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  1. - Top - End - #1
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    Default Thoughts on "Datamine-style" spells, magical loot, and the value of information

    Preface: I'm going to be speaking mostly from a 5e and partially 3e perspective, but I welcome comparisons and perspectives from any system, hence the posting in General.

    So, you've found something you've got reason to believe is magical. How do you figure out what it does? Well, 5e tells us that you can cast identify, and after a minute or ten, there you go. You know pretty much everything you need to know about its form and function. But, even if you don't have identify, you can just...fiddle the doohickey for an hour and get the same result, just about. This is pretty much all the depth there is to it, save for Legend Lore if you want to do some sort of psychohistory on the items previous owners and significant uses. You pretty much either know everything there is to know about the item's function, or nothing. There are some cruel edge cases, though, specifically Nystul's Magic Aura and some cursed items, both of which wholly no-sell any non-empirical attempt at figuring out what the item does, if anything (and in the case of some cursed items, actively says "lol no identify won't fix this for you, you gotta put your hand in it lmao rekt").

    This strikes me as somewhat...boring, binary, and uninteractive. Either the system of information flow is more or less rendered vestigial, or it becomes either nonfunctional or actively malicious. Are there better ways to handle this that still reward tactical uses of information-gathering utilities? All I can think of is the fairly niche feature that UA Mystic Awakened had. At the same time, you wouldn't want to have to do a week's R & D just to figure out that that faintly glowing sword you picked up was, wouldn't ya know it, +1.

    Thoughts?

    (Sidenote: villains that use Nystul's Magic Aura to hide mind control effects and other magical secrets have the potential to be insanely confusing for players to figure out, especially if they're not actively aware that the spell being in play is a possibility.)
    Last edited by Phhase; 2022-09-05 at 05:46 PM.
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    Firbolg in the Playground
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    Default Re: Thoughts on "Datamine-style" spells, magical loot, and the value of information

    Magic items have conflicting purposes in the game, which tends to create this problem. On the one hand, they're important aspects of more or less passive character advancement - modifying a number on a sheet. On the other hand, they're gameplay opportunities to be engaged with, whether it means figuring out a use for a weird thing or discovering all of the abilities of a complex item or even just having stuff where pursuing those things in-character leads to an expansion of agency (versus gaining experience, which tends to be more inevitable and interchangeable).

    The former means 'easy identification is necessary'. The latter means 'easy identification defeats the purpose and bypasses the gameplay'.

    So what makes sense design-wise would be to have any items that give standard, expected passive buffs be really easy to identify - the '+1' of a +1 sword is just take a look at the strength of the magical aura and off you go, etc. Anything active or peculiar on the other hand you could break down into things 'about' the function such that even with a simple item description, there would be questions which would be worth engaging in gameplay to answer. Consider something like an immovable rod - the 'simple ID' level of analysis could let someone know e.g. that a certain panel on the rod acts as a toggle for an on-going effect contained to the rod itself, messing around with it will reveal the effect easily enough, but higher level analysis via skill or spell could answer for example 'how much weight can this support?', 'what happens if I use this on a moving train?', etc. Very high-end analysis could let someone modify some of those ambiguous questions: 'how can I get this to treat the ground under the train as its reference frame rather than the train itself?' for example.

    You could run the high-end analysis on the +1 sword too, but because the function of the item is inherently simple you wouldn't get anything more than you get with simple ID.

    I guess I'm saying, it makes sense to me to actually have fundamentally separate classes of magic items for 'things that have a simple mechanical interpretation' and 'things that are intentionally designed so as to require interacting with the fiction rather than the mechanics layer in order to understand them'. For the second class of item, different analysis tools could provide different benefits and you could have a rich 'learning to use this item to the fullness of its potential' minigame that would be worth playing, in a way that isn't worth it for 'it modifiers your Craft skill by +3'.

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    Default Re: Thoughts on "Datamine-style" spells, magical loot, and the value of information

    It's a feature / bug of WotC moving towards a different style of gameplay for D&D. Away from somewhat dangerous exploration, towards heroically fighting your way to the adventure-arc finale.

    In the former magic items are another type of puzzle, a potentially dangerous but also frequently highly rewarding one.
    In the latter, they're just a buff to your character.

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    Default Re: Thoughts on "Datamine-style" spells, magical loot, and the value of information

    Quote Originally Posted by Tanarii View Post
    It's a feature / bug of WotC moving towards a different style of gameplay for D&D. Away from somewhat dangerous exploration, towards heroically fighting your way to the adventure-arc finale.
    I suppose you're right that combat has historically been emphasized mechanically while exploration has been abstracted, but on the other hand, this is one of the points where the two overlap. It's not even about a lack of of danger, just a lack of depth. I guess it's just de facto on the "Dm's adjudication" pile rather than de jure?
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    Default Re: Thoughts on "Datamine-style" spells, magical loot, and the value of information

    It requires a lot of homebrew to get working, but my solution to this has been to push hard away from the idea of magical items as part of progression. Yes, I know the game is built around that assumption, but the game is built around a lot of assumptions that you can yank out and rebuild without it immediately collapsing if you halfway know what you're doing. I mean, I don't know anyone who actually plays strictly enough to the rules-as-written for any 'intended' balance to pan out in actual play anyway. Everybody homebrews, forgets the actual rules, or adjudicates ad hoc rulings to deal with organic play all the time. As they should, or we might as well just play a CRPG and save ourselves a lot of campaign prep and scheduling headaches. (Your experiences may vary, of course.)

    Anyway, it's always bothered me that the game has managed to take storytelling elements like Excalibur, the One Ring, the Golden Fleece and so forth and reduce them to nothing but +1s on your character sheet. I generally don't like when magic doesn't feel magical (boring, mechanical utility spells being another pebble in my shoe), and whenever I do stomach it in my own games I put a lot of work into trying to make it feel more important than another toy in the collection of a spoiled child.

    In terms of items, one easy fix in my book is to simply turn basic +X bonuses into nonmagical buffs. Just turn "masterwork" from a pathetic prerequisite to enchantment into increasing levels of high-quality craftsmanship. Disconnected from the assertion that this is just "how it's done," there's no reason a +5 longsword needs to be magical, and not just the entirely mundane work of a legendary blacksmith. That way you can keep the numbers where they should be, hand out a healthy supply of magic weapon oil and things like that to deal with DR, and then save the real magic for custom artifact weapons that actually have something to do with the story.
    If asked the question "how can I do this within this system?" answering with "use a different system" is never a helpful or appreciated answer.

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    Default Re: Thoughts on "Datamine-style" spells, magical loot, and the value of information

    I agree with about 99% of what NichG said. I think, though, that there can be items that, even knowing what they do, you still have the puzzle gameplay of figuring out how to make that useful.

    And… honestly, I always hated the “I take a sip of the potion, then try to jump / breathe water / breathe out fire” minigame. Why? Because I watched idiots with no creativity go down their list of known items. They had no capacity to comprehend the truly novel, and no skill at roleplaying, either. It was just painful. The only good part was watching their characters die to poison or curses.

    So, I’ll take “all items are automatically identified”, with a side of “so, how do we use a sword made of ice that keeps us warm, a bowl that fills with soup of choice 3/day, and a Pokéball that can’t shrink its target / can’t catch anything that won’t fit inside a Pokéball?”.

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    Default Re: Thoughts on "Datamine-style" spells, magical loot, and the value of information

    Quote Originally Posted by Quertus View Post
    I agree with about 99% of what NichG said. I think, though, that there can be items that, even knowing what they do, you still have the puzzle gameplay of figuring out how to make that useful.

    And… honestly, I always hated the “I take a sip of the potion, then try to jump / breathe water / breathe out fire” minigame. Why? Because I watched idiots with no creativity go down their list of known items. They had no capacity to comprehend the truly novel, and no skill at roleplaying, either. It was just painful. The only good part was watching their characters die to poison or curses.

    So, I’ll take “all items are automatically identified”, with a side of “so, how do we use a sword made of ice that keeps us warm, a bowl that fills with soup of choice 3/day, and a Pokéball that can’t shrink its target / can’t catch anything that won’t fit inside a Pokéball?”.
    Sweet spot is between zero information and full information.

    'This is an unlabeled potion' is boring. 'This potion permanently polymorphs someone into a half-fire elemental' is okay. But 'This potion is one of a set of four from a mad wizard's lab, each of which has extremely strong transmutation magic on it; only one potion left in the set, and the party defeated a very confused frozen-looking ooze elemental creature on the way in' is even better. And 'This potion is one of a set of six from a mad wizard's lab bearing strong transmutation magic, but at the same time seeming oddly inert. There are notes referring to something called the Sympathetic Vitae Resonator which is supposedly elsewhere in the complex. The notes talk about using it to 'charge the blanks"' is potentially better still.

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    Default Re: Thoughts on "Datamine-style" spells, magical loot, and the value of information

    There is a whole bunch of magic in D&D whose reason for existence is “because it makes the game run better” which are really difficult to justify from a world building perspective. Either you accept it and play D&D or if it breaks your verisimilitude then perhaps you should go play something else with a more coherent world building, literally almost any other RPG.

    This isn’t meant as a criticism of D&D, just an acceptance of what the system is. D&D wasn’t developed from a single coherent source, it’s always been a grab bag of pop culture, old stories, epic myths and Gary Gygax’s fever dreams, with an emphasis on “hey this is cool”, not “this is how it works in the setting”.

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    Default Re: Thoughts on "Datamine-style" s epells, magical loot, and the value of information

    The issue here is more that cursed items as a concept are inherently flawed with the current style of the game. And have been for close to 20 years at this point.

    "LMAO rekt" is a great way to put it. That's basically the sentiment they were designed to evoke. The DM gets to laugh at the dumb player who has some (mostly) unavoidable misfortune befall them. "Hilarity" ensues. In a time of mostly disposable characters, and a gameplay style where metagaming was pretty much considered the norm (your player knowledge is absolutely necessary to survive, and largely indistinguishable from your character knowledge) this is...fine.

    But as time went on, more and more ways were given to accurately and (most importantly) reliably ping curses.

    This shifts the design even further into a "LMAO rekt" mindset as getting hit by the curse becomes essentially a PLAYER KNOWLEDGE check in a game that increasingly has pushed towards in-game solutions to problems. So your cursed items are now, primarily, going to meme on new players who don't know any better than to equip unidentified items. "LMAO rekt", kiddo. What do you mean you think that's dumb and you don't want to play anymore? You can play a character with only one hand, suck it up buttercup.

    Honestly, just toss cursed items entirely except for maybe extremely rare, very story relevant events where the results of the curse are designed, by you, to create interesting narrative events. Instead of generic "**** you" effects like the Bag of Devouring etc.

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    Default Re: Thoughts on "Datamine-style" spells, magical loot, and the value of information

    Quote Originally Posted by NichG View Post
    Magic items have conflicting purposes in the game, which tends to create this problem. On the one hand, they're important aspects of more or less passive character advancement - modifying a number on a sheet. On the other hand, they're gameplay opportunities to be engaged with, whether it means figuring out a use for a weird thing or discovering all of the abilities of a complex item or even just having stuff where pursuing those things in-character leads to an expansion of agency (versus gaining experience, which tends to be more inevitable and interchangeable).
    I have never seen people friviously fool around with unknown magic items expect in cases of pretty linear adventures and using the McGuffin at its seemingly matching problem.
    Unknown magic items tend to simply collect dust.

    However, it is fine to have different identification difficulties. I see that in many other games and it works. Usually more complex or more foreign items are harder to identify. But a failed identification should just give no information, not wrong information.

    Items that are unlocked/improved by doing stuff with them are fine as well. But they work far better when the unlocking requirements and the resulting effects are known. Only then can a player make an informed decision about doing this.

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    Default Re: Thoughts on "Datamine-style" spells, magical loot, and the value of information

    Quote Originally Posted by Tanarii View Post
    In the former magic items are another type of puzzle, a potentially dangerous but also frequently highly rewarding one. In the latter, they're just a buff to your character.
    And the former game play has a lot more variations on the general theme. Discovery is part of old school play. (My level 15 Champion still uses a Cursed sword of Vengeance...nobody in the party has yet figured out that he's got a cursed sword, although a few times his reluctance to use javelins or his long bow got the rogue character's player to get all crabby with him). We have a cleric who, if the rest of the party ever figures it out, can cast remove curse on the sword. The DM and I agree that it needs to emerge in play. It may never, and I may end up charging off to my death at some point. (We will be restarting that campaign after a many years layoff next week! I am stoked).
    Quote Originally Posted by Drakevarg View Post
    Anyway, it's always bothered me that the game has managed to take storytelling elements like Excalibur, the One Ring, the Golden Fleece and so forth and reduce them to nothing but +1s on your character sheet.
    I've got a homebrew artifact that gives the wearer advantage on death saves and allows speak with dead once per day. He's the wrong class to unlock artifact feature (undead warlock, necromancer wizard, grave cleric) but the side effect of a pact worshipping a lich regularly hunting the party down and trying to kill them/get the amulet back has been a staple of the campaign.
    Quote Originally Posted by Rynjin View Post
    The issue here is more that cursed items as a concept are inherently flawed with the current style of the game. And have been for close to 20 years at this point.
    The cursed magic item fits the game, but the trick is to make sure a cursed item has a collateral use. In other words, it requires more thought and creativity to make a cursed item unique (one that puts the player in the position of "do I keep using this despite its drawbacks, or do I try to rid myself of this item?"). Some sentient items and some artifacts do this.
    Honestly, just toss cursed items entirely except for maybe extremely rare, very story relevant events where the results of the curse are designed, by you, to create interesting narrative events.
    See my amulet above.
    Instead of generic "**** you" effects like the Bag of Devouring etc.
    Bag of devouring can be used tactically, though. But first you have to figure out (1) what it does and (2) what it is before you start trying to drop various foes and bad things into it. (I was with a party that dropped an artifact into one to get rid of it, and the occasional "polymorph enemy into frog, drop into bag of devouring" seems to work...but the hard part is actually turning them into a frog).
    Last edited by KorvinStarmast; 2022-09-06 at 07:33 AM.
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    Firbolg in the Playground
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    Default Re: Thoughts on "Datamine-style" spells, magical loot, and the value of information

    Quote Originally Posted by Satinavian View Post
    I have never seen people friviously fool around with unknown magic items expect in cases of pretty linear adventures and using the McGuffin at its seemingly matching problem.
    Unknown magic items tend to simply collect dust.

    However, it is fine to have different identification difficulties. I see that in many other games and it works. Usually more complex or more foreign items are harder to identify. But a failed identification should just give no information, not wrong information.

    Items that are unlocked/improved by doing stuff with them are fine as well. But they work far better when the unlocking requirements and the resulting effects are known. Only then can a player make an informed decision about doing this.
    I think this is a self fulfilling prophecy type of thing. You can absolutely run games in ways that discourage people from fiddling with the unknown. You can also run games that absolutely hinge on it in fundamental ways, such that players learn that the unknown or random stuff is where their opportunities to get sudden disproportionate agency are most likely to come from. Basically, you can get stuff out of this only if you're willing to put into it as a GM and make these things important rather than just one-off jokes or gotchas.

    The higher order example of the magic item with unknown function is the magic item where it's interactions aren't even known to the GM before the situation arises. For example, the Un-Gun from Un Lun Dun. It's a gun that can be loaded with anything, and which in abstract fashion interprets those things as ammo to be shot. Since there's an infinite number of things it could be loaded with, you can never have the full description of it's mechanics. But once you've discovered that e.g. acorn bullets will make trees grow out of anything you hit, you know it does that now. I've seen that kind of item get a LOT of play at tables I've been at. Tarot decks where each card gives you the one time chance to buy something with XP, crafting ingredients that take the shape of what they're formed into to determine the effect they provide, exploratory combinatorial systems for runes or gems, etc.

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    Default Re: Thoughts on "Datamine-style" spells, magical loot, and the value of information

    Sigh. It's near universally a D&D 3e & 5e problem. Games that want you to explore gear & loot have things like the old Gamma World rules for figuring out pre-apocalypse artifacts. Games that know gear is just numbers upgrades, like D&D 4e, skip that stuff and have easy upgrade mechanic. Even AD&D"s only real issue with it was the lack of structure around experimentation, it knew it wanted people to explore the uses of the magical loot so the Identify spell was not assured to be available or perfect.

    I don't think I've ever played a game other than D&D where this was an issue of hiding required gear/numbers/effects behind a discovery mechanic, and then creating a **** mechanic for it.

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    Default Re: Thoughts on "Datamine-style" spells, magical loot, and the value of information

    Perhaps controversial opinion: In general, I think that the more info you give players, the better. That's not an absolute statement, to be clear.

    This goes for items as well as monsters.

    A good cursed item is interesting even if you know about the curse. If it's a terrible item and the only gameplay is to avoid it, that's boring.

    So I have zero issue with datamining spells.

    Now, for OSR style games, there's another layer in there - there's interesting resource decisions to be made around item identification - do you pack some Identifies? How many? What does that mean you don't get to do? If you find an unknown item, is it worth identifying? Is it worth risking it even though there's a chance of curse? At what point is the risk worth the reward?

    If those are interesting decision points in your game (I'd hazard a guess that in most games they're not), then I wouldn't worry about it, and instead make cursed items that are still interesting even if you know about the curse.
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    Default Re: Thoughts on "Datamine-style" spells, magical loot, and the value of information

    Thinking back i am not convinced that the reluctance to experiment with unknown magic really comes from cursed items. Many systems don't even really have cursed items.

    Sure, even non-cursed ones might be dangerous when used inappropriately, but i think the biggest impact is that many items in many systems have very limited charges, often only one or three. And the more powerful the item is, the less you want to waste even one charge on pure experimentation.

    Now in D&D most single charge items come recognizable as potions and scolls but even here many exceptions do exist.
    Last edited by Satinavian; 2022-09-06 at 03:40 PM.

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    Default Re: Thoughts on "Datamine-style" spells, magical loot, and the value of information

    As a general rule, when it comes to unknown magic items, I always try to not force players to spend extra time figuring out basic stuff about items. The assumption is that if it's a basic +x item, I'll just tell them that. We assume you can fiddle with it and figure out that it swings better/faster/more accurately/harder/whatever. I'm not going to hide that from the players, if for no other reason, I don't want to have to figure out the adjustments myself.

    Unknown stuff is reserved for items with odd or unusual abilities. And for those, it depends on what divinatory spells/abilities exist in the game. If they exist, then they should be useful, so just handing the players information should not be done. On the flip side, these abilities should be things that if the character chooses to do some experimentation, they should be fairly evident. So in the first case, they should be able to noodle out basic abilities by just fiddling with it. In this one, they have to use it in a situation where the items ability may be useful.

    I also tend to give players vague descriptions as well. So upon picking up the item, they can sense that it has some activatable ability that will do something like <insert vague description>. Sometimes that's something they can figure out without having to be in an encounter setting, sometimes not. Again though, always keep in mind the concept that if the players have certain spells and abilities they should be able to learn more about the item and how it works than if they don't. At least some items have to be kept mysterious in the absence of those abilities, or the abilities themselves become pointless.

    As to cursed items, I don't include such things in my game just as "cursed items". As some have stated, old style D&D just loved to put items in that looked like something useful but, surprise!, were cursed. You know, just for laughs. Of course, why anyone would spend money, time, rare materials, research, exp, etc into making such a thing is pretty questionable. That's not to say I don't have items that might be harmful to the PC to use. Just that all items are created to be useful in some way to the person who made it and/or the person intended to use it. An evil sword built to be wielded by the lead soldier of the dread mage's dark army may very well have a powerful demon/spirit in the sword that influences the wielder and drives them to do evil things on behalf of the dread mage. Cause, if I'm a dread mage granting a powerful weapon to my right hand warrior guy, I'm going to want it to be powerful but also make sure he's going to do things I want and not turn it on me, right? So binding some kind of evil force in there that compels him to fight on my behalf and tempts him into doing even more evil stuff as a side effect is perfectly ok. Poor PC sap who picks that up might get a bit of a personality change as a result, but that's not a "curse" in the typical D&D way of thinking. His friends will have to notice the personality change, figure out it's the sword doing it, and then figure out how to get it away from him to remove its influence on him. This can provide a lot of fun RP opportunities, and can also be used to provide your powerful bad guys with stuff you don't want the players to have and use later on (well, without side effects).

    Some items have function that just works differently for the PCs than the NPCs. In one case there was an wand wielded by a mind flayer (or appropriate alternatively named critter). We watched as the flayer struck someone with it, and it drained that person's power on the hit (and seemed to magically strengthen the flayer). After defeating them, we were left looking at the wand. Most of us realized that if it triggered that spell effect when hitting someone, it probably would do the same to you if you picked it up, so were giving it a wide berth. One player, of course, just had to pick it up. And got zapped. The item basically hit anyone who touched it with the nasty spell effect *except* mind flayers. It was made by the mind flayers as a weapon to use against others. Picking it up was exactly the same as being touched by it. Doh!

    Was it "cursed" in traditional thinking? Of course not. It was a very potent weapon. If you were a mind flayer. For everyone else? Not so useful. Also discouraged any pesky minions from messing with their stuff.

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    Default Re: Thoughts on "Datamine-style" spells, magical loot, and the value of information

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    Was it "cursed" in traditional thinking? Of course not. It was a very potent weapon. If you were a mind flayer. For everyone else? Not so useful. Also discouraged any pesky minions from messing with their stuff.
    Tie it to a stick. Swing it on a rope. Glue it to a dragon. You're talking to people who weaponize bags of devouring and evil books just out of habit. It hurts something? Its a weapon!

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    Default Re: Thoughts on "Datamine-style" spells, magical loot, and the value of information

    Quote Originally Posted by Drakevarg View Post

    In terms of items, one easy fix in my book is to simply turn basic +X bonuses into nonmagical buffs. Just turn "masterwork" from a pathetic prerequisite to enchantment into increasing levels of high-quality craftsmanship. Disconnected from the assertion that this is just "how it's done," there's no reason a +5 longsword needs to be magical, and not just the entirely mundane work of a legendary blacksmith. That way you can keep the numbers where they should be, hand out a healthy supply of magic weapon oil and things like that to deal with DR, and then save the real magic for custom artifact weapons that actually have something to do with the story.
    This is the L5R solution. Numenari (sp) are incredibly rare and unique artifacts. However, really well made weaponry and family weapons can still give you bonuses such as to Status, Honor, and Glory (and sometimes to combat too).
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    Default Re: Thoughts on "Datamine-style" spells, magical loot, and the value of information

    Quote Originally Posted by Easy e View Post
    This is the L5R solution. Numenari (sp) are incredibly rare and unique artifacts. However, really well made weaponry and family weapons can still give you bonuses such as to Status, Honor, and Glory (and sometimes to combat too).
    The problem with thus approach is that there are many monsters that are explicitly only vulnerable to magic weapons or magic weapons of +N or greater. While I agree with you from a world building POV, D&D doesn’t run on a coherent world building philosophy.

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    Default Re: Thoughts on "Datamine-style" spells, magical loot, and the value of information

    Quote Originally Posted by Telok View Post
    Tie it to a stick. Swing it on a rope. Glue it to a dragon. You're talking to people who weaponize bags of devouring and evil books just out of habit. It hurts something? Its a weapon!
    Eh. The system I play in is a modified RQ3. So item enchantments are very clear. In this case, it was a tap (power) spell matrix, with a trigger condition of "touched by anyone other than a mind flayer". Trigger conditions in RQ3 require a target condition (person who touched it), and source condition (magic points to run the spell come from a MP matrix on the wand). The tap spell requires a power vs power roll to succeed, so in this case it was ruled that if a mind flayer was holding it and hitting someone else with it, it would use the flayers power (which tend to be quite high) to overcome the target. If just a valid target is touching it, the targets power is used as both the attacking and defending power (so 50% chance). And yes, we have mind flayers in our RQ game. Go figure.

    It could absolutely be glued to a stick and used to strike targets, but in this case, that spell effect, while devastating to a character over the long term (power stat is used to determine success when casting spells against others, defending against spells, and attacking/defending in spirit combat), and is absolutely great as a set up for weakening someone against further spell attacks, isn't terribly effective as a "I really just want to drop this opponent in front of me" effect. The spell cannot reduce any stat it targets below 1, so no possibility of killing anyone, or even incapacitating them. A PC in combat would be vastly better off, in pretty much every situation, just whacking their opponent with their normal weapon. If you can manage to hit the target with the improvised weapon (wand attached to the end of a stick/staff), you should easily be able to hit with a weapon you're actually already skilled with, and you probably have magic enhancements on said weapon to actually do real damage to the target.

    It's also pretty dangerous to carry around. The tap spell doesn't just temporarily reduce a stat, it does so permanently. The power stat is easier to regain than other stats, but you still wouldn't want to accidentally touch that thing while randomly rummaging around your gear. Best use would be to leave it as a "trap" in some chest of stuff at your house (maybe with tongs nearby that you know to use to move it out of the way). And in that use, it would absolutely appear as a "cursed item" to anyone trying to steal your stuff, but still fits the general concept of "no one would actually spend resources making something that wasn't useful to them in some way".

    The funny thing is that the guy who picked it up (and got zapped) was the party wizard. Which left him extremely gimped for the rest of the adventure. Guess he just saw "wand" and wanted it.

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    Drakevarg's Avatar

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    Default Re: Thoughts on "Datamine-style" spells, magical loot, and the value of information

    Quote Originally Posted by Pauly View Post
    The problem with thus approach is that there are many monsters that are explicitly only vulnerable to magic weapons or magic weapons of +N or greater. While I agree with you from a world building POV, D&D doesn’t run on a coherent world building philosophy.
    a) If you're already houseruling one thing you can just as easily houserule the thing that makes it not work.
    b) Magic weapon oil is a thing, DR/+N or greater went out with 3.0, and as for DR/Epic, you should probably have some kind of fancy artifact weapon by then anyway.
    Last edited by Drakevarg; 2022-09-07 at 07:06 PM.
    If asked the question "how can I do this within this system?" answering with "use a different system" is never a helpful or appreciated answer.

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    OrcBarbarianGuy

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    Default Re: Thoughts on "Datamine-style" spells, magical loot, and the value of information

    I mean, this is pretty much one of the reasons why Earthdawn was written. (Plus “why are there so many underground places with ludicrous traps and treasure).

    To summarize. Multiple classes have “identify” or “legend lore” equivalents. For lower power magic items, a la +2 sword, that is all you need.

    For higher power items, you have to unlock an item’s power in stages. Beyond the most basic powers, you need to learn important details about the items history, or do heroic deeds that are symbolically important. Things like “learn the name of the elemental that helped create this”, or “challenge a special monster that original owner also fought ”. Identify type spells tell you roughly what you need to learn (find it’s name, somewhere in mount dungeon), but it usually takes an adventure to find the exact info (party goes to dungeon and finds where name is etched into the wall)

    I suppose this doesn’t exactly allow for cursed items as such, but there’s plenty of room for “powerful with drawbacks or negative side effects”

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    Firbolg in the Playground
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    Default Re: Thoughts on "Datamine-style" spells, magical loot, and the value of information

    Quote Originally Posted by SpoonR View Post
    I mean, this is pretty much one of the reasons why Earthdawn was written.

    To summarize. Multiple classes have “identify” or “legend lore” equivalents. For lower power magic items, a la +2 sword, that is all you need.

    For higher power items, you have to unlock an item’s power in stages. Beyond the most basic powers, you need to learn important details about the items history, or do heroic deeds that are symbolically important. Things like “learn the name of the elemental that helped create this”, or “challenge a special monster that original owner also fought ”. Identify type spells tell you roughly what you need to learn (find it’s name, somewhere in mount dungeon), but it usually takes an adventure to find the exact info (party goes to dungeon and finds where name is etched into the wall)
    (Reading GM’s note): to obtain the full power of this magical cudgel, one must learn its former owner’s name, which is written in the grimoire of the dread Hex Witch sextuplets. And… something about ‘Gibbs smack’? Wait… is this Saint Cuthbert’s mace? <gives GM a Gibbs smack>

    GM: well, I guess you’ve unlocked the full power of the magical cudgel…

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    Ogre in the Playground
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    Default Re: Thoughts on "Datamine-style" spells, magical loot, and the value of information

    It seems to me like there are some limits on how much one can avoid such from happening.

    In particular, even if there aren't any spells for magic item identification, some characters are likely to have skills of some sort that should be applicable regardless of player figuring out. ie A wizard who has extensively studied magic should know how to safely analyze a magic item.

    As such there's a limit to how much gameplay depth you can have, since no matter what other choices there are, the slow/safe analysis choice is still there.

    One way to make choice more pertinent is if items expire/weaken after a time, and hence using slower methods comes with a cost. But such items are very very rarely used in most systems.
    A neat custom class for 3.5 system
    http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=94616

    A good set of benchmarks for PF/3.5
    https://rpgwillikers.wordpress.com/2...y-the-numbers/

    An alternate craft point system I made for 3.5
    http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showt...t-Point-system

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    oxybe's Avatar

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    Default Re: Thoughts on "Datamine-style" spells, magical loot, and the value of information

    I don't think datamine spells and effects are bad, per say, they're just troublesome when easily accessible in large quantities. These should be given as rewards or quest goals:

    "For your valour in defending the temple, the seer of the war god offers to divine an answer on an upcoming conflict."
    "within the dragon's hoard you find a magnifying glass wrapped in fine silks, with faint divination magic radiating from the tool."
    "After cleansing the lake, the water begins swirling as the form of a giant serpent made of torrential flows breaks the surface and approaches. the water weird thanks you, and should you ever be in need of help with healing, will guide you true"

    Going to fight an orc warband? the seer tells you where and when is the best time to engage them, as they're trudging through fresh mud and slowed to a crawl. The faint magic in the glass fully identifies the unknown rain-summoning properties of the magic chalice you found before the lens cracks and breaks. ally died fighting that orc hoard? the water weird tells you of a dungeon where you can find the diamonds needed to resurrect your friend.

    Heck the ritual for something like identify could very well be widely known but the reagent needed could be rare in itself or a highly guarded material, or the ritual only capable of being cast under certain conditions, like after casting your gift(ie: material component) to them under a full moon with clear sky, the various gods (or their proxies) will attend and see the ritual and weigh in with their specialties and gift you the answer. is it overcast or raining on the night of a full moon? no identify for you.

    This is how datamining spells and effects should be used IMO: Information should come with a price.

    The price just shouldn't be an 8-hour sleep and the time it takes to have a light breakfast.

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    OldWizardGuy

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    Default Re: Thoughts on "Datamine-style" spells, magical loot, and the value of information

    I think the implication of "datamine" is closer to "you know the full statblock".

    And I'm 100% in favor of it. While not knowing what a monster can do can make an interesting encounter, it's the weakest form of interesting encounter.
    "Gosh 2D8HP, you are so very correct (and also good looking)"

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    Flumph

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    Default Re: Thoughts on "Datamine-style" s epells, magical loot, and the value of information

    Quote Originally Posted by Rynjin View Post
    The issue here is more that cursed items as a concept are inherently flawed with the current style of the game. And have been for close to 20 years at this point.

    "LMAO rekt" is a great way to put it. That's basically the sentiment they were designed to evoke. The DM gets to laugh at the dumb player who has some (mostly) unavoidable misfortune befall them. "Hilarity" ensues. In a time of mostly disposable characters, and a gameplay style where metagaming was pretty much considered the norm (your player knowledge is absolutely necessary to survive, and largely indistinguishable from your character knowledge) this is...fine.

    But as time went on, more and more ways were given to accurately and (most importantly) reliably ping curses.

    This shifts the design even further into a "LMAO rekt" mindset as getting hit by the curse becomes essentially a PLAYER KNOWLEDGE check in a game that increasingly has pushed towards in-game solutions to problems. So your cursed items are now, primarily, going to meme on new players who don't know any better than to equip unidentified items. "LMAO rekt", kiddo. What do you mean you think that's dumb and you don't want to play anymore? You can play a character with only one hand, suck it up buttercup.

    Honestly, just toss cursed items entirely except for maybe extremely rare, very story relevant events where the results of the curse are designed, by you, to create interesting narrative events. Instead of generic "**** you" effects like the Bag of Devouring etc.
    "LMAO rekt" also has the effect of discouraging meaningful role-play and character development - why build up this character and get invested if he might just disappear tomorrow on a bad roll or gotcha trap?

    But, cursed items make sense from a certain sort of narrative perspective, or can. Instead of being intentionally-created, they're failed creations - magical waste. The difficulty in destroying them makes further sense for why they're still around, and their keepers are either hoarder wizards who think they're going to "fix" them or poor saps who can't get rid of them.

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