Following up to the last thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=252870
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Following up to the last thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=252870
Just read through the magic item section. I like some things, I dislike others. As a general rule, I like most of the magic items. I like that they are moving to make magic items more unique and less about combining bonuses and abilities. I really like the changes to magic items with charges, though I do wish wands and staffs worked differently(I'd make it so staves use your spell slots as charges, and wands just have charges, but whatever).
I also like the idea that magic items are rare, difficult to buy, and even more difficult to sell. I even like the general rarity table, though I'd like to go into more depth into what each rarity means, and the kinds of bonuses one would expect. I like the idea of attunement, but I don't think it is fully realized.
Now for what I don't like as much. I don't like the magic item random rewards table, they are designed for a monty haul campaign, and they should take character level into account(a level 1 character should never get better than common drops, and artifacts should never appear on a random table ever). I HATE the suggested prices. Yes I know, magic items, hard to buy, ect, ect, but remember that Plate Mail costs 5,000gp, a +1 sword should cost at least as much as a suit of Plate Mail.
I'm not sure I like magic items replacing your stats. Whats the point of using your racial bonus to boost a stat if an item replaces it? I'm unsure if I like removing magic item slots. IMO, attunement should be much much more common, but instead of a 3 item limit, have it so you can only attune 1 item per slot(2 items for some slots, like rings). The only items that shouldn't require attunement are smaller items that take some action to use. I think this would help balance the game a little, and prevent the now coming argument about how I could manager to fit that bracelet over that pair of bracers, or counting how many necklaces Mr. T wears as a baseline.
So, for example, a ring of protection would have attune(ring), and bracers of archery would have attune(wrist). I could also see powerful magical weapons and magic staffs having attune(weapon)(though most weapons wouldn't).
Has there been a new article on the subject?
My initial impression is that the magic item rules are currently very overcomplicated. And possibly contradictory.
I'm all for complexity where it adds depth, I'm just not sure that magic items are where I'd be putting it.
Edit: On second thought, looks like most of the sillier stuff is optional and mostly for personalizing items, so I guess it's not so bad.
I've gone through the updated bestiary and like what I see. In general, the tweaks made are minor, but from my experience of the previous iterations, will likely have a positive impact. Example: the kobolds in "Caves of Chaos" were generally pushovers, especially if the caster had sleep or some other AoE spell left. However, if the group did not, the fact that they gained advantage as long as they were outnumbering the invaders, meant the kobolds were very likely to score hits. The tweaked kobolds gain a bonus to the attack roll in relation to the number of kobolds threatening the same target. Much better system, and more elegant mechanics.
Yeah, after reading a little more that line of fluff was quickly revealed as nonsense.
And for a DM to really balance things well, they have to be a better game designer than Mearls, in which case why aren't they working for WotC instead? So far I've seen very little reason for this guy's employment.
If I wanted to do my own thing, I'd just do my own thing, not spend money.
Hey, WotC, you might want to give players and incentive to purchase your products, not tell them in advance that your rules are vague and require the DM to fix everything.
Hey, that system looks pretty cool. Have you copyrighted it yet? If not, hope you don't mind if I run over to the library, steal a ream of paper, and market it myself...
I didn't realize monsters had been updated as well, I thought this was just a magic item packet, and we were waiting until the level 10 packet was done to see any other changes.
The current update has updated monsters, magic items and some magic items rules. And an updated Caves of Chaos (for those wanting to go through that again).
To recap:
Hey look, there's an update to the playtest package, which most notably contains magical items now.
It is full of contradictions. The fluff text says that magic items are not an entitlement, but the rules say the average encounter should have 0-8 magical items in it (determined by a % roll). The fluff says that there is no market for magic items, but also that this nonexistent market is easier to find in big cities, and the rules give each item a gp value between 50 and 10,000. The fluff says that 'rare' items should be given to characters of level 5 and up, but they have a 4% chance of showing up for every average encounter, regardless of character level.
And yes, the rarity levels from 4E are back, ranging from 'common' to 'artifact' (which are unique, but have a 1% chance of showing up every hard encounter). There is no clear correlation between an item's rarity and its power level, and there little or no 'common' items in the book except for healing potions. WOTC says they'll rectify this later.
Magic items no longer auto-identify (like in 4E) but a variety of trial-and-error methods are suggested, plus the classic Identify spell. While there are still a few 'item slots' left, you can now wear as many necklaces as the DM allows. However, a few rare or very rare items only work if you "attune" them to you, and there's a strict limit to how many items you can attune (plus attuning costs time). Which is odd considering how unlikely you are to find enough for this limit to matter.
Then there's a long table for randomly deciding who created the item and for what purpose. And a bunch of sample items which are reminiscent of 3E's items, except that they don't get pluses. They're pretty much all +1, and you use them for the special abilities. 1E's mixing potions table is also back as an optional rule.
Well, I expect this to change substantially after feedback, because right now the rules are all over the place.
-=-=-
The rules tell you that the average encounter should, by default, contain a randomly determined amount of 0-8 magical items, that requires several consecutive dice rolls to generate. In my view, there are two things inherently wrong with these rules, i.e. (1) that this default leads to the Christmas Tree effect, and (2) that it's overly complex to require so many rolls.
That the rules tell you that you can deviate from the default is not the point. RPG rules always tell you that. It just so happens that in practice, the vast majority of people will end up using the default, or something closely resembling the default.
And, of course, the default is the design intent. So this tells me that either WOTC intends for campaigns to go monty haul, or they haven't done the math on how many items an average party will accumulate over a few levels.
How could a professional game design team release a packet with random numbers slapped down? Presumably they did the math. It's their judgment I question, so I'm not quite ready to assume they want characters drowning in magic items; maybe they just didn't evaluate their numbers sober.
Yes, I am aware of their previous existence, but no I am not being sarcastic. For the Ring of Mind Shielding, what I liked about it was the "secret" it comes with. I don't notice that in the SRD you link to, but maybe it existed in the sourcebook. Either way, it is still a fun idea that can make for a good game.Quote:
Originally Posted by PairO'Dice Lost
On the other hand, even though the Identify spell has existed probably for the entire life of the game, that doesn't mean it should stay, at least in its current incarnation. I like the way my 4e game handled it: when you found an item, you could make an Arcana/Religion/Nature check (depending on the power source of the item's magic), and if you succeeded (DC dependent on the rarity of the item), you learned the item's properties and powers, but if you failed then you had to learn by trial and error. Fun stuff ensued:
SpoilerOnce I gave a player a Lesser Cloaked Weapon but the party failed their Arcana checks to realize what it was. The party then came across a problem that could not be solved through combat. The fighter, who was ready to go with her weapon drawn, was upset that her particular skills could not be put to use at the moment, and so sheathed her sword and swore at the same time. The sword then vanishes, causing the fighter to become even more upset, especially when they fail the skill challenge and combat begins. However, in a moment of epiphany, the fighter's player realizes the connection between what she said and her weapon, and from then on always swears loudly in order to draw her magic sword.
The Rod of Lordly Might, though...they just kept it for the purpose of those jokes. There is no way anyone at Wizards could publish this item without snickering to themselves.
No read the packet, it explicitly says these tables are for generating Magic Items based off encounter difficulty and that its up to the DM to determine whether or not an encounter will have an item, no where does it say each encounter should provide the following
Sure, it spells out that if you don't put the items in an encounter, you should put them in a later encounter in the same adventure (e.g. the dragon's hoard at the end).
And as stated above, many people will ignore the fluff text and go straight to the rules. Guess what? The rules tell you to roll 1d100 for each encounter and then put in as many items as that roll specifies. Even if the fluff tells you that you don't need to do it that way, that's what the rules say. We pay WOTC to make good rules. We don't pay anyone to write disclaimers that say you don't need to use rules you dislike.
I'm going with haven't done the math.
Look at "Average Encounter"
91–96
1d2 common
1d2 uncommon
1d2–1* rare
97–99
1d2 common
1d2 uncommon
100
1d2 common
1d2 uncommon
1d2 rare
1 very rare
1d2–1* legendary
This is on a table where higher is good. If the pattern established on this and the other two tables were followed it would be:
97–99
1d2 common
1d2 uncommon
1d2 rare
1d2-1 very rare
They dropped two entries and never noticed.
Similarly, you simply CAN NOT actually playtest their adventures with a group with someone who wants to tank and not notice that the monster attack bonuses are about 7 points too low! Seriously, not a single monster in the playtest has a hit bonus as higher than +4, you can get AC 26 without a single magic item and with the very limited options we have in an early playtest. But the orcs do 1d12+7 if there's a leader boosting them and the medusa has a save or die.
Or have you looked at their Pre-gen characters? Finesse weapons with attacks based on strength from dex based characters. Abilities not added into damage. The human fighter gets both her attacks wrong. It's not like a fighter might want to use a weapon attack. And they didn't bother to update the pre-gens, does anyone really believe that no one reported this in the last two months?
They are not seriously thinking about or applying their own rules, they're throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks.
What do you think is the purpose of those tables? Serious question.
It would NEVER be a good idea to use them. They will NEVER produce the results you claim they want to produce, why do you think they have them at all.
What do you think is the purpose of the playtest adventures? Serious question.
Is it to test how the game is expected to work? Because the playtest adventures give out magic items FAR faster than is claimed to be intended in fluff.
Where do you see instructions to SYSTEMATICALLY give less than the tables? Because I've read the instructions, and they say:
Pl
"These tables are designed to help you award magic
items based on the difficulty of a given encounter.
You can determine the available items at the start
of each encounter for a taste of unpredictability, or
roll for all the encounters in a given adventure area
ahead of time and parcel them out as you see fit."
Those INSTRUCTIONS have you rolling for every encounter and placing every rolled item in the adventure. How do you determine that the FLUFF that says you can use the tables or not takes prescendence over the part that says to use the tables and why do you think the tables are included if you never expect them to be used?
Anyone else just groaning at items that have, for example, a 1% chance per month of saying something interesting?
I mean, really, folks. (1) I am not tracking that. (2) If you want me to track it, giving a 1% chance is not the way to do it.
Now, putting it entirely in the DM's hands? I can get behind that. But random 1% chances per month is just silly. It's a new, weird little subsystem that likely will never, ever matter over the course of an entire campaign.
-O
I'm also liking the bestiary. There were some real oddities earlier, particularly concerning experience (the Kobold example is a good one, with that pitiful Dragonshield being worth far more experience than the actually dangerous Trapmaster last packet), and most of them have been resolved. There is still room for new problems to develop, and I'm a little concerned about the 10xp monsters, simply because having 7-1 odds at level 1 for a normal encounter seems excessive, but that could work out better than anticipated.
Sadly, encounter design is now bogged down by the magic item rules, which involve a ridiculous amount of rolling, and quite a bit of assigning and then tracking magic items, many of which are absurdly powerful at the low levels of the playtest packet, and probably indefinitely. Granted, they also have the Holy Avenger, a weapon that can only be attuned by a class they haven't actually released yet, so I'd expect the magic item system to get an overhaul.
On the other hand, equipment has been a mess in general from day one, from the absurd weights to the odd pricing to the clutter, so there is a real possibility that magic items will suffer the same fate.
I've run some math on the "Caves of Chaos" adventure that's included. The adventure gives its own "treasure", but I thought it would be a good thought exercise to see how much treasure would "generate" assuming all of the encounters occurred in an original adventure. In other words, all of the encounters in the Caves of Chaos, run relatively back to back, without the framework of the adventure. How much loot would the PCs gain (on average)?
Assumption 1: The PCs started at level 1, and made their way through each cave in order of easiest difficulty first (i.e. kobolds before orcs). They became level 2 after clearing the Kobold, Golbin, and Hobgoblin Lairs (Areas A, D, and F) and level 3 after clearing both Orc lairs, The Shunned Cavern, and the Ogre Lair (Areas B, C, E and G). After that, they were considered to be level 3 for the rest of the adventure, although the experience gains were enough to bring them to level 4 about halfway through the last area, the Shrine of Evil Chaos (Area K).
Since XP is supposed to be divided equally amongst four PCs, the follow XP totals were calculated as being the "break points"
level 1: 0 xp
level 2: 2600 xp
level 3: 7300xp
level 4: 14100xp
Assumption 2: Treasure was generated based on the XP total of a particular encounter against the GM guidelines for an Easy/Average/Tough encounter. For reference:
Level: Easy / Average / Tough
1: 160 / 260 / 400xp
2: 280 / 480 / 720xp
3: 520 / 920 / 1380xp
Calculating an experience "budget" is a simple matter of multiplying the values on page 11 of the recent DM Guidelines document by the number of players: 4.
An "encounter" total between 0 and half the "easy" value -1xp was considered to be trivial; no magic items found.
An "encounter" total between half the "easy" value and the easy value was considered to qualify for an "easy" magic item reward.
An "encounter" total between the "easy" value +1 xp and the "average" value was considered to qualify for an "average" magic item reward.
An "encounter" total equal to or greater than the "average" value +1xp was considered to qualify for a "tough" magic item reward.
Note that there are no suggestion that a "trivial" encounter (i.e. the Giant Centipedes in Room 13) should not reward an equal chance as a standard "easy" encounter; this is a judgement call I'm making; the math is below if you want to award treasure for "trivial" encounters.
Thus, for level 1, fights worth between 80 and 160xp qualified for "easy" loot; fights between 161xp and 260xp qualified for "average" loot; fights 261xp and above qualified for "tough" loot.
For level 2, fights worth between 140 and 280xp qualified for "easy" loot; fights between 281xp and 480xp qualified for "average" loot; fights 481xp and above qualified for "tough" loot.
For level 3, fights worth between 260 and 520xp qualified for "easy" loot; fights between 521xp and 920xp qualified for "average" loot; fights 921xp and above qualified for "tough" loot.
While the PCs would level to level 4 by about halfway into the final area, the PCs are assumed to gain treasure as if they were level 3, for simplicity sake. The data is below if you want to correct for this.
Assumption 3: All fights are trivial. The PCs all roll critical hits, and the monsters roll natural ones, so there is never a reason to stop. Reinforcements never have a chance to be called, nor to groups "mingle" with each other. The PCs are so quick, that they don't encounter wandering monsters. They enter each room like a SWAT team, clear it out, and continue.
Note, because don't try and tackle the "hard" challenges first, they're technically "reducing" the amount of treasure they get (as they encounter more "easy" encounters rather than "tough" encounters. Still, some assumptions must be made, and this would be the most pragmatic one if survival (not "phat loot") was the number priority (despite the PCs ridiculous luck).
The encounters are as follows, based off the ones encountered in the Caves of Chaos module, spoilered for room:
SpoilerLevel: Easy / Average / Tough
1: 160 / 260 / 400xp
A. Kobold Lair
Kobold outside: 9 x 10xp (90xp) = easy encounter
1. Guard area: 6x 10xp (60xp) = trivial encounter
2. Garbage heap: 15 x 10xp, + 20xp (170xp) = average encounter
4. Elite Guard Room: 4x 20xp (80xp) = easy encounter
5. Kobold Lord's Room: 5 x 10xp + 70xp (120xp) = easy encounter
6. Kobold Common Chamber: 8 x 10xp (80xp) = easy encounter
= 600xp (600xp total)
D. Goblin Lair
Wandering goblins: 4x 10xp (40xp) = trivial encounter
17. Guard Chamber: 7x 10xp (70xp) = trivial encounter
18. Guard Chamber: 7x 10xp (70xp) = trivial encounter
19. Goblin Quarters: 15 x 10 xp (150xp) = easy encounter
20. Goblin Chieftan's room: 7 x 10 xp + 80xp (150xp) = easy encounter
21. Storage Chamber: 4x 10xp (40xp) = trivial encounter
= 520xp (1120xp total)
F. Hobgoblin Lair
23. Hobgoblin Quarters: 13x 40xp (520xp) = tough encounter
24. Prison: 2x 40xp + 60xp (140xp) = easy encounter
25. Common Hall: 5x 40xp (200xp) = average encounter
26. Guard Room: 4x 40xp (160xp) = easy encounter
27. Armory: 3x 40xp (120xp) = easy encounter
29. Guard Room: 3x 40xp (120xp) = easy encounter
30. Hobgoblin Warlord's Quarters: 4x 40xp +170xp (330xp) = tough encounter
31. Guard Room: 3x 40xp (120xp) = easy encounter
=1710xp (2830xp total, level up to 2)
Level: Easy / Average / Tough
2: 280 / 480 / 720
B. Orc Lair
7. Guard Room: 4x 60xp (240xp) = easy encounter
8. Guard Room: 3x 60xp (180xp) = easy encounter
10. Orc Common Room: 12x 60xp (720xp) = tough encounter
12. Orc Leader's Room: 4x 60xp + 290 xp (530xp) = tough encounter
= 1670xp (4500xp total)
C. Orc Lair
13. Secret Room: 2 x 10xp (20xp) = trival encounter
14. Sleeping Chamber: 7x60 xp (520 xp) = tough enconter
15. Orc Common Hall: 12 x 60 xp (720xp) = tough encounter
16. Orc Leader's Room: 2x 160xp + 290xp (610xp) = tough encounter
= 1870xp (6370xp total)
G. Shunned Cavern
33. Murky Pool: 3x150xp (450xp) = average encounter
34. Owlbear Den: 1x 370xp (370xp) = average encounter
= 820xp (7190xp)
E. Ogre Lair
22. Ogre Cave 1x240xp (240xp) = easy encounter
= 240xp (7430xp, level up to 3)
Level: / Easy / Average / Tough
3: 520 / 920 / 1380
H. Bugbear Lair
35. Guard Room: 3x 140xp (420xp) = easy encounter
36. Bugbear Leader's Quarters: 2x140xp (280xp) = easy encounter
38. Bugbear Common Room: 10 x 140 xp (1400xp) = tough encounter
39. Guard Room: 5x 140xp (700xp) = average encounter
40. Prison: 3x 40xp, 1x60xp, 1x140xp, 1x40xp (360xp) = easy encounter
=3160xp (10590xp total)
I. Minotaur Caves
42. Stirge Nest: 13x 20xp (260xp) = easy encounter
43. Fire Beetles: 8x 10xp (80xp) = trivial encounter
44. More Fire beetles: 7x 10xp (70xp) = trivial encounter
45. The Minotaur: 1x 490xp (490xp) = easy encounter
= 900xp (11490xp total)
J. Gnoll Lair
46. Guard Room: 3x 60xp (180xp) = trivial encounter
47. Guard Room: 5x 60xp (300xp) = easy encounter
49. Common Area: 6x 60xp (360xp) = easy encounter
50. Gnoll Leader's Quarters: 5x 60xp + 170xp (470xp) = easy encounter
= 1310xp (12800xp total)
K. Shrine of Evil Chaos
52. Hall of Skeletons: 12x 30xp (360xp) = easy encounter
53. Guard Room: 8x 20xp (160xp) = trivial encounter
54. Acolytes' Chamber: 5x 90xp (450xp) = easy encounter
56. Evil Chapel: Adept's Chamber: 4x 170xp (680xp) = average encounter
57. Hall of Undead Warriors: 10x 30xp, 10x 20xp (500xp) = easy encounter
59. High Priest's Chamber/Anteroom: 3x 20xp, 240xp (300xp) = easy encounter
61. Torture Chamber: 2x 170xp (340xp) = easy encounter
62. Crypt: 1x 300xp (300xp) = easy encounter
63. Storage Chamber: 1x 220xp (220xp) = trivial encounter
64. Cell: 1x 200xp (200xp) = trivial encounter
= 3510xp (16310, level 4 ahoy!)
Total easy encounters: 28
Total average encounters: 6
total tough encounters: 8
Treasure can therefore be calculated as follows (using the tables on page 2 of the Magic Items playtest document); note that the tables probably have errors on it (why do you not get and rare treasure for rolling 97-99 on the "average" table?). This also assumes that all rolls are equally likely, and the GM lets the "dice fall where they may". Spoilered for length, hopefully the calculations make sense, although there has been a lot of simplification.
SpoilerEasy Encounters:
Common items gained: (28 * 0.2) + (28 * 0.3 * 1.5) = 18.2 items
Uncommon items gained: (28 * 0.06 * 0.5) + (28 * 0.03) + (28 * 0.01 * 1.5) = 2.1 items
Rare items gained: (28 * 0.03 * 0.5) + (28 * 0.01) = 0.7 items
Very Rare items gained: (28 * 0.01 * 0.5) = 0.14 items
Average Encounters:
Common items gained: (6 * 0.25) + (6 * 0.5 * 1.5) = 6 items
Uncommon items gained: (6 * 0.2 * 0.5) + (6 * 0.1 * 1.5) = 1.5 items
Rare items gained: (6 * 0.06 * 0.5) + (6 * 0.01 * 1.5) = 0.27 items
Very Rare items gained: (6 * 0.01) = 0.06 items
Legendary items gained: (6 * 0.01 * 0.5) = 0.03 items
Tough Encounters:
Common items gained: (8 * 0.25) + (8 * 0.75 * 1.5) = 11 items
Uncommon items gained: (8 * 0.2 * 0.5) + (8 * 0.3 * 1.5) = 4.4 items
Rare items gained: (8 * 0.2 * 0.5) + (8 * 0.1) = 1.6 items
Very Rare items gained: (8 * 0.06 * 0.5) + (8 * 0.03) + (8 * 0.01 * 1.5) = 0.6 items
Legendary items gained: (8 * 0.04 * 0.5) = 0.16 items
Artifact items gained: (8 * 0.01) = 0.08 items
Grand totals:
Common items gained: 35.2 items
Uncommon items gained: 8 items
Rare items gained: 1.94 items
Very Rare items gained: 0.8 items
Legendary items gained: 0.19 items
Artifact items gained: 0.08 items
Total = 46.21 magical items
Discussion: that's a lot of magic items being thrown around, despite the relatively "easy" time tackling the Caves presents. However, a deeper analysis is required; magical weapons and shields are not found at the common slot (only Uncommon and above); the only common items currently in the game are Potions of Climbing and Potions of Healing. thus the actual breakdown looks like this:
Potions of Healing (with a few potions of Climbing) gained: 35.2
Traditional magical items: 11.01
Things could change if new "common" magic items were introduced that bump up their relative value, i.e. magic daggers +1 and level 1 wizard scrolls.
Are ~11 uncommon (or greater) magical items cause to call the table made for "Monty Hall" games? Maybe! The 4e DMG recommends that four level 4 characters will gain about 10 items between level 1 and partway through level 4. Your feelings on the amount of treasure that 4e gives away will therefore influence how you feel about these tables.
Of course, another way to look at it is whether or not the "trivial"/"easy"/"average"/"tough" encounter "building" system is worth anything; note that the amount of "easy" encounters assumed that the party above fights vastly outweighs the amount of average/tough encounters. If we were to assume a more "even" encounter split (i.e. 20% easy, 60% average, 20% hard), a lot more treasure would be generated. This might be especially true if optimization causes only "tough" encounters to actually be a challenge.
I think it's also important to recognize how "luck based" such a table is; the party that wins the tough encounter and rolls 100 on the "tough" treasure table will get an average of 6 uncommon of greater items, more than half the amount one would typically see generated above. There are certainly logistical problems as well; if the party does get lucky and claims a Holy Avenger from a tough encounter, it could be a long while before the party Wizard gets his own "legendary" item.
TL/DR: It works for the Caves of Chaos adventure (sort of), but I shudder to think about the amount of treasure it would generate in an actual game where DMs don't have the party facing a lot of "easy" encounters.
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.
Actually, historically speaking, TSR modules had a metric ton of treasure and magic goodies in them because they were expected to be there to make up the expected XP value haul. An adventure generated by the DM would result in significantly less such treasures in practice (with a few ouliers obviously).
If I had to guess, I think some of the designers might have looked at the treasure payout of the modules, and then wrote rules to get the desired results and missed why the treasure output of some modules was so high in the first place.
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). Second, oddly enough the amount of treasure received doesn't depend on party size. Third, it bothers me how utterly random this is; while the average is 11 items here, a party might just as easily end up with only 5, or might end up finding a major artifact in the first encounter. Fourth, from my experience with 4E, nobody is at all interested in easy encounters, so I'd expect more encounters to be average or hard, which skews the numbers.
Note also that the 4E numbers are distorted by LFR (where you'll find one item per character level) and 4.4 (where you roll randomly for everything, including item level).
I recall that 2E also had random tables for which item you got; I wonder if they'll be doing that again.
However, didn't the playtest mention the minimum level at which PCs should get magic items?
Something like 3rd level for uncommon, 5th level for rare, and so on.
Though I've seen people complain that the rules make no sense and contradict each other at several points. This might be one of them.
Verifying this (Math is currently partly done, I'll get to it later):
Assume a 1/3 distribution of easy encounters, medium encounters, and hard encounters. That produces these totals:
{table]Total Encounters of Each Type|Encounters During Previous Level|Level
9.5|9.5|2
19|9.5|3
26.1|7.1|4
37|10.9|5[/table]
So. We have 37 encounters of each type to reach level 5, meaning 9.25 encounters of each type per level on average. Now, lets look at what this says regarding the probability of having items of the type given, knowing this:
{table]Level|Type|Encounters of Each Type By Average
2+|Common|18.5
3+|Uncommon|27.75
5+|Rare|46.25
7+|Very Rare|64.75
9+|Legendary|83.25
11+|Artifact|101.75[/table]
Now, this brings us to the expected items per encounter of each type calculations. These are:
{table]Difficulty|Common|Uncommon|Rare|Very Rare|Legendary|Artifact
Easy|.41|.024|.0058|.0013|0|0|
Average|
Tough|
Total|[/table]
Now, we need to know the how many encounters it takes for there to be a 50% chance to have each type of item, so we can evaluate the expected level by which the first item of each type to show up. So, that gives us:
.5=probability^number of encounters.
-1/[13.4 ln(probability)]=expected level
I still need to work out the probabilities, which is all sorts of tedious, but once that is done it should be pretty easy to see whether the expected levels actually mirror when the 50% chance of having an item shows up.
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 rewardfightersmacebro clerics for dumping Strength like 3e druids.
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. :smallsmile:
-O
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
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.
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:Quote:
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.
Quote:
Originally Posted by WotC
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?Quote:
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. :smallsmile:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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
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.Quote:
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
I'm not entirely sure whether you're being serious.
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!
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
For those of us who don't know, what's wrong with the stealth rules?
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.
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.
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.