Aside from Wizards they seems to be the reason you find most of your magic items to me or am I crazy here?
,mechanically they aren't actually any better at crafting things than anyone else. well, they are better at crafting common and uncommon items, and by better they do it in 1/4 the time and half the cost.
Really, artificer's lore doesnt line up with its mechanics. Mechanic wise they essentially magically imbue non magical items, up to 6 total at a time, which will losemagic when they die, or want to imbue a new item after reaching the max. Mechanically there is no reason they would be producing most of the multiverse's magic items, Lore wise its theoretically possible its just a cultural thing.
The thing is to separate player-facing content from DM-facing content. While the hard mechanics don't provide for big lasting projects like advanced automata, magic lightning powered trains, etc., they also don't provide for anything comparable for Wizards, like creating a true magic tower with a magic elevator/escalator, step-and-go type teleportation circles, an enchanted larder that functions like a freezer, etc. These are things that the DM builds into the world rather than player-facing features, and so the process for bringing them about isn't codified as a hard class feature.
And regarding being better at crafting things, the only other class that is able to start with a single artisan tool proficiency is the Monk; Artificers start with two such proficiencies and gain a third when they get their subclass. Thus they're "better" at crafting in that the ability to use the crafting tools is a baked in part of their class, rather than something that 11 out of 12 main classes need some outside factor to provide, and they get a far better range of proficiencies than any class that comes to mind. Plus, while proficiency bonuses don't matter for downtime crafting, the level 6 bonus will be very relevant if they try to do something with their tools in the middle of a session like make a duplicate of a key the party needs from a sketch or memory of the original, carefully disassemble a mechanism for some reason, or somesuch.
The core D&D game isn’t about you fixing airships and building trains, so there is no point in making the mechanics reflect that. If you are making that the game then it’s not downtime anymore. It’s what you are actively doing. The artificers that are doing those jobs aren’t on downtime from adventuring. That’s their job and they are NPCs capable of doing anything the DM imagines. As a DM if a player has a job to fix an airship best believe we aren’t doing that with down time rules. They need to actively make checks to access the problem, adventure to find the necessary replacement parts and checks to repair it. They don’t need to be an Artificer to do this as not every gnome tinker is an artificer, but that expertise with tools and the multiple tool proficiencies will probably come in handy. Oh if they have that multi tool that only artificers can attune to they literally have expertise in all tools.
If magic items are banned, social rewards suck, and gold is meaningless much past level 6, what's left? Why adventure past level 6, if you're never going to get anything for it? Beyond the whole "the world will end and you live here" deal, which fine - but there's only so many times you can threaten the PCs' stuff that way before they start getting ugly, ne?
Call me naive or idealistic, but since the rules themselves tell us that magic items are entirely optional, my assumption is that the reward for adventuring is leveling up and getting cool new spells/abilities/feats. This seems especially self-evident when multiple classes gain the ability to overcome resistance to damage from nonmagical weapons around level 5 or so.
I agree that gold itself, as used in the 2014 rules, is a fairly poor motivator beyond a certain point. In Tier 1, it remains a big motivator so that you can buy better armor, more healing potions, etc. But as you say: once you hit level 6 and beyond, gold just isn't a good motivator.
But getting higher level spells is. Getting more hit points is. Getting new invocations or martial abilities or class features is.
We can debate about whether those are effective motivators or not - but it seems clear that the game is explicitly designed to reward advancement not with magic items but expanded capabilities.
These reason are very metagamy, to me the more we remove the more this turn into a hack and slash for only combat and random roleplay interaction, I though this game was about Role playing in a different world and the decision to keep adventuring gotta be either for something to gain or personal reason of the PC.
Yeah, that's why Bastions should cost money. You got to go adventure to pay off your mortgage!
If magic items are banned, social rewards suck, and gold is meaningless much past level 6, what's left? Why adventure past level 6, if you're never going to get anything for it? Beyond the whole "the world will end and you live here" deal, which fine - but there's only so many times you can threaten the PCs' stuff that way before they start getting ugly, ne?
Call me naive or idealistic, but since the rules themselves tell us that magic items are entirely optional, my assumption is that the reward for adventuring is leveling up and getting cool new spells/abilities/feats. This seems especially self-evident when multiple classes gain the ability to overcome resistance to damage from nonmagical weapons around level 5 or so.
I agree that gold itself, as used in the 2014 rules, is a fairly poor motivator beyond a certain point. In Tier 1, it remains a big motivator so that you can buy better armor, more healing potions, etc. But as you say: once you hit level 6 and beyond, gold just isn't a good motivator.
But getting higher level spells is. Getting more hit points is. Getting new invocations or martial abilities or class features is.
We can debate about whether those are effective motivators or not - but it seems clear that the game is explicitly designed to reward advancement not with magic items but expanded capabilities.
These reason are very metagamy, to me the more we remove the more this turn into a hack and slash for only combat and random roleplay interaction, I though this game was about Role playing in a different world and the decision to keep adventuring gotta be either for something to gain or personal reason of the PC.
Disagree. Any adventurer is going to want to increase their skills and capabilities, and the best way to do that (other than endlessly training) is to go and use them. The in-game explanation that works for most of the features unlocked by leveling up is that the character sharpens and learns from experience: after they've fought some foes - assuming they survive - they've learned how to better wield a sword, access the Weave, call upon their ki, etc.
I think it actually works fairly elegantly in that the game design allows for the player and the character to want the same thing (leveling up) for parallel reasons that don't require metagaming.
So, are we at the stage where players and DMs don't want to bother tracking money?
I've heard people don't wanna track ammunition, and that makes sense because it's trivial to obtain so many arrows that you'll never run out, and it's trivial to keep all those arrows on you at all times. It just seems like pointless accounting and doesn't strike the heroic fantasy, that's what I hear. And I've heard people don't want to track food and water, for similar reasons. And they don't want to track encumbrance, also for the same reasons.
People want to track HP, because it gives them a clear indicator of how well they're doing and how close they are to a failure state, and they can interact with it with multiple dynamic inputs. (Rest, potions, magic, special class features, plus risking more HP by using certain tactics like Reckless Attack or AoEs on top of one's person.) The range of HP for most characters is small enough that there's a meaningful chance of going to 0 in many situations, and you usually see people push back against the ones where there isn't (encounters that are too easy, or "pointless." And yes, I'm well aware that these types of encounters in older editions can drain other resources like arrows, but at that point we're going in circles. Apparently arrows are boring.)
They put up with tracking spell slots because it claims to contain the power level of magic, and magic is fun. (It's possible that players actually want to track spell slots because of similar reasons to tracking HP, but just going off my own experience, I'm not sure about that. I can elaborate if you really need me to.) If you want your magic spell dessert, you have to eat your spell slots vegetables.
Tracking money, then. You can use it to buy all those resources we already don't care about. And you can sometimes use it to buy magic items, but allegedly you're not supposed to or something. There are other ways to get them anyway. You can use it to pay for a lavish lifestyle, but there's really no reason to, and often you won't have time. Ultimately you use it to pay for a room at an inn, and little expenses like that which, similarly to the arrows thing and the HP thing, is just not going to actually drain you, so it feels pointless. Plus it's not actually a failure state to go broke in the first place. You could consider it a win state to have a lot of money, but how much is a lot? The meter doesn't have bounds like the HP bar does.
And does it strike the heroic fantasy? I think it used to, for sure. But nowadays our heroes are like, above that sort of thing for the most part. Geralt of Rivia gets his coin and he's a bit of a standout for it. It's gauche, un-heroic, craven to insist on payment from NPCs. The noble thing to do is work for free, like Superman does. These people are often in distress already, why make it worse by taking their hard-earned coin?
Maybe this is all just a natural contradiction that can't be removed and doesn't need to be. Or maybe it's time for a reality dramatic change. The kind of change Wizards is infamous for basically never making, but the kind that set 5e apart in the first place, back at its outset, like the advantage/disadvantage system eating up most situational modifiers.
Consider: The only class features that directly interface with the money system are the Wizard's spell learning features. And those are getting changed already. The opening is right there.
Money is very important in Tier 1 as it's your primary means of getting more and better equipment (especially armor for martials).
Once you hit Tier 2, it's assumed you've earned/found enough dinero to get the (mundane) armor and gear you've wanted and to buy the occasional healing potion as needed.
Tracking things like ammunition and food is something I'd do in an ideal world, but when you're playing, at most, two times a month for only a few hours each session, I honestly don't want to take up any of that time counting arrows. And as the post above says, that's not really in line with heroic fantasy.
So, are we at the stage where players and DMs don't want to bother tracking money? I've heard people don't wanna track ammunition
I think both of these are very subjective.
For example, I'm running a campaign with variant encumbrance and strict ammo tracking, but I do so very much on the basis of "only when needed". Since the campaign is set mostly in Baldur's Gate, most of the time they're only a quick walk away from a store they can buy more ammo from, or their home base where you can pick up anything they left behind.
But in a situation where they can't simply do that, e.g- descending into the undercity in search of someone, they need to keep track of things and think about what they're taking with them. I like doing this because it adds tensions you don't otherwise get, because supplies are now limited, and if you put your pack down to avoid being encumbered, what do you do if an enemy flees? What if your pack is stolen or you fall somewhere and can't back to it? What if you're trying to break into a building, you take your pack off to climb the wall and your allies are going to throw it over after you, but there are guards heading your way? You can get all these little tensions and challenges/puzzles that you don't otherwise get if you use the kitchen sink rules.
I'm not super strict about it though, in that if a player simply forgot to bring something from their home base I allow some reasonable ret-conning. I also have stolen the flashback/gear mechanics from Blades in the Dark, which helps to cut down on time spent planning by allowing players to spend points to "remember" they had what they needed all along, or they bribed a guard earlier so they'd leave a door unlocked or something, which lets things happen more in the moment and can lead to fun little heist-movie style flashbacks. I'm considering combining it with inspiration though, i.e- give players multiple inspiration dice they can either spend on a re-roll or a flashback. That's all very much homebrew though.
Point being you can be strict without it having to feel burdensome; I can't claim to have found a perfect balance, but the general principle is you only track it strictly when it really matters. Another good example is when travelling outside the city; players don't normally worry about rations because there's no shortage of places to eat and drink in the city, and when most of them cost only a few silver at most that's rarely a problem. But when leaving the city you need rations for the road (which are heavy), do they hire a wagon/carriage to carry extra supplies (but potentially makes themselves more of a target for bandits) etc., because those decisions can feed into challenges they might run into while travelling and make that more interesting. If you're running low on ammo, where do you get more? You can try to recover it, or make more, with the latter making tools useful.
Tracking money depends a lot on what the DM offers for players to spend their money on. The biggest problem with players gaining huge sums of money is that if there's nothing to spend it on then it feels pointless; but there are plenty of things a DM could present to a group that they might like to spend that money on as a side activity, or part of a larger goal. For example, in another campaign where I'm a player, the party owns a pub, but they have something they need to take care of in the Feywild, and they've been told of a portal that can be used to get there during a storm, and it's at sea. So they've been investing a load of money in buying and equipping a ship for the journey, they've hired a motley crew (since only one of them has a sailing background, and he's best known for rolling natural 1's when trying to sail) and doing everything else they can to prepare. They also took the ship on a shakedown cruise to test it (and its crew) and ran into a few unexpected challenges (a naval captain that had it in for them and a dragon turtle that hasn't been paid its tribute, you know, the usual). So suddenly we've gone from "players have too much gold" to a load of interesting little events, and a lot of Pirates of the Caribbean and Black Sail music and sound effects.
I think it's important to view a lot of these things in the rules as advisory/suggestions rather than hard systems that must always be used as-is, because no one system is ever going to perfectly fit every group. But I wouldn't dismiss them either because even simple mechanics that don't seem that important, can be used as a jumping off point for something interesting; if the problem is that your group has too much money, then find out what they want to spend it on, or give them something they need to spend it on. If they run out of rations what do they eat? Do they try hunting for food? What if that leads them into an unexpected encounter or stumbling upon a dungeon? Whatever you do, make it at least one of challenging, fun or interesting, because those are the things that really matter.
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I swear, if I see someone else say “well, if it ain’t gold and it ain’t magic, why would they even adventure” imma hit this thread with my list of reasons to adventure. And then add more.
I mean, I'll do it if it's the only way to get you to share, but my heart just wouldn't be in it so maybe just share now and spare everyone from my mediocre performance?
That not only woke me up but freaked out poor April, my pup, who had just settled in at my feet because I don't usually bark out a laugh this soon after waking up.
The thrill of adventure.
To seek out new experiences.
To boldly go where no one has gone before.
To solve a mystery.
To escape the law.
To find love.
To gain vengeance.
To sail beyond the sunset and all the eastern stars.
To find the second star to the right, so they can keep going until dawn.
To unearth ancient civilizations.
To free the oppressed.
To defeat an evil scheme.
To explore strange new lands.
To seek out new peoples.
To encounter new cultures.
To answer a question.
To enforce the law.
To save their village.
To save their family.
To save their people.
To have freedom and few responsibilities.
To see where the road leads.
To make even more money.
To come of age.
To build something of value.
To become Famous & Renowned.
To become Infamous and Feared.
To prove something.
To demonstrate competence.
To show defiance.
To recover something lost.
To get high.
To earn new ways of crafting.
To get laid.
To offer something of value to their patron.
To find a way out of this crazy world.
To find a way to stay in this wonderful world.
To test themselves against dangers.
To grow stronger.
To find new places to pan gold.
Because it is there to be done.
I have to confess that I owe this list to this forum. Because while one can nitpick the individual items, all of them are reasons to adventure just from within my own games, and to my mind, if folks think that the only possible reason to adventure are gold and Magic, they are missing out on so many more possible types of adventure and experience that I genuinely feel bad for them.
And with that, good morning.
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YES to what AEDorsay wrote. Saying there's no other reason to adventure except to gain magic items (and maybe gold) feels incredibly reductive, regardless of edition (but especially 5E).
To ignore the fact that some PCs do adventure for gold is also a bit of an oversight. IME popular reasons to adventure are: 1) to runaway / escape something or someone 2) to understand a mystery / prophecy 3) to stop an evil person / plot 4) to save someone(s) 5) for the thrill of adventure / curiosity 6) to recover someone / something that was lost 7) to get revenge 8) to pay off a debt. 9) out of spite. 10) to earn respect / reputation
To ignore the fact that some PCs do adventure for gold is also a bit of an oversight. IME popular reasons to adventure are: 1) to runaway / escape something or someone 2) to understand a mystery / prophecy 3) to stop an evil person / plot 4) to save someone(s) 5) for the thrill of adventure / curiosity 6) to recover someone / something that was lost 7) to get revenge 8) to pay off a debt. 9) out of spite. 10) to earn respect / reputation
Item 23 on my list does account fo the gold thing, lol. What I didn't include was "to find more spells", and I should, since spells in my game have to be found, lol.
And yes, all of those are common reasons.
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Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
I track everything. It may be old fashioned, it may not be a thing anyone newer wants to have to do, but I do track those things.
I track weather and storm build up, I track the effects of temperature, and so forth. I don't push hard on encumbrance, but I do it to an extent, and i track ammunition and supplies.
I get that a lot of folks think that is boring -- as you are pointing out here. But all of those things are part of the story, part of the drama, and the real issue, in my mind, is that a lot of DMs and players only know of and think about one style of play and one way of having adventures:
Go to the dungeon and kill it all, hauling out the loot, then do it again.
Nothing wrong with that. We did that for a decade, lol. But we have been playing for longer than a decade, and we eventually moved into a different kind of gaming -- first it was adventures that really focused on personal growth of the characters, so more role playing, more tightly tied to their backstories. THen we began to make it more about the world they were in. Then we began experimenting with different kinds of stories, different genres, and for us, it has always been closer to the nature of a book, but without the railroading that starts with "you are all in a tavern".
Someone said that the core of D&D isn't about being mechanics (paraphrase), except, well, it can be. It can be about anything one wants it to be. We've done victorian gaslamp and urban paranormal. horror and comedy, and we've even done romance, though never as a direct adventure. Tis next campaign and setting I will be doing draws from Aime to a pretty fair extent, but not in the sense of OP powers", lol -- just ideas. Like, despite this world being completely separated from anything else, folks can be isekai'd into it. They can be summoned. I even have it possible that they think they are in a video game and their character goes intangible (though never while the Player is in the game).
Part of the reason that I get kinda pissy aorund inclusion of Lore is that it sucks up space in the books, lol. They could just be frameworks. But I also understand that often for the rules to make sense there needs to be a context around and within them and so they have to work in some lore. All the classes are built upon a core foundation of lore -- certain things that are expected to be common, although they've long since abandoned some of the basis for those.
To me, all that tracking is key because of the kinds of adventures we run -- there are still dungeons and the like, and I have the fetch quests and the imbroglios and the many genres and the world even has elements of epic fantasy within it -- but it is an open world, where I might write a 100 page outline for an incredible story and watch it never be used.
5e has the ability for people to track all of those things. some folks like to say that 5e isn't a simulation style game anymore (and I will reserve my comments on how their doing so irks the shit out of me because it factually is still a simulation), except that all the rules for such are still there in the game, and so it can be.
If the Dm puts in the effort and the players want to try that.
Power fantasy it may be, but that doesn't mean that is all it is, or only what it is, or only what it could be.
I once challenged some "students" to a task of converting the film The Maltese Falcon into an adventure. I specified not the book (which to the humor of us all, only three of the 40 people in the class had ever even heard of). Only about 10% of the submission changed the names of the leads, or converted their role to something that fit the larger scale world we had constructed previously collectively.
Most relied on the idea that the PCs were the main characters, as well -- which wasn't part of the assignment parameters. So they could do that -- but the 20% or so who didn't chose to make the PCs observers to the larger story.
This is an example of how D&D can be so much more than just sandals and spells, more than just some Power Fantasy. Granted, I play with mostly adults -- and the kids are the children of those adults -- so we don't have a problem exploring more adult themes, but still:
I don' tthink the DEvs think of D&D as only a game for Heroic Fantasy. It may be their default, but I do know that I am not alone in recognizing that story comes from Drama and conflict, and that anything can be a conflict and that everything can be drama.
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To ignore the fact that some PCs do adventure for gold is also a bit of an oversight. IME popular reasons to adventure are: 1) to runaway / escape something or someone 2) to understand a mystery / prophecy 3) to stop an evil person / plot 4) to save someone(s) 5) for the thrill of adventure / curiosity 6) to recover someone / something that was lost 7) to get revenge 8) to pay off a debt. 9) out of spite. 10) to earn respect / reputation
If you look at actual published adventures, they're mostly about (3), with (2), (4), and (6) as possible subplots. There are a few deathtrap modules that are about (1).
To ignore the fact that some PCs do adventure for gold is also a bit of an oversight. IME popular reasons to adventure are: 1) to runaway / escape something or someone 2) to understand a mystery / prophecy 3) to stop an evil person / plot 4) to save someone(s) 5) for the thrill of adventure / curiosity 6) to recover someone / something that was lost 7) to get revenge 8) to pay off a debt. 9) out of spite. 10) to earn respect / reputation
If you look at actual published adventures, they're mostly about (3), with (2), (4), and (6) as possible subplots. There are a few deathtrap modules that are about (1).
Half the player base doesn't use published adventures though.
And some people DO play D&D to be accountants. Never underestimate the diversity of human creativity.
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We also track weather, using a really detailed set of house rules I Frankensteined from official and third-party sources. And we definitely keep an eye on encumbrance.
To ignore the fact that some PCs do adventure for gold is also a bit of an oversight. IME popular reasons to adventure are: 1) to runaway / escape something or someone 2) to understand a mystery / prophecy 3) to stop an evil person / plot 4) to save someone(s) 5) for the thrill of adventure / curiosity 6) to recover someone / something that was lost 7) to get revenge 8) to pay off a debt. 9) out of spite. 10) to earn respect / reputation
If you look at actual published adventures, they're mostly about (3), with (2), (4), and (6) as possible subplots. There are a few deathtrap modules that are about (1).
Also, published adventures require wide, fairly character-neutral hooks. 5 and 7-10 are specific to particular personalities/backstories, so they’re not good options for the wide approach of a published adventure.
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,mechanically they aren't actually any better at crafting things than anyone else. well, they are better at crafting common and uncommon items, and by better they do it in 1/4 the time and half the cost.
Really, artificer's lore doesnt line up with its mechanics. Mechanic wise they essentially magically imbue non magical items, up to 6 total at a time, which will losemagic when they die, or want to imbue a new item after reaching the max. Mechanically there is no reason they would be producing most of the multiverse's magic items, Lore wise its theoretically possible its just a cultural thing.
The thing is to separate player-facing content from DM-facing content. While the hard mechanics don't provide for big lasting projects like advanced automata, magic lightning powered trains, etc., they also don't provide for anything comparable for Wizards, like creating a true magic tower with a magic elevator/escalator, step-and-go type teleportation circles, an enchanted larder that functions like a freezer, etc. These are things that the DM builds into the world rather than player-facing features, and so the process for bringing them about isn't codified as a hard class feature.
And regarding being better at crafting things, the only other class that is able to start with a single artisan tool proficiency is the Monk; Artificers start with two such proficiencies and gain a third when they get their subclass. Thus they're "better" at crafting in that the ability to use the crafting tools is a baked in part of their class, rather than something that 11 out of 12 main classes need some outside factor to provide, and they get a far better range of proficiencies than any class that comes to mind. Plus, while proficiency bonuses don't matter for downtime crafting, the level 6 bonus will be very relevant if they try to do something with their tools in the middle of a session like make a duplicate of a key the party needs from a sketch or memory of the original, carefully disassemble a mechanism for some reason, or somesuch.
The core D&D game isn’t about you fixing airships and building trains, so there is no point in making the mechanics reflect that. If you are making that the game then it’s not downtime anymore. It’s what you are actively doing. The artificers that are doing those jobs aren’t on downtime from adventuring. That’s their job and they are NPCs capable of doing anything the DM imagines. As a DM if a player has a job to fix an airship best believe we aren’t doing that with down time rules. They need to actively make checks to access the problem, adventure to find the necessary replacement parts and checks to repair it. They don’t need to be an Artificer to do this as not every gnome tinker is an artificer, but that expertise with tools and the multiple tool proficiencies will probably come in handy. Oh if they have that multi tool that only artificers can attune to they literally have expertise in all tools.
Yeah, that's why Bastions should cost money. You got to go adventure to pay off your mortgage!
Disagree. Any adventurer is going to want to increase their skills and capabilities, and the best way to do that (other than endlessly training) is to go and use them. The in-game explanation that works for most of the features unlocked by leveling up is that the character sharpens and learns from experience: after they've fought some foes - assuming they survive - they've learned how to better wield a sword, access the Weave, call upon their ki, etc.
I think it actually works fairly elegantly in that the game design allows for the player and the character to want the same thing (leveling up) for parallel reasons that don't require metagaming.
So, are we at the stage where players and DMs don't want to bother tracking money?
I've heard people don't wanna track ammunition, and that makes sense because it's trivial to obtain so many arrows that you'll never run out, and it's trivial to keep all those arrows on you at all times. It just seems like pointless accounting and doesn't strike the heroic fantasy, that's what I hear. And I've heard people don't want to track food and water, for similar reasons. And they don't want to track encumbrance, also for the same reasons.
People want to track HP, because it gives them a clear indicator of how well they're doing and how close they are to a failure state, and they can interact with it with multiple dynamic inputs. (Rest, potions, magic, special class features, plus risking more HP by using certain tactics like Reckless Attack or AoEs on top of one's person.) The range of HP for most characters is small enough that there's a meaningful chance of going to 0 in many situations, and you usually see people push back against the ones where there isn't (encounters that are too easy, or "pointless." And yes, I'm well aware that these types of encounters in older editions can drain other resources like arrows, but at that point we're going in circles. Apparently arrows are boring.)
They put up with tracking spell slots because it claims to contain the power level of magic, and magic is fun. (It's possible that players actually want to track spell slots because of similar reasons to tracking HP, but just going off my own experience, I'm not sure about that. I can elaborate if you really need me to.) If you want your magic spell dessert, you have to eat your spell slots vegetables.
Tracking money, then. You can use it to buy all those resources we already don't care about. And you can sometimes use it to buy magic items, but allegedly you're not supposed to or something. There are other ways to get them anyway. You can use it to pay for a lavish lifestyle, but there's really no reason to, and often you won't have time. Ultimately you use it to pay for a room at an inn, and little expenses like that which, similarly to the arrows thing and the HP thing, is just not going to actually drain you, so it feels pointless. Plus it's not actually a failure state to go broke in the first place. You could consider it a win state to have a lot of money, but how much is a lot? The meter doesn't have bounds like the HP bar does.
And does it strike the heroic fantasy? I think it used to, for sure. But nowadays our heroes are like, above that sort of thing for the most part. Geralt of Rivia gets his coin and he's a bit of a standout for it. It's gauche, un-heroic, craven to insist on payment from NPCs. The noble thing to do is work for free, like Superman does. These people are often in distress already, why make it worse by taking their hard-earned coin?
Maybe this is all just a natural contradiction that can't be removed and doesn't need to be. Or maybe it's time for a reality dramatic change. The kind of change Wizards is infamous for basically never making, but the kind that set 5e apart in the first place, back at its outset, like the advantage/disadvantage system eating up most situational modifiers.
Consider: The only class features that directly interface with the money system are the Wizard's spell learning features. And those are getting changed already. The opening is right there.
Money is very important in Tier 1 as it's your primary means of getting more and better equipment (especially armor for martials).
Once you hit Tier 2, it's assumed you've earned/found enough dinero to get the (mundane) armor and gear you've wanted and to buy the occasional healing potion as needed.
Tracking things like ammunition and food is something I'd do in an ideal world, but when you're playing, at most, two times a month for only a few hours each session, I honestly don't want to take up any of that time counting arrows. And as the post above says, that's not really in line with heroic fantasy.
I think both of these are very subjective.
For example, I'm running a campaign with variant encumbrance and strict ammo tracking, but I do so very much on the basis of "only when needed". Since the campaign is set mostly in Baldur's Gate, most of the time they're only a quick walk away from a store they can buy more ammo from, or their home base where you can pick up anything they left behind.
But in a situation where they can't simply do that, e.g- descending into the undercity in search of someone, they need to keep track of things and think about what they're taking with them. I like doing this because it adds tensions you don't otherwise get, because supplies are now limited, and if you put your pack down to avoid being encumbered, what do you do if an enemy flees? What if your pack is stolen or you fall somewhere and can't back to it? What if you're trying to break into a building, you take your pack off to climb the wall and your allies are going to throw it over after you, but there are guards heading your way? You can get all these little tensions and challenges/puzzles that you don't otherwise get if you use the kitchen sink rules.
I'm not super strict about it though, in that if a player simply forgot to bring something from their home base I allow some reasonable ret-conning. I also have stolen the flashback/gear mechanics from Blades in the Dark, which helps to cut down on time spent planning by allowing players to spend points to "remember" they had what they needed all along, or they bribed a guard earlier so they'd leave a door unlocked or something, which lets things happen more in the moment and can lead to fun little heist-movie style flashbacks. I'm considering combining it with inspiration though, i.e- give players multiple inspiration dice they can either spend on a re-roll or a flashback. That's all very much homebrew though.
Point being you can be strict without it having to feel burdensome; I can't claim to have found a perfect balance, but the general principle is you only track it strictly when it really matters. Another good example is when travelling outside the city; players don't normally worry about rations because there's no shortage of places to eat and drink in the city, and when most of them cost only a few silver at most that's rarely a problem. But when leaving the city you need rations for the road (which are heavy), do they hire a wagon/carriage to carry extra supplies (but potentially makes themselves more of a target for bandits) etc., because those decisions can feed into challenges they might run into while travelling and make that more interesting. If you're running low on ammo, where do you get more? You can try to recover it, or make more, with the latter making tools useful.
Tracking money depends a lot on what the DM offers for players to spend their money on. The biggest problem with players gaining huge sums of money is that if there's nothing to spend it on then it feels pointless; but there are plenty of things a DM could present to a group that they might like to spend that money on as a side activity, or part of a larger goal. For example, in another campaign where I'm a player, the party owns a pub, but they have something they need to take care of in the Feywild, and they've been told of a portal that can be used to get there during a storm, and it's at sea. So they've been investing a load of money in buying and equipping a ship for the journey, they've hired a motley crew (since only one of them has a sailing background, and he's best known for rolling natural 1's when trying to sail) and doing everything else they can to prepare. They also took the ship on a shakedown cruise to test it (and its crew) and ran into a few unexpected challenges (a naval captain that had it in for them and a dragon turtle that hasn't been paid its tribute, you know, the usual). So suddenly we've gone from "players have too much gold" to a load of interesting little events, and a lot of Pirates of the Caribbean and Black Sail music and sound effects.
I think it's important to view a lot of these things in the rules as advisory/suggestions rather than hard systems that must always be used as-is, because no one system is ever going to perfectly fit every group. But I wouldn't dismiss them either because even simple mechanics that don't seem that important, can be used as a jumping off point for something interesting; if the problem is that your group has too much money, then find out what they want to spend it on, or give them something they need to spend it on. If they run out of rations what do they eat? Do they try hunting for food? What if that leads them into an unexpected encounter or stumbling upon a dungeon? Whatever you do, make it at least one of challenging, fun or interesting, because those are the things that really matter.
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I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
That not only woke me up but freaked out poor April, my pup, who had just settled in at my feet because I don't usually bark out a laugh this soon after waking up.
I have to confess that I owe this list to this forum. Because while one can nitpick the individual items, all of them are reasons to adventure just from within my own games, and to my mind, if folks think that the only possible reason to adventure are gold and Magic, they are missing out on so many more possible types of adventure and experience that I genuinely feel bad for them.
And with that, good morning.
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
YES to what AEDorsay wrote. Saying there's no other reason to adventure except to gain magic items (and maybe gold) feels incredibly reductive, regardless of edition (but especially 5E).
To ignore the fact that some PCs do adventure for gold is also a bit of an oversight. IME popular reasons to adventure are:
1) to runaway / escape something or someone
2) to understand a mystery / prophecy
3) to stop an evil person / plot
4) to save someone(s)
5) for the thrill of adventure / curiosity
6) to recover someone / something that was lost
7) to get revenge
8) to pay off a debt.
9) out of spite.
10) to earn respect / reputation
Item 23 on my list does account fo the gold thing, lol.
What I didn't include was "to find more spells", and I should, since spells in my game have to be found, lol.
And yes, all of those are common reasons.
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
I track everything. It may be old fashioned, it may not be a thing anyone newer wants to have to do, but I do track those things.
I track weather and storm build up, I track the effects of temperature, and so forth. I don't push hard on encumbrance, but I do it to an extent, and i track ammunition and supplies.
I get that a lot of folks think that is boring -- as you are pointing out here. But all of those things are part of the story, part of the drama, and the real issue, in my mind, is that a lot of DMs and players only know of and think about one style of play and one way of having adventures:
Go to the dungeon and kill it all, hauling out the loot, then do it again.
Nothing wrong with that. We did that for a decade, lol. But we have been playing for longer than a decade, and we eventually moved into a different kind of gaming -- first it was adventures that really focused on personal growth of the characters, so more role playing, more tightly tied to their backstories. THen we began to make it more about the world they were in. Then we began experimenting with different kinds of stories, different genres, and for us, it has always been closer to the nature of a book, but without the railroading that starts with "you are all in a tavern".
Someone said that the core of D&D isn't about being mechanics (paraphrase), except, well, it can be. It can be about anything one wants it to be. We've done victorian gaslamp and urban paranormal. horror and comedy, and we've even done romance, though never as a direct adventure. Tis next campaign and setting I will be doing draws from Aime to a pretty fair extent, but not in the sense of OP powers", lol -- just ideas. Like, despite this world being completely separated from anything else, folks can be isekai'd into it. They can be summoned. I even have it possible that they think they are in a video game and their character goes intangible (though never while the Player is in the game).
Part of the reason that I get kinda pissy aorund inclusion of Lore is that it sucks up space in the books, lol. They could just be frameworks. But I also understand that often for the rules to make sense there needs to be a context around and within them and so they have to work in some lore. All the classes are built upon a core foundation of lore -- certain things that are expected to be common, although they've long since abandoned some of the basis for those.
To me, all that tracking is key because of the kinds of adventures we run -- there are still dungeons and the like, and I have the fetch quests and the imbroglios and the many genres and the world even has elements of epic fantasy within it -- but it is an open world, where I might write a 100 page outline for an incredible story and watch it never be used.
5e has the ability for people to track all of those things. some folks like to say that 5e isn't a simulation style game anymore (and I will reserve my comments on how their doing so irks the shit out of me because it factually is still a simulation), except that all the rules for such are still there in the game, and so it can be.
If the Dm puts in the effort and the players want to try that.
Power fantasy it may be, but that doesn't mean that is all it is, or only what it is, or only what it could be.
I once challenged some "students" to a task of converting the film The Maltese Falcon into an adventure. I specified not the book (which to the humor of us all, only three of the 40 people in the class had ever even heard of). Only about 10% of the submission changed the names of the leads, or converted their role to something that fit the larger scale world we had constructed previously collectively.
Most relied on the idea that the PCs were the main characters, as well -- which wasn't part of the assignment parameters. So they could do that -- but the 20% or so who didn't chose to make the PCs observers to the larger story.
This is an example of how D&D can be so much more than just sandals and spells, more than just some Power Fantasy. Granted, I play with mostly adults -- and the kids are the children of those adults -- so we don't have a problem exploring more adult themes, but still:
I don' tthink the DEvs think of D&D as only a game for Heroic Fantasy. It may be their default, but I do know that I am not alone in recognizing that story comes from Drama and conflict, and that anything can be a conflict and that everything can be drama.
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
People don't play D&D to be accountants.
If you look at actual published adventures, they're mostly about (3), with (2), (4), and (6) as possible subplots. There are a few deathtrap modules that are about (1).
Half the player base doesn't use published adventures though.
And some people DO play D&D to be accountants. Never underestimate the diversity of human creativity.
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
We also track weather, using a really detailed set of house rules I Frankensteined from official and third-party sources. And we definitely keep an eye on encumbrance.
True, but they're a decent indicator of what Wizards thinks people want.
7, 18, 22, 41
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
The list was long so maybe I missed it, but another reason might be:
True Love
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
Also, published adventures require wide, fairly character-neutral hooks. 5 and 7-10 are specific to particular personalities/backstories, so they’re not good options for the wide approach of a published adventure.