The Importance of Magical Items in D&D with Mike Mearls
One of the most exciting things that can happen in any D&D campaign is that moment you find a magical item, especially if it's rare. A magical item can not only represent power, but also be a symbol of a successful adventure, a villain defeated, or a personal hurdle overcome. If you are playing in one of Mike Mearls’ campaigns it can also mean you’ve been cursed. I spoke with Mike about how magical items can enhance your campaign and create a story.
Mike: I find that a lot of the items that I'm drawn to are ones that have really big impacts and that are very flexible. You think of superheroes who have items that are iconic. I like magic items that feel that way, that really help define your character and who they are, but that also by necessity means you don't want to have eight of them. It's something where in the course of the campaign you're going to have one.
Mike: I like things like the Rod of Lordly Might, it is interesting because it has lots of things it can do. I like items like the Rod of Seven Parts because naturally it has a story embedded within it, can do a lot of things, but then there's the test of can you actually find little parts of the thing.
Mike: I like items that change the character in an interesting way, especially in a way that sits outside the typical. A plus two sword is fine, but a magic sword that lets a fighter become much smarter than you'd expect and cast spells. That's interesting because it's a very different fighter and it's fun as a Dungeon Master because then you can put that in the game and you can break the game by giving players things that are too powerful, but you're the one doing it, so you can always just account for it. It's up to you whether you want that in your game. That's why magic item design is very hard, so I think if you were to ... For me at least, if you were to ask me to write a bunch of magic items to publish, I'd probably make items that most DMs really wouldn't find useful or it would be like that's too good. To me, that's fun. That's what makes that magic item something fun to strive for as a player.
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Posted Aug 16, 2017I agree. A dm can adjust the challenge to compensate for op magic weapons.
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Posted Aug 17, 2017I'm totally fan of Magic Items. But at same times, I'm not due to the fact the players become too distant in terms of power.
For example, our Barb has a magic axe and he does a LOT more damage than us. I know, Barbs are supposed to do more damage than average, but then he's the only one with a magic item, increasing the distance. So it becomes quite annoying to see him doing tons of damage (~70) while other players, if lucky, do 20~30.
DM is increasing the challenge to compensate that but in the end, most of our fights become too hard for those who do lot less damage and doesn't have the half-damage reduction from Rage/Fury/whatever, not to mention creatures with slash/pierce resistant, lowering our damage even further (while magic axe goes on rampage, full damage).
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Posted Aug 18, 2017It depends how the DM handles and balance the game with the character with the magic item. But in the same sense, balance should be maintained between the players' characters so that one character doesn't become more powerful than the others. But an ideal eventually came to mind, on how to base a campaign on the attaining of an artifact, then the search to destroy the very same artifact.
In the campaigns that I ran over the years, I found "Blackrazor" to be an item that I didn't like a player character to attain. But with age comes wisdom and slowly I began adjusting the artifact until I felt comfortable with it in my campaign. For example, most individuals, who attains the dreadful blade, are now cursed to be a pure albino and has an aura of doom and gloom about themselves. The individual could never absorb more than x3 their original hit points in temporary hit points. But there were other side effects as well. For example, in a recent campaign, I let an individual believe, after several adventures with the blade, that he was slowly turning into a "Vampire-like" creature. The harsh reality of the black blade struck the core of their being when the party encounter their further selves in a long campaign (I adjusted the adventure of "Curse of Stradh" to reflect what the future may hold for their characters). The "future" black blade, in the Curse of Strahn, after the completion of the adventure, found it's way back to the amber temple. to find a way to wreck more chaos across the multiple verse. Needless to say, after the completion of the adventure arch, the party is now looking for a way to dispose of the blade for good (Hence, the modified verse of the "Storm King Thunder," with the addition of the G1, G2 and G3 modules thrown in). What they don't know at the moment, it could well tear the party apart, by testing their friendship and "character" of each player's character.
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Posted Aug 30, 2017Sometimes that frees the rest of the team to do alternative tactics. A swashbuckler, a controller mage and a utility cleric can now be in the team because the death machine makes more playful builds available. As a gm i see all of that as connected. If everyone is Melee then it's annoying but a super axe, a bag of tricks and a bardic instrument can do a lot to make a diverse group.
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Posted Dec 8, 2018Once I was gifted with a celestial battle axe from a fallen cherub. It was quite useful but the great thing was on critical hits it had a 50% chance of causing the creature to implode!