Red Flags for DMs?

[Grod_The_Giant]

On the magic items conundrum:

I feel that wholesale magic items kinda destroy the uniqueness of magic. Magic should feel potent and useful but not "Common". Did anyone play NWNs? Those games make magic Mundane. Then again I think the biggest culprit here is the rules about material components that use mundane stuff to power magic. If the components themselves were rare (Pearl for the Identify rare), both spells and magic castings should feel much more flavourful. I understand why this is not the case. But I *do* also believe that it is a fixable issue. Whether it can be done within the *current* framework of D&D is another problem.

If I were the king (DM) I would actually have no +1 magic swords. Every item would be unique and *made* useful via specific story around it. A decanter of water would be a holy artifact that you'd only gain with immense investment. A headband of intellect +2 would not exist. Spells like wish, miracle, planar binding, plane shift, raise dead, resurrection would be guarded by archmages and gods and would be the purview of epic level characters only.

More importantly, I would agree with people pointing out about working for the magic item. You encounter a unique monster and then go on a quest to equip yourself to fight it. Mages go on a quest to acquire spells, feats and prestige classes and materials, while martial characters similarly quest for the feats, weapons, armors and prestige classes. This would act to justify the power these character options add to the player characters.

Also, I would use circumstance bonuses a lot to award players who think out of the box. Spells having mixed effects, martials exploiting the environment effectively etc would be encouraged to with these bonuses. The catch here is a great deal of investment from the DM in terms of description and planning including a well set up gameworld. But these are the costs of a good RPG anyway.

You can sort of do it if you use some sort of automatic bonus progression and stick to the more broadly capable classes (Warblades instead of Fighters, that sort of thing). And allow environmental actions to provide benefits on par with full attacking. And maybe stick to E6ish instead of allowing indefinite advancement into high levels. But D&D is sadly not great at the "magic is potent and useful but not common" business. Not only because half your expected power progression comes from items, but because spells are friggin' everywhere in the system, and they're cheap and easy and reliable. So... yeah, you're probably best not trying to run a magic-is-rare-and-special game in D&D; by the time you finish all the houserules, you're basically playing an entirely different d20 game.

[Quertus]

On the magic items conundrum:

I feel that wholesale magic items kinda destroy the uniqueness of magic. Magic should feel potent and useful but not "Common". Did anyone play NWNs? Those games make magic Mundane. Then again I think the biggest culprit here is the rules about material components that use mundane stuff to power magic. If the components themselves were rare (Pearl for the Identify rare), both spells and magic castings should feel much more flavourful. I understand why this is not the case. But I *do* also believe that it is a fixable issue. Whether it can be done within the *current* framework of D&D is another problem.

If I were the king (DM) I would actually have no +1 magic swords. Every item would be unique and *made* useful via specific story around it. A decanter of water would be a holy artifact that you'd only gain with immense investment. A headband of intellect +2 would not exist. Spells like wish, miracle, planar binding, plane shift, raise dead, resurrection would be guarded by archmages and gods and would be the purview of epic level characters only.

More importantly, I would agree with people pointing out about working for the magic item. You encounter a unique monster and then go on a quest to equip yourself to fight it. Mages go on a quest to acquire spells, feats and prestige classes and materials, while martial characters similarly quest for the feats, weapons, armors and prestige classes. This would act to justify the power these character options add to the player characters.

Also, I would use circumstance bonuses a lot to award players who think out of the box. Spells having mixed effects, martials exploiting the environment effectively etc would be encouraged to with these bonuses. The catch here is a great deal of investment from the DM in terms of description and planning including a well set up gameworld. But these are the costs of a good RPG anyway.

I think this could be a thread all to itself - and I'd be surprised if there haven't been such threads here before, actually.

3e has an expected balance point / range. As written, that balance involves lots of magic, from WBL items to casters to fantastic beasts. Attempting to change this can, obviously, have serious repercussions to play.

Making spell components rare should in itself probably be a red flag, per this thread. It's bad enough that the fighter can swing his sword 14,400 x (1-5) times per day, while the poor caster is so very limited in how many spells they can cast. Making spell components rare just adds insult to injury.

Ignoring balance for a moment, IMO, if you want to make magic rare, make it cool. A returning adamantine shotput that is hollow, and, when opened, acts as a few inch range mage hand (no concentration required to hold things inside the sphere). A staff made from a solidified beam of sunlight. A rainbow, forever held within a crystal ring, fashioned in the form of a möbius strip. Those are just a few of the unique items that have made it into my games.

IMO, items should be things that someone actually made. Back in 2e, I had a few characters craft items. Here's what I can remember, off the top of my head:
- Staff of the Wild Magi - lots of description of how it's 3 incongruous materials fused together, studded with powdered gemstones, and capped with a butterfly trapped in Amber. Functionally, it is a Staff of the Magi, but with Wild Magic spells in place of the standard array of spells.
- 6-Shooter - A hand crossbow grip beneath a platinum tube, at the end of which is a rotating cylinder of 6 stubby inset wands. This device allows you to charge one item (the cylinder) to power any of the 6 attached custom-built wands.
- Armus' Polyhedron Gateway - the rough size and appearance of a d12, this red glass item was created from a whole laundry list of components, including shavings from a gp and soil samples from each of the prime material worlds to which the device is attuned. Armus' Polyhedron Gateway is a not-so-cubic Cubic Gate; each of the 10 "active" faces is attuned to a different prime material world - the homes of the Armus' party members who, like Armus, were all abducted from their various home worlds. Armus collected those components over months/years of play.
- Left - created from the mouth of a... Um... Duplicating sphere thing... This glove / bracer / hand puppet is a psionic artifact granting the vast majority of the psycho metabolic school.
- Right - created from the mouth of a... Um... Duplicating sphere thing... This glove / bracer / hand puppet is a psionic artifact granting Dimension Door.
- Endbringer - this sentient blade I sadly remember little about, other than that it would Disintegrate any foe, and was crafted as a holy relic for a newly-ascended deity.
- several variations on Deck of Many Things.

In 3e? Eh, I've crafted some stat boosters, a few weapons, probably some armor, a Ring of Spell Storing for a demon, probably some boots. I can't really remember.

[Deophaun]

I feel that wholesale magic items kinda destroy the uniqueness of magic. Magic should feel potent and useful but not "Common". Did anyone play NWNs? Those games make magic Mundane.

Those games make magic mundane because the only way for a character to get access to it is for everyone else to have access to it as well. It must dropped by monsters, it must be sold in stores. Tabletop RPGs have no such restriction: you can bend the narrative arc to fit just about any magic rarity (except for non-existent) and still have the characters looking like Christmas trees under a detect magic with the Players having exactly what they want.

This is why I put this as a flag for DMs: it's a sign of a lack of imagination. It indicates that the person in charge thinks the world is playing a game, instead of the game trying to model a world.

[Remuko]

I think this could be a thread all to itself - and I'd be surprised if there haven't been such threads here before, actually.

3e has an expected balance point / range. As written, that balance involves lots of magic, from WBL items to casters to fantastic beasts. Attempting to change this can, obviously, have serious repercussions to play.

Making spell components rare should in itself probably be a red flag, per this thread. It's bad enough that the fighter can swing his sword 14,400 x (1-5) times per day, while the poor caster is so very limited in how many spells they can cast. Making spell components rare just adds insult to injury.

That's a dangerous line of thinking imo. Casters already have it way better than mundanes even if they can "swing his sword 14,400 x (1-5) times per day".

[logic_error]

That's a dangerous line of thinking imo. Casters already have it way better than mundanes even if they can "swing his sword 14,400 x (1-5) times per day".

With the constraint of level and a fixed average number of encounters per day.

[Florian]

In 3e? Eh, I've crafted some stat boosters, a few weapons, probably some armor, a Ring of Spell Storing for a demon, probably some boots. I can't really remember.

*Shrugs*

It´s a sad thing that the "functional" items beat the "colorful" ones by a wide margin.

[Arbane]

I was never a big fan of that. It is always silly to have a dragon being defeated by players that are not close to Epic levels. This breaks my immersion seriously. A Dragon is supposed to be an *intelligent* ancient creature that can literally plot and plan its entire life. You should not be able to defeat it willy nilly. Don't even get me started on the Archfiends :P.

Not every dragon is going to be Ancalagon the Black's older, smarter sibling. Some will be the Lambton Worm.

[Quertus]

*Shrugs*

It´s a sad thing that the "functional" items beat the "colorful" ones by a wide margin.

Well, there's several issues here that contribute to this "problem".

The first is that having an expected balance point means that wasting money on things that don't pull their weight is potentially suicidaly stupid.

The second, related issue is that abstracting the components to "X thousands of GP worth of components" removes a lot of the flavor and impetus to care about the details. Don't get me wrong, the old-school method where a DM would mandate a firstborn mandrake and butterfly kisses for a +2 longsword had its issues, including a lack of logic / breaking immersion or that v-word, plus made the crafting minigame take way too long / have way too much potential for effective spotlight hogging. But at least it did produce much cooler items.

Related to that is the issue of image. I can craft something I think is cool, but if the player doesn't like it for his character, he could just buy one to his specifications at the local magic shop. It sadly behooves an item crafter to simply create "generic item +1" rather than envisioning a fully realized, cool item.

Lastly, note which item I remembered crafting in 3e? The gift. Because it actually meant something (currying favor with the demon, and attempting to sow discord in their ranks) to the emergent plot. Because 3e item crafting now costs XP (in older editions, it gave XP), there is less impetus to do cool things with items, and stronger impetus to limit crafting to more... utilitarian pursuits. You craft items for party members because they're paying you, not as gifts. Making random gifts weakens you, and drags the party down.

[Earthwalker]

Eberron, despite being one of my favorite settings, is a bit funny. Merrix d'Cannith is a poor level 10 something guy. He can literally never come close to what you character would become in the game. This tells you something important about how seriously to take the game design there. As a DM there is a lot to balance in the game.

I think you can solve most problems in Eberron by treating most magic items as temporary charge based items or as infusions made specifically for you by your guild/ employer.

EDIT:

About going against Archfiends and Dragons.

I was never a big fan of that. It is always silly to have a dragon being defeated by players that are not close to Epic levels. This breaks my immersion seriously. A Dragon is supposed to be an *intelligent* ancient creature that can literally plot and plan its entire life. You should not be able to defeat it willy nilly. Don't even get me started on the Archfiends :P.

I would honestly say look into Earthdawn 4th Edition (or any of the older ones if you want it cheap)

The way it handles magic items is basically what you are saying.

Its an odd fish of a game making a reason why adventurers exist and why there are so many ruins with magic items in for people to find. It gets even better when your magic items are unique and you need to perform deeds / quests to power them up.

[Florian]

I would honestly say look into Earthdawn 4th Edition (or any of the older ones if you want it cheap)

The way it handles magic items is basically what you are saying.

Its an odd fish of a game making a reason why adventurers exist and why there are so many ruins with magic items in for people to find. It gets even better when your magic items are unique and you need to perform deeds / quests to power them up.

True. In its way, Earthdawn was a glorious example on how things can be handles, from adventurers to magic items.

[Mikemical]

It's bad enough that the fighter can swing his sword 14,400 x (1-5) times per day, while the poor caster is so very limited in how many spells they can cast.

[atemu1234]

TBH I'm kind of surprised the thread has stayed this civil. Pleasantly surprised, but typically when a thread with as volatile a topic as this lasts for 2+ weeks, things go south faster than a plane full of retirees from Michigan.

[Guizonde]

TBH I'm kind of surprised the thread has stayed this civil. Pleasantly surprised, but typically when a thread with as volatile a topic as this lasts for 2+ weeks, things go south faster than a plane full of retirees from Michigan.

i had to double check this wasn't the "discrepancies thread".

just remembered a red flag that i'm a repeat offender of/for. any player giggling a bit too much at bad ideas. i rarely go through with them, but i do tend to think a bit too much about "latteral problem solving". it usually involves explosives and/or large-scale destruction. to say nothing of breaking the fourth wall or the laws of physics. of course, sometimes, you need to rough up the plot to show him who's boss. the red flag bit is when a player is not a wise-guy, but an active game-breaker.

(for ideas of what i'm talking about, i'll refer you to my posts in the "things i'm not allowed to do" threads. about 95% are things i indeed have been banned to do again or preemptively. most of those i started giggling before being banned)