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Thoughts going through the packet:

Before I start actually looking at the details, I want to say that I love the idea of attunement. I think it's a reasonably elegant solution to a situation that nobody really liked. That said, their implementation of it is bad. Bad bad bad bad bad. Not good. Unless it was an afterthought, and more items will eventually be folded into the system, attunement does approximately zilcho because the vast majority of magic items don't require it or give significant bonuses regardless.

The default game assumptions are that players/characters have very little influence over what magic items they acquire. I'm fine with that. It means that magic item crafting that looks anything like how it looked in previous editions is also out, but I'm also fine with that. It's a little weird that unwanted magic items are also relatively valueless, but I can deal with that. The only issue in my mind is that the system strongly damages the value of gold as treasure, since it no longer represents fractions of desirable things to the same degree. Not fatal, but something to think about.

The notion that the quality of the treasure a particular group of enemies has with them scales inversely with how strong the people who beat them up is is... weird. Like, I understand where it's coming from, but it's weird that, say, six ogre warriors have extremely good treasure if the party is at a low level and crummy treasure if the party is at a high level. So like, if a low-level party kills them, they have a 40% chance of having at least an uncommon, and if a high level party kills them, it drops to 7%. That's just one of the costs of getting rid of item levels, though. I understand the tables are optional, of course, but that seems like the kind of thing that bugs people who are bugged by things like that.

Okay, so there is a heading for Magic Item Creation. (Coming in a future packet.) Presumably it's completely quest-based, or that basically completely undermines the whole "magic items are super rare; you can't just buy them" thing.

The packet seems really big on "let's hope you have someone who can cast identify".

The optional rule basing the number of attunements you can have on Charisma is great. Or at least, it would be great if that limitation meant anything whatsoever, which hopefully it eventually will. Now we can stop pretending that charisma does anything, because there'll be something it actually does.

Magic item details are neat. They're something I've done forever, and it's nice to see them get some core-book recognition. Whoever decided what the associated mechanics were was really, really generous (and harsh) in some places. I would never give out a +2 Initiative bonus as just a throw-in, for example.

Why does the +1 armor table have wider ranges for some rarer armors instead of narrower ones?

With no mechanism for magic weapons returning and with them being essentially impossible to replace, you better be really, really sure before you throw that Dwarven Thrower.

I like some of the sort of arbitrary mechanical choices (oathbow's oath lasts until dawn a week later). That's not sarcasm, I actually like them. (Although speaking of being sure about things, disadvantage with every attack for a week if your target gets away? Eesh.)

The staff charging rule is pretty generous. I would not be surprised if I played Next for years and years and years and never saw a staff (or wand) burn out.

I'm curious to see more common items. The packet lists two: The potion of climbing and the potion of healing. If you're using the rolling tables, then 68.5% of the magic items found after "tough" encounters, 77% of the magic items found after "average" encounters, and 86% of the magic items found after "easy" encounters are common.

While duplicates of common items are far, far more acceptable than duplicates of non-common items, the game actually needs a fairly large number of common items that are interesting in bulk quantities. (A party that does an easy encounter, two average encounters, and a tough encounter generates 3.5 common items on average; an easy encounter, an average encounter and two tough ones generate 4.4.) Because consumables are 3.5 regular magic items, if all commons are consumable that means that a normal adventuring day generates over twelve of them. That's a lot of potions.

Oct 9, 2012 -- 2:35AM, Lesp wrote:

The default game assumptions are that players/characters have very little influence over what magic items they acquire. I'm fine with that. It means that magic item crafting that looks anything like how it looked in previous editions is also out, but I'm also fine with that. It's a little weird that unwanted magic items are also relatively valueless, but I can deal with that. The only issue in my mind is that the system strongly damages the value of gold as treasure, since it no longer represents fractions of desirable things to the same degree. Not fatal, but something to think about.

Yeah it is kinda weird, isn't it?

Wealth is always one of those weird things but I think I kinda do this on my games anyway though. Like, if a lvl 1 party moves through an old cave encountering the odd nest of centipedes to encounter an orc ambush - one guy with a crossbow covering another orc with more badass looking armour ('cause really the crossbow is all you need vs a lvl 1 group, right?) - the orcs are gonna have the big money.

They finish, get the big money (roughly 2k in gold after negotiation), upgrade their shizzle, and then go after the orcs' boss. The orcs they encounter in the next raid aren't gonna have the big money.

So really, the context of the encounter dictates the treasure so it works that way for me anyway, but to put it in specific mathematical terms is weird.

Oct 9, 2012 -- 2:35AM, Lesp wrote:

The only issue in my mind is that the system strongly damages the value of gold as treasure, since it no longer represents fractions of desirable things to the same degree. Not fatal, but something to think about.

I actually like this consequence, because it frees up gold to be used for roleplaying purposes instead of being squirreled away to buy the next big magical item. The cleric can tithe to his church, the paladin can donate to charity, the fighter can save up to buy a title and land, the rogue can cultivate a network of contacts and stool pigeons, and the wizard can buy rare tomes and extravagant personal luxuries. And no one is kicking themselves later for not buying that incremental bonus or lynchpin magical item.

Oct 8, 2012 -- 10:03PM, Maxperson wrote:

It's a silly mechanic.  Other than for very rare items, magic items just should not attune.  It's one of those arbitrary balance mechanics that make no sense other than for the sake of balance.  I couldn't stand them in 4e, and I won't abide them in 5e. 

Then don't use it in your games, and make all magic items you have automatically attune, or just have the attunement properties "on" all the time or whatever.

I like the attunement thing, personally, but then, I'm an avid Werewolf: the Forsaken fan, where PC's have to attune fetishes (items that have spirits bound within them that can do certain effects; basically a "magic item" of sorts) to get them to work at all, so the mechanic isn't unfamiliar to me.

To each his own, really.

Oct 9, 2012 -- 6:31AM, Xerxes13 wrote:

I agree that freeing up money to be used on things other than upgrades is nice, but buying better armors still costs 500/5000 GP and isn't magical so it is readily available, which means most people will be saving up to buy an upgrade and then we are right back where we started.

That's true, the later armors are pretty expensive, I seem to remember doing the math and calculating that you'd have to save most of your treasure for the first fifteen levels to buy the 5000 gp armors. Granted, since it's only a 1 AC bump compared to the previous armor, you can probably justify putting it off or hoping you find some magical armor first.

@Seerow Point well taken; I kind of doubt that they're paying very much attention at all to the "economy" at this point and are just throwing out numbers as placeholders to replace later. Of course, that's assuming that they remember to replace them...