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Sep 25, 2012 -- 7:24AM, Sesdun wrote:

In our group, this was one of the first things we houseruled away when we first started playing D&D...
We just did not like the feeling of it, that an ogres armor would automatically resize to fit a dwarf and the axe of said dwarf would double in size if grasped by the ogre...

But I have seen on this forum that most seem to take one-size-fits-all magical items for granted.

So, I became curious. Is this thing as universially liked as it seems? Any others that do it like us? (magic items do not resize). How do you want it to be in 5E?

It was a matter of convenience and is not something I feel any need to see restored to D&D.  I know it was explicitly stated in the AD&D1st books.  At what point did it actually disappear as a formal rule?  I might have to pull out the AD&D2nd books and see if it's still there. By 4E, it required a ritual.

I think it goes back to the days of AD&D when death was quick and the parties spent their lives in dungeons.  When you found some magical armor you weren't even sure you would survive to get back to town and they wanted to make it an immediate reward.  So they made them resize.

I'd rather see this idea go away and require the players to go back to town to have the local smithy resize them - for a moderate fee (probably around what the smith would pay for the next cheapest armor, so that just trading in your old used set of banded would pay to have plate resized, for example).

But then again - I also want the idea of players sitting down during a short rest and toying with their magic items to figure out their powers (as in 4E) to go away.  I want either identify (a wizard ritual) or a need to go pay someone in town if they want to identify their magic - for largely the same reasons.

Carl

Sep 25, 2012 -- 7:57AM, Garthanos wrote:

I seem to recall self resizing rings an such in norse myth

Not to mention Tolkien.

But that one also 'un-sized' itself when it fit its needs.

Carl

Sep 25, 2012 -- 8:04AM, OrwellianHaggis wrote:

To be honest I would love it if armour no longer resized automatically.
It gives a minor detail for players to think about when carrying gear around but more importantly, I find immersion comes from the small things.

P.S. Fighters shouldnt have a problem with this... _{so long as you play a 4e pixie fighter} 

So what was the last edition that armor automatically resized in.
It didn't in 4E, It did in AD&D 1st.  Between those, I don't recall.  I'd guess it changed in 3.x, but I don't recall....



Carl


edit:  Checked.  In AD&D 2nd, magical armor did not automatically resize. 


From the AD&D2nd DMG:  When adding magical armor to the game, be aware of sizing problems:  85% of all armor is (except elven chain mail) is man-sized, 20%     is elf-sized, 10% is dwarf-sized, and but 5% is gnome or halfling sized.