Thoughts on D&D magic items

[Dracos]

Warning D&D economy whine/rant :P

It was just striking me as I was going through, how much of the D&D magic item table is really almost entirely unaccessible in any game where the GM is not freehanded with treasure.  Most games I've seen anywhere start between 1-5 and end before reaching level 15, usually around level 10-12.  Some random numbers.

level 5 suggested treasure: 9000 gp.
level 10 suggested treasure: 49000 gp.
level 15 suggested treasure: 200000 gp.

In other words, throughout most of the game, an expenditure of 20000 gp represents more than ten percent of the gold you are ever likely to see over the entire course of the game, and for level 10 endings, about 40 percent of your total game amount.  Now, ignoring weapons and armor for a second (the initial drains of resources  for almost everyone), what might that mean?  Well, let's see what percentage of the core magic items fall into that category outside of it.  Just counting 20000 gp costs and up (Counting greater varients individually)

27 rings are priced above this amount, and most of those at well more  than double it ranging all the way up to absolutely ludicrious 200000 gp amounts, the entire 100 percent that a player might see over a game.  There's only about 40 total rings counting varients.
21 rods are as well
20 of 21 staves qualify as above this amount.
131 wonderous items.

Effectively, even if they're available, nearly 200 of the possible core magic item/trinket options require an expenditure that is upwards of what a player is likely to have as their entire net worth for a fair while and even in end game are likely to represent more than an entire level of saving resources (The first level to expect a resource growth of 20000 gp is going from level 11 to level 12, a fairly rare occurance).  And frankly, in most games where money gets played with, you really don't want the players to get into this 'save save save' mindset since its opposed to them spending money to enhance the setting.  For most of the game, even the 10k items represent more than an entire levels worth of resources.

And this is without considering in magic weapons and armor, by large the biggest single expenditures that the players make.  Why do boring weapons tend to dominate the early game?  Because its an 8000 gp expenditure to enter into the first weapon with any kind of effect on it, and even then only the weakest sort.  The buy in to get a simple effect on a weapon represents half of the first seven levels of gold resources.  It doesn't become a minor expense to buy a weapon with an effect on it until around 13 or so.  And the price tags on the things go up exponetially.  Want a holy sword?  Hope the game is starting at level 8 or so, so you can put down a nice solid 18000 and change on it without the GM calling you for spending your entire resource budget on one item.  Good luck if you want a mighty '+2' on that thing.  About the only things that are reasonable in the knicknack range usually are 1 use consumables or +5 to a skill check items.  Moreso, I just thought of what that meant.  That's probably about 60+ percent of the magic item options in core (that 200 figure earlier) are more expensive than purchasing a +3 sword, something that doesn't even seem like that huge a bonus, considering a +2 or so different in stat points could represent that alone at creation.  Armor gets a little better, but largely because it costs half as much, and so you see a lot more +2 armor of Some Effect that show up in games.

I went over S&Ss and while Eb was right, he couldn't hand us nifty items, we  never spent on them, but even a wild experimenter like Rat's inventory was full of consumables, basically wizard only scrolls that cost less than 1000 gp each, and usually only a few hundred.  He had six items by end game and a debt accounted towards a seventh (his first exotic knicknack of any kind).  Most of them were enemy drops or pure stat up items...which couldn't even be traded in for enough money to purchase much of the odd knicknacks on the wonderous item list.  Amonet (who had the most) did spend some on plot stuff (A fair bit indeed), and had the most knicknack items, but generally they were all pure mathematical bonus things that cost under ten thousand gp each.  What frontliner is going to be likely to save up 50000 gp for a once a week summoning of 1d4+1 low level helpers when they could pick up +1-+2 mathematical items 'now' for 2000-8000 gp?  Especially when a lot of these things come with percentage fail rates, 'use once per x time' rates, or worse 'percentage fail and hinder you in pitched combat' rates.  Is it any wonder you don't see folks picking up eyes  of the eagle over a ring of protection?  Or Eyes of Doom over a +5 suit of fullplate or +5 bracer of armor?

Is it no wonder many of the GMs end up leading towards and pushing up the gold amounts in attempts to avoid watching players fight through five levels and save up to buy...a  +2 sword of boringness?  In dungeon crawl, we have extraordinary amounts of gold, the gm is making things more expensive...and I've bought the first cloak of displacement I've ever seen used in a game.  For more than the price of a +3 sword and instantly representing me expending more than twice  the value of my entire current equipment (All low tier math bonus things).  Had not the amounts been exceedingly beyond the pale and produced quickly, I don't know if I would've done that, and that largely arose from a small party where vast resources end up in few hands.

So I rambled on this a bit, but I don't tend to think there's a point to such if I don't at least come to a clear question or answer at the end.  Something worth reading it for.  The question that spurred this really was "Yes, I know I'm a stingy bastard who doesn't accessorize in games...but aside from a few where the GM actively accessorizes the party...I don't see it happening.  Why not?"  It's not all due to personality going for that.  The fact that for the first ten levels of play, you can almost be assured not to have enough money to spare even for a few of those weak +1 type items and even simple things like a cloak of elvenkind is a pretty significant investment.  This means that players are going to spend the majority of their early game time being trained to spend what little resources they have on things of immediate value, because there isn't room for much random expenditure.  Result?  Most players continue to do that even in to the last  couple levels afterwards.

Open for discussion: Telling me I'm crazy, Proposing solutions to this, Suggesting this is good and doesn't need anything and why.

I'll offer an immediate one.  Drop the prices significantly on effect items and even more significantly on style items.  Give these things out as treasure as well in this environment.  Make it more interesting to use a wonderous item than to see it as 15000 gp that could go anywhere instead.  Put consumables around, and not just potions of heal (which seem to be the standard), and make the sellback rate low for them, or better worthless for sellback so the players don't even divy them in the same spot as static treasure.  The most common consumable I've seen as a drop, almost to the exclusion of everything else is cure moderate wounds potions.  You never run into a thief decked out with little potions like breath fire or something.

I also, clearly, don't think it is something that is properly ignored as most GMs natively try and work around this problem, whether by providing excess treasure, dropping them directly, or having them given by plot.

[Ebiris]

I remember when the Magic Item Compendium came out, I rabidly decried it as being full of broken and cheap shit, but after reading the design article for it on the Wizards site, I've changed my mind.

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/dd/20070302a

They reached pretty much the exact same conclusions you did, Drac, and sought to rectify it by introducing a lot more useful and fun random items, and keep them at a price point that makes them viable compared to the obvious ability/ac/attack boosters.

When I was hating on the Magic Item Compendium, I was mostly getting bent out of shape because everything in it seemed so damn cheap compared to what's in the DMG, but as the article says - when was the last time you saw a player drop 23,500gp on a Rod of Enemy Detection?

edit: Also, shouldn't this go in the RP Codex?

[Dracos]

Yes it should, moved and thanks for the reminder, this got written pretty late my time so I didn't even notice I was in the wrong forum ^^  Luckly, admin powers solve all such things! :)

*goes to read your article link and refresh on the MIC before commenting*

[Anastasia]

*Reads*

Yeah, I agree that weapons could be done better. The price hikes between them are a cast iron bitch and could use a tweak.  I don't really know how, but that's not the main thrust of my thoughts here anyway.

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In my D/D game(Balmuria), I make an effort to mix up mundane items and more quirky offerings. To do so, you have to bear in mind a few things or you'll just give them more GP after selling. The first is to be loose with things. If you want them to use something quirky or off the path, make it interesting. For example, a metal detecting orb doesn't sound like much on the first draft. Maybe useful, but with a decent pricetag the PCs would never look at it. So I made it into an insane, sentient, metal obsessing orb that likes to rip metal out and make spiky, protruding constructions out of them. It has a few more powers related to that and it's not just another cookie cutter +2 item. It has flavor; Seira's been impaled by the metal shards she tries to control before, but the use and flavor outweigh the downsides. Hell, she uses water to terro-er, keep the big bad orb in check. The thing is terrified of it, being metal and all.  It's awesome.

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Another related problem is giving PCs non matching weapons and armor. Unless you make them really, really good, most PCs won't even look at something. Hell, remember when Gourash found a Brilliant Energy scythe? It took an effective +6 weapon to make  him look away from his +1 greataxe he had invested into. Even then it didn't work, Gourash never used it. Further, if you try this and miss, you have a huge GP valued item in your campaign, just waiting to be sold. Sure, creative GMing can alleviate the problem, but it's a dodge and the PCs will rightfully resent it if you do that too much.

This is partially a problem of unrelated things with character specialization. The aspect of GP cost making it worst stand out, making matters worse.

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I'm really cautious about dropping prices on magical items. If you have a group of intelligent PCs, they can and will use those prices to have more ways to solve problems. This isn't innately a bad thing, but an overloaded group is fucking hard to challenge. Dicking with one aspect of the prices affects everything, so you'd want a comprehensive plan before slashing the prices of a large part of the item list.

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MIC's prices do need some tweaking.  Then again, I'm a lukewarm fan of MIC in general.

[Ebiris]

The problem with the Compendium is that it can't reasonably exist in the same world where DMG price guides are used - the discrepancies are too jarring.

Who would ever pay 57,000gp for a Helm of Underwater Action when they could just get the Deepdweller enhancement on their armour for 12,000gp? Sure, it's not quite as good, but it's a hell of a lot more reasonable for something that either will come up very rarely, or be required as standard for the setting (like a seafaring campaign) and therefore likely given to the PCs as a matter of course.

This is hopefully something that can be fixed in 4th ed, since they'll have a fresh start to price everything reasonably from the get go.

[Anastasia]

The problem with the Compendium is that it can't reasonably exist in the same world where DMG price guides are used - the discrepancies are too jarring.

Who would ever pay 57,000gp for a Helm of Underwater Action when they could just get the Aquatic enhancement on their armour for 4,000gp? Sure, it's not quite as good, but it's a hell of a lot more reasonable for something that either will come up very rarely, or be required as standard for the setting (like a seafaring campaign) and therefore likely given to the PCs as a matter of course.

This is hopefully something that can be fixed in 4th ed, since they'll have a fresh start to price everything reasonably from the get go.

Pretty much. Tai's bugging me for something from the MIC and it's like 2000 GP to summon your armor at will. This is from -anywhere on the same plane-. That's not gonna fly as is.

Your faith in 4th edition is epic.

[Ebiris]

It's hard to read the development articles on the wizards site and not come away agreeing with their conclusions, which makes me hopeful that they can put out a quality product. But this isn't the thread for that.

[Anastasia]

It's hard to read the development articles on the wizards site and not come away agreeing with their conclusions, which makes me hopeful that they can put out a quality product. But this isn't the thread for that.

Fair enough, but I look at it this way. We've had 20+ years of D/D and they still haven't gotten magical items entirely right.

To make this post more worthwhile, what would it take for a PC of yours to start using a non specialized weapon? Say Alicia, what sort of gear would tempt her away from a double sword?

[Ebiris]

Alicia has 1 feat invested in the double-bladed sword. (Exotic Weapon Proficiency)

She has 2 feats invested in two-weapon fighting. (Two Weapon Fighting, Improved Two Weapon Fighting)

She has 1 feat that only really works when wielding a weapon 2 handed. (Power Attack)

She has 1 feat that only works with a single wielded weapon. (Arcane Strike)

She's a spellcaster and needs one hand free to cast spells with somatic components.

This says that she's not going to move away from two-weapon fighting, but also that it's a horrible idea for her to wield a seperate weapon in each hand.

The only viable weapon for her besides the double-bladed sword is the humble quarterstaff. For her to seriously consider wielding anything else on a permanent basis, it'd need to be a pretty godly artifact. For her to switch to a quarterstaff? Probably something with relevant enhancements that come up to say +2 higher than her current weapon.

A lot of it's a style thing, though. I like being Darth Maul/Shizuru.

[Dracos]

Another related problem is giving PCs non matching weapons and armor. Unless you make them really, really good, most PCs won't even look at something. Hell, remember when Gourash found a Brilliant Energy scythe? It took an effective +6 weapon to make  him look away from his +1 greataxe he had invested into. Even then it didn't work, Gourash never used it. Further, if you try this and miss, you have a huge GP valued item in your campaign, just waiting to be sold. Sure, creative GMing can alleviate the problem, but it's a dodge and the PCs will rightfully resent it if you do that too much.

This is partially a problem of unrelated things with character specialization. The aspect of GP cost making it worst stand out, making matters worse.

I'm just going to note something here.  That was a pretty special case.  I had feats that could be utilized with any two-handed weapon.  This was a pretty big range here, consisting of I think 10-15 or so core weapons, and  if you removed exotic proficiency from the table  on them (spit) probably about 40 possible splat weapons (a different problem for a different discussion).  Axe was chosen since it was both powerful in that category (second really only to Greatsword) and thematically appropriate.  Did I intend thematically to keep going with axes when I eventually upgraded?  Yeah.  But could I have been tempted to do other things easily?  I definitely think so.  I wasn't heavily invested in other things so all it had to offer me was the premise that it was either slightly better or more interesting than my current weapon.  The exception being lances because we had a lance user in the party who got first dibs on those.

  I recall only three weapons of note in that.  One was the bastard sword held by one of the gith early on, which I forget why I passed on, but I'm pretty sure it was simplyly because we already had Varul filling the sword theme back then.  The next was a cold iron +1 greataxe of variability that gave a higher  crit multiplier in exchange for a minus one on all damage  rolls.  I saw that as a downgrade to pick up, even as I tried to think of how to make it work.  The greataxe already has an exceedingly dangerous multiplier and I only rolled two crits in the entire campaign.  It was pretty sacrificing a significant amount of damage over time in hopes off increasing the damage on...blows that would likely already be fatal anyway.  It didn't make any sense to switch to it over my axe.

  The other, which I took hoping to use, was the Scythe, a +1 bonus with a +4 property on it.  It was a Negative Energy scythe to be particular and this cool black swathe of death.  Brilliant is a very specific property that's very powerful in its balwark.  I was willing to switch to this because while it had lesser damage in the average case, it was cool enough to interest me in breaking what 9at that point) had become a pretty solid theme for the character (ol' axe wielded with insane strength) and provided a possibility of being even better against certain opponents.  I immediately used it against the very next encounter we got, not even spending in character time to consider a switchover.  And then switched back shortly afterwards...because it became evident that we were fighting unarmored foes, and dangerous ones, and I didn't have the time to screw around when I could just draw it if the times changed.  Up from when I got it until the game concluded, we did not run into a single armored opponent.  not even a lightly armored one.  When I sold it right before our last adventure, I was just throwing my hands up at looking at it and saying "I'm carrying around this item that's exceedingly expensive, represented about 1/3rd of my total to date treasure  amount, and didn't ever do anything".

I go into detail here because going through this kind of think through is a good thing to do to understand why players might not switch.  Had someone dropped a +2 great sword of flames, I would've been all over  that.  A sonic maul of sickening?  Cool.  But when changing the status quo, it has to be something that encourages a belief that it is at least slightly better than what you currently have.  The math is generally pretty simple and very few people are  going to switch to an item, no matter how expensive, that noticibly degrades their performance.

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Expanding on this, I find its the exception, rather than the rule, where folks are truly heavily geared into one particular weapon type.  Exotic weapon choices *points up to eb's post* do this, and once somone has spent a feat on it, they are likely to stay with it.  Fighters do this, because there's a very notable reward, and before retraining came into play, the expense of switching was made ever higher with levels.  Outside of it?  Rogues?  Barbarians?  Rangers?  Multiclassed fighters?  Most splat fighting classes?  These folks very rarely have even one feat invested in a 'specific' weapon type, and usually are just towards a category, whether it is one handed light, double weapons, two weapon fighting, sword and shield, or two handed weapons and the  only thing needed to really encourage  a switch is:
A)Is it more interesting
B)Am I not being mathematically punished by switching?

A I think is the more important one, but B is something to keep in mind.  Folks are simply rarely going to switch to something that drops their damage per successful attack one or more points and if you want them to, there's got to be other stuff to weigh off in that that they are likely to buy in on.  The variable greataxe was a good example of thinking about it, because something that's simply empowers and already powerful ability is often not necessarily going to be very valuable to them over something that comes up all the time.

==========

Edit, I'll just note though, my intent was not a focus on so much on weapons and armors  as wonderous items.  Though getting properties onto there comes  into play too.

They do something to keep things 'siimple', but just as a suggestion, it might be good to eliminate the +1 requirement on weapons and armors.  I bet we'd see a lot more property type items if the buy in for them wasn't so egregriously high.  They do it like such so they don't have to think 'masterwork bonus' on such, but still, it inflates the base cost to get a neat  property item a full 6000 gp.

[Dracos]

It's hard to read the development articles on the wizards site and not come away agreeing with their conclusions, which makes me hopeful that they can put out a quality product. But this isn't the thread for that.

Fair enough, but I look at it this way. We've had 20+ years of D/D and they still haven't gotten magical items entirely right.

In fairness, for MOST of those 20 years, there was the exact opposite mentality from balancing magical items for 'purchase'.  It was only in the past 8 that it became something that wasn't excessively punishing to create or acquire, and it was THAT heritage that they acquired when designing and pricing these  magic items.  I don't expect next one to have it entirely right, but I suspect that it may be the first time ever they've gone into it from the ground floor with a consideration of "Hey, how do we get people to use these things' rather than 'what does our neat little easy power scaling table say?'

[Taishyr]

You would need to break Deme's current sword to make him switch, if even that. But hey, Kensai.

[Dracos]

The problem with the Compendium is that it can't reasonably exist in the same world where DMG price guides are used - the discrepancies are too jarring.

Who would ever pay 57,000gp for a Helm of Underwater Action when they could just get the Aquatic enhancement on their armour for 4,000gp? Sure, it's not quite as good, but it's a hell of a lot more reasonable for something that either will come up very rarely, or be required as standard for the setting (like a seafaring campaign) and therefore likely given to the PCs as a matter of course.

This is hopefully something that can be fixed in 4th ed, since they'll have a fresh start to price everything reasonably from the get go.

Pretty much. Tai's bugging me for something from the MIC and it's like 2000 GP to summon your armor at will. This is from -anywhere on the same plane-. That's not gonna fly as is.

I have to wonder...why not?  Apologies that this is on a game in progress and thus an awkward question, but reading over it, it calls to mind two things:

A)Most campaigns I've ever been in have never used the armor wearing rules.  Folks who walked outside  their door in the morning were wearing armor.  The only times it ever came into play was folks attacking you in bed.
B)I could get a ring of protection +1 for that price.

So, sure, it would also come up if a town was  under seige and they needed to arm themselves quickly or if they were in jail or imprisoned otherwise and striipped of their stuff...but outside o that?  How often does it really come up that a fighting character is without their armor AND needs/wants it right away?  I've never encountered it personally and I play  a lot of fighters.  A creative player might use it for some subterfuge, but in general, spending the opening round of battle calling your armor (your standard action) seems a poor decision versus just wearing it...and leaves it as an almost entirely a style type purchase.  "look, I can summon my armor in this cool magical girl effect!"
"I just wore my armor since I knew I would be fighting bad guys today.  No big.  by the way, Free sneak attack while you're busy."

It sounds kind of like this is exactly the kind of mentality which is how the prices got inflated to begin with.  Sure, summoning your armor from anywhere on the plane is a pretty nifty teleport effect...  but in game, both role playing and not, it doesn't strike me as mechanically relevant or deserving of an expensive entry fee.  As it stands, it explicitly is priced at twice the entry fee of magical armor with no scaling factor for whatever existing enchantments occur.  I'd say it was overpriced save that kind of makes it something you get after you have a few magical effects already for cheap if you so choose.

[Dracos]

You would need to break Deme's current sword to make him switch, if even that. But hey, Kensai.

Okay, so that's another that qualifies in there.  But its really a special case since kensai is all about offering an alternative path to powering up a specialty weapon that you never trade out.

[Dracos]

The problem with the Compendium is that it can't reasonably exist in the same world where DMG price guides are used - the discrepancies are too jarring.

Who would ever pay 57,000gp for a Helm of Underwater Action when they could just get the Aquatic enhancement on their armour for 4,000gp? Sure, it's not quite as good, but it's a hell of a lot more reasonable for something that either will come up very rarely, or be required as standard for the setting (like a seafaring campaign) and therefore likely given to the PCs as a matter of course.

This is hopefully something that can be fixed in 4th ed, since they'll have a fresh start to price everything reasonably from the get go.

MIC is really, after reading that article, meant as a complete replacement of magical prices.  They should've gone the extra few steps to made sure you didn't  need to reference any other book for their magical stuff.