There's an item that appeared in 3.5 that I miss, and some other DM's I spoke with do, too. It's called the Masterwork Item. This is the finest product that a merchant or smith can possibly make, and there's only one or two of them made in the smith's entire career. (I happen to know this from the real world, from a weapons smith named Shadowmaker, who used to craft swords and daggers. The poor man suffered a car accident, after which he could no longer forge swords, but suffered the most debilitating pain. He got his nickname because of his Masterwork Sword, which he called Shadowsong. This sword was a legend in the SCA. Finely crafted, perfectly balanced, and nobody could afford it! Finally, after many years, the son of a Senator purchased the sword for his wall. Shadowmaker (called so because of his masterwork sword) died a few years later, I heard from Cancer.
Only a Masterworkitem can be made into a magic sword, for the simple reason that only this best of quality work can hold the magic. (A Bag of Holding, for example, would have to be made of the finest leather or silk, NEVER of burlap!)
A Masterwork weapon was highly sought after, because it automatically had a +1 to Hit, but NOT to damage. This was because the sword was perfectly balanced. Only after the sword was enchanted by a wizard pouring his power into the weapon for several months to a year would it become a +1 Sword, with +1 to Hit and to Damage.
I heard that WoTC had cancelled Masterwork items, because there were a number of complaints from DMs who foolishly allowed their players to buy up multiple Masterwork swords and axes and bows and whatnot, getting high-quality weapons without having to search and search for magic weapons. This to my mind, makes no sense. In the real world, in any Medieval City, even Kalaman or Waterdeep, there would ONLY be so many smiths capable of crafting masterwork items in the whole city--and even then, they would only be able to craft one, perhaps two, of these high-quality weapons! Same goes for tailors who make Masterwork Cloaks, or glassblowers who make Masterwork Crystal Balls for a wizard to enchant! There are only so many of this product to go around! We live in an industrialized society, where things come out from the factory in PERFECT CONDITION. Not so a thousand years ago! The craftsman poured his heart and soul into everything he made and sold, like my great-grandfather, who was a bricklayer from the Ukraine. My grandmother and great-aunt once said to me when I was little, "You see that stoop over there? Your great-grandfather made it! Still as solid as the day he put it together!" Joseph made it around 1920, '25. The stone itself was carved, you could see the craftsmanship that went into it--not like today in the 21st Century, where you push a button and things get printed off a 3D printer with really questionable quality.
THAT is Masterwork, by a master craftsman, at the pinnacle of his talent, after YEARS spent perfecting his technique.
The same thing happens with spells like Invisibility. The original spell lasted 24 Hours when cast, unless the Target of the spell did something foolish, like attacking someone. The first attack broke the spell. Novice DMs don't understand, that Invisibility only masks SIGHT. There are a number of other factors that bring things out, such as smell, a foul odor. Or--as happened to my wizard when I first started--as I tried to sneak past the guards at a city gate under an invisibility spell, I didn't realize that in walking through the mud in a forest, that I was COVERED with the mud, and the guards gaped at an invisible man COVERED IN MUD, as he tried to sneak past them! Animals as well are NOT fooled by invisibility! Dogs are common...and a typical dog will walk right on up to an invisible mage or thief, hoping for a treat or a pat on the head, if they don't growl or try to bite the intruder outright!
Finally, as a DM, I brought back something from 2nd Edition: Comeliness! If a female PC character had an 18 Charisma, it acted like an automatic Charm Spell! Think of Jennifer Aniston, or Kristy Brinkley, or any super-model. Every last NPC is drooling, falling over each other to get the girl's attention. "Hello, big, strong, and handsome! You don't mind getting me a glass of wine, do you? I feel a little faint." Or, "You don't really mind if my party goes on into the castle to talk to the vampire, do you? Never mind the wooden stakes in their hands, they just want to say hello!" As the whole party walks on through the gate, completely unnoticed, because the guards are still drooling at Jennifer Aniston's every word, every sway of her hips! Yeah, I did this because one of my miniatures came back from the painter looking JUST LIKE JENNIFER ANISTON as a ranger! I immediately dug through all my old Dungeons and Dragons modules, until I found the character: Shalindra the Ranger, so beautiful that everyone was after her affections...but her heart belonged to another party member. So, I dug up Shalindra and updated her stats to 5e, doing an override for an 18 Chr, and traded off her swords for an elven longbow and added the Sharpshooter feat.
I’m going to say no to all. The game math is very different. A +1 to hit in this edition is much more meaningful. It lets a level 1 character hit as reliably as a level 5-8 character. Now a +1 to damage instead of to hit might work.
Invisibility works well as it is. There are other limiting factors in this edition, concentration being the big one. But this edition also has a number of other different powers and abilities that interact differently. So the fact that it worked fine as a 24- hour duration in a different edition doesn’t mean it will do so this time.
Comliness was silly in 2e. Don’t know why it would be different now. Physical appearance is just a character choice, there’s no need to give it mechanical impact. Certainly not to make it an auto-succeed on a persuasion check. (I mean really, what if the guard was, for any number of reasons, not attracted to women? What if the guard were a dwarf, or a bugbear a who like women but is not interested in human women? What if the guard were attracted to human women, but she’s not their type? Comeliness as a stat assumes there’s an objective, universal standard for what is beautiful, which is provably false.)
There's an item that appeared in 3.5 that I miss, and some other DM's I spoke with do, too. It's called the Masterwork Item.
+1 to damage rolls should do nicely here. I suppose a +1 to attack and damage could work for a non-magical weapon, but it'd have to be balanced the same way, and there can't be stacking bonuses due to bounded accuracy.
Finally, as a DM, I brought back something from 2nd Edition: Comeliness! If a female PC character had an 18 Charisma, it acted like an automatic Charm Spell! Think of Jennifer Aniston, or Kristy Brinkley, or any super-model. Every last NPC is drooling, falling over each other to get the girl's attention.
Masterwork weapons (and armor) weren't nearly as rare or valuable as OP makes them out to be, either. They were not legendary, once-in-a-lifetime items, they were simply better quality than the generic stuff. Under 3E rules, it was pretty reasonable to expect to find a masterwork simple weapon in even a small village, while a major city like Waterdeep would have masterwork weapons for sale in every shop, basically. And I've never heard of any GMs having issues with player characters having multiple masterwork weapons because by about 4th level if you weren't using magic weapons and armor, what you had was largely useless.
And comliness was never anything but a bad idea that the game is better without.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
The Masterwork lore makes for a good dramatic moment in a book, such as when Bruenor crafted Aegis Fang and then never picked up a blacksmith's hammer again. But I don't think it works with modern D&D. Crafting rules would need a complete overhaul in order to implement Masterwork Crafted Items. (Not just weapons, but shields, armor and other items too.) Let's say a player makes a woodworker character and decides to craft a bow at level 3. Rolls a Natural 20. Is this the one Masterwork Crafted Item that (s)he can make in their entire lives? Do they need to wait for a higher proficiency bonus?
Invisibility is fine the way it is.
As far as Comeliness, the D&D stats have changed drastically since 2nd edition. You couldn't naturally get a 20 stat. A character with 20 Strength in 5th Edition can't carry as much as a 2nd Edition character could. Gauntlets of Ogre Strength used to be a really big deal. Now they're what you give to the guy who used Str as their dump stat. And if you had a 20 Con you regenerated health. Even if you died you could come back to life.
Comeliness as a mechanic was dripping in the sexism and racism of Gary Gygax. It was a bigoted mechanic that both demeaned women and contained some racist descriptions when describing “ugly” races from a man who regularly added his own racism to the game and believed woman were “biologically incapable of enjoying D&D.” It never should have been included in the first place and has no place today.
To be perfectly frank, your post is exactly why it has no place in the game. There’s a creepy level of fixation of a celebrity female’s body in your description and a bit of misogynistic “women should only be looked at for their bodies, their other stats should not matter if they’re hot” vibe to your entire post. I am not sure that was the vibe you intended to give off - but that is the vibe you are giving. And, in my experience, the totality of folks wanting comeliness in the game give off the same vibe. The game is better off without the skill - and without many of the people who wish to see its return.
Comeliness as a mechanic was dripping in the sexism and racism of Gary Gygax. It was a bigoted mechanic that both demeaned women and contained some racist descriptions when describing “ugly” races from a man who regularly added his own racism to the game and believed woman were “biologically incapable of enjoying D&D.” It never should have been included in the first place and has no place today.
To be perfectly frank, your post is exactly why it has no place in the game. There’s a creepy level of fixation of a celebrity female’s body in your description and a bit of misogynistic “women should only be looked at for their bodies, their other stats should not matter if they’re hot” vibe to your entire post. I am not sure that was the vibe you intended to give off - but that is the vibe you are giving. And, in my experience, the totality of folks wanting comeliness in the game give off the same vibe. The game is better off without the skill - and without many of the people who wish to see its return.
Racism but not necessarily sexism. Men are vain too and people do typically react better to men deemed good looking than those deemed less so. Also, charisma and physical attractiveness are different things. There was a good argument for separating the two.
As I recall, in Oriental Adventures, there was a note with Hengeyokai that their charisma penalties do not necessarily extend to those with affinity for the specific animal species any given member of the race is associated with and although I am less certain of such, I seem to recall something similar with respect to the 'ugly' races, that they would have different standards of beauty.
Masterwork weapons: Only if there is a rework to make more monsters immune to non-magical weapons.
Invisibility: Detecting by scent or sound is still not the same as by sight. Animals with good sense of smell usually have advantage on perception or tracking so that would cancel with the disadvantage from being invisible, but even then, just because a species has a good sense of smell does not mean it relies on that in the same way it relies on sight. Dogs still have eyes for a reason.
Comeliness as a mechanic was dripping in the sexism and racism of Gary Gygax. It was a bigoted mechanic that both demeaned women and contained some racist descriptions when describing “ugly” races from a man who regularly added his own racism to the game and believed woman were “biologically incapable of enjoying D&D.” It never should have been included in the first place and has no place today.
To be perfectly frank, your post is exactly why it has no place in the game. There’s a creepy level of fixation of a celebrity female’s body in your description and a bit of misogynistic “women should only be looked at for their bodies, their other stats should not matter if they’re hot” vibe to your entire post. I am not sure that was the vibe you intended to give off - but that is the vibe you are giving. And, in my experience, the totality of folks wanting comeliness in the game give off the same vibe. The game is better off without the skill - and without many of the people who wish to see its return.
Racism but not necessarily sexism. Men are vain too and people do typically react better to men deemed good looking than those deemed less so. Also, charisma and physical attractiveness are different things. There was a good argument for separating the two.
As I recall, in Oriental Adventures, there was a note with Hengeyokai that their charisma penalties do not necessarily extend to those with affinity for the specific animal species any given member of the race is associated with and although I am less certain of such, I seem to recall something similar with respect to the 'ugly' races, that they would have different standards of beauty.
In a 1975 interview where Gygax was asked about how he depicted women in his game - usually as secondary characters whose only defining personality trait was their “comeliness” - Gygax responded “Damn right I am a sexist” and said he wanted women “can jolly well stay away from war gaming in droves for all I care.” He also said some far worse, far more evil things which do not really belong on this forum.
Comeliness, as a skill, was always rooted in Gygax’s incredibly sexist views on women and his belief that women should be defined by looks first and foremost. It is invariably tied to the many, many, many sexist elements Gygax intentionally included in early D&D.
Comeliness as a mechanic was dripping in the sexism and racism of Gary Gygax. It was a bigoted mechanic that both demeaned women and contained some racist descriptions when describing “ugly” races from a man who regularly added his own racism to the game and believed woman were “biologically incapable of enjoying D&D.” It never should have been included in the first place and has no place today.
To be perfectly frank, your post is exactly why it has no place in the game. There’s a creepy level of fixation of a celebrity female’s body in your description and a bit of misogynistic “women should only be looked at for their bodies, their other stats should not matter if they’re hot” vibe to your entire post. I am not sure that was the vibe you intended to give off - but that is the vibe you are giving. And, in my experience, the totality of folks wanting comeliness in the game give off the same vibe. The game is better off without the skill - and without many of the people who wish to see its return.
Racism but not necessarily sexism. Men are vain too and people do typically react better to men deemed good looking than those deemed less so. Also, charisma and physical attractiveness are different things. There was a good argument for separating the two.
There was an argument, but it wasn't a good argument. It was always sexist no matter how much "men can be vain too" one tries to claim.
As I recall, in Oriental Adventures, there was a note with Hengeyokai that their charisma penalties do not necessarily extend to those with affinity for the specific animal species any given member of the race is associated with and although I am less certain of such, I seem to recall something similar with respect to the 'ugly' races, that they would have different standards of beauty.
Yes, they'd throw little lines like that but all the rules ignored it and treated the stat as if it was a universal standard among everything. It was a terrible idea that the game is better without.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
There's an item that appeared in 3.5 that I miss, and some other DM's I spoke with do, too. It's called the Masterwork Item. This is the finest product that a merchant or smith can possibly make, and there's only one or two of them made in the smith's entire career. (I happen to know this from the real world, from a weapons smith named Shadowmaker, who used to craft swords and daggers. The poor man suffered a car accident, after which he could no longer forge swords, but suffered the most debilitating pain. He got his nickname because of his Masterwork Sword, which he called Shadowsong. This sword was a legend in the SCA. Finely crafted, perfectly balanced, and nobody could afford it! Finally, after many years, the son of a Senator purchased the sword for his wall. Shadowmaker (called so because of his masterwork sword) died a few years later, I heard from Cancer.
Only a Masterwork item can be made into a magic sword, for the simple reason that only this best of quality work can hold the magic. (A Bag of Holding, for example, would have to be made of the finest leather or silk, NEVER of burlap!)
A Masterwork weapon was highly sought after, because it automatically had a +1 to Hit, but NOT to damage. This was because the sword was perfectly balanced. Only after the sword was enchanted by a wizard pouring his power into the weapon for several months to a year would it become a +1 Sword, with +1 to Hit and to Damage.
I heard that WoTC had cancelled Masterwork items, because there were a number of complaints from DMs who foolishly allowed their players to buy up multiple Masterwork swords and axes and bows and whatnot, getting high-quality weapons without having to search and search for magic weapons. This to my mind, makes no sense. In the real world, in any Medieval City, even Kalaman or Waterdeep, there would ONLY be so many smiths capable of crafting masterwork items in the whole city--and even then, they would only be able to craft one, perhaps two, of these high-quality weapons! Same goes for tailors who make Masterwork Cloaks, or glassblowers who make Masterwork Crystal Balls for a wizard to enchant! There are only so many of this product to go around! We live in an industrialized society, where things come out from the factory in PERFECT CONDITION. Not so a thousand years ago! The craftsman poured his heart and soul into everything he made and sold, like my great-grandfather, who was a bricklayer from the Ukraine. My grandmother and great-aunt once said to me when I was little, "You see that stoop over there? Your great-grandfather made it! Still as solid as the day he put it together!" Joseph made it around 1920, '25. The stone itself was carved, you could see the craftsmanship that went into it--not like today in the 21st Century, where you push a button and things get printed off a 3D printer with really questionable quality.
THAT is Masterwork, by a master craftsman, at the pinnacle of his talent, after YEARS spent perfecting his technique.
The same thing happens with spells like Invisibility. The original spell lasted 24 Hours when cast, unless the Target of the spell did something foolish, like attacking someone. The first attack broke the spell. Novice DMs don't understand, that Invisibility only masks SIGHT. There are a number of other factors that bring things out, such as smell, a foul odor. Or--as happened to my wizard when I first started--as I tried to sneak past the guards at a city gate under an invisibility spell, I didn't realize that in walking through the mud in a forest, that I was COVERED with the mud, and the guards gaped at an invisible man COVERED IN MUD, as he tried to sneak past them! Animals as well are NOT fooled by invisibility! Dogs are common...and a typical dog will walk right on up to an invisible mage or thief, hoping for a treat or a pat on the head, if they don't growl or try to bite the intruder outright!
Finally, as a DM, I brought back something from 2nd Edition: Comeliness! If a female PC character had an 18 Charisma, it acted like an automatic Charm Spell! Think of Jennifer Aniston, or Kristy Brinkley, or any super-model. Every last NPC is drooling, falling over each other to get the girl's attention. "Hello, big, strong, and handsome! You don't mind getting me a glass of wine, do you? I feel a little faint." Or, "You don't really mind if my party goes on into the castle to talk to the vampire, do you? Never mind the wooden stakes in their hands, they just want to say hello!" As the whole party walks on through the gate, completely unnoticed, because the guards are still drooling at Jennifer Aniston's every word, every sway of her hips! Yeah, I did this because one of my miniatures came back from the painter looking JUST LIKE JENNIFER ANISTON as a ranger! I immediately dug through all my old Dungeons and Dragons modules, until I found the character: Shalindra the Ranger, so beautiful that everyone was after her affections...but her heart belonged to another party member. So, I dug up Shalindra and updated her stats to 5e, doing an override for an 18 Chr, and traded off her swords for an elven longbow and added the Sharpshooter feat.
I’m going to say no to all.
The game math is very different. A +1 to hit in this edition is much more meaningful. It lets a level 1 character hit as reliably as a level 5-8 character. Now a +1 to damage instead of to hit might work.
Invisibility works well as it is. There are other limiting factors in this edition, concentration being the big one. But this edition also has a number of other different powers and abilities that interact differently. So the fact that it worked fine as a 24- hour duration in a different edition doesn’t mean it will do so this time.
Comliness was silly in 2e. Don’t know why it would be different now. Physical appearance is just a character choice, there’s no need to give it mechanical impact. Certainly not to make it an auto-succeed on a persuasion check. (I mean really, what if the guard was, for any number of reasons, not attracted to women? What if the guard were a dwarf, or a bugbear a who like women but is not interested in human women? What if the guard were attracted to human women, but she’s not their type? Comeliness as a stat assumes there’s an objective, universal standard for what is beautiful, which is provably false.)
+1 to damage rolls should do nicely here. I suppose a +1 to attack and damage could work for a non-magical weapon, but it'd have to be balanced the same way, and there can't be stacking bonuses due to bounded accuracy.
You could make a spell that has a longer duration, but it would have to be cast at a higher level.
Super gross.
Masterwork weapons (and armor) weren't nearly as rare or valuable as OP makes them out to be, either. They were not legendary, once-in-a-lifetime items, they were simply better quality than the generic stuff. Under 3E rules, it was pretty reasonable to expect to find a masterwork simple weapon in even a small village, while a major city like Waterdeep would have masterwork weapons for sale in every shop, basically. And I've never heard of any GMs having issues with player characters having multiple masterwork weapons because by about 4th level if you weren't using magic weapons and armor, what you had was largely useless.
And comliness was never anything but a bad idea that the game is better without.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Where's the No option?
The Masterwork lore makes for a good dramatic moment in a book, such as when Bruenor crafted Aegis Fang and then never picked up a blacksmith's hammer again. But I don't think it works with modern D&D. Crafting rules would need a complete overhaul in order to implement Masterwork Crafted Items. (Not just weapons, but shields, armor and other items too.) Let's say a player makes a woodworker character and decides to craft a bow at level 3. Rolls a Natural 20. Is this the one Masterwork Crafted Item that (s)he can make in their entire lives? Do they need to wait for a higher proficiency bonus?
Invisibility is fine the way it is.
As far as Comeliness, the D&D stats have changed drastically since 2nd edition. You couldn't naturally get a 20 stat. A character with 20 Strength in 5th Edition can't carry as much as a 2nd Edition character could. Gauntlets of Ogre Strength used to be a really big deal. Now they're what you give to the guy who used Str as their dump stat. And if you had a 20 Con you regenerated health. Even if you died you could come back to life.
You do realise a survey that doesn’t have no options isn’t much use?
The UA8 playtest document had the option of using your Bastion to forge Masterwork weapons.
Comeliness as a mechanic was dripping in the sexism and racism of Gary Gygax. It was a bigoted mechanic that both demeaned women and contained some racist descriptions when describing “ugly” races from a man who regularly added his own racism to the game and believed woman were “biologically incapable of enjoying D&D.” It never should have been included in the first place and has no place today.
To be perfectly frank, your post is exactly why it has no place in the game. There’s a creepy level of fixation of a celebrity female’s body in your description and a bit of misogynistic “women should only be looked at for their bodies, their other stats should not matter if they’re hot” vibe to your entire post. I am not sure that was the vibe you intended to give off - but that is the vibe you are giving. And, in my experience, the totality of folks wanting comeliness in the game give off the same vibe. The game is better off without the skill - and without many of the people who wish to see its return.
Racism but not necessarily sexism. Men are vain too and people do typically react better to men deemed good looking than those deemed less so. Also, charisma and physical attractiveness are different things. There was a good argument for separating the two.
As I recall, in Oriental Adventures, there was a note with Hengeyokai that their charisma penalties do not necessarily extend to those with affinity for the specific animal species any given member of the race is associated with and although I am less certain of such, I seem to recall something similar with respect to the 'ugly' races, that they would have different standards of beauty.
Masterwork weapons: Only if there is a rework to make more monsters immune to non-magical weapons.
Invisibility: Detecting by scent or sound is still not the same as by sight. Animals with good sense of smell usually have advantage on perception or tracking so that would cancel with the disadvantage from being invisible, but even then, just because a species has a good sense of smell does not mean it relies on that in the same way it relies on sight. Dogs still have eyes for a reason.
In a 1975 interview where Gygax was asked about how he depicted women in his game - usually as secondary characters whose only defining personality trait was their “comeliness” - Gygax responded “Damn right I am a sexist” and said he wanted women “can jolly well stay away from war gaming in droves for all I care.” He also said some far worse, far more evil things which do not really belong on this forum.
Comeliness, as a skill, was always rooted in Gygax’s incredibly sexist views on women and his belief that women should be defined by looks first and foremost. It is invariably tied to the many, many, many sexist elements Gygax intentionally included in early D&D.
There was an argument, but it wasn't a good argument. It was always sexist no matter how much "men can be vain too" one tries to claim.
Yes, they'd throw little lines like that but all the rules ignored it and treated the stat as if it was a universal standard among everything. It was a terrible idea that the game is better without.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.