D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7

[stainboy]

Very interesting.

A couple of points. First, it seems workable as long as all common items are one-shot consumables (that may be the intent but we don't know that yet).

This seems likely. "Common item" is currently almost synonymous with "healing potion." A healing potion cures average 7 HP. Ashdate's 35.2 Common items over 64 encounters works out to a little less than 4 free HP per encounter. That's pretty reasonable. In 3e terms it's 2/3 of a cure stick over multiple character levels. I can't vouch for the number of healing potions being spot-on but it looks like it's at least *sort of* in the right ballpark.

The only other Common item offered is a Potion of Climbing. What's likely to happen is DMs hand out as many healing potions as is necessary to keep the game running, which will either take the entire Common item budget and then some, or barely leave room for a handful of Climb Pots and other basic buff consumables.

Speaking of consumables, those 8 uncommon magic items include spell scrolls. I can easily see 46 magic items in the Caves of Chaos working out to only 1-2 permanent items per party member. Which might be too high depending on personal preference but it's at least within the realm of sanity.

Here's something that bothers me though: They game works fine if you can buy Commons at Magic Mart, but starting at Uncommon the game both breaks if the PCs can buy items and breaks if they can't. The Cloak of Elvenkind is a stealth patch-fix and you basically don't want to play a rogue unless you can get one, but it's in the same rarity tier as Gauntlets of Ogre Power which reward fighters macebro clerics for dumping Strength like 3e druids.

[obryn]

I don't see the problem. It is clearly spelled out that the party is not expected to have any magic items at all. As a DM, just use whatever you like.

Except the party is supposed to have some items. It's still baked into the armor system where you need to buy your way into a better AC with various (technically non-magical, but I fail to see the difference) new suits of armor... Which means there's an implied wealth-by-level or at least expected character wealth value.

If WotC is going to give any encounter-building guidelines at all, there has to be an expectation one way or the other baked into the system regarding item bonuses. I've said it before and I'll say it again - you can't have it both ways.

What's more, I don't think we're getting out of this edition without monsters that need magic weapons to hit them. I dearly hope we do, but I just don't think it's going to happen.

-O

[Ashdate]

Here's some more calculations to ponder over (something similar to what Knaight is doing):

Let's again assume that we have a party of four characters, and that all encounters fall on the "easy/average/tough" mark in terms of experience exactly. Thus, for levels 1 through 5, you have the following "encounter" budgets:

Level: Easy / Average / Tough
1: 160 / 260 / 400
2: 280 / 480 / 720
3: 560 / 920 / 1380
4: 940 / 1580 / 2380

A party of four characters will level up when the following XP total is gained (essentially, the amount for a character to level x 4):

Level 1: 0xp
Level 2: 2600xp (+2600xp)
Level 3: 7300xp (+4700xp)
Level 4: 14100xp (+6800xp)
Level 5: 31900xp (+17800xp)

(tangent: does anyone think these values are kind of pulled out of nowhere, especially considering the idea that monsters are expected to be threatening for several levels beyond their listed one?):

With these we can create an equation to figure out "roughly" how many fights/day are required to level. We'll assume, for the sake of argument, that following the advice that the "bulk" of encounters "fall into the average range" (DM Guidelines page 10), that there is a 20/60/20 split; 20% of the encounters faced are "easy', 20% are "tough", and the remaining 60% are "average".

Without going into a lot of math, this means that getting from level 1 (0xp) to level 2 (2600xp) requires roughly two easy encounters, six average encounters, and two tough encounters (2/6/2; total xp gained: 2680xp). A slightly different ratio (1/6/2) will get you enough experience (plus change) to get to almost get to level 3 (+4600xp, 7280xp total). A 2/5/1 ratio will get you to level 4 plus change (+7100xp, 14380 total). Finally, a 2/7/2 ratio will get you enough experience to get to level 5 (+17700xp, 32080xp total).

(aside: again, where does this math come from?)

So we could roughly calculate the journey from level 1 to 5 as being one where a party of four people encounter seven "easy" encounters, 24 "average" encounters, and seven "tough" encounters. The percentages end up being 18.42% / 63.16% / 18.42% which works out reasonably close to our 20/60/20% goal.

From here, we can work out the average number of magical items that a party gets; as shown before, the playtest currently only really has Potions of Healing as "common" items, so I'll skip those in favour of the more "meaty" items.

Math spoilered:

Spoiler

Show

Easy Encounters
Uncommon items gained: (7 * 0.06 * 0.5) + (7 * 0.03) + (7 * 0.01 * 1.5) = 0.525 items
Rare items gained: (7 * 0.03 * 0.5) + (7 * 0.01) = 0.175 items
Very Rare items gained: (7 * 0.01 * 0.5) = 0.035 items

Average Encounters
Uncommon items gained: (24 * 0.2 * 0.5) + (24 * 0.1 * 1.5) = 6 items
Rare items gained: (24 * 0.06 * 0.5) + (24 * 0.01 * 1.5) = 1.08 items
Very rare items gained: (24 * 0.01) = 0.24 items
Legendary items gained: (24 * 0.01 * 0.5) = 0.12 items

Tough Encounters
Uncommon items gained: (7 * 0.2 * 0.5) + (7 * 0.3 * 1.5) = 3.85 items
Rare items gained: (7 * 0.2 * 0.5) + (7 * 0.1 * 1.5) = 1.75 items
Very rare items gained: (7 * 0.06 * 0.5) + (7 * 0.03) + (7 * 0.01 * 1.5) = 0.525 items
Legendary items gained: (7 * 0.04 * 0.5) = 0.14 items
Artifact items gained: (7 * 0.01) = 0.07 items

Total Uncommon items expected: 10.375 Uncommon items
Total Rare items expected: 3.005 Rare items
Very Rare items expected: 0.68 Very Rare items
Legendary items expected: 0.26 Legendary items
Artifact items expected: 0.07 Artifact items

Total Uncommon of greater items expected that a party of four PCs will gain from level 1 (0xp) to roughly the beginning of level 5 (32080xp): 14.39

While there are not experience totals above level 5 currently, we can speculate that using a 7/24/7 model will roughly allow a group of four players to gain four levels. From here, we can guesstimate the number of magical items a party will gain from level 1 to 20, by simply taking the above totals and multiplying by 5:

Uncommon items expected: 51.875
Rare items expected: 15.025
Very Rare items expected: 3.4
Legendary items expected: 1.3
Artifacts expected: 0.35

Therefore in the "end-game", players will have roughly thirteen "uncommon" items each (although one could expect replacements), 4 "rare" items each, and one "very rare/legendary/artifact" item per PC.

Question for discussion: Putting aside the variability, does the above "feel" right, as an example of what a level 20 character might be packing in a generic campaign?

Personal opinion: I think the "average" numbers sound about right, but what worries me is that the potential variability is much, much too large. I don't mind a "let the dice fall where they may" option, but one that produced more consistent results would be nice.

What I would like to see (aside from tighter math) is some basic conceit that players want and should gain magical items. If we agree that 13 uncommon, four rare, and one "very rare/legendary" item should be "gained" between levels 1 and 20, why not cut out the middle (dice) man?

Levels 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17: award an uncommon item to each player
Levels 3, 8, 13, and 18: Award a rare item to each player
Level 19: award a very rare/legendary item to each player (btw, combine the two catagories)

Encourage an artifact (items that benefit the entire party directly) to be put in the game as a source of plot hooks if the DM wishes, around level 10.

For magic-lite games, you can cut the amount given in half. Remove the uncommon items gained at levels 1, 5, 7, 9, 12, 15, and 17, and the rare items gained at 3 and 13 (leaving item gains at level 2, 4, 6, 8, 11, 14, 16. and 18).

In any case, it would be relatively easy to determine how decorated a "Christmas tree" you want each character to be. Baking such an assumption into the system would be a good idea in my opinion.

[Zombimode]

It's still baked into the armor system where you need to buy your way into a better AC with various (technically non-magical, but I fail to see the difference) new suits of armor... Which means there's an implied wealth-by-level or at least expected character wealth value.

Since to-hit values do not fluctuate that wildly, you actually don't need to upgrade your AC constantly. Some enemies just hit more often then others.

If WotC is going to give any encounter-building guidelines at all, there has to be an expectation one way or the other baked into the system regarding item bonuses.

Exactly, and the expectation is: none at all:

You determine how many magic items characters
can find in your adventures. The game does not
assume that characters need them to succeed.
Magic items, when found at all, simply make PCs
better.

What's more, I don't think we're getting out of this edition without monsters that need magic weapons to hit them. I dearly hope we do, but I just don't think it's going to happen.

1. When every PC is expected to have a magic weapon, immunity/resistance to non-magic weapons becomes rather pointless. How many times in 3.5 DR magic has actually mattered?

2. Only when creatures with immunity/resistance to non-magic weapons are ubiquitous it becomes a problem, when PC generally don't have access to them, since it hoses a large range of characters. Likewise with magic resistance/immunity. Just make those creatures a rare occurrence.

[TheOOB]

Monsters attack and AC are balanced assuming no magic items. If a character has a magic weapon, they hit more often, and if they have magic armor, they get hit less often, but they should do fine without.

[Kurald Galain]

Funny thing... it's easy to claim that magic items are unnecessary for a party to function. However, in practice it works differently. Assuming magical items do something useful, then a party with magical items is clearly at a higher power level than a party without magical items.

Simply put, this means that a party with magical items will be able to deal with more challenging encounters and/or higher level monsters than a party without. This is, of course, precisely the same as in every earlier edition. Just with an added CYA disclaimer.

[Seerow]

One thing you guys forgot in calculating number of magic items is if you get consumables instead of a permanent item, you get 1d2+2. So if you get 35 common items, and assume they are all consumable, you actually have 122 average consumables.

[Yora]

Funny thing... it's easy to claim that magic items are unnecessary for a party to function. However, in practice it works differently. Assuming magical items do something useful, then a party with magical items is clearly at a higher power level than a party without magical items.

Simply put, this means that a party with magical items will be able to deal with more challenging encounters and/or higher level monsters than a party without. This is, of course, precisely the same as in every earlier edition. Just with an added CYA disclaimer.

The really bif difference is the change of Damage Reduction to be always 50% instead of a fixed amount. Getting through DR 15/magic with nonmagic daggers isn't fun. A raging barbarian with a greataxe would still deal good damage, but getting +15 to damage rolls as a rogue, bard, or ranger isn't easy. And in 3.5e there are CR 10 monsters like that.
But when your measly 1d4+2 deals 2 points of damage instead of 4, it just takes twice as long. If your 1d6+5 may even deal no damage on a critical hit, it's not simply taking longer, but pretty much impossible.
And while melee characters in 3rd Edtitions can be made to work at higher levels with a lot of magic items, the difference between a wizard and a fighter would be much greater without any magic items.

It's not as if it was impossible to play without magic items, but there are many way to make it much more easy to do so without a headache.

[obryn]

Since to-hit values do not fluctuate that wildly, you actually don't need to upgrade your AC constantly. Some enemies just hit more often then others.

Exactly, and the expectation is: none at all:

WotC might claim there's no reliance on magic items. But that's not what the system is actually telling us right now, and systems speak louder than philosophy.

That system has the following features right now:
(1) Increasing values to-hit and increasing armor classes of targets. Much slower than previously, but it's there.
(2) The ability to purchase improvements on defense through strict upgrades costing GP. This improves base ACs by up to 2 for relatively reasonable costs. Further improvements from magic are possible.
(3) Increasing ability scores, which will improve both to-hit and AC.
(4) Magic items with mathematical bonuses to-hit.

We have a "bounded accuracy" system in place which means there's a very strict range of potential bonuses. If your success rate on an attack is 50%, any +1 means you hit 10% more often. This means the value of a +1 sword is leaps & bounds above what it was before. (Armor improvements are even crazier if monsters' attack bonuses stay as bad as they are right now.)

If their philosophy is "no dependence on magic items" then they need to provide a system which actually accomplishes these goals.

Also, without clear guidelines or expectations, the encounter guidelines they provide become basically worthless. I don't like 3e or 4e's reliance on magic items, but one of the reasons their encounter balancing guidelines are even close is because those bonuses are figured into the math. These problems are exacerbated - not mitigated - by bounded accuracy. You can't have it both ways.

EDIT:

Simply put, this means that a party with magical items will be able to deal with more challenging encounters and/or higher level monsters than a party without. This is, of course, precisely the same as in every earlier edition. Just with an added CYA disclaimer.

Yep, only a bit worse. With 3.x and 4e, I at least knew an expected range of items that were expected and knew when I'd exceeded that.

-O

[1337 b4k4]

Funny thing... it's easy to claim that magic items are unnecessary for a party to function. However, in practice it works differently. Assuming magical items do something useful, then a party with magical items is clearly at a higher power level than a party without magical items.

Simply put, this means that a party with magical items will be able to deal with more challenging encounters and/or higher level monsters than a party without. This is, of course, precisely the same as in every earlier edition. Just with an added CYA disclaimer.

I'm not sure what the complaint here is. Are you complaining that magic items make characters more powerful? This seems like an obvious thing. Of course giving your players more powerful items makes them more powerful. At a party that I give a +1 bonus to all attributes is at a higher power level than one I don't. Same with a party full of armored characters is at a higher level than a party full of unarmored fools.

Are you looking to have players without magic items be on equal footing as players with magic items? That just doesn't make sense. The whole point of a magic item is to do something out of the ordinary. By definition that means someone with magic items is at a higher power level than someone else.

What they mean when they say that there is no assumption that players will have magic items is that if you take the standard class progression, with the standard equipment list, with the standard XP values for the standard monsters, that your players will be able to satisfactorily play through from level 1 to 20 without falling behind a power curve and requiring DM intervention to artificially boost their power. This was not so of 4e and to a lesser extent any prior edition.

Introducing magic items will increase the players power level and make things easier, but that isn't the same thing as expecting the players to have magic items.

[noparlpf]

I'm not sure what the complaint here is. Are you complaining that magic items make characters more powerful? This seems like an obvious thing. Of course giving your players more powerful items makes them more powerful. At a party that I give a +1 bonus to all attributes is at a higher power level than one I don't. Same with a party full of armored characters is at a higher level than a party full of unarmored fools.

Are you looking to have players without magic items be on equal footing as players with magic items? That just doesn't make sense. The whole point of a magic item is to do something out of the ordinary. By definition that means someone with magic items is at a higher power level than someone else.

What they mean when they say that there is no assumption that players will have magic items is that if you take the standard class progression, with the standard equipment list, with the standard XP values for the standard monsters, that your players will be able to satisfactorily play through from level 1 to 20 without falling behind a power curve and requiring DM intervention to artificially boost their power. This was not so of 4e and to a lesser extent any prior edition.

Introducing magic items will increase the players power level and make things easier, but that isn't the same thing as expecting the players to have magic items.

The complaint is that if they say "a party will function without magic items", they may be balancing with the intent that a party not have magic items, in which case introducing magic items destroys that balance.

[Ashdate]

The complaint is that if they say "a party will function without magic items", they may be balancing with the intent that a party not have magic items, in which case introducing magic items destroys that balance.

Right; there is a real, mathematical difference between a guy wearing platemail and a longsword, and a guy wearing the Skins of Bahamut and Flametounge. If encounter difficulty ignores the gain in magical might that a party is expected to gain using the magic item distribution rules (see my post above), then all you're potentially giving a huge disadvantage to a party that doesn't gain magical items, even if the missing bonuses might seem relatively small (i.e. a +1 weapon).

Which will, of course, be further exacerbated if your DM guidelines suggest that you reward players (with greater amounts of magical items) for those who fight "tough" encounters over those who fight "average" ones. Add the Internet to guarantee that "tough" becomes the new "average" and you've got a cocktail of trouble.

[obryn]

What they mean when they say that there is no assumption that players will have magic items is that if you take the standard class progression, with the standard equipment list, with the standard XP values for the standard monsters, that your players will be able to satisfactorily play through from level 1 to 20 without falling behind a power curve and requiring DM intervention to artificially boost their power. This was not so of 4e and to a lesser extent any prior edition.

Introducing magic items will increase the players power level and make things easier, but that isn't the same thing as expecting the players to have magic items.

It's odd, but 1e/2e was probably the most magic-item-dependent of the editions. Not necessarily for the math, but because a host of monsters needed +X or better to hit. (And for a lot of characters, that's how they were distinguishable from one another.) In 3.x, martial characters were excessively magic item dependent because it was the only way to improve their offensive and defensive capabilities reliably. (Casters got off easy, OTOH.) In 4e, it's directly and clearly figured into the math and you violate the expectations at your peril, but Inherent Bonuses let you fix the math while cutting the magic item cord, so to speak, making it potentially the least magic-item-dependent edition if you use it.

You simply can't have it both ways, though. You either figure it in and set expectations, or you don't figure it in and get a flimsy & worthless encounter balance. My preferred situation is to remove all attack roll and AC bonuses from magic items entirely. (Rip out the masterwork armor bonuses while we're at it, please.) Keep the magic item bonuses on the damage and special effect side of things. Include all expected improvements to attack and defense in the classes' advancement charts.

I can't express enough - in a bounded accuracy setup, every +1 to a d20 roll is huge. I know this from 4e, which basically had bounded accuracy on a treadmill. Those +1's are paramount. Likewise, +1's to defense have far, far larger effects on the math than you would otherwise expect - especially with the rather pathetic attack bonuses we're seeing in the monster manual.

-O

[Madfellow]

I've spent the last few hours (off and on) mulling over what the optimal number of magic items might be to introduce to a campaign, and here's what I've come up with.

Goals:
1) to give the party magic items as rewards for killing powerful villains
2) to give out as few magic items as possible to reflect the rarity of magic items
3) to make sure that each rarity level of magic item is represented
4) to reflect the relative rarity of different levels of magic item

If all these goals are accepted, we get 1 artifact, 2 legendaries, 3 very rares, 4 rares, 5 uncommons, and 6 commons over the course of a 20-level campaign. That means that the party is receiving roughly one magic item per level, and that as they level they get rarer and rarer items. At levels 1-5 they get commons, 6-10 they get uncommons, 11-14 rares, 15-17 very rares, 18-19 legendaries, and finally at 20th level they get their first and only artifact. In total they will receive 21 magic items, 6 of which will likely be consumables that will be used fairly quickly, leaving them with 15 permanent possessions, or less if any of those are also consumables.

What do you guys think?

[noparlpf]

I've spent the last few hours (off and on) mulling over what the optimal number of magic items might be to introduce to a campaign, and here's what I've come up with.

Goals:
1) to give the party magic items as rewards for killing powerful villains
2) to give out as few magic items as possible to reflect the rarity of magic items
3) to make sure that each rarity level of magic item is represented
4) to reflect the relative rarity of different levels of magic item

If all these goals are accepted, we get 1 artifact, 2 legendaries, 3 very rares, 4 rares, 5 uncommons, and 6 commons over the course of a 20-level campaign. That means that the party is receiving roughly one magic item per level, and that as they level they get rarer and rarer items. At levels 1-5 they get commons, 6-10 they get uncommons, 11-14 rares, 15-17 very rares, 18-19 legendaries, and finally at 20th level they get their first and only artifact. In total they will receive 21 magic items, 6 of which will likely be consumables that will be used fairly quickly, leaving them with 15 permanent possessions, or less if any of those are also consumables.

What do you guys think?

Seems like a weird progression to me. I think that if we have "common" items, and that's an if to me, they should actually be common, like a good knife or an axe. However, I don't like the idea of common magic items. To my mind, the entire magic system is too high-powered for true mundanes (please don't let's get into a ToB debate again) to keep up beyond low levels. Likewise, magic items should be as rare as in stories like "The Lord of the Rings"--over the course of the adventure, they only come across a few magic items, some of which are dangerous, and some of which are only given as gifts by a higher power; and when they are encountered by random chance after winning a difficult encounter, the chance should be fairly low, maybe less than five percent. On the other hand, to be fair to a party, and maintain game balance, it's probably best to get a few at a time (like in a small hoard or some such, or a powerful entity's armory). I do prefer random generation of items, because it's more organic and realistic than the DM picking specific items that suit characters perfectly.
Basically, I'd prefer a low-magic system, which I believe puts me in the minority when it comes to D&D fans. Of course, for a system like Next is purported to be, a module could introduce several different variants for magic items.

[Craft (Cheese)]

How about an actually modular system for magic items? You know, like what they promised?

Attunement rules that apply to all magic items, so characters using one type where magic items are given out like candy aren't overpowered compared to characters using another type.

Three "tiers" of how many attunement slots you get every level: Legendary (very few slots), Compromise (a moderate number of slots), and Christmas Tree (holy crap that's a lot of slots.) Characters with fewer slots get more powerful slots earlier, to have some sort of semblance of balance.


Combined with these three possible rules, three different types of distribution methods. Random loot after every encounter (with random drop rules and rules for you should give out less gold due to excess items that are sold), magic marts (with rules for how to price items and how much extra gold you should give players to buy items with), or quest-only.


Instead of the dumb one-size-fits all system they have here.

[TheOOB]

Seems like a weird progression to me. I think that if we have "common" items, and that's an if to me, they should actually be common, like a good knife or an axe. However, I don't like the idea of common magic items. To my mind, the entire magic system is too high-powered for true mundanes (please don't let's get into a ToB debate again) to keep up beyond low levels. Likewise, magic items should be as rare as in stories like "The Lord of the Rings"--over the course of the adventure, they only come across a few magic items, some of which are dangerous, and some of which are only given as gifts by a higher power; and when they are encountered by random chance after winning a difficult encounter, the chance should be fairly low, maybe less than five percent. On the other hand, to be fair to a party, and maintain game balance, it's probably best to get a few at a time (like in a small hoard or some such, or a powerful entity's armory). I do prefer random generation of items, because it's more organic and realistic than the DM picking specific items that suit characters perfectly.
Basically, I'd prefer a low-magic system, which I believe puts me in the minority when it comes to D&D fans. Of course, for a system like Next is purported to be, a module could introduce several different variants for magic items.

You're looking too far into the use of the word "common". It's common as in common for a magic item, as in the majority of magic items in the world will be of this type, regardless of how many magic items are in the world.

[Madfellow]

It's a common complaint that we're not seeing the modularity yet that Wizards has promised, but that's because they haven't finished testing the core system yet. They can't start testing the modules until the core is done, which means we have to wait a while. In the meantime, I suggest we focus on what we do have instead of complaining about what we don't. There probably will be modules for more common magic items. Something like that would be absolutely vital for a campaign setting like Eberron.

By the way, is anyone else absolutely psyched about the fluff options for +1 weapons and armor? I rolled up a random armor and here's what I got:

The party kills the villain of the week.
Me: "Your foe's ring mail armor is made of a mysterious black metal, and paint on its surface moves to form images of gruesome sacrifice rituals. Forbidden Lore checks, everybody!"

10 recognizes this as a magic item that requires attunement (I'm playing with the idea of making all non-common magic items require attunement, for flavor as well as balanace).
20 recognizes that this is ceremonial armor, and that the black metal is demonic in origin.
30 recalls the story of a demon who crafted this armor for his most loyal servant, to guard him against the harsh environments where most of the demon's altars and temples are hidden.

A Detect Magic or Identify spell reveals abjuration and illusion magic.
Attunement grants the owner a +1 to Armor Class, above the normal bonus for ring mail. The armor protects its owner from harsh temperatures.

Best. +1 Armor. Ever.

[noparlpf]

You're looking too far into the use of the word "common". It's common as in common for a magic item, as in the majority of magic items in the world will be of this type, regardless of how many magic items are in the world.

Well, based on the random generation in the packet, common items do seem to be about as or more common than mundane weapons. Each critter with a weapon in that adventure Ashdate analysed has two weapons, right? And you get either 35 or 122 potions in there. Healing potions seem as common as dirt.

Best. +1 Armor. Ever.

I'm not entirely sure whether you're being serious.

[Madfellow]

I am. +1 items, some of the most common items in the game and among the first found by the party, don't suck anymore!

[noparlpf]

I am. +1 items, some of the most common items in the game and among the first found by the party, don't suck anymore!

Okay. Well, I guess adding small extras and a bit of fluff helps. Definitely makes things feel more unique even if they're effectively almost identical.

[Kurald Galain]

I like the fluff. However, it should not be overused: if during every encounter you are likely to find a Mad Libs item then it gets silly after awhile.

[Tehnar]

Well in truth they could make the no magic item thing work, if they made rules for encounter budgets to include a party with a normal item progression and with no item progression.

The elephant in the room is however that the core rules suck, so magic items just make things worse.

[Madfellow]

Magic items only start to sound like Mad Libs if the party gets a lot of them. And yes, I know Wizards goofed on this one and made magic items too common. Tell them that in the surveys and they will fix it, the same way they fixed the fighter and the same way they fixed the monsters. Yes, the core system still needs work. Guess what? That's what the playtests are for! If the system was ready to be released already, they would release it. {{Scrubbed}}

Where was I? Oh, right. Let's assume (as I did in an earlier post) that the party receives a grand total of 5 uncommon items over the course of leveling from 6th to 10th. Let me get my d20 out and... one abyssal item, one elemental (earth), one human, one celestial, and one draconic item. That doesn't sound like Mad Libs, it sounds like a series of blood feuds between powerful magical beings, which is awesome!

[Loki_42]

What if characters got different attunement slots for different rarities of items, and gained more attunement slots as they leveled? We could give them attunement slots that fit the expected item levels that Madfellow laid out a few posts ago. Make it so that every item requires attunement, and you've made it so that you can run a game that hands out as many magic items as you want, but they're all balanced against each other. More Monty Haul campaigns will just be able to change their gear more, but they're recieving the same limited effects of it.

[stainboy]

One thing you guys forgot in calculating number of magic items is if you get consumables instead of a permanent item, you get 1d2+2. So if you get 35 common items, and assume they are all consumable, you actually have 122 average consumables.

Good point, although I don't know what that means for Common items. The "Consumable Items" paragraph says to swap a permanent for 1d2+2 consumables, but in Common there aren't any permanents to swap out. So either:

• They forgot to mention that the Consumable Items thing doesn't apply to Commons (editing error)
• When you roll a Common item you actually are supposed to roll 1d2 instances of 1d2+2 consumables instead of just rolling 2d4+1 or something (which would be retarded and probably also an editing oversight)
• There are a bunch of Common permanent items that didn't make the October playtest. (Unlikely because they already have the low end of the AD&D magic-item power spectrum in Uncommon and Rare, unless they want to add Continual Light gems or something.)

I think the first is most likely.

The elephant in the room is however that the core rules suck, so magic items just make things worse.

Yeah, this. Look at Cloak of Elvenkind: they're trying to use a Hide in Plain Sight item as a patch fix for the stealth rules not working. This is before they've gone to press when they still have months to just fix the damn stealth rules. Also funny: by strict RAW Cloak of Elvenkind does nothing. You gain Hidden and then immediately lose it.

[Madfellow]

For those of us who don't know, what's wrong with the stealth rules?

[Oscredwin]

To throw a different take on the magic item rules out there, I thought they were trying to make everyone happy. They have fluff written so that you can play games without magic items, something that many players want. They have mechanics written so that you can have a ton of magic items without increasing the power level too much.

Of course the item list and tables need a lot of work. I think there should be multiple item frequency levels with encounter building guidelines depending on which of the three you're using.

[Dublock]

Of course the item list and tables need a lot of work. I think there should be multiple item frequency levels with encounter building guidelines depending on which of the three you're using.

While I do agree.

That can get messy if there are a lot of splat books that introduce the power creep with magic items then if they have different table with 4-6 people, then you could be looking at Easy, medium, hard encounters, then with different amount of magic items.

I might need a spread sheet just to figure out exp budget.

[Camelot]

I like the fluff. However, it should not be overused: if during every encounter you are likely to find a Mad Libs item then it gets silly after awhile.

I think that the fluff should not just be there for an interesting story, but it should be involved in the plot of the adventure, or introduce a plot to a future adventure. For example, the demonic armor might have been lost when the demon's servant who originally wore it died. Now that it's being worn again, the demon can trace it, and he wants it back! Or worse, perhaps wearing it is eqivalent to signing a contract to be the devil's new servant.