roughly the same level, and so on) and that CR should be increased if those assumptions don't hold; and so forth.

Looking at splatbooks, modules, and different editions, adventures routinely hand out dozens of magic items; AD&D parties famously end up with enough +1 weapons by the mid levels to freely hand them out to henchmen and hirelings; there are more spellcasting classes in every edition than there are non-spellcasting classes; all of the mid-to-high-level "boss monsters" (beholders, dragons, outsiders of various stripes) are dangerous for their magic and only secondarily for their melee capabilities; low-level followers are assumed to basically stop mattering against monsters past a certain point and are never factored into PC forces for XP calculations; and so forth.

Yes, there's no sentence in the DMG that says "Oh by the way, the D&D world is absolutely swimming in magic and if you try to run Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, Conan the Barbarian, or Lord of the Rings exactly as written you're gonna need to change a ton of stuff because it won't work by default," but if you run things with the rules as presented and no houserules or setting-specific tweaks to the contrary, you inevitably end up with a high-magic setting.


I do house rule a few things. For instance that barbarian rage can break certain types of debuffs. I generally remove Teleport entirely. But otherwise, I play reasonably close to RAW. It's a flavor thing, not a system thing. And then, to be frank, almost universally RPG systems are crap. I've played Shadowrun (2e, 3e, 4e), Dark Heresy, Earthdawn, Warhammer RP, Call of Cthulhu, Mythos, Cyperpunk, and many more besides, and from a technical standpoint, only Dark Heresy and Call of Cthulhu work. That's not to say they're better systems, more like they're made simply enough to be mechanically sound - but for the same reason, often limited.

So I take what I can work with and leave the rest be. Dark Heresy (and WHFRP to a degree, but I've never GM'd that) are systems that work, but they're very locked into their respective game worlds, and hardly useful for playing anything else.

So ... in the final outcome, I play D&D because it's simple, it kinda works for it's given purpose, it's flexible enough to do whatever I want it to do, and everyone knows it.

Yeah, definitely agreed on the distaste for most systems; I'm happy to run other games for shorter or highly-focused campaigns, but just about the only other RPG I can stand to run as much as D&D these days is Fate, and even then only for short adventures because it gets pretty mechanically bland after a while.

As I like to say, D&D 3e (and its d20 System derivatives) is probably the most solid, balanced, and playtested RPG system out there...and given how variable, breakable, and fuzzy it can be, that really tells you how horrifically bad all the rest are. :smallamused:


Well, I like the general knowladge that characters would have. They know about undead, and the couple of types and the General Theory of Undeath....but they DON"T know every rule mechanical detail about every undead encountered with a roll of DC Easy.

I would point out that, at least in 3e, the monster knowledge rules are pretty clear about what information you can get and what DCs you need to hit to get it. The "make a single Knowledge roll, get to look at the stat block" thing that tends to come up in Knowledge discussions is either hyperbole or a very permissive reading of "useful bit of information." So you don't actually need to keep 'brewing up new monsters to prevent PCs from knowing too much in such a system--not to say that you shouldn't brew up lots of monsters, since I don't even know if you run 3e, just that "PCs know some useful information but still need to be creative" is the default assumption in D&D.



The specific raw materials you need to make something are heavily abstracted, when they're even mentioned at all. Very little consideration is given to unique or rare materials and the effects they might have on an item.

I'd quibble with this being a problem, since leaving things abstracted can be a good thing for different settings. The thing where a +1 flaming sword requires a handful of gemstones out of 100+ possible varieties if you're in FR, obsidian and more obsidian if you're in Dark Sun, one of three kinds of dragonshard if you're in Eberron, and so on is a nice bit of distinctive setting flavor, and a more concrete system would require writing up a bunch of correspondences between abstract resources or big ol' lists of specific ingredients to get the same flavor when dealing with new settings. And with the incredible variety of possible magic items, any treatment of rare materials would probably end up like the Power Component or Special Holy Symbol rules, small and arbitrary collections of particular benefits gained when making particular items with particular ingredients.

I can totally get behind making magic item creation more involved when it comes to special ingredients, but I don't think heavy levels of abstraction and/or DM judgment are really avoidable. I came up with a set of ingredient-based magic item crafting houserules for my last campaign, where monster parts were the primary source of loot so instead of getting "a +2 frost spear" you'd get "2,000 gp worth of mammoth ivory" or the like and different kinds of parts were particularly attuned with certain kinds of items, not useful for other kinds of items, and neutral toward the rest, and it was very thematic and nicely procedural-generation-y...but it required me to be very broad with all the categories, heavily restrict the legal items and available monsters based on the setting, write up separate loot entries for every single monster, and still okay or veto a lot of edge-case combinations, because there's no good way to generalize that kind of thing and end up with something concrete.



Material quality/adequacy is measured in gold pieces, which implies a game world where prices are fixed in every locale. (For example, 1500gp worth of ruby dust gets you the same quantity of ruby dust - enough for a Forcecage - whether you're purchasing it in a human city, the dwarven capital, the drow black market in the Underdark etc.)

This isn't all that weird if you view it as the value of gold being pegged to the magical use it can be put to, rather than magical reagents being given gold prices in a vacuum. In a world where any kind of material can be conjured out of thin air or retrieved from the planes (with varying degrees of effort, obviously), a currency backed by a "magic standard" makes a lot of sense, such that it's not that a handful of ruby dust gets its value because it's worth 50 gp, but that 50 gp gets its value because it's worth 1 continual flame or 1/30 of 1 forcecage or the like.

That, plus the existence of relatively common interplanar/inter-setting trade and the nonexistence of fiat currency/market inflation/etc., makes fixed constant magic item prices a reasonable setting element, I feel.

Coretron03
2020-06-21, 09:54 PM
I second Ars Magicia 5E for having the best Magic Item creation system. Because of the nature of the games spell system, you get lots of freedom in creating the effect. The system gives you a variety ways of boosting your score and personalising the item, such as giving it customised triggers like being dropped or the sun setting and letting you set how many uses you want per day. Definitely the coolest system I’ve found in terms of magic and the item creation is no exception.

Kaptin Keen
2020-06-22, 02:09 AM
There are, in fact, lots of things in D&D pointing to ubiquitous high magic. Looking at the 3e core books in particular, the WBL rules say they're about the number and power of magic items possessed by PCs, not oodles of mundane gear; the gold limit rules say that PCs can buy any magic item below the settlement's gold limit in any settlement with no "Oh, sorry, no potions today because the alchemist is sick" caveats; the NPC level rules say that every single small town has at least 6 1st-level-or-higher spellcasters in it and on average you get many more casters and much higher levels (especially with the "+10 for druids in thorps and hamlets on 96+%" thing); the monster rules say that monster abilities basically advance in conjunction with PC magic (petrification and stone to flesh come online at similar levels, DR/magic and magic weapon come online at roughly the same level, and so on) and that CR should be increased if those assumptions don't hold; and so forth.

Looking at splatbooks, modules, and different editions, adventures routinely hand out dozens of magic items; AD&D parties famously end up with enough +1 weapons by the mid levels to freely hand them out to henchmen and hirelings; there are more spellcasting classes in every edition than there are non-spellcasting classes; all of the mid-to-high-level "boss monsters" (beholders, dragons, outsiders of various stripes) are dangerous for their magic and only secondarily for their melee capabilities; low-level followers are assumed to basically stop mattering against monsters past a certain point and are never factored into PC forces for XP calculations; and so forth.

Yes, there's no sentence in the DMG that says "Oh by the way, the D&D world is absolutely swimming in magic and if you try to run Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, Conan the Barbarian, or Lord of the Rings exactly as written you're gonna need to change a ton of stuff because it won't work by default," but if you run things with the rules as presented and no houserules or setting-specific tweaks to the contrary, you inevitably end up with a high-magic setting.

See - I know what you're saying, of course. I know the rules, I must have read them a hundred times. But you're looking at them through a filter that confirms your view, and it's possible to look at the same rules through a different filter that doesn't.

Under the heading Character Power Levels, on page 135 of the PHB, it states clearly that you - the GM - must control and match power level of PC's to match their challenges, and just below, under Character Wealth, it states that the table is based on average treasures in average encounters.

In other words: It's all up to the GM, and the WBL table is a guideline that assumes average treasure and average encounters.

It's not a rule. You cannot as a player look up that table and hang your GM out to dry with the statement that 'I'm now level 6, where's my 13.000 gp.'

It's a little different for towns. There are rules for making towns of various sizes, and they clearly forgot to mention that those rules are also a guideline - at least, I didn't find any such thing. But clearly, even if you accept the rules and feel that 'all towns must confirm to this', obviously the game doesn't force you to litter the land with towns full of spellcasters.

What's more, the rules are obviously 100% bogus. One of their examples is a hamlet of 30 people - and states that if the PC's want to buy longswords, they'll find that the hamlet only has 30 such swords for sale. Which is clearly insane, and the guy who typed that out should have been fired on the spot. Why would there even be a longsword - for sale - in a tiny hole-in-the-ground dirtfarmer community in the middle of nowhere?!

But nevermind. Suffice it to say that I'm well aware my view of the rules is the minority view, but I'm not twisting the rules out of shape to play the game.


Yeah, definitely agreed on the distaste for most systems; I'm happy to run other games for shorter or highly-focused campaigns, but just about the only other RPG I can stand to run as much as D&D these days is Fate, and even then only for short adventures because it gets pretty mechanically bland after a while.

I'm not sure it's a distaste. For instance, I love Shadowrun - but it's by far the worst system I ever played. I'd go so far as say it's literally unplayable without serious help.

But yes, D&D is good in so far as you know exactly what you're getting. It's not so much that it works, because it doesn't - but it runs. Like an old crapheap car you love to hate, it starts every time, and though the aircon gives you hot instead of cold and the blinker has fallen off, it get's you from A to B.

Quertus
2020-06-22, 05:39 AM
I'd quibble with this being a problem, since leaving things abstracted can be a good thing for different settings. The thing where a +1 flaming sword requires a handful of gemstones out of 100+ possible varieties if you're in FR, obsidian and more obsidian if you're in Dark Sun, one of three kinds of dragonshard if you're in Eberron, and so on is a nice bit of distinctive setting flavor, and a more concrete system would require writing up a bunch of correspondences between abstract resources or big ol' lists of specific ingredients to get the same flavor when dealing with new settings. And with the incredible variety of possible magic items, any treatment of rare materials would probably end up like the Power Component or Special Holy Symbol rules, small and arbitrary collections of particular benefits gained when making particular items with particular ingredients.

I can totally get behind making magic item creation more involved when it comes to special ingredients, but I don't think heavy levels of abstraction and/or DM judgment are really avoidable. I came up with a set of ingredient-based magic item crafting houserules for my last campaign, where monster parts were the primary source of loot so instead of getting "a +2 frost spear" you'd get "2,000 gp worth of mammoth ivory" or the like and different kinds of parts were particularly attuned with certain kinds of items, not useful for other kinds of items, and neutral toward the rest, and it was very thematic and nicely procedural-generation-y...but it required me to be very broad with all the categories, heavily restrict the legal items and available monsters based on the setting, write up separate loot entries for every single monster, and still okay or veto a lot of edge-case combinations, because there's no good way to generalize that kind of thing and end up with something concrete.

So, why is "GM judgement" a negative here?

I've had characters write up "magic item recipes" based on the items that they've collected / harvested.

So, suppose I took that mammoth horn, and carved it into a pair of Wands.

One Wand, I smeared with a paste made from 1000 hand-collected wasps and the blood and sweat of a dozen apprentice Wizards, and tipped with the adamantine arrowhead used to carve it. Will that fly for a Wand of Magic Missile? What if I did one step (the carving, the smearing, the tipping) on a battlefield where at least 1,000 lives were lost to arrows?

The second wand, I leave soaking in Dragon blood for a year and a day. I pull it out and set it on a dwarven hearth, and pull out a ruby, mined by my own hands during its bath, imbued with the spirit of a Fire Elemental. I break and powder the ruby over the wand, then grasp it, and thrust my hand and it into lava. Good for an Eternal Wand of Fireball? What if I add a core made from the heart of a sulfur elemental, and find an anthropomorphic bat Tainted Sorcerer, and use its intestines for the Dragon blood bath?

Then I powder all the scrap mammoth horn bits. I take the head of a mace, wielded by a Cleric of Saint Cuthbert for at least 10 levels, and melt it down, forging a ring from a bit of the metal. I soak the ring in a bath of anthropomorphic rhino Monk drool, imbued with the powdered mammoth horn. Good for a Ring of the Ram? What if I add runes carved by a dwarven smith?

I guess my question is, what did you gain by explicitly calling out components, and by limiting what items could be made?

aglondier
2020-06-22, 07:08 AM
So, why is "GM judgement" a negative here?

I've had characters write up "magic item recipes" based on the items that they've collected / harvested.

So, suppose I took that mammoth horn, and carved it into a pair of Wands.

One Wand, I smeared with a paste made from 1000 hand-collected wasps and the blood and sweat of a dozen apprentice Wizards, and tipped with the adamantine arrowhead used to carve it. Will that fly for a Wand of Magic Missile? What if I did one step (the carving, the smearing, the tipping) on a battlefield where at least 1,000 lives were lost to arrows?

The second wand, I leave soaking in Dragon blood for a year and a day. I pull it out and set it on a dwarven hearth, and pull out a ruby, mined by my own hands during its bath, imbued with the spirit of a Fire Elemental. I break and powder the ruby over the wand, then grasp it, and thrust my hand and it into lava. Good for an Eternal Wand of Fireball? What if I add a core made from the heart of a sulfur elemental, and find an anthropomorphic bat Tainted Sorcerer, and use its intestines for the Dragon blood bath?

Then I powder all the scrap mammoth horn bits. I take the head of a mace, wielded by a Cleric of Saint Cuthbert for at least 10 levels, and melt it down, forging a ring from a bit of the metal. I soak the ring in a bath of anthropomorphic rhino Monk drool, imbued with the powdered mammoth horn. Good for a Ring of the Ram? What if I add runes carved by a dwarven smith?

I guess my question is, what did you gain by explicitly calling out components, and by limiting what items could be made?

Damn...now I'm feeling inspired. I'll be crunching numbers with pf/3.5 item creation, but the roleplay aspect is coming straight out of this guys playbook...

Psyren
2020-06-22, 08:53 AM
I'd quibble with this being a problem, since leaving things abstracted can be a good thing for different settings. The thing where a +1 flaming sword requires a handful of gemstones out of 100+ possible varieties if you're in FR, obsidian and more obsidian if you're in Dark Sun, one of three kinds of dragonshard if you're in Eberron, and so on is a nice bit of distinctive setting flavor, and a more concrete system would require writing up a bunch of correspondences between abstract resources or big ol' lists of specific ingredients to get the same flavor when dealing with new settings. And with the incredible variety of possible magic items, any treatment of rare materials would probably end up like the Power Component or Special Holy Symbol rules, small and arbitrary collections of particular benefits gained when making particular items with particular ingredients.

I did say these were my own bugbears, rather than universal problems :smallamused: but responding anyway...

The issue i have is a minor one, but could be summed up as - I can already abstract stuff as the GM if I want to. When I buy a book though, I'm paying the designers to give me ideas. They can be labelled as wholly optional and they don't have to cover every item ever printed, but getting at least some guidance. Having a list of flowers., herbs, or body parts in Golarion that typically have magical properties can help me if I want to put together a survival sort of setting. It's kind of like how Pathfinder's Alchemy Manual gave me ideas for what specific components you might need to craft various substances, or what extra effects certain other components could have when mixed in with the vague ones.


I can totally get behind making magic item creation more involved when it comes to special ingredients, but I don't think heavy levels of abstraction and/or DM judgment are really avoidable. I came up with a set of ingredient-based magic item crafting houserules for my last campaign, where monster parts were the primary source of loot so instead of getting "a +2 frost spear" you'd get "2,000 gp worth of mammoth ivory" or the like and different kinds of parts were particularly attuned with certain kinds of items, not useful for other kinds of items, and neutral toward the rest, and it was very thematic and nicely procedural-generation-y...but it required me to be very broad with all the categories, heavily restrict the legal items and available monsters based on the setting, write up separate loot entries for every single monster, and still okay or veto a lot of edge-case combinations, because there's no good way to generalize that kind of thing and end up with something concrete.

For individuals like you and me this may be true, but games with design teams have done it reasonably well. Consider any Elder Scrolls game for instance, or the Divinity series, or recent games like Breath of the Wild and Monster Hunter World. It's not like I'm asking for something nobody has ever been able to do.


This isn't all that weird if you view it as the value of gold being pegged to the magical use it can be put to, rather than magical reagents being given gold prices in a vacuum. In a world where any kind of material can be conjured out of thin air or retrieved from the planes (with varying degrees of effort, obviously), a currency backed by a "magic standard" makes a lot of sense, such that it's not that a handful of ruby dust gets its value because it's worth 50 gp, but that 50 gp gets its value because it's worth 1 continual flame or 1/30 of 1 forcecage or the like.

That, plus the existence of relatively common interplanar/inter-setting trade and the nonexistence of fiat currency/market inflation/etc., makes fixed constant magic item prices a reasonable setting element, I feel.

Oh I agree with that being a great explanation for the global prices we see in the book. I'm more interested in guidance around a high-level system that allows for fluctuations depending on local conditions. Planar trading/retrieval isn't really relevant if there are no conjurers around for example, or if there's a war on that restricts such activities. Again, I'm more after guidelines here than specifics. When are some examples of reasonable times to expect a markup, and how severe should it be? What party abilities could be used to circumvent it? etc.

Zarrgon
2020-06-22, 12:24 PM
It's a little different for towns. There are rules for making towns of various sizes, and they clearly forgot to mention that those rules are also a guideline - at least, I didn't find any such thing. But clearly, even if you accept the rules and feel that 'all towns must confirm to this', obviously the game doesn't force you to litter the land with towns full of spellcasters.


My favorite "workaround" here that I use for Rules Lawyers: Ok sure the town only has "forever" whatever number of wizards page 77 says.

But, ok, the Guild of Magic is...oh...50 feet outside of town. Ok, officially outside of town.....and has 102 wizards.

Plus I've gotten some fun with "a force" blocking a PC wizard from entering a town as the town already has the maximum number of wizards in it....hehe.