Then it needs to be special in a way that when one character gets it, everyone else has an item of similar power and usefulness that doesn't make everyone want to have that one item. It shouldn't diminish the choices of someone who spent all his resources to naturally get the strength of an ogre and who now feels like an idiot because the 8 Str Rogue is now just as strong as he is.
There is.
It's called the Dungeon Master.
You know, the living, breathing being that is running the game and handing out items and capable of independant thought and reasoning. Who can decided to hand out comparable items or other balancing factors.
Right. If the Dungeon Master wants to break the math of the game, that should be his choice. It is his game. If R&D wants to claim that bounded math is important to them, then they need to make it that items obey that bounded math. If the best swords in the whole world give a +3 to hit/damage and that's important to them, then there shouldn't be an always on item that gives a strictly better bonus than that.
Haven't got to read the packet yet, but judging from the article and the posts here, it seems like with so many other things in DDN, they've come really close to the mark, then missed it altogether.
I'll have to give the packet a read and see for sure though.
I will need to take a good look at the items. They are at least flavourful, which was my biggest gripe about 4e but they do seem to have forgotten all the reasons why 4e tried to reign in some of the more useful items. It's nice to see Elven chain is back with a vengeance and they they have placed sensible limits on bracers of defence and rings of protection.
The strength ratings of the various giants bears no resemblance to the recent giant article and giving PCs such huge attack bonuses with no limitations is just bonkers. Once again, if they halve the atack bonuses, they become more manageable but adding to damage, lifting, and hurling rocks would probably be enough for most players. Limitations on the belt usage would be cool too - maybe making an endurance check with a penalty equal to your damage bonus to avoid being weakened if the belt is used for more rounds than your level?
Personally I don't think that any magical item should have more than +1 attack rolls but I don't have a problem if more powerful items increase damage and have special abilities. I'm happy if +1 armour is the norm with +2 being very rare and +3 being artifact level.
Overall, a mixed bag but it looks rushed and I agree that they need someone to take a serious look at their maths. The items will break their bounded syystem in a heartbeat and it doesn't take a simpleton with disadvantage on intelligence checks to recognise that...
Then it needs to be special in a way that when one character gets it, everyone else has an item of similar power and usefulness that doesn't make everyone want to have that one item. It shouldn't diminish the choices of someone who spent all his resources to naturally get the strength of an ogre and who now feels like an idiot because the 8 Str Rogue is now just as strong as he is.
There is.
It's called the Dungeon Master.
You know, the living, breathing being that is running the game and handing out items and capable of independant thought and reasoning. Who can decided to hand out comparable items or other balancing factors.
Right. If the Dungeon Master wants to break the math of the game, that should be his choice. It is his game. If R&D wants to claim that bounded math is important to them, then they need to make it that items obey that bounded math. If the best swords in the whole world give a +3 to hit/damage and that's important to them, then there shouldn't be an always on item that gives a strictly better bonus than that.
Yet there is...
Well there's the four options.
1) Magic offers bonuses. And you're assumed to have magic. (Tried in 3e and 4e with mixed results.) 2) Magic offers bonuses. And you're not assumed to have magic. (The current 5e standard) 3) Magic does not offer bonuses. Either they're cosmetic or only useful out of combat. 4) Magic does not exsit.
3) is a little "why bother" as magic doesn't do anything. And you can still have that by not awarding magic items excluding cosmetic or non-combat items. Likewise, you can also still have 4) by simply ignoring magical items. It's always easier to ignore content than have to make it up yourself.
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1) Magic offers bonuses. And you're assumed to have magic. (Tried in 3e and 4e with mixed results.) 2) Magic offers bonuses. And you're not assumed to have magic. (The current 5e standard) 3) Magic does not offer bonuses. Either they're cosmetic or only useful out of combat. 4) Magic does not exsit.
3) is a little "why bother" as magic doesn't do anything. And you can still have that by not awarding magic items excluding cosmetic or non-combat items. Likewise, you can also still have 4) by simply ignoring magical items. It's always easier to ignore content than have to make it up yourself.
2) is definitely my preference but your definitions are vague. I don't want items to have LARGE at-will bonuses to attack rolls without side effects. I do want them to have bonuses.
I do have some points to make about magic items: 1.Let the DMs who want make magic items as rare or as common as they like. Present a core is fine, but maybe talk about variants. I would like to be able to use a lot of magic items without breaking the system. If the magic items are too strong, such a game may have problems. 2. Don’t forget the optional rules: buy and sell (commerce), Pc and NPC magic item creation, item curses and etc., and guidance about how to run a game with a lot of magic items. Somethings are already there, others, not. Just don’t forget them. 3. I didn’t liked the Ability Score item thing. In the way that it is, a wizard would be stronger than the fighter, and maybe the fighter, the one who should use the magic item, has no reason to do it. Just bonuses would work, perhaps within a boundary. Also, why the Gauntlets of Ogre Power automatically makes you stronger than the actual ogre? Or the Belt of Giant Strength makes you stronger than the actual giants that they represent (like Belt of Giant Strength of a Hill Giant gives you more strength than the actual Hill Giant)? I would like to, or change to bonuses, or they give you the same ability score as their counterpart (like Gauntlets of Ogre Power give you an 18 in Strength). 4. And I would like to +1 magic items to be common.
I have some friction points with D&D Next: cosmology, balance, multiclass and magic item (if I remember another I tell later). The three first ones are good: cosmology will be a choice, balance it seems that they are taking it seriously (this includes multiclass), but the magic item part it is not completely solved.
There is one advantage in class design that it’s not mentioned very often. The short version is: being a Wizard actually means something. I will try to explain this. A class is formed by several parts: It has the mechanics, which is obvious. But it also has fluff, flavor, description and legacy. Basically there are the stories about characters of that class, the class’s identity and all of such. To better represent my opinion, I shall bring to the discussion another commercial franchise: Final Fantasy. In many FFs there exists the Job system, which is really just a class system. Many times the Final Fantasy’s games uses a system different from that, but usually it’s a system unique to the game, and even so references to the Job system exist, so the Job system wins as most common system used by FF. Thing is, many people recognize FF Jobs, from classical Jobs such as Black Mage, White Mage, Warrior, Ninja, Paladin, Dragoon to less iconic Jobs such as, I don’t know, Jobs that only appeared in one to three games. Thing is, with considered time, these Jobs have all sort of Fluff and Legacy with then. Many characters not only use one Job, but also marked the series. When people talk about the Black Mage, for instance, not only they will remember the concept itself, but they will also remember all the appearances made in Job based games (which, in that specific case, are many) and also many characters like Palom from FFIV or Vivi from FFIX or Lulu from FFX. Things is, these Jobs marked the series and being one of them actually has meaning, because this Jobs have strong identities attached to them. The problem with classless systems is that, they are classless. What is a Wizard in a classless system? This really matter? In a classless system, is there some meaning in being a Wizard? The problem with classless systems is that these identities are kinda of lost, because being a Wizard is not so important, because being a Wizard does not have any mechanical marks and basically in a classless system, there is no Wizard by default, this doesn’t have meaning in a practical way. With class bases D&D, however, that is different. Being a Wizard in D&D has meaning, an when people talk about Wizards in D&D they will not only remember the current version of the Wizard, they will also remember all versions of the Wizard, and all characters and NPCs that are Wizards, and now, they will also remember the mechanical difference and the flavor, identity difference between the Wizard and the other spellcasting classes. This is something really hard to put in words, there is my best shot.
Right now, I would make Vancian the standard magic system for most classes in D&D (including Wizard and Cleric). What people complained is the fact that the Wizard was Vancian-Only. If it was Vancian-Default, that would be different. I've long advocated supporting both the Points of Light setting and settings full of magic items. I had some thought on one spellcasting system. Spoiler:Show
It is basically composed of three parts: 1. The Standard System: The standard system would be classic Vancian. Wizard: classic Vancian, have to learn spells first, and then prepare them. All the 9 spells levels. Cleric: It would be Vancian, but with some differences, The Cleric would carry on the tradition of choosing spells directly from the class’s spell list, but it would have some old school disadvantages to compensate, such as 7 spell-levels for Clerics and Druids (and even less for Paladins and Rangers), and most divine’s spells would be about healing and support (the Druid and the Ranger can have more offensive spells), and, in general, they would have less spells, perhaps even having divine spells (Cleric, Druid, Paladin and Ranger) be worse than arcane spells, as I’ve told that it was like this in pre-3rd Edition. 2. The Flagships The Flagships are classes that represent one alternative magic system in the standard system. They, by default, are not Vancian, they use another system (with the possibility of using Vancian or other systems). Sorcerer: This Sorcerer would be a little different than the other casters. They would have the same spell list as the Wizard (a la 3.X) and they will use, by default, flexible spell-slots spellcasting (the current system. Very like 3.X Sorcerer, but with class benefits that make then different, a la 4th Edition. With regards to other classes, I would make Bards Vancian, but the Warlock is also a good candidate to some different spellcasting mechanics. Possibly the Witch (4e post-Essentials subclass) somewhere? 3. Modular Magic Systems And there would be a module that changes the way that the spellcasting works. This would be a module that has guidelines about altering the default spellcasting mechanics. The guidelines would consist of how the quantity of spells cast can be ported over, and from which spells they prepare, etc... Let’s give a proper example: The Wizard would be classic Vancian. Thing is, for alternative casting systems, the Wizard would have guidelines that would be something on these lines: “They always prepare spells from the list of know spells. In alternative spellcasting modules, he can prepare a number of spells equal to 1+ Wizard’s level, and the number of spells slots or equivalent is equal to the number of spells per level per day.” This is not something that will have problems of text space. All that you need is some short guidelines about which spells they can chose to cast and how much spells they cast. The rest of these mechanics would be stated only once, in the module of alternative magic system. The good points: • Not only every Vancian class would have an option to be non-Vancian, but also the non-Vancian classes would have the options to be Vancian. Why some classes in default would be Vancian while others not? Add some variety for the new players and players of things like RPGA and Encounter. That and many of the editions of D&D had it like that. • It manages to both being classic with classic Vancian and satisfy the non-Vancian fans with flagships and modules. The bad points: • Using alternative magic systems do not raise your raw power but make casters more flexible. The classes that are already flexible (such as Sorcerer) would need some more flexibility to keep up. No idea how to handle martial characters, although.
We should get rid of at-will cantrips. Spoiler:Show
Okay, now that you’ve got the first panic reaction, let me explain it. Yes, many people like at-will cantrips and they are popular. They have everything that it takes to be popular. However, I think we should remove them from the game, at least as an assumption to all caster classes. First: At-will cantrips blur up the distinction between casters and martial characters, and makes being a gish useless. Basically in non at-will cantrips systems there is an advantage in martial characters: the fact that they have abilities that they can always use. But if we give every caster at-will cantrips this blurs up the difference between classes, take out a huge advantage of martial classes. There is also the gish issue. Basically in non at-will cantrips systems, there is a huge advantage of being a gish over being a full caster. The advantage of have some reliable action when out of spells. At-will cantrips weakens that advantage. Just for you to have some idea I was talking previously about the possibility of the Wizard being weaker than the Cleric (some time ago), and when I quoted the fact that the Cleric is a gish, people talked that this is not important, that it doesn’t have such impact because it will use its at-will cantrips. Being a gish should matter. Of course when being a gish actually matters, we can rebalance the classes but it should matter.
Second: At-will cantrips go into the opposite direction of trying to balance casters. Really when we are trying to balance classic or neo Vancian casters, why give to all of them at-will cantrips? Why we cannot use the absence of at-will cantrips to provide a drawback to balance casters? Third: At-will cantrips weaken the challenge of resource management. Really when you always have magic a great part of the challenge goes away. The possibility in being out of magic is not a bug, it is a feature It is part of the system, and this challenge don’t have to go away because it is fun. The challenge of running out of magic is part of the system, and fun. Fourth: At-will cantrips do not fit properly under every system. Really is not that I don’t like at-will magic, but I don’t think we should bake in every spellcasting system. In 4e it worked because it was part of AEDU, but now, they don’t feel part of anything. They seem to be an arbitrary addition to the game. The 3.5 Warlock was special because it was a class with at-will magic in a game where it doesn’t exist, otherwise, at-will magic. We can have at-will cantrips but it should be done it right, and not being a default assumption for every caster class. I’m worried if they are going to launch a mana spell-point based magic system for spellcasters. This system should not have at-will, no mana cost magic as default for every caster class, because running out of mana is part of the mana system. In Final Fantasy they even have no MP cost magic, but they do it right, and when they use no MP cost magic, it is special because it is in a game that is otherwise MP based.
No item should ever give more than a +1 to-hit or to a defense, and it should be impossible to stack bonuses to-hit or to a defense in any way from multiple magic items, including indirectly via bonuses to a stat.
There. Problem solved. Follow that simple rule and people can now freely include or exclude magic items from their campaigns without having to figure out balance implications.
If a DM wants to give out more powerful items, let them houserule it. Don't make the entire magic item system a minefield for DMs who don't want to micromanage it; put the burden on the DMs who want to muck around with balance.
Book provides item with massive bonus Players are not assumed to have PCs who ever see such items. DMs hand out item at their own whims with knowledge of how doing so will affect the game.
So no dumping states to have an item make up the difference as the DM is not assumed to ever give said item or anything similiar out.
Orzel, Halfelven son of Zel, Mystic Ranger, Bane to Dragons, Death to Undeath, Killer of Abyssals, King of the Wilds.
