I'll agree that a rebalancing to better match expectations would be good. But, it would also mean nerfing player characters, and that's not going to be popular.
Here's a basic example. My Barbarian character can currently Rage four times in a day. That's enough to do it when I need it, but not enough to do it all the time, because I only long rest at night, and even then only when it's safe. Let's assume this is the intended experience, which means the constantly-resting groups are not having the intended experience. The designers want players to have the intended experience, that's why they intended it, so they change things: now Rage refreshes twice a day. They cut the number of uses in half, right? Simple. Now I can only use it twice between rests, but I can rest at noon. Same numbers, basically. Except, Bob here has been playing in a "long rest twice a day campaign", so from Bob's perspective, he usually gets 8 Rages a day, and now you're cutting it down to just 4. Now Bob can't even Rage in every encounter. It's like he's not even allowed to do Barbarian stuff half the time, he says.
It never even occurred to me to try a 1 session adventuring day. Hells, most of the time I’m lucky to get two combat encounters done in a single session, that would take the party from breakfast to elevensies, at most lunch. The day is the day, and most adventurers tend to sleep in the nighttime. 🤷♂️
Sometimes adventurers travel at night, especially if they have Darkvision.
Absolutely. Or if there’s a ticking clock and they can’t afford to stop. But then that adventuring day goes into extra innings encounters. 😉
I'll agree that a rebalancing to better match expectations would be good. But, it would also mean nerfing player characters, and that's not going to be popular.
Well, you can compensate for fewer uses by making them recover on a short rest.
I'll agree that a rebalancing to better match expectations would be good. But, it would also mean nerfing player characters, and that's not going to be popular.
Well, you can compensate for fewer uses by making them recover on a short rest.
Yeah, you'de have to give your players time to take a short rest though and a lot fo campaigns dont do that.
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I'll agree that a rebalancing to better match expectations would be good. But, it would also mean nerfing player characters, and that's not going to be popular.
Well, you can compensate for fewer uses by making them recover on a short rest.
Yeah, you'de have to give your players time to take a short rest though and a lot fo campaigns dont do that.
If there's enough time for a long rest, there's certainly enough time for a short rest, and if you're only going to run a single encounter during a given day anyway, resting is irrelevant.
I'll agree that a rebalancing to better match expectations would be good. But, it would also mean nerfing player characters, and that's not going to be popular.
Well, you can compensate for fewer uses by making them recover on a short rest.
Yeah, you'de have to give your players time to take a short rest though and a lot fo campaigns dont do that.
If there's enough time for a long rest, there's certainly enough time for a short rest, and if you're only going to run a single encounter during a given day anyway, resting is irrelevant.
As I said earlier though, it depends on the campaign, you probably wont have enough time in, say, a dungeon crawl.
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As I said earlier though, it depends on the campaign, you probably wont have enough time in, say, a dungeon crawl.
Plenty of dungeon crawls have dungeons that are passive enough that you can take a short rest, but the whole point of changing this is because dungeon crawls are not what most people play.
As I said earlier though, it depends on the campaign, you probably wont have enough time in, say, a dungeon crawl.
Plenty of dungeon crawls have dungeons that are passive enough that you can take a short rest, but the whole point of changing this is because dungeon crawls are not what most people play.
True, that makes sense.
Maybe their could be different suggestions on how much you could use certain abilities relative to how many monsters your players face, for the next DMG when the new edition comes out?
Like, you could pick from a list of about how many monsters your players encounter per a day, and their it would say under it "For this type of play, you have ______ uses of _______ ability and it recharges after ________ as opposed to the normal amount of uses for the ability."
It would take a lot of work, but it would make the game a lot more flexible.
5e's item system is a complete mess. Rarity's correlation with power is tentative at best, with some items of high rarity being rather useless and some items of uncommon rarity being incredibly powerful. Add to that the lack of official gold values, meaning we have to consult third-party lists or just ad lib (suggested value based on rarity is not overly helpful given the disparate powers within tiers), and you have a system that is a step backward from prior editions.
4e's item system just worked. Each item had a rarity and a level, and items of the same type were available at different levels. So, a Dagger of Frost +1 might be a level 5 item; a Dagger of Frost +4 might be a level 20 item. Any abilities that weapon had also scaled with level, so it might do 1d6 extra damage when using an ability at level 5, and 4d6 at level 20. Wonderous items, which only existed by themselves and were not +X items, would be levelled to give an idea when that item would be appropriate for a player to have.
All told, this gave the 4e a wider range of loot at each level, while also providing more insight so a DM who just wanted to quickly find appropriate items did not have to go through a big old list and decide "what would be okay at this level?"
, and you have a system that is a step backward from prior editions.
Wasnt it a concious design decision though?
It seems on par with the decision to limit the number of + modifier you can have so that you cant build those untouchable/cantmiss heroes of past edition through items and buffs.
Items seems more utilities/roleplay/effect oriented than numerical in nature and therefore it's more difficult, or even useless, to classify them in a generic system.
, and you have a system that is a step backward from prior editions.
Wasnt it a concious design decision though?
It seems on par with the decision to limit the number of + modifier you can have so that you cant build those untouchable/cantmiss heroes of past edition through items and buffs.
Items seems more utilities/roleplay/effect oriented than numerical in nature and therefore it's more difficult, or even useless, to classify them in a generic system.
While intentional, that doesn’t mean it’s the best way to deal with items. Even if they wanted to keep their current number and power of items, removing gold costs and recommended minimum levels is an unnecessary change that only makes more work for DMs, without adding anything tangible in exchange.
, and you have a system that is a step backward from prior editions.
Wasnt it a concious design decision though?
It seems on par with the decision to limit the number of + modifier you can have so that you cant build those untouchable/cantmiss heroes of past edition through items and buffs.
Items seems more utilities/roleplay/effect oriented than numerical in nature and therefore it's more difficult, or even useless, to classify them in a generic system.
Not really. I mean, it was a decision of some sort, but it didn't really have to do with preventing untouchable characters. There's basically two issues with 5e magic items:
The designers occasionally show total incompetence at math (e.g. vicious weapon being Rare, when it is inferior to a +1 weapon).
4e had an attitude of "If X is game breaking, we'll leave it out". 5e has the attitude of "Eh, leave that up to the DM". Which is not necessarily wrong, but they should probably have a special category for "admit this item into your game at the game's peril" such as amulet of the planes, bag of beans, deck of many things, etc, or "this item is really hilariously overpowered even for a Legendary item" such as Iron Flask.
Unless I'm mistaken, the game never asserts that rare items are meant to be more powerful than common items.
As for gp, since the game design is to have no magic market, gp seems kind of pointless to add.
Yeah they do in the DMG:
"Rarity provides a rough measure of an item’s power relative to other magic items. Each rarity corresponds to character level, as shown in the Magic Item Rarity table. A character doesn’t typically find a rare magic item, for example, until around 5th level. That said, rarity shouldn’t get in the way of your campaign’s story. If you want a ring of invisibility to fall into the hands of a 1st-level character, so be it. No doubt a great story will arise from that event."
Also in the DMG when they talk about creating magic items:
It should also be noted that there is a point to giving a GP value even if there isn't a bazaar where they sell these things on a Thursday morning. While there may not be a thriving market for them, there Will still be times when parties will want to obtain a given magic item, and therefore a subset of those who don't want to do so by prying it from the cold, dead hands of the NPC who was the previous owner. There are also parties who have magic items that they'd wish to part with in exchange for something more appropriate to their circumstances.
In either case, there is a need for the DM and players to have an idea of what an item (magic or not) is worth to others. There might not be an entire industry based around these objects, but there would be a sense of value. A D&D given baseline value would prevent disagreements between players who think their +1 longsword is worth a life worthy of Kings and DMs who think that it might buy them 3 nights in the stable with leftover stew for supper.
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It should also be noted that there is a point to giving a GP value even if there isn't a bazaar where they sell these things on a Thursday morning. While there may not be a thriving market for them, there Will still be times when parties will want to obtain a given magic item, and therefore a subset of those who don't want to do so by prying it from the cold, dead hands of the NPC who was the previous owner. There are also parties who have magic items that they'd wish to part with in exchange for something more appropriate to their circumstances.
In either case, there is a need for the DM and players to have an idea of what an item (magic or not) is worth to others. There might not be an entire industry based around these objects, but there would be a sense of value. A D&D given baseline value would prevent disagreements between players who think their +1 longsword is worth a life worthy of Kings and DMs who think that it might buy them 3 nights in the stable with leftover stew for supper.
I try and use DMG values for a given magic item.
I also have a problem with giving my players to many magic items and to little gold.
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It should also be noted that there is a point to giving a GP value even if there isn't a bazaar where they sell these things on a Thursday morning. While there may not be a thriving market for them, there Will still be times when parties will want to obtain a given magic item, and therefore a subset of those who don't want to do so by prying it from the cold, dead hands of the NPC who was the previous owner. There are also parties who have magic items that they'd wish to part with in exchange for something more appropriate to their circumstances.
In either case, there is a need for the DM and players to have an idea of what an item (magic or not) is worth to others. There might not be an entire industry based around these objects, but there would be a sense of value. A D&D given baseline value would prevent disagreements between players who think their +1 longsword is worth a life worthy of Kings and DMs who think that it might buy them 3 nights in the stable with leftover stew for supper.
I try and use DMG values for a given magic item.
I also have a problem with giving my players to many magic items and to little gold.
It should also be noted that there is a point to giving a GP value even if there isn't a bazaar where they sell these things on a Thursday morning. While there may not be a thriving market for them, there Will still be times when parties will want to obtain a given magic item, and therefore a subset of those who don't want to do so by prying it from the cold, dead hands of the NPC who was the previous owner. There are also parties who have magic items that they'd wish to part with in exchange for something more appropriate to their circumstances.
In either case, there is a need for the DM and players to have an idea of what an item (magic or not) is worth to others. There might not be an entire industry based around these objects, but there would be a sense of value. A D&D given baseline value would prevent disagreements between players who think their +1 longsword is worth a life worthy of Kings and DMs who think that it might buy them 3 nights in the stable with leftover stew for supper.
It is also worth noting that crafting, both materials and time, are based on gold values, so if the party wants to commission an item be crafted, knowing that information would be helpful.
Additionally, while Wizards might think 5e should be the “use less items, be less powerful” edition, my players like getting loot and like feeling incremental increases in power more often than whenever they level up. It’s not like I can’t just make the fights harder to compensate - why Sen them something they enjoy? If you give out more than the recommended items, the’ll eventually want to sell things and upgrade their gear.
Let’s not also forget there’s a spell, Distort Value, that specifically is tied to item prices that generally don’t exist.
All told, there’s really no sensible reason not to have an official price. They can even add some rules for haggling and for DMs to justify using other values. “Here’s a baseline, here’s some recommendations on deviation” is a heck of a lot more useful than “Google it and use a fan creation,” which is what we have now.
It should also be noted that there is a point to giving a GP value even if there isn't a bazaar where they sell these things on a Thursday morning. While there may not be a thriving market for them, there Will still be times when parties will want to obtain a given magic item, and therefore a subset of those who don't want to do so by prying it from the cold, dead hands of the NPC who was the previous owner. There are also parties who have magic items that they'd wish to part with in exchange for something more appropriate to their circumstances.
In either case, there is a need for the DM and players to have an idea of what an item (magic or not) is worth to others. There might not be an entire industry based around these objects, but there would be a sense of value. A D&D given baseline value would prevent disagreements between players who think their +1 longsword is worth a life worthy of Kings and DMs who think that it might buy them 3 nights in the stable with leftover stew for supper.
I try and use DMG values for a given magic item.
I also have a problem with giving my players to many magic items and to little gold.
I use the pricing system in Xanathar’s Guide.
I should probably start using the base prices in Xanathars, or a combination fo the two, but I often have trouble finding the page mid session.
With the DMG though, I dont know why, but I can find the page pretty quickly. Guess I'm more used to that book.
It should also be noted that there is a point to giving a GP value even if there isn't a bazaar where they sell these things on a Thursday morning. While there may not be a thriving market for them, there Will still be times when parties will want to obtain a given magic item, and therefore a subset of those who don't want to do so by prying it from the cold, dead hands of the NPC who was the previous owner. There are also parties who have magic items that they'd wish to part with in exchange for something more appropriate to their circumstances.
In either case, there is a need for the DM and players to have an idea of what an item (magic or not) is worth to others. There might not be an entire industry based around these objects, but there would be a sense of value. A D&D given baseline value would prevent disagreements between players who think their +1 longsword is worth a life worthy of Kings and DMs who think that it might buy them 3 nights in the stable with leftover stew for supper.
It is also worth noting that crafting, both materials and time, are based on gold values, so if the party wants to commission an item be crafted, knowing that information would be helpful.
Additionally, while Wizards might think 5e should be the “use less items, be less powerful” edition, my players like getting loot and like feeling incremental increases in power more often than whenever they level up. It’s not like I can’t just make the fights harder to compensate - why Sen them something they enjoy? If you give out more than the recommended items, the’ll eventually want to sell things and upgrade their gear.
Let’s not also forget there’s a spell, Distort Value, that specifically is tied to item prices that generally don’t exist.
All told, there’s really no sensible reason not to have an official price. They can even add some rules for haggling and for DMs to justify using other values. “Here’s a baseline, here’s some recommendations on deviation” is a heck of a lot more useful than “Google it and use a fan creation,” which is what we have now.
Well, Distort Value is from the Acq. Inc. book, which is a little different from standard play. But I agree. A table of suggested adjustments would be aces. I've seen people say things like "I'm running a low magic setting," and then proceed to have magic item shops that sell whatever you want in any city you visit.
It should also be noted that there is a point to giving a GP value even if there isn't a bazaar where they sell these things on a Thursday morning. While there may not be a thriving market for them, there Will still be times when parties will want to obtain a given magic item, and therefore a subset of those who don't want to do so by prying it from the cold, dead hands of the NPC who was the previous owner. There are also parties who have magic items that they'd wish to part with in exchange for something more appropriate to their circumstances.
In either case, there is a need for the DM and players to have an idea of what an item (magic or not) is worth to others. There might not be an entire industry based around these objects, but there would be a sense of value. A D&D given baseline value would prevent disagreements between players who think their +1 longsword is worth a life worthy of Kings and DMs who think that it might buy them 3 nights in the stable with leftover stew for supper.
It is also worth noting that crafting, both materials and time, are based on gold values, so if the party wants to commission an item be crafted, knowing that information would be helpful.
Additionally, while Wizards might think 5e should be the “use less items, be less powerful” edition, my players like getting loot and like feeling incremental increases in power more often than whenever they level up. It’s not like I can’t just make the fights harder to compensate - why Sen them something they enjoy? If you give out more than the recommended items, the’ll eventually want to sell things and upgrade their gear.
Let’s not also forget there’s a spell, Distort Value, that specifically is tied to item prices that generally don’t exist.
All told, there’s really no sensible reason not to have an official price. They can even add some rules for haggling and for DMs to justify using other values. “Here’s a baseline, here’s some recommendations on deviation” is a heck of a lot more useful than “Google it and use a fan creation,” which is what we have now.
Well, Distort Value is from the Acq. Inc. book, which is a little different from standard play. But I agree. A table of suggested adjustments would be aces. I've seen people say things like "I'm running a low magic setting," and then proceed to have magic item shops that sell whatever you want in any city you visit.
I’ve run both high magic and low magic settings. In high magic settings a price guide would come in handy.
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I'll agree that a rebalancing to better match expectations would be good. But, it would also mean nerfing player characters, and that's not going to be popular.
Here's a basic example. My Barbarian character can currently Rage four times in a day. That's enough to do it when I need it, but not enough to do it all the time, because I only long rest at night, and even then only when it's safe. Let's assume this is the intended experience, which means the constantly-resting groups are not having the intended experience. The designers want players to have the intended experience, that's why they intended it, so they change things: now Rage refreshes twice a day. They cut the number of uses in half, right? Simple. Now I can only use it twice between rests, but I can rest at noon. Same numbers, basically. Except, Bob here has been playing in a "long rest twice a day campaign", so from Bob's perspective, he usually gets 8 Rages a day, and now you're cutting it down to just 4. Now Bob can't even Rage in every encounter. It's like he's not even allowed to do Barbarian stuff half the time, he says.
I dunno. Just a thought.
Absolutely. Or if there’s a ticking clock and they can’t afford to stop. But then that adventuring day goes into extra
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Well, you can compensate for fewer uses by making them recover on a short rest.
Yeah, you'de have to give your players time to take a short rest though and a lot fo campaigns dont do that.
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HERE.If there's enough time for a long rest, there's certainly enough time for a short rest, and if you're only going to run a single encounter during a given day anyway, resting is irrelevant.
As I said earlier though, it depends on the campaign, you probably wont have enough time in, say, a dungeon crawl.
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HERE.Plenty of dungeon crawls have dungeons that are passive enough that you can take a short rest, but the whole point of changing this is because dungeon crawls are not what most people play.
True, that makes sense.
Maybe their could be different suggestions on how much you could use certain abilities relative to how many monsters your players face, for the next DMG when the new edition comes out?
Like, you could pick from a list of about how many monsters your players encounter per a day, and their it would say under it "For this type of play, you have ______ uses of _______ ability and it recharges after ________ as opposed to the normal amount of uses for the ability."
It would take a lot of work, but it would make the game a lot more flexible.
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HERE.4e's item system.
5e's item system is a complete mess. Rarity's correlation with power is tentative at best, with some items of high rarity being rather useless and some items of uncommon rarity being incredibly powerful. Add to that the lack of official gold values, meaning we have to consult third-party lists or just ad lib (suggested value based on rarity is not overly helpful given the disparate powers within tiers), and you have a system that is a step backward from prior editions.
4e's item system just worked. Each item had a rarity and a level, and items of the same type were available at different levels. So, a Dagger of Frost +1 might be a level 5 item; a Dagger of Frost +4 might be a level 20 item. Any abilities that weapon had also scaled with level, so it might do 1d6 extra damage when using an ability at level 5, and 4d6 at level 20. Wonderous items, which only existed by themselves and were not +X items, would be levelled to give an idea when that item would be appropriate for a player to have.
All told, this gave the 4e a wider range of loot at each level, while also providing more insight so a DM who just wanted to quickly find appropriate items did not have to go through a big old list and decide "what would be okay at this level?"
Wasnt it a concious design decision though?
It seems on par with the decision to limit the number of + modifier you can have so that you cant build those untouchable/cantmiss heroes of past edition through items and buffs.
Items seems more utilities/roleplay/effect oriented than numerical in nature and therefore it's more difficult, or even useless, to classify them in a generic system.
While intentional, that doesn’t mean it’s the best way to deal with items. Even if they wanted to keep their current number and power of items, removing gold costs and recommended minimum levels is an unnecessary change that only makes more work for DMs, without adding anything tangible in exchange.
Not really. I mean, it was a decision of some sort, but it didn't really have to do with preventing untouchable characters. There's basically two issues with 5e magic items:
Yeah they do in the DMG:
"Rarity provides a rough measure of an item’s power relative to other magic items. Each rarity corresponds to character level, as shown in the Magic Item Rarity table. A character doesn’t typically find a rare magic item, for example, until around 5th level. That said, rarity shouldn’t get in the way of your campaign’s story. If you want a ring of invisibility to fall into the hands of a 1st-level character, so be it. No doubt a great story will arise from that event."
Also in the DMG when they talk about creating magic items:
https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/dmg/dungeon-masters-workshop#PowerLevel
They directly correlate power to rarity.
It should also be noted that there is a point to giving a GP value even if there isn't a bazaar where they sell these things on a Thursday morning. While there may not be a thriving market for them, there Will still be times when parties will want to obtain a given magic item, and therefore a subset of those who don't want to do so by prying it from the cold, dead hands of the NPC who was the previous owner. There are also parties who have magic items that they'd wish to part with in exchange for something more appropriate to their circumstances.
In either case, there is a need for the DM and players to have an idea of what an item (magic or not) is worth to others. There might not be an entire industry based around these objects, but there would be a sense of value. A D&D given baseline value would prevent disagreements between players who think their +1 longsword is worth a life worthy of Kings and DMs who think that it might buy them 3 nights in the stable with leftover stew for supper.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
I try and use DMG values for a given magic item.
I also have a problem with giving my players to many magic items and to little gold.
BoringBard's long and tedious posts somehow manage to enrapture audiences. How? Because he used Charm Person, the #1 bard spell!
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HERE.I use the pricing system in Xanathar’s Guide.
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It is also worth noting that crafting, both materials and time, are based on gold values, so if the party wants to commission an item be crafted, knowing that information would be helpful.
Additionally, while Wizards might think 5e should be the “use less items, be less powerful” edition, my players like getting loot and like feeling incremental increases in power more often than whenever they level up. It’s not like I can’t just make the fights harder to compensate - why Sen them something they enjoy? If you give out more than the recommended items, the’ll eventually want to sell things and upgrade their gear.
Let’s not also forget there’s a spell, Distort Value, that specifically is tied to item prices that generally don’t exist.
All told, there’s really no sensible reason not to have an official price. They can even add some rules for haggling and for DMs to justify using other values. “Here’s a baseline, here’s some recommendations on deviation” is a heck of a lot more useful than “Google it and use a fan creation,” which is what we have now.
I should probably start using the base prices in Xanathars, or a combination fo the two, but I often have trouble finding the page mid session.
With the DMG though, I dont know why, but I can find the page pretty quickly. Guess I'm more used to that book.
BoringBard's long and tedious posts somehow manage to enrapture audiences. How? Because he used Charm Person, the #1 bard spell!
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Ever wanted to talk about your parties' worst mistakes? Do so HERE. What's your favorite class, why? Share & explain
HERE.Well, Distort Value is from the Acq. Inc. book, which is a little different from standard play. But I agree. A table of suggested adjustments would be aces. I've seen people say things like "I'm running a low magic setting," and then proceed to have magic item shops that sell whatever you want in any city you visit.
I’ve run both high magic and low magic settings. In high magic settings a price guide would come in handy.