D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting

[Saph]

I really dislike dependence on magic equipment. If we're moving away from that and making magic items quest items, or at least rare, I'll be happy.
Which is not to say that better weapons (bonuses to attack and damage) and armor (bonuses to AC and drops in ACP) shouldn't be a thing, but they should be cheaper and should be considered mundane.

To be honest I'd be fine with just getting rid of the whole idea of magical items with numerical bonuses. I know, I know, the whole "plus one sword" is iconic to D&D, but as soon as you make numerical-bonus items a thing then you inevitably make characters dependent on them. Once you get to the point where a character can have a +5 sword and +5 armour and a +5 stat booster and +5 to saves, then your gear is such a huge part of your combat effectiveness that it's practically impossible to fight level-appropriate challenges without it.

Besides, it's not as though just getting a +1 to your attack rolls is actually all that interesting. In the long run all it does is contribute to stat inflation. By the time the PCs have +3 weapons, the monsters have ACs that are 3 points higher, and so on.

[Antonok]

To be honest I'd be fine with just getting rid of the whole idea of magical items with numerical bonuses. I know, I know, the whole "plus one sword" is iconic to D&D, but as soon as you make numerical-bonus items a thing then you inevitably make characters dependent on them. Once you get to the point where a character can have a +5 sword and +5 armour and a +5 stat booster and +5 to saves, then your gear is such a huge part of your combat effectiveness that it's practically impossible to fight level-appropriate challenges without it.

Besides, it's not as though just getting a +1 to your attack rolls is actually all that interesting. In the long run all it does is contribute to stat inflation. By the time the PCs have +3 weapons, the monsters have ACs that are 3 points higher, and so on.

Agreed. With the bonuses to stats you get from your class and race, it'd just be a bit overkill to have numeric bonuses on gear.

So, topic change.

Item crafting. The devs haven't really talked about it much, but it's something that needs to be addressed. What does everyone think of it? What new directions should 5E take?

I'd honestly be fine if they didn't add in crafting.

Or at the very least they shouldn't add in where you can add a second enhancement to items. Way too easily abused when your party is decked out in twice their WBL.

[noparlpf]

To be honest I'd be fine with just getting rid of the whole idea of magical items with numerical bonuses. I know, I know, the whole "plus one sword" is iconic to D&D, but as soon as you make numerical-bonus items a thing then you inevitably make characters dependent on them. Once you get to the point where a character can have a +5 sword and +5 armour and a +5 stat booster and +5 to saves, then your gear is such a huge part of your combat effectiveness that it's practically impossible to fight level-appropriate challenges without it.

Besides, it's not as though just getting a +1 to your attack rolls is actually all that interesting. In the long run all it does is contribute to stat inflation. By the time the PCs have +3 weapons, the monsters have ACs that are 3 points higher, and so on.

Yeah, so maybe having anything beyond "masterwork" is pointless.

[TheOOB]

Yeah, so maybe having anything beyond "masterwork" is pointless.

I'd agree that the scaling bonuses on magic items is more harmful than helpful, but some bonuses are acceptable. I'd be happy to accept that a magic weapon or armor has a +1 bonus, in addition to what ever special abilities it may have, and a strong magical weapon or armor(say level 11+) has a +2 bonus, once again in addition to whatever other abilities they have. This means there is some base bonus(also good tiers for overcoming resistances), but if a player doesn't have as high of a bonus they should have it's not a huge deal.

As for stat bonuses, I'm not a huge fan.

[Camelot]

That's all fine and dandy for the default baseline rules, but I'd certainly expect to see a module that allows for magic items to be more common without it snapping the game in half. Especially since magitech settings like Eberron are fundamentally incompatible with the notion of magic being exotic.

Yes, I agree. I hope they utilize modules to the fullest for things like this, or better yet, make some sort of OGL for people to publish their own modules. At the very least we'll have plenty to do in the homebrew section of these forums.

[1337 b4k4]

a) Item creation should be possible for PCs. If the PCs have the power to kill demons and gods, it should be within their capabilities to make stuff. Item creation should also be practical – it shouldn't require jumping through a ludicrous number of hoops.

This isn't strictly true in the original myths that inform D&D. Plenty of mythological heroes fought and defeated or killed demons and gods, usually with the help of magic items yes, and usually those magic items were created by other gods and demons. Whether characters should be able to craft magical items is a setting dependent thing, and it's not even tied into how common magic items are. You could have a setting where the gods are highly involved and warring, and give magical items to their champions, leading to magic items being very common, but no mortal can create those items.

He continually leans towards "ease of use" and DM Fiat. I'm not going to pay for a game that relies on DM Fiat. If I have to make up my own rules, I'm not going to pay for yours. Making everything easy seems to have transgressed into making everything stupid. I'm still somewhat optimistic . . . but listening to Mearls makes me think this game is made for children who can't understand or be bothered by basic mechanics.

On the other hand, I'm more interested in buying a rule set that provides good general guidelines and otherwise leaves things open. I like this for a number of reasons:

a) Because I don't have time to memorize a 300 page rule book covering every thing from tap dancing to crafting popsicle sticks.

b) Because since I don't have the time to memorize all the rules, and I hate stopping the game to look up rules, I'm just going to wing or house rule it anyway.

c) Because inevitably, the more rules and the more layered and dependent they are, the more likely something is to break when I want to do something outside those rules.

d) Because not everyone I play with is a huge RPG rules fan. For those players who don't enjoy char-op, rules lawyering or knowing how all the mechanics fit together to make this well oiled machine, having less they have to wade through to get to the table and play is a good thing.

To be honest I'd be fine with just getting rid of the whole idea of magical items with numerical bonuses. I know, I know, the whole "plus one sword" is iconic to D&D, but as soon as you make numerical-bonus items a thing then you inevitably make characters dependent on them. Once you get to the point where a character can have a +5 sword and +5 armour and a +5 stat booster and +5 to saves, then your gear is such a huge part of your combat effectiveness that it's practically impossible to fight level-appropriate challenges without it.

Honestly, I think if they want to keep +x magic items, they should go back to +x vs y magic items. They can keep the generic +1 items if they want, but anything better than that should be vs some creature, attack or other thing, and it should be very specific. +3 vs goblins, +2 against fire so on and so forth. Sure on the one hand, this is adding more book keeping that players have to do, but I think the little book keeping it adds is a valid trade off to reducing stat inflation while still making basic magical items easy to create without also making them "Wonderous" items. And it's not like it's withou precedent. Plenty of mythological items were useful against just one or two foes. Even in LOTR, look at Sting, a magical sword that was only useful around Orcs, and was otherwise just a pretty sword.

[Draz74]

At the moment I quite like the Pathfinder model for doing it: PCs can create items for 50% of their value, assuming they have the time, item prerequisites, and feats to do so. Effectively, an item creation feat is trading a feat slot for gold (and for the ability to make your own stuff instead of relying on other people to do it). The 50% mark is a logical one because that's also the basic sell value for items.

Not perfect, but workable. I'd kind of like to see some form of return of the 2e magic item system, where you had to go on some sort of quest to make poewrful items. But if they feel that should be the realm of DM fiat (which does tend to be 5e's direction), just letting you trade a feat slot for gold could work.

To be honest I'd be fine with just getting rid of the whole idea of magical items with numerical bonuses. I know, I know, the whole "plus one sword" is iconic to D&D, but as soon as you make numerical-bonus items a thing then you inevitably make characters dependent on them. Once you get to the point where a character can have a +5 sword and +5 armour and a +5 stat booster and +5 to saves, then your gear is such a huge part of your combat effectiveness that it's practically impossible to fight level-appropriate challenges without it.

Besides, it's not as though just getting a +1 to your attack rolls is actually all that interesting. In the long run all it does is contribute to stat inflation. By the time the PCs have +3 weapons, the monsters have ACs that are 3 points higher, and so on.

AMEN.

a) Because I don't have time to memorize a 300 page rule book covering every thing from tap dancing to crafting popsicle sticks.

Suddenly I want to make a character with Craft (Popsicle Sticks) ...

Honestly, I think if they want to keep +x magic items, they should go back to +x vs y magic items. They can keep the generic +1 items if they want, but anything better than that should be vs some creature, attack or other thing, and it should be very specific. +3 vs goblins, +2 against fire so on and so forth. Sure on the one hand, this is adding more book keeping that players have to do, but I think the little book keeping it adds is a valid trade off to reducing stat inflation while still making basic magical items easy to create without also making them "Wonderous" items. And it's not like it's withou precedent. Plenty of mythological items were useful against just one or two foes. Even in LOTR, look at Sting, a magical sword that was only useful around Orcs, and was otherwise just a pretty sword.

There are ways to include this same flavor without the additional bookkeeping, though. For example, I'd rather just see "+1d6 damage vs. aberrations." Not only does it involve less math (since the bonus is in the form of another physical die that you roll, rather than changing the attack roll modifier that's written on your character sheet that you're used to using), but it also fits with the general 5e strategy of "attack rolls don't scale much; HP and damage are the scaling element."

[1337 b4k4]

Suddenly I want to make a character with Craft (Popsicle Sticks) ...

A (clean shaved, young looking) halfling (they would look as children to your eyes) assassin that uses sharpened popsicle sticks as his weapon of choice. After all, what town guard is going to be suspicious of the little kid with a popsicle?

There are ways to include this same flavor without the additional bookkeeping, though. For example, I'd rather just see "+1d6 damage vs. aberrations."

By bookkeeping I mostly meant the tracking exceptions to the norm. The benefit of generic +x weapons is that when you get it and equip it, you just add +1 to the numbers on your sheet and move on. +x vs y weapons require you to do more of the book keeping that a 4e rogue is famous for (Do I have X, am I attacking a Y creature, have I attacked them this round, have they moved yet etc). So would it be with +x vs y weapons (I'm I attacking a goblin? Is he dealing fire damage?)

[Dublock]

b) Because since I don't have the time to memorize all the rules, and I hate stopping the game to look up rules, I'm just going to wing or house rule it anyway.

I would LOVE it if they release e-book format.

I have the play test rules on my kindle, and I have used this to search for whatever rule.

Having it in such form allows me to only use a laptop for everything from reading the books, having everything open, keeping track of everything (including things the PCs can't know yet), making rolls (They hear typing, and are scared ), and I am sure there are other uses that I am not thinking of.

To be honest, its not a deal breaker, but I would be more interested if they did make such switch.

[MukkTB]

My design criteria for 5E magic weapons would be something like this.

#1 No +X on regular magic items. Maybe on legendary things could have this.

#2 Magic items should not be required for regular adventuring. If a monster requires the player to have a magic item for it to be an even fight at its CR this should be marked in the monster manual. There shouldn't be many (or any) monsters like this.

#3 The game should be balanced regardless of how many magic items per character the DM decides to have.

This leads me to think items that give +X VS Y, allow new maneuvers to be preformed, or cause spell like effects for a standard action(say throwing flames) are going to be preferable.

[Urpriest]

I think that it is absolutely essential that 5e retain some iconic terminology, because I think that most new players are drawn in by a desire to understand the old stories about D&D. That said, I think there are workarounds to making that terminology dictate the same game mechanics, and +x magic items are a basic example of this.

Basically, I think they should use the terms +1, +2, etc, to refer to tiers of non-numerical bonuses. A +1 longsword would not be a longsword that gives +1 to damage or to hit, but rather a longsword that has a first-tier ability, like being able to light itself on fire or break through certain types of damage reduction. +2 would then denote more powerful abilities, etc. While this may sound confusing, it's no weirder than spell levels having no numeric effect on the spell's actual effects beyond DC.

[Yora]

Which leads to the issue of damage reduction and energy resistance.

I think the principle should be, that not having any attacks to overcome such resistances should be the default assumption. If a creature has lots of them, like four or more, maybe having a way to ignore one of them would also be okay.
Having special weapons or special magic attacks would allow characters to handle the creature at a lower level, or to handle a larger group of them.

Having the right special weapons should be an advantage, rather then not being correctly equiped being a disadvantage.

[Camelot]

#3 The game should be balanced regardless of how many magic items per character the DM decides to have.

I agree with your post, but this one requires a bit more explaining. If you do not allow magic items to increase the power of the party, you run into a few problems.

#1 If you aren't stronger for having a magic item, then magic items don't feel fun and magical.

#2 If an ability granted to you by a magic item is equal in strength to your other abilities, then your turn slows down as you have more options to consider.

#3 If a magic item only works against certain enemies, then you'll have a harder time remembering which item works against which enemy the more magic items you have.

There are a number ways to keep the game balanced while still avoiding those problems.

A. Some magic items have negative side-effects. That sword of strength might deal more damage, but whenever you roll a natural 1, it slices you instead.

B. Some magic items have charges, so you're more powerful for a while, but it runs out if you use it too much. You'll want to save that wand of lightning bolt for the dragon at the end of the dungeon.

C. Some magic items grant all of your powers a bonus against certain enemies. You only have to write down that all of your attacks and spells have +2 against orcs instead of needing to pull out the specific weapon.

These are just some ideas, though. I'm sure they're full of holes too, but that there are also a lot of other ways to do it.

[MukkTB]

Having the right special weapons should be an advantage, rather then not being correctly equiped being a disadvantage.

You get both or neither.

[MukkTB]

#3 The game should be balanced regardless of how many magic items per character the DM decides to have.

3a Magic items don't benefit one class more than others.
3b Monsters can somehow be adjusted for a high magic setting or a low magic setting to be the same challenge. For example monsters could use magic items in a high magic campaign.

[Yora]

You get both or neither.

Of course you get effectively both. But for guidelines for DMs what makes appropriate encounters of a party of n characters with level x, it does make a difference.

[Kurald Galain]

I'm not going to pay for a game that relies on DM Fiat. If I have to make up my own rules, I'm not going to pay for yours.

That is a very good point. I love rules-light games and relying on improvisation... but there's no way I'm going to pay WOTC for that. There are plenty of free games out there that do rules-light better than any version of D&D does.

[Anderlith]

Firstly, DDN better have rules to create magic items because I am looking forward to playing a badass Articifer when the Eberron book comes out.

Secondly I want to see mundane items that feel powerful, why not have the masterwork quality take over for +x mechanics? Instead of a Masterwork weapon that gives +1 to attack, you will have one that gives +1 to attack & damage, as well as masterwork weapons that give +3 & such.

Let magic be magical, not numeral. Elemental damages & Bane qualities being the only things that blur that line.

Let magic crafters cut costs by finding rare/exotic ingredients. A bound fire elemental or the heart of a magman will allow you to add the flaming quality to a weapon without knowing the spell requirements, Seigfried wasn't a mage when he crafted Balmog, neither should my berzerker when he goes to have the thunder god bless his blade with the might of the heavens.

[Starbuck_II]

Not perfect, but workable. I'd kind of like to see some form of return of the 2e magic item system, where you had to go on some sort of quest to make poewrful items. But if they feel that should be the realm of DM fiat (which does tend to be 5e's direction), just letting you trade a feat slot for gold could work.

Actually, questing was more of a joke and an optional rule.
"find the voice of a stone" meant casting ventriloquist on it (example in the bok). It was just flavor stuff that any any low level wizards could do, but designers thought was fun.

There are ways to include this same flavor without the additional bookkeeping, though. For example, I'd rather just see "+1d6 damage vs. aberrations." Not only does it involve less math (since the bonus is in the form of another physical die that you roll, rather than changing the attack roll modifier that's written on your character sheet that you're used to using), but it also fits with the general 5e strategy of "attack rolls don't scale much; HP and damage are the scaling element."

Nah, I say you can't go above +3 hit enhancement non-epic (+10 is total enhancement possible, rest must be in other stuff).
I say divorce enhancement to be hit or damage.
For +1 you can get +1 hit, +1 damage, or +1d6 vs a type.

So you can get a little damage boost or a bigger one vs one type.

Let magic be magical, not numeral. Elemental damages & Bane qualities being the only things that blur that line.

Let magic crafters cut costs by finding rare/exotic ingredients. A bound fire elemental or the heart of a magman will allow you to add the flaming quality to a weapon without knowing the spell requirements, Seigfried wasn't a mage when he crafted Balmog, neither should my berzerker when he goes to have the thunder god bless his blade with the might of the heavens.

This I like.
Rewarding you for a fetch quest instead of required.

Binding Fire Elementals was done in Eberron for Air Ships flight.

[Anderlith]

Binding Fire Elementals was done in Eberron for Air Ships flight.

I would like to see elemental binding to be expanded, &used for interesting effects like binding it to a weapon.

[Loki_42]

I'm of the opinion that pluses for weapons should be purely damage, and armor pluses could be DR. This would solve a lot of problems of magic item necessity while still allowing the sacred cow of numerical bonuses. +5 extra damage really makes a lot less difference than +5 attack and damage, or even just +5 attack.

[Grundy]

I would like to see elemental binding to be expanded, &used for interesting effects like binding it to a weapon.

This would be especially interesting if binding wasn't a risk-free proposition. What if the element was imperfectly bound and either had some agency, or could work itself free?

[TheOOB]

So I went to a D&D Next panel and PAX today. I'm too tired to type everything said, but it was very interesting.

They talked mostly about their design philosophy and process, trying to bring in elements from every edition and keeping the system simple and modular. Examples they presented were keeping the combat simple, but they could put out rules for more in depth tactical rules. They also mentioned that the base encounter and xp system assumes no magic items, and they'll have rules for how to adjust encounters depending on how much magic you want to give the players. The base system is supposed to end up as a kind of framework where you can build the campaign or setting you want.

They confirmed that you will be able to choose your own skills and feats if you don't want an existing specialty or background, and fighters will be able to cherry pick abilities if they want(rogues will likely not, as their abilities build on eachother). They also emphasized trying to make each class unique(and if it's not unique it'll be an option on another class, like archery fighter). So Paladin and Ranger will use different systems than fighter, cleric, or druid.

They said multiclassing is a ways off, they want it to be more organic than 1st or 2nd edition, but it won't be just like 3rd. They want to front load cool abilities on classes from level 1, so likely there will be multiclass versions of classes if you multiclass later in your career, so you won't get all the cool stuff with a one level dip, but you also won't be stuck with crappy low level abilities either(they said if you take a level of wizard at level 10, you won't be stuff with just a couple 1st level spells).

They also said they had plans to make it so you can only have one major debuff spell out at a time, and people can only have one major buff spell. They want to avoid people stacking a ton of spells and making encounters trivial.

[navar100]

I like the plus numbers. While my characters and others have had rings of protection +1, cloaks of resistance +1, items of ability score +2 here and there over the years, they were not so plentiful people here make them out to be. Magic mart is more theoretical than practical experience. I also do not find a longsword +1 to be boring. It can break verisimilitude when at some level above 5 +1 weapons are "everywhere" to be sold for scrap because the party has +2 or +3 equivalency weapons, that's a DM/campaign problem, not one of the mere existence of possibility for there to be a +1 weapon.

Spending a feat to be able to craft magic items is fine. I actually didn't mind 3E's approach of XP cost, but I certainly don't object to Pathfinder choosing to do away with that. I like that in Pathfinder you have to spend gold make a Spellcraft check, adding +5 to the DC for each prerequisite spell you don't have. It's also possible for warriors to craft magic weapons and armor of specific abilities. It takes two feats, though, which I think was a mistake - Master Craftsman and Craft Magic Arms & Armor. Since it's only for limited specifically defined enchantments, one feat would have sufficed. Have the prerequisite be some minimum ranks in Craft to be comfortable with magic weapons and armor crafting by PCs which helps to explain why not every NPC armorer and weapon smith can make them, only the true experts.

[MukkTB]

I'm of the opinion that pluses for weapons should be purely damage, and armor pluses could be DR. This would solve a lot of problems of magic item necessity while still allowing the sacred cow of numerical bonuses. +5 extra damage really makes a lot less difference than +5 attack and damage, or even just +5 attack.

I like this. You get to keep the iconic +X sword but the advantage is much reduced.

[Knaight]

This would be especially interesting if binding wasn't a risk-free proposition. What if the element was imperfectly bound and either had some agency, or could work itself free?

Or what if the other elementals weren't happy with their kind being bound into slavery for humans and demihumans? Or say that at least some humans and demihumans have the basic ethical sense to see that binding someone to a piece of technology for the rest of their life simply because it is convenient to you is wrong, and choose to oppose it.

I'm not opposed to the inclusion of elemental binding at all, but it certainly shouldn't be treated as anything other than a vile, despicable, selfish act. There is absolutely no way that it should be treated as acceptable if minor necromancy is portrayed as horrible, given that enslaving a person is somewhat worse than desecrating a corpse.

[AgentPaper]

I like this. You get to keep the iconic +X sword but the advantage is much reduced.

If magic weapons are that weak, then what's the point of having them? You may as well have magic weapons not exist at that point, because getting an extra +5 damage at level 20 is basically irrelevant. Not only does it still add to the bookkeeping, but it does so without actually having much effect on the game to compensate.

[Knaight]

If magic weapons are that weak, then what's the point of having them? You may as well have magic weapons not exist at that point, because getting an extra +5 damage at level 20 is basically irrelevant. Not only does it still add to the bookkeeping, but it does so without actually having much effect on the game to compensate.

This actually seems like an area where you could use the 4e multiple weapon dice fairly well. If you get +1 die per +1, but no attack it might be more reasonable (+5d12 is the maximum, for an average of +32.5 damage, but there is really no need to have +1 through +5). That places the +x line as worth using, but leaves other effects as viable.

That said, I'd rather they drop the +x weapons entirely, and introduce magical effects, as well as a simple scale of weapons and armor. Say that there are Poor, Standard, Masterwork, and Magical weapons, and using one higher on the scale against someone lower grants Advantage (perhaps it also interacts with armor on the same scale, maybe there are other effects). The +1 weapon would be replaced with the Magical weapon, which works out to a fairly minor hit bonus, but has a more visible effect due to how Advantage works. Then, on top of Magical are a whole host of other optional effects, one of which might essentially be another bump up on the scale.

[Yora]

They also said they had plans to make it so you can only have one major debuff spell out at a time, and people can only have one major buff spell. They want to avoid people stacking a ton of spells and making encounters trivial.

That could actually make things really interesting. Instead of having all your regular minor enchantments on all the time, you would have very distinctive attack or defense modes.
Fire immunity to rush at the big fire elemental and once it's down you switch to magic armor to survive in the sea of goblins you are now standing in.

Remains to be seen what "major" effects mean, but it could really become quite fun.

[Craft (Cheese)]

Or what if the other elementals weren't happy with their kind being bound into slavery for humans and demihumans? Or say that at least some humans and demihumans have the basic ethical sense to see that binding someone to a piece of technology for the rest of their life simply because it is convenient to you is wrong, and choose to oppose it.

I'm not opposed to the inclusion of elemental binding at all, but it certainly shouldn't be treated as anything other than a vile, despicable, selfish act. There is absolutely no way that it should be treated as acceptable if minor necromancy is portrayed as horrible, given that enslaving a person is somewhat worse than desecrating a corpse.

Silly Knaight, that's not how D&D ethics works! It only counts if you do it to a PC race. Drow, Orcs, Goblins, Elementals, you can do anything you want to them with no consequences to your alignment.