DMs who unclench and let their players acquire powerful and/or fun to use items generally see a lot less clamour for player-side crafting.
Those same DMs show up on the boards a couple weeks later complaining that CR is broken and terrible and the PCs are steamrolling encounters way above their level because they gave the Sword of Kas to a 3rd level fighter.
It’s almost like we need to go back to the 4e model, where gear of a certain strength was assumed by a certain level, but that was also a real pain the DM for — you practically needed an excel sheet to track and make sure everyone had their +2 neck slot item, etc.
Still, I generally agree with you, and prefer more magic items to show up in game. But they need to figure a way to do it that doesn’t break bounded accuracy. That’s the real trick.
They can't, it's a fundamental design choice. Either magic items are assumed to be given out at certain levels and not receiving those items means that characters feel weaker at higher levels than they did at lower levels, or you assume no magic items are given out and if a character does receive a magic item they will feel more powerful afterwards than they did before regardless of level.
The big question IMO, is "Do you want combat encounters to feel like they are life-or-death?" because for many players, and even many DMs the answer is "No", and it is totally fine if that is your answer. It's why Easy modes are incorporated into videogames. D&D is a hobby, it's supposed to be fun, if thinking like your character will die in every combat isn't fun for you then it's totally fine to play a more relaxed game where combats aren't challenging.
Giving out tons of magic items is essentially "easy mode" for D&D, just like how Elden Ring / Souls games have build options that make the game really easy. This just needs to be explained in the DMG better than it is now.
The big problem for D&D is that many DMs find DMing in "easy mode" really boring. This is how D&D is different from videogames (where it doesn't matter if you enjoy cheesing the AI as the AI doesn't care). And there is this perception (though I'm personally not sure if it is true) that "optimizers" want their characters to be challenged regardless of how broken & OP they make them.
We really need a more open dialogue between Players, DMs and the designer's intentions. So that everyone can make informed choices about what kind of game they want to play. And what the consequences are for those choices.
I don't think the entire DMG needs to be playtested, but I'd love to see improvements / augments to the baseline Combat Options. Currently the DMG has Climb Onto, Disarm, Flanking, Marking, Overrun, Shove Aside, Cleave Through and Tumble; I'd like to add a few more here (like Sunder, Dirty Trick, and Steal), as well as tweak the ones we have.
For example, Flanking granting advantage is either too powerful when advantage is rare, useless when it's common, and either way tends to hurt melee more than it helps because monsters generally outnumber PCs. Flanking should grant a static +2 or +1.
Similarly, Tumble is often useless because you still need to Disengage to move past enemies safely. It should be possible for highly acrobatic characters to get a free Disengage as part of their movement, so you get the really cinematic characters flipping around and sliding under blades etc.
Still, I generally agree with you, and prefer more magic items to show up in game. But they need to figure a way to do it that doesn’t break bounded accuracy. That’s the real trick.
There's a simple way to make bounded accuracy work: bring back bonus types from 3e/4e (but with an extremely reduced number of types; I recommend 2 -- power and item), and two bonuses of the same type don't stack. This immediately breaks most ways of doing things like obtaining AC 35, but I can live with that.
It’s almost like we need to go back to the 4e model, where gear of a certain strength was assumed by a certain level, but that was also a real pain the DM for — you practically needed an excel sheet to track and make sure everyone had their +2 neck slot item, etc.
Well, you only need that if you care about the math working exactly, a level 15 character with a +1 neck item (when a +3 is expected) is going to get hit something like 20% more often, which is painful but not actually game breaking. Most gear bonuses in 5e are small enough that being behind the curve isn't a big deal unless people are stacking bonuses, which is what my above suggestion is about.
They can't, it's a fundamental design choice. Either magic items are assumed to be given out at certain levels and not receiving those items means that characters feel weaker at higher levels than they did at lower levels, or you assume no magic items are given out and if a character does receive a magic item they will feel more powerful afterwards than they did before regardless of level.
That's only true if you have an assumed scaling of monsters with PCs, which the PCs are actually aware of.
DMs who unclench and let their players acquire powerful and/or fun to use items generally see a lot less clamour for player-side crafting.
Those same DMs show up on the boards a couple weeks later complaining that CR is broken and terrible and the PCs are steamrolling encounters way above their level because they gave the Sword of Kas to a 3rd level fighter.
It’s almost like we need to go back to the 4e model, where gear of a certain strength was assumed by a certain level, but that was also a real pain the DM for — you practically needed an excel sheet to track and make sure everyone had their +2 neck slot item, etc.
Still, I generally agree with you, and prefer more magic items to show up in game. But they need to figure a way to do it that doesn’t break bounded accuracy. That’s the real trick.
They can't, it's a fundamental design choice. Either magic items are assumed to be given out at certain levels and not receiving those items means that characters feel weaker at higher levels than they did at lower levels, or you assume no magic items are given out and if a character does receive a magic item they will feel more powerful afterwards than they did before regardless of level.
The big question IMO, is "Do you want combat encounters to feel like they are life-or-death?" because for many players, and even many DMs the answer is "No", and it is totally fine if that is your answer. It's why Easy modes are incorporated into videogames. D&D is a hobby, it's supposed to be fun, if thinking like your character will die in every combat isn't fun for you then it's totally fine to play a more relaxed game where combats aren't challenging.
Giving out tons of magic items is essentially "easy mode" for D&D, just like how Elden Ring / Souls games have build options that make the game really easy. This just needs to be explained in the DMG better than it is now.
The big problem for D&D is that many DMs find DMing in "easy mode" really boring. This is how D&D is different from videogames (where it doesn't matter if you enjoy cheesing the AI as the AI doesn't care). And there is this perception (though I'm personally not sure if it is true) that "optimizers" want their characters to be challenged regardless of how broken & OP they make them.
We really need a more open dialogue between Players, DMs and the designer's intentions. So that everyone can make informed choices about what kind of game they want to play. And what the consequences are for those choices.
I resisted, lol, but I can't now.
Bounded Accuracy hasn't been a functional thing mathematically for a while now -- and if you dive into the popular homebrew stuff here, you rapidly learn that bounded accuracy is, well, only going to work if you use a d30 base. But that's not an argument I feel like having, personally, merely something I wanted to point out. If you disagree or don't think so, fine -- I'm not here to prove this.
So, fairly early in the 5e process, they made a couple major decisions. One was that they were going to reduce the need for magic items, and so they opted to really dive in and cull the hell out of them while also (decision 2) empowering the classes more (and getting the complaint from folks like me that all the classes have lost their sense of archetype, while making them more popular). They made magic items a very different thing, overall, and not essential to the nature of getting to your favorite vision of the all powerful or whatever. They then joined to this the notion that magic items are something from past history, the secrets of making them lost and the rest of it, and the funny thing is that's actually an old 1e concept that they should have learned from.
They restructured the game so that magical items labelled "rare" basically are supposed to be all but impossible to create for players, common ones can be, and uncommon ones are in the middle. I mean, they literally spell this out:
The game assumes that the secrets of creating the most powerful items arose centuries ago and were then gradually lost as a result of wars, cataclysms, and mishaps. Even uncommon items can’t be easily created. Thus, many magic items are well-preserved antiquities.
So creating magical items was kinda wiped out at the dawn of 5e, on purpose.
Thus, the overall idea was "if they have all these super powers, they don't need magic items", to use the cranky style of describing things. That was a major design choice -- and as I noted, part of it was something that was tried in 1e, lol.
Well, a decade later, and players want more magic items. They want to be able to create magic items (as they always have), and the design precepts continue to be based in the popularity of them to Players, for the most part. And, well, players want more magic items.
But, to Xalthu's point, there is a sense that giving out a lot more magic items will unbalance the game from the perspective of the Devs, and so they don't want to do too much -- but there are several signs that they are going to mke +1 and +2 weapons more common, and focus on adding more features (I mean, the bastion system does it, as an example).
So I think there will be a change in the way they deal with magical items -- and part of it is also business related; new magical items sell well on an individual basis, i am willing to bet, which they no doubt have seen. So, a combination of demand and general pressure points to it, though there is no real confirmation of it.
This is, of course, undercut by the existence of folks like the Artificer -- a class that isn't seeing much UA action -- and rules for making magic items that are frequently stretched beyond the ideas of making "common" magic items.
As far as the Easy Mode stuff, well, that's pretty much the popular choice, again. ANd it is very apparent that design choices are made based on that popularity -- which means the "life or death" thing is still going to continue to be rare, as that's what the popular base wants (and note that in any popularity structure that is not controlled for the distinction between DM and Player, players will always win simply because they outnumber DMs massively).
That means that the game is going to continue to make character death rare (as has been noted, the baseline for the game is 70% chance of survival. Most players like that. Dead characters do not make for growth of the game/business).
That conversation? The design choice there was to foist it onto the tables, moving it out of the game design issue as a whole. IF they table wants more chance of dying, they will do it. If not, they won't. I run a 50% chance of dying game. I also run an unstructured, open world where folks can die in a heartbeat if they do some damn fool thing -- which is, for most players, exactly what they want to do: the damn fool thing. How did they push it off? The Zero Session.
Which I fully expect a whole bit on in the PHB this go around. Something a little more involved than they had in Tasha's.
And since most of the folks who are playing today have never played any other version, they don't realize that there is any other way of doing things. Stuff like mine, then, is essentially relegated to the fringe of the game as a whole -- so folks like me either create our own rules or go find a new game or whatever.
I want more magic items to show up in the game. But to make room for them, you have to either step outside of the idea of Bounded Accuracy, expand the accuracy limits and forge to tell anyone who doesn't have a good stats program (which is the choice they made), or cut out features that are popular with 80% of the folks who play the game.
And that's why I am interested in seeing what they do with more magic items.
I am also interested in seeing a lot more cool systems, lol. Because While I might buy the 2024 stuff, I already know that the game I will be playing for the next several years is very much not basic D&D.
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I don't think the entire DMG needs to be playtested, but I'd love to see improvements / augments to the baseline Combat Options. Currently the DMG has Climb Onto, Disarm, Flanking, Marking, Overrun, Shove Aside, Cleave Through and Tumble; I'd like to add a few more here (like Sunder, Dirty Trick, and Steal), as well as tweak the ones we have.
For example, Flanking granting advantage is either too powerful when advantage is rare, useless when it's common, and either way tends to hurt melee more than it helps because monsters generally outnumber PCs. Flanking should grant a static +2 or +1.
Similarly, Tumble is often useless because you still need to Disengage to move past enemies safely. It should be possible for highly acrobatic characters to get a free Disengage as part of their movement, so you get the really cinematic characters flipping around and sliding under blades etc.
Oh, I love this, lol.
Can you explain Sunder, Dirty Trick, and Steal?
You know, I often forget how static this place can be about RAW, because I always just assumed tumble includes a disengage to avoid opportunity attacks. But I also see it as moving someone out of the prior grid space (out of reach).
As someone pointed out, form of combat other than on foot are a big piece missing - and that includes areial and submerged combat -- where the directions of movement can change the outlay. Vehicles, Mounts, and similar stuff too -- I may have my own solution, but something "official" would have a good chance of taking that slot over once we got past the edge case arguments.
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AEDorsay, I think you're placing too much emphasis on what the books codify vs what your game and your DM will allow. You might call it "foisting design onto tables" but in reality, the game treating the DM as more of an active participant at the table instead of resolution engine for pre-baked inputs is a good thing.
- Do you want highly lethal games with 50% or even higher chance of character death? That's trivial to do, the DM can just add more or stronger monsters to each encounter and more encounters per rest. Even if the base game is easier than expected, it's better to start lower (D&D is the first TTRPG ever for many people) and then adjust upward than it is to risk the players having one TPK and deciding to go back to Scrabble for their next game night.
- Do you want to craft magic items? You never actually needed a Bastion or even Xanathar's for that; every magic item has a rarity, and those rarities are included in the Tiers of Play guidelines in the DMG so that nobody is getting a Legendary in T1. Items aren't player-facing either, so whatever the player is allowed to craft they will know to be a boon rather than an entitlement.
EDIT, sorry my page didn't update and I missed this post (above was a reply to the previous post)
You know, I often forget how static this place can be about RAW, because I always just assumed tumble includes a disengage to avoid opportunity attacks. But I also see it as moving someone out of the prior grid space (out of reach).
As someone pointed out, form of combat other than on foot are a big piece missing - and that includes areial and submerged combat -- where the directions of movement can change the outlay. Vehicles, Mounts, and similar stuff too -- I may have my own solution, but something "official" would have a good chance of taking that slot over once we got past the edge case arguments.
These are basic combat maneuvers in Pathfinder that would (imo) translate well to 5e because all they'd require is an opposed check.
Sunder would entail damaging or even destroying someone's weapon, shield, or spell focus mid-fight. Equipment damaged in this way would probably need some downtime (say a minute or even a short rest) to repair or resituate. Steal would be removing anything not particularly well-secured, like a component pouch, ring, or potion. Dirty Trick is a catch-all for just about anything underhanded you can do to inconvenience someone in combat - throw dust or put your finger in their eye, kick then in the nethers, tie their shoelaces together, blind them with light reflected from your shield etc.
As written, Tumble is purely to allow you to move through enemies, they still get a swing. Our table rules that if you succeed by 5 or more you get a free disengage.
The big benefit of a crafting system over simple drops is that it means you get the items you want, instead of the items the drop table or DM decide to give you. You can accomplish a lot of that with something like a gem system: to make a +1 sword, combine a Gem of Enchantment (+1) with a Sword. And if you find a +1 sword and what you really want is a warhammer, go pry the gem out of the sword and attach it to a warhammer.
The other thing you can do with a crafting system is that it lets you change a quest for acquiring a magic item from "Go to point X to get the item" to "Go to points X, Y, and Z to get the parts of the item".
The thing to avoid is "let the PCs look through the magic item books to find the most broken options".
The big benefit of a crafting system over simple drops is that it means you get the items you want, instead of the items the drop table or DM decide to give you. You can accomplish a lot of that with something like a gem system: to make a +1 sword, combine a Gem of Enchantment (+1) with a Sword. And if you find a +1 sword and what you really want is a warhammer, go pry the gem out of the sword and attach it to a warhammer.
This is a poor argument. Either the DM wants magic items to be randomized to discourage their players from making their characters built entirely around one particular weapon (in which case allowing players to swap them it a bad thing from their perspective), or the DM will certainly allow the player to swap it or exchange it in between sessions when the player talks to the DM and says "Hey I really want to use this weapon we just found, but I built my character to use a maul so could we swap it to be a maul, please?". In either of these cases : hardliner DM or DM who made a simple mistake, crafting rules are either unnecessary or undesirable. We do not need rules that allow players to subvert the wishes of the DM, because that will lead to angry DMs and fewer games available.
The thing to avoid is "let the PCs look through the magic item books to find the most broken options".
But this is precisely why PCs want it. PCs who don't look through the books for the most broken options are completely satisfied receiving whatever magic items they are given. The only players who demand to be able to craft exactly what items they want are the ones who have looked through the books and want a particular item to either cheese the system : "Gimme that belt of Giant Strength so I can put all my ASIs into CHA with my paladin and still have a STR of 23", or who want to to make something broken "Gimme those Illusionist's Bracers so I can do double Eldritch Blasts every turn."
The other thing you can do with a crafting system is that it lets you change a quest for acquiring a magic item from "Go to point X to get the item" to "Go to points X, Y, and Z to get the parts of the item".
You can do that already simply by having the magic item be broken or cursed.
Honestly, I'm not particularly a fan of crafting systems, but I do prefer characters having items that match their desired theme, so a means of styling magic items or transferring the effect to a more appropriate item would serve a value.
I know tons of people want crafting, but honestly I think that should be reserved for a specific supplemental book. Crafting is such a headache to track, and it has such profound implications for world building that I really kind of hate it -> if anyone can craft a flametongue sword with just some fire elemental essence and a couple of weeks of work, then why aren't wizards farming them to provide everyone and their grandmother one of them?
cause wizards are spell casters generally, not master crafters.
And, the experiences of adventurers are not normal. Regular people can't kill a dragon to get flames, or be artificers. The game clearly implies the main thing limiting a lot of these things is not scarcity in terms of ingredients, but How many people have the ability to do what needs to be done to get it. A strong enough group could easily obtain a flame sword. A caster can literally make any weapon better than flame sword at high levels. Theoretically a master bard can influence kings and cultures.
The main reason it doesnt have mechanics, is just because it wasn't something the designers wanted to do. The game started as a dungeon crawler, and its game focused on explorering dungeons and combat as the main means of progression.
As far as the hassle of crafting, they don't really have detailed rules, so thats a lot up to the GM, Some GMs love a hyper detailed granular crafting system. But thats generally too much investment for the average campaign. In fact, I don't think crafting is for the average player. Just like bard isn't. (only 7-9% of players for each class) That said the DMs guide allows/helps you to make things only 1/5 of your players may want to engage with. And I think that should be the design focus. Not an additional system most players are meant to engage with, but a modular system designed such that one player can engage with it without causing too much hassle for other players, or more players can go in depth.
That said, I doubt crafting will be good by their design, based on the past attempts at crafting. Its too heavily focused on time that players will very rarely ever be able to control. Either due to GMs or other players.
The big guidance might be how much power level is appropriate. And maybe some fun ground rules.
AEDorsay, I think you're placing too much emphasis on what the books codify vs what your game and your DM will allow. You might call it "foisting design onto tables" but in reality, the game treating the DM as more of an active participant at the table instead of resolution engine for pre-baked inputs is a good thing.
- Do you want highly lethal games with 50% or even higher chance of character death? That's trivial to do, the DM can just add more or stronger monsters to each encounter and more encounters per rest. Even if the base game is easier than expected, it's better to start lower (D&D is the first TTRPG ever for many people) and then adjust upward than it is to risk the players having one TPK and deciding to go back to Scrabble for their next game night.
- Do you want to craft magic items? You never actually needed a Bastion or even Xanathar's for that; every magic item has a rarity, and those rarities are included in the Tiers of Play guidelines in the DMG so that nobody is getting a Legendary in T1. Items aren't player-facing either, so whatever the player is allowed to craft they will know to be a boon rather than an entitlement.
EDIT, sorry my page didn't update and I missed this post (above was a reply to the previous post)
You know, I often forget how static this place can be about RAW, because I always just assumed tumble includes a disengage to avoid opportunity attacks. But I also see it as moving someone out of the prior grid space (out of reach).
As someone pointed out, form of combat other than on foot are a big piece missing - and that includes areial and submerged combat -- where the directions of movement can change the outlay. Vehicles, Mounts, and similar stuff too -- I may have my own solution, but something "official" would have a good chance of taking that slot over once we got past the edge case arguments.
These are basic combat maneuvers in Pathfinder that would (imo) translate well to 5e because all they'd require is an opposed check.
Sunder would entail damaging or even destroying someone's weapon, shield, or spell focus mid-fight. Equipment damaged in this way would probably need some downtime (say a minute or even a short rest) to repair or resituate. Steal would be removing anything not particularly well-secured, like a component pouch, ring, or potion. Dirty Trick is a catch-all for just about anything underhanded you can do to inconvenience someone in combat - throw dust or put your finger in their eye, kick then in the nethers, tie their shoelaces together, blind them with light reflected from your shield etc.
As written, Tumble is purely to allow you to move through enemies, they still get a swing. Our table rules that if you succeed by 5 or more you get a free disengage.
I don't disagree at all that having the DM be involved is a good thing -- I was using zero sessions before they got called that, but it did work to drive a point home so I used it.
You are correct though that I do place an emphasis on the Game code vs my code (I only ever DM). Indeed, your comment made me sit here and put some thought into it while I worked. I likely won't change, but yeah, you got that.
I was pointing out that the default rules essentially state that PCs can make Common items, and occasionally uncommon items, but that rare or later aren't really supposed to be done (per the straight rules). My stuff for crafting them is different -- but it is based on a different paradigm where magic items aren't "family heirlooms", they are just really, really, really hard to make. I have way more low level magic in my "everyday person"'s hands than the default game seems to presume.
But I am an old 1e player who wants to see them bring back more magical items, so I have a bit of bias, lol.
Lethality is easy. I didn't even need to add many hit points, I just needed to "rank" some basic ones and then most importantly hide all the stats for my critters. WHich means don't use anything from the MM's as they are presented. But I also built a new CR system blah blah to support all of that, and what did I use as the basis for it? THe 5e system, lol.
Hmm. So, we collectively decided that we wouldn't use double damage for crits -- our Critical Hit is a Sunder, and our Critical Fumbles are a weapon breaking. Has added a lot of narrative flair to the game and fun stuff, but in terms of practical, it means I pass through the damage to the AC, thus making it easier to hurt an opponent.
I am not a PF person, but that's kinda nifty to hear they have a thing like that.
Steal I generally would have as an action anyway, using slight of hand. So I wonder at the mechanics of it in light of the whole idea around action economy. Dirty Trick iis a nice use -- I already have some actions for that kind of thing, but again, like Sunder, it is nice to see that it isn't just me.
Thank you for explaining those!
That really is a weird thing about Tumble, to me. I am just sitting here shaking my head, lol.
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The big benefit of a crafting system over simple drops is that it means you get the items you want, instead of the items the drop table or DM decide to give you. You can accomplish a lot of that with something like a gem system: to make a +1 sword, combine a Gem of Enchantment (+1) with a Sword. And if you find a +1 sword and what you really want is a warhammer, go pry the gem out of the sword and attach it to a warhammer.
You've basically described the pf2e system, except the call them runes, not gems. The big difference is they calculate damage and to hit separately, so that +1 sword would only be to hit, you need a different rune for damage. (and most weapons have 2 rune "slots") A benefit is, the damage could be something like +2d6 fire damage, so you could have a flaming weapon of any type -- including hand wraps for a monk or what have you -- not just a sword. For 5e, it's easy enough to say the +1 applies to both to hit and damage, and the second slot is for cool effects. Make your sling into an oathbow, make your glaive into a dwarven thrower. It just opens up lots of options for a much more customizable weapons.
And it's easier on the DM, since they don't have to worry about which weapons the characters are using. They just give out the +1, and let the players figure out who needs it more.
It also gives a side benefit from a story perspective. Where the farm kid can pick up that sword grandma used in the great war a few generations ago, and just keep using the thing through the whole campaign, swapping out a +1 rune for a +2 when they get one, etc.
Since they'll never do that, it would be nice to get hard rules about jumping up to attack, pulling someone down, shooting arrows with ropes attached to them, and determining distances traveled in the 3rd dimension in a way that's not totally stupid.
But anyway.
Re: magic items. I have a great idea for this and I'll type it up when I get home, shortly. You're all gonna love it.
I can't wait to see what the DMG play tests are. These are the rules that really have an opportunity to swing the way the game is played. Right now, almost none of the DMG rules are getting used, because they fail to serve their purpose. But imagine.
The only rules that really, truly work are for the combat pillar. Nobody even uses rules for exploration, but it's not like they don't exist -- they just suck. Maybe if they were good (read: they did what players wanted them to do), you'd start seeing whole campaigns centered around exploration. (To be clear, while I have a soft spot for dungeon turns, supply tracking, diseases and weather hazards, I don't think these are what modern players are after, by and large. I expect something more narrative-centered would fly better. Something closer to what the LotR 5e thing has for example. Something where the rules tell you that the confusing path that seems like it goes in circles is making the characters get snippy at each other and someone's going to snap. Or that the lovely waterfall pond is where characters glimpse one another in the nude and realize they're attracted. You know? Something that can give players a reason to care about the journey beyond that journey's effect on future combat encounters.)
Since they'll never do that, it would be nice to get hard rules about jumping up to attack, pulling someone down, shooting arrows with ropes attached to them, and determining distances traveled in the 3rd dimension in a way that's not totally stupid.
Yeah, flying is something that ain't goin anywhere, lol.
However, you listed 3 things that I never considered in developing rules for flying out (that at least my group doesn't think suck).
jumping up to attack pulling someone down shooting arrows with ropes attached to them
We just had a meeting about flying rules, lol. Now I have to add these in! That's a whole edit!
I will go cry now.
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They can't, it's a fundamental design choice. Either magic items are assumed to be given out at certain levels and not receiving those items means that characters feel weaker at higher levels than they did at lower levels, or you assume no magic items are given out and if a character does receive a magic item they will feel more powerful afterwards than they did before regardless of level.
The big question IMO, is "Do you want combat encounters to feel like they are life-or-death?" because for many players, and even many DMs the answer is "No", and it is totally fine if that is your answer. It's why Easy modes are incorporated into videogames. D&D is a hobby, it's supposed to be fun, if thinking like your character will die in every combat isn't fun for you then it's totally fine to play a more relaxed game where combats aren't challenging.
Giving out tons of magic items is essentially "easy mode" for D&D, just like how Elden Ring / Souls games have build options that make the game really easy. This just needs to be explained in the DMG better than it is now.
The big problem for D&D is that many DMs find DMing in "easy mode" really boring. This is how D&D is different from videogames (where it doesn't matter if you enjoy cheesing the AI as the AI doesn't care). And there is this perception (though I'm personally not sure if it is true) that "optimizers" want their characters to be challenged regardless of how broken & OP they make them.
We really need a more open dialogue between Players, DMs and the designer's intentions. So that everyone can make informed choices about what kind of game they want to play. And what the consequences are for those choices.
I don't think the entire DMG needs to be playtested, but I'd love to see improvements / augments to the baseline Combat Options. Currently the DMG has Climb Onto, Disarm, Flanking, Marking, Overrun, Shove Aside, Cleave Through and Tumble; I'd like to add a few more here (like Sunder, Dirty Trick, and Steal), as well as tweak the ones we have.
For example, Flanking granting advantage is either too powerful when advantage is rare, useless when it's common, and either way tends to hurt melee more than it helps because monsters generally outnumber PCs. Flanking should grant a static +2 or +1.
Similarly, Tumble is often useless because you still need to Disengage to move past enemies safely. It should be possible for highly acrobatic characters to get a free Disengage as part of their movement, so you get the really cinematic characters flipping around and sliding under blades etc.
There's a simple way to make bounded accuracy work: bring back bonus types from 3e/4e (but with an extremely reduced number of types; I recommend 2 -- power and item), and two bonuses of the same type don't stack. This immediately breaks most ways of doing things like obtaining AC 35, but I can live with that.
Well, you only need that if you care about the math working exactly, a level 15 character with a +1 neck item (when a +3 is expected) is going to get hit something like 20% more often, which is painful but not actually game breaking. Most gear bonuses in 5e are small enough that being behind the curve isn't a big deal unless people are stacking bonuses, which is what my above suggestion is about.
That's only true if you have an assumed scaling of monsters with PCs, which the PCs are actually aware of.
I resisted, lol, but I can't now.
Bounded Accuracy hasn't been a functional thing mathematically for a while now -- and if you dive into the popular homebrew stuff here, you rapidly learn that bounded accuracy is, well, only going to work if you use a d30 base. But that's not an argument I feel like having, personally, merely something I wanted to point out. If you disagree or don't think so, fine -- I'm not here to prove this.
So, fairly early in the 5e process, they made a couple major decisions. One was that they were going to reduce the need for magic items, and so they opted to really dive in and cull the hell out of them while also (decision 2) empowering the classes more (and getting the complaint from folks like me that all the classes have lost their sense of archetype, while making them more popular). They made magic items a very different thing, overall, and not essential to the nature of getting to your favorite vision of the all powerful or whatever. They then joined to this the notion that magic items are something from past history, the secrets of making them lost and the rest of it, and the funny thing is that's actually an old 1e concept that they should have learned from.
They restructured the game so that magical items labelled "rare" basically are supposed to be all but impossible to create for players, common ones can be, and uncommon ones are in the middle. I mean, they literally spell this out:
The game assumes that the secrets of creating the most powerful items arose centuries ago and were then gradually lost as a result of wars, cataclysms, and mishaps. Even uncommon items can’t be easily created. Thus, many magic items are well-preserved antiquities.
So creating magical items was kinda wiped out at the dawn of 5e, on purpose.
Thus, the overall idea was "if they have all these super powers, they don't need magic items", to use the cranky style of describing things. That was a major design choice -- and as I noted, part of it was something that was tried in 1e, lol.
Well, a decade later, and players want more magic items. They want to be able to create magic items (as they always have), and the design precepts continue to be based in the popularity of them to Players, for the most part. And, well, players want more magic items.
But, to Xalthu's point, there is a sense that giving out a lot more magic items will unbalance the game from the perspective of the Devs, and so they don't want to do too much -- but there are several signs that they are going to mke +1 and +2 weapons more common, and focus on adding more features (I mean, the bastion system does it, as an example).
So I think there will be a change in the way they deal with magical items -- and part of it is also business related; new magical items sell well on an individual basis, i am willing to bet, which they no doubt have seen. So, a combination of demand and general pressure points to it, though there is no real confirmation of it.
This is, of course, undercut by the existence of folks like the Artificer -- a class that isn't seeing much UA action -- and rules for making magic items that are frequently stretched beyond the ideas of making "common" magic items.
As far as the Easy Mode stuff, well, that's pretty much the popular choice, again. ANd it is very apparent that design choices are made based on that popularity -- which means the "life or death" thing is still going to continue to be rare, as that's what the popular base wants (and note that in any popularity structure that is not controlled for the distinction between DM and Player, players will always win simply because they outnumber DMs massively).
That means that the game is going to continue to make character death rare (as has been noted, the baseline for the game is 70% chance of survival. Most players like that. Dead characters do not make for growth of the game/business).
That conversation? The design choice there was to foist it onto the tables, moving it out of the game design issue as a whole. IF they table wants more chance of dying, they will do it. If not, they won't. I run a 50% chance of dying game. I also run an unstructured, open world where folks can die in a heartbeat if they do some damn fool thing -- which is, for most players, exactly what they want to do: the damn fool thing. How did they push it off? The Zero Session.
Which I fully expect a whole bit on in the PHB this go around. Something a little more involved than they had in Tasha's.
And since most of the folks who are playing today have never played any other version, they don't realize that there is any other way of doing things. Stuff like mine, then, is essentially relegated to the fringe of the game as a whole -- so folks like me either create our own rules or go find a new game or whatever.
I want more magic items to show up in the game. But to make room for them, you have to either step outside of the idea of Bounded Accuracy, expand the accuracy limits and forge to tell anyone who doesn't have a good stats program (which is the choice they made), or cut out features that are popular with 80% of the folks who play the game.
And that's why I am interested in seeing what they do with more magic items.
I am also interested in seeing a lot more cool systems, lol. Because While I might buy the 2024 stuff, I already know that the game I will be playing for the next several years is very much not basic D&D.
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
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Oh, I love this, lol.
Can you explain Sunder, Dirty Trick, and Steal?
You know, I often forget how static this place can be about RAW, because I always just assumed tumble includes a disengage to avoid opportunity attacks. But I also see it as moving someone out of the prior grid space (out of reach).
As someone pointed out, form of combat other than on foot are a big piece missing - and that includes areial and submerged combat -- where the directions of movement can change the outlay. Vehicles, Mounts, and similar stuff too -- I may have my own solution, but something "official" would have a good chance of taking that slot over once we got past the edge case arguments.
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
AEDorsay, I think you're placing too much emphasis on what the books codify vs what your game and your DM will allow. You might call it "foisting design onto tables" but in reality, the game treating the DM as more of an active participant at the table instead of resolution engine for pre-baked inputs is a good thing.
- Do you want highly lethal games with 50% or even higher chance of character death? That's trivial to do, the DM can just add more or stronger monsters to each encounter and more encounters per rest. Even if the base game is easier than expected, it's better to start lower (D&D is the first TTRPG ever for many people) and then adjust upward than it is to risk the players having one TPK and deciding to go back to Scrabble for their next game night.
- Do you want to craft magic items? You never actually needed a Bastion or even Xanathar's for that; every magic item has a rarity, and those rarities are included in the Tiers of Play guidelines in the DMG so that nobody is getting a Legendary in T1. Items aren't player-facing either, so whatever the player is allowed to craft they will know to be a boon rather than an entitlement.
These are basic combat maneuvers in Pathfinder that would (imo) translate well to 5e because all they'd require is an opposed check.
Sunder would entail damaging or even destroying someone's weapon, shield, or spell focus mid-fight. Equipment damaged in this way would probably need some downtime (say a minute or even a short rest) to repair or resituate. Steal would be removing anything not particularly well-secured, like a component pouch, ring, or potion. Dirty Trick is a catch-all for just about anything underhanded you can do to inconvenience someone in combat - throw dust or put your finger in their eye, kick then in the nethers, tie their shoelaces together, blind them with light reflected from your shield etc.
As written, Tumble is purely to allow you to move through enemies, they still get a swing. Our table rules that if you succeed by 5 or more you get a free disengage.
The big benefit of a crafting system over simple drops is that it means you get the items you want, instead of the items the drop table or DM decide to give you. You can accomplish a lot of that with something like a gem system: to make a +1 sword, combine a Gem of Enchantment (+1) with a Sword. And if you find a +1 sword and what you really want is a warhammer, go pry the gem out of the sword and attach it to a warhammer.
The other thing you can do with a crafting system is that it lets you change a quest for acquiring a magic item from "Go to point X to get the item" to "Go to points X, Y, and Z to get the parts of the item".
The thing to avoid is "let the PCs look through the magic item books to find the most broken options".
This is a poor argument. Either the DM wants magic items to be randomized to discourage their players from making their characters built entirely around one particular weapon (in which case allowing players to swap them it a bad thing from their perspective), or the DM will certainly allow the player to swap it or exchange it in between sessions when the player talks to the DM and says "Hey I really want to use this weapon we just found, but I built my character to use a maul so could we swap it to be a maul, please?". In either of these cases : hardliner DM or DM who made a simple mistake, crafting rules are either unnecessary or undesirable. We do not need rules that allow players to subvert the wishes of the DM, because that will lead to angry DMs and fewer games available.
But this is precisely why PCs want it. PCs who don't look through the books for the most broken options are completely satisfied receiving whatever magic items they are given. The only players who demand to be able to craft exactly what items they want are the ones who have looked through the books and want a particular item to either cheese the system : "Gimme that belt of Giant Strength so I can put all my ASIs into CHA with my paladin and still have a STR of 23", or who want to to make something broken "Gimme those Illusionist's Bracers so I can do double Eldritch Blasts every turn."
You can do that already simply by having the magic item be broken or cursed.
Honestly, I'm not particularly a fan of crafting systems, but I do prefer characters having items that match their desired theme, so a means of styling magic items or transferring the effect to a more appropriate item would serve a value.
cause wizards are spell casters generally, not master crafters.
And, the experiences of adventurers are not normal. Regular people can't kill a dragon to get flames, or be artificers. The game clearly implies the main thing limiting a lot of these things is not scarcity in terms of ingredients, but How many people have the ability to do what needs to be done to get it. A strong enough group could easily obtain a flame sword. A caster can literally make any weapon better than flame sword at high levels. Theoretically a master bard can influence kings and cultures.
The main reason it doesnt have mechanics, is just because it wasn't something the designers wanted to do. The game started as a dungeon crawler, and its game focused on explorering dungeons and combat as the main means of progression.
As far as the hassle of crafting, they don't really have detailed rules, so thats a lot up to the GM, Some GMs love a hyper detailed granular crafting system. But thats generally too much investment for the average campaign. In fact, I don't think crafting is for the average player. Just like bard isn't. (only 7-9% of players for each class) That said the DMs guide allows/helps you to make things only 1/5 of your players may want to engage with. And I think that should be the design focus. Not an additional system most players are meant to engage with, but a modular system designed such that one player can engage with it without causing too much hassle for other players, or more players can go in depth.
That said, I doubt crafting will be good by their design, based on the past attempts at crafting. Its too heavily focused on time that players will very rarely ever be able to control. Either due to GMs or other players.
The big guidance might be how much power level is appropriate. And maybe some fun ground rules.
I don't disagree at all that having the DM be involved is a good thing -- I was using zero sessions before they got called that, but it did work to drive a point home so I used it.
You are correct though that I do place an emphasis on the Game code vs my code (I only ever DM). Indeed, your comment made me sit here and put some thought into it while I worked. I likely won't change, but yeah, you got that.
I was pointing out that the default rules essentially state that PCs can make Common items, and occasionally uncommon items, but that rare or later aren't really supposed to be done (per the straight rules). My stuff for crafting them is different -- but it is based on a different paradigm where magic items aren't "family heirlooms", they are just really, really, really hard to make. I have way more low level magic in my "everyday person"'s hands than the default game seems to presume.
But I am an old 1e player who wants to see them bring back more magical items, so I have a bit of bias, lol.
Lethality is easy. I didn't even need to add many hit points, I just needed to "rank" some basic ones and then most importantly hide all the stats for my critters. WHich means don't use anything from the MM's as they are presented. But I also built a new CR system blah blah to support all of that, and what did I use as the basis for it? THe 5e system, lol.
Hmm. So, we collectively decided that we wouldn't use double damage for crits -- our Critical Hit is a Sunder, and our Critical Fumbles are a weapon breaking. Has added a lot of narrative flair to the game and fun stuff, but in terms of practical, it means I pass through the damage to the AC, thus making it easier to hurt an opponent.
I am not a PF person, but that's kinda nifty to hear they have a thing like that.
Steal I generally would have as an action anyway, using slight of hand. So I wonder at the mechanics of it in light of the whole idea around action economy. Dirty Trick iis a nice use -- I already have some actions for that kind of thing, but again, like Sunder, it is nice to see that it isn't just me.
Thank you for explaining those!
That really is a weird thing about Tumble, to me. I am just sitting here shaking my head, lol.
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
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Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
You've basically described the pf2e system, except the call them runes, not gems. The big difference is they calculate damage and to hit separately, so that +1 sword would only be to hit, you need a different rune for damage. (and most weapons have 2 rune "slots") A benefit is, the damage could be something like +2d6 fire damage, so you could have a flaming weapon of any type -- including hand wraps for a monk or what have you -- not just a sword. For 5e, it's easy enough to say the +1 applies to both to hit and damage, and the second slot is for cool effects. Make your sling into an oathbow, make your glaive into a dwarven thrower. It just opens up lots of options for a much more customizable weapons.
And it's easier on the DM, since they don't have to worry about which weapons the characters are using. They just give out the +1, and let the players figure out who needs it more.
It also gives a side benefit from a story perspective. Where the farm kid can pick up that sword grandma used in the great war a few generations ago, and just keep using the thing through the whole campaign, swapping out a +1 rune for a +2 when they get one, etc.
It's a common video game concept (WoW and Diablo use the term Gem Slots), apparently dating to the late 90 (https://old.reddit.com/r/MMORPG/comments/vg93iy/what_is_the_first_game_to_have_socketed_weapons/), so most likely that's where pf2e got it.
Sure.
I don’t much care who gets the credit for the idea. Just, it’s a good system.
Yes this. And more on combat with vehicles and on mounts.
I didn’t see what you did there.
I'd love if they removed flying from the game.
Since they'll never do that, it would be nice to get hard rules about jumping up to attack, pulling someone down, shooting arrows with ropes attached to them, and determining distances traveled in the 3rd dimension in a way that's not totally stupid.
But anyway.
Re: magic items. I have a great idea for this and I'll type it up when I get home, shortly. You're all gonna love it.
I can't wait to see what the DMG play tests are. These are the rules that really have an opportunity to swing the way the game is played. Right now, almost none of the DMG rules are getting used, because they fail to serve their purpose. But imagine.
The only rules that really, truly work are for the combat pillar. Nobody even uses rules for exploration, but it's not like they don't exist -- they just suck. Maybe if they were good (read: they did what players wanted them to do), you'd start seeing whole campaigns centered around exploration. (To be clear, while I have a soft spot for dungeon turns, supply tracking, diseases and weather hazards, I don't think these are what modern players are after, by and large. I expect something more narrative-centered would fly better. Something closer to what the LotR 5e thing has for example. Something where the rules tell you that the confusing path that seems like it goes in circles is making the characters get snippy at each other and someone's going to snap. Or that the lovely waterfall pond is where characters glimpse one another in the nude and realize they're attracted. You know? Something that can give players a reason to care about the journey beyond that journey's effect on future combat encounters.)
Yeah, flying is something that ain't goin anywhere, lol.
However, you listed 3 things that I never considered in developing rules for flying out (that at least my group doesn't think suck).
jumping up to attack
pulling someone down
shooting arrows with ropes attached to them
We just had a meeting about flying rules, lol. Now I have to add these in! That's a whole edit!
I will go cry now.
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
Don't stress about it overmuch. The 5th edition of D&D doesn't have rules for these things, and it's doing alright for itself, I would say.
Update: Here's that magic item hack I was talking about.
I would love if diseases were actually fleshed out and made into a real hazard for the game, but it looks like that's not gonna happen...😑