Monte Cook Back to Work

[Seerow]

I'm good with "no crafting items", or at least crafting items typically requires you go on a quest. I hate the way currently all wealth must be carefully monitored for fear of breaking the game. High level characters should be dealing in mountains worth of gold, and be fully capable of going out and buying themselves a small kingdom/castle/whatever without worrying about "What if I put that 500,000 gold towards a shiny new sword instead?"

Basically, I'd make crafting a magic item require some reagent that can't just be fabricated (either for some magibabble reason or because fabricate no longer exists, don't care which), and the appropriate challenge level of trying to get one should be about the same as the level of the gear. So if you are level 4 and really want that level 10 magic item, you can try to get it, but good luck surviving a quest that normal level 10 characters have some trouble with.



But yeah, I don't disagree with the principles on the table here. Making magic items idiosyncratic would be something interesting to see, as long as it isn't along the lines of "everything you pick up is cursed" or "this item has a 10% chance when used to kill you instead of doing what you want". The examples given are cool, but largely plot related, so I can't imagine anything like that actually being codified except for giving a few examples in the DMG and telling the DM to take it from there, and have fun making shit up.

[hogarth]

Yeah, you read that right. What if the game assumed no magic items? What if magic items really were just hard-fought-for treasure that made characters better? A DM could run as high or low magic a campaign as he wanted. Players who beat the dragon would just be better off than those that played it safe. As I wrote earlier, working harder really will get the PCs ahead. Those that succeed at greater challenges will be more powerful than those that don't. That seems to be a bit of the heart and soul of D&D that has somehow become lost.

This paragraph is ridiculous beyond belief. "What if magic items made you more awesome than not having magic items?" Isn't that how magic items have worked in every edition of D&D?

[Seerow]

Yeah, you read that right. What if the game assumed no magic items? What if magic items really were just hard-fought-for treasure that made characters better? A DM could run as high or low magic a campaign as he wanted. Players who beat the dragon would just be better off than those that played it safe. As I wrote earlier, working harder really will get the PCs ahead. Those that succeed at greater challenges will be more powerful than those that don't. That seems to be a bit of the heart and soul of D&D that has somehow become lost.

This paragraph is ridiculous beyond belief. "What if magic items made you more awesome than not having magic items?" Isn't that how magic items have worked in every edition of D&D?

Technically yes. But the point I think he was trying to get at is since magic items are an assumed part of the character now, a level 10 character isn't actually level 10 unless he has level 10 equivalent gear. What he seems to want is a level 10 character goes in naked, or with mundane gear, and takes down level 10 challenges, but a level 10 with a lot of magic gear might be taking down level 12 challenges. So the magic items aren't a part of your assumed level, they effectively boost your level.

Which now that I think about it could potentially get pretty confusing for a lot of GMs and players.

[Username17]

Actually, with the exception of keeping the +3 nomenclature, this article is pretty spot on. I notice the repeated digs he makes at 4th edition, and I brace myself for the 4rries to writhe in angry anguish.

The assumed level of magic items is an important point. Fire Giants are a 10th level monster (or whatever) and their numbers are set to the assumed level of equipment that the fighters are "supposed" to have. If the game is written with the assumption that the Fighter is decked out in +3 shiznit, then the naked Fighter is going to be fighting under par and feel like a pussy. In fact, all the characters are going to feel like weaklings, because they need to be decked out in bling just to scrape by against naked lizard people. On the flip side, if the assumption is no magic items, then the players are going to feel like bad asses because when they inevitably get a +2 flaming sword, it's going to make them kick noticeable amounts of ass and beat up enemies that they know are "higher level".

-Username17

[Winnah]

What I read:

Removal of tangible rewards that have an effect on the capabilities of the character.

Inclusion of plot McGuffin items that the DM can hand over as they like, also they come with a nebulous expiration date which can be invoked at the DM's whim.

This makes any given character more homogenous with other members of the same class. In theory, when the numbers are pushed though a given equation, the outcome will be easier to predict within a limited RNG.

At least until the party fighter gets his hands on a magic sword or helm of disintegration...

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This is supposed to add 'mystery' back into 4e? Fuck that shit. Mystery items are fucking terrible. Turning every enchantment into an AD&D artifact will not improve the game. Especially when the mystery items being proposed will most likely only be providing mundane situational modifiers.

[GâtFromKI]

On the flip side, if the assumption is no magic items, then the players are going to feel like bad asses because when they inevitably get a +2 flaming sword, it's going to make them kick noticeable amounts of ass and beat up enemies that they know are "higher level".

... And that's why magic item are something special: because with your +2 flaming sword, you feel badass.

[hogarth]

On the flip side, if the assumption is no magic items, then the players are going to feel like bad asses because when they inevitably get a +2 flaming sword, it's going to make them kick noticeable amounts of ass and beat up enemies that they know are "higher level".

Right. We can all agree that everyone is fine with no magic swords (lots of games work this way), and everyone is fine if they all have magic swords (which is the 3.5E approach).

But what are you supposed to do when Fighter A has a magic sword and Fighter B has jack shit? Console Fighter B by telling him magic swords are optional -- just ask Frank and Monte? Bullshit.

[Seerow]

On the flip side, if the assumption is no magic items, then the players are going to feel like bad asses because when they inevitably get a +2 flaming sword, it's going to make them kick noticeable amounts of ass and beat up enemies that they know are "higher level".

Right. We can all agree that everyone is fine with no magic swords (lots of games work this way), and everyone is fine if they all have magic swords (which is the 3.5E approach).

But what are you supposed to do when Fighter A has a magic sword and Fighter B has jack shit? Console Fighter B by telling him magic swords are optional -- just ask Frank and Monte? Bullshit.

Typically, I'd expect Fighter A and Fighter B to be in different parties.

I mean, yeah, if you have a game where you find only one magic weapon ever, that sucks for everyone else. But I think the goal is more along the lines of you can give magic items as you see fit to make your players more badass, rather than being required.

[hogarth]

Typically, I'd expect Fighter A and Fighter B to be in different parties.

Right. So now we have one party where everyone has performance-enhancing magic items. Congratulations! You just reinvented 3.5E D&D.

[Josh_Kablack]

Magic should be weird and mysterious

Within the contect of a game where characters are supposed to control magic that the players have only the game rules to inform them about, that's a huge RED FLAG THAT THE CRAZY IS ABOUT TO FOLLOW

, and when it’s presented as a regimented list of carefully balanced and well-defined spells or powers, it's hard to retain any mystery. Anything presented in the Player's Handbook, almost by definition, isn't going to be mysterious for long. We actually expect players to have read through that stuff. This means that traditionally, DMs have had a better shot at making magic mysterious by introducing weird magic items into their games. Why? Because for most of the game's history, magic items fell under the purview of the DM.

Tradition and history of the game are important. But if that's the only reason for a design choice it indicates that the designer didn't consider alternatives.

Players just never knew what they were going to get when they opened up that chest and found the various objects inside. A sword? Okay, we probably know what that's going to do. A wand? Could be any manner of magical spell inside. An amulet? A ring? Those could be anything. Which is great.

Wait what? You never explain how or why this is great?

And left to my own frame of reference, I contend that it is exactly the opposite of great.

Let me take you down the actual memory lane of "history and tradition" in D&D

The Sword is a -2 backbiter, cursed. You can't get rid of it and it permanently weakens your character for having picked it up in the first place - meaning that the rational choice for players in the treasure acquisition minigame is to avoid it, at least whenever anything is weird and or mysterious. You shouldn't use the loot you find until you can have it tested with the appropriate magical spells. I mean that will prevent stuff like

Bowl of Watery Death
Bowl of Watery Death: This device looks exactly like a bowl commanding water elementals, right down to the color, design, magical radiation, etc. However, when it is filled with water, the wizard must successfully save vs. spell or be shrunk to the size of a small ant and plunged into the center of the bowl. If salt water is poured into the bowl, the saving throw suffers a -2 penalty.

The victim will drown in 3-8 rounds, unless magic is used to save him, for he cannot be physically removed from the bowl of watery death except by magical means: animal growth, enlarge, or wish are the only spells that will free the victim and restore normal size; a growth potion poured into the water will have the same effect; a sweet water potion will grant the victim another saving throw (i.e., a chance that the curse magic of the bowl works only briefly). If the victim drowns, death is permanent, no resurrection is possible, and even a wish will not work.

Oh wait, that doesn't prevent anything as even magic detections don't work.

Note the underlines I added - traditionally D&D includes cursed magic items that are completely indistinguishable from normal magic items by any of the means within the item-identification minigame and which offer nearly instant and totally irrevocable character death beatable only if one of the other PCs has one of five and only five specific counters available inside 3-8 rounds.

So once again, "traditional D&D" has a minigame best left to your dungeoneering terriers instead of having PCs actual engage with the system . "Luckily I had Rex the Eighth fitted with a St. Bernard style cask, I'll open the stopper on it, tell him to fetch a bone I throw into the bowl and then command him to stay there while the bowl fills and I wait in the next room."

And I can't speak for the rest of you, but if I wanted to play a game about animal wrangling and pet tricks, I'd be playing My Little Pony or Late Night with David Letterman instead of D&D.

Hence, in the case of "weird and mysterious" magic items, traditional and historic D&D is the opposite of great - because the system includes serious disincentives for players to engage with it at all.


Alternately, a player can defeat many cursed items, by reading the DMG and all supplements / modules to know what the standard ones are. If a player knows that some Bowls of Commanding Water Elementals are uber-letahal traps that are undetectable, the player can just decide to never activate any such item and try to trade it for some type of magic item which is less likely to be cursed or at least has cursed varients that are easier to identify. But in this case, the player is again actually rewarded with increased odds of character survival for having gone to great personal lengths to remove the weirdness and mystery from magic items that Monte wanted to put there.

But if the players come to expect certain treasure items, or if they can just go to a magic item shop in a large city and buy what they want, there's no mystery there. This means that to restore mystery to magic, one great way would be to complexly decouple magic items from character advancement.

Urr...no.

That fails to restore mystery to magic so long as any of the viable player character classes or races have abilities that are explained as magic.

If you were running say Lankhmar, where the main PCs are a Barbarian and a Rogue and the spellcasters are NPCs - then you can sort of keep magic weird and mysterious.

But the instant a player needs to know that their character's Magic Missile auto-hits and deals 1d4+1 per 2 character levels, they also know what all other Magic Missiles in the setting can do, how they can and can't be avoided and an approximation of the level of an enemy wizard based on the damage their Magic Missile deals. The only ways to keep magic mysterious are to either:
A. keep all magic out of the hands of PCs or
B. Never give the players the functions for their character's abilities.
that's an exhaustive list.
A fails because there's a crapload of source material where the protagonists wield magic and if PC's can't do that, then the game cannot emulate its own source material.
B fails because it means that the MC must store more information and do more math themselves in the middle of the game - reducing the amount of time and mental capacity he or she has to actual interact with the players. So it outright results in a worse game session experience.

So the only ways to keep magic mysterious are to fail to be like the inspirational material or to offer inferior game sessions. I dunno about you, but as much as I like playing games with a discovery element,"mysterious" isn't worth those sorts of trade-offs to me.

Now there is another option here, and it's that Monte is being lazy and leaving some words out - in which case what he's saying is that he just wants to keep "magic items" weird and mysterious and magic-users can still roll their own magic missile dice.

And if that's the case, Lago needs to take him to the mat for the amount of underperforming suckage that guarantees any non-caster classes will have in a system developed from those premises. See Lago's previous rants about DMFs, VAHs, Magic-Item-Gift-Cards, and people's stubborn unwillingness to accept superhuman deeds in fanatasy unless the word "magic" is invoked, et al, and since we're talking about traditional D&D q.v.

Yeah, you read that right. What if the game assumed no magic items? What if magic items really were just hard-fought-for treasure that made characters better? A DM could run as high or low magic a campaign as he wanted. Players who beat the dragon would just be better off than those that played it safe. As I wrote earlier, working harder really will get the PCs ahead. Those that succeed at greater challenges will be more powerful than those that don't. That seems to be a bit of the heart and soul of D&D that has somehow become lost.

Monte? Haven't 15 years of MMORPG grindfests on top of the 15 prior years of CRPGs taught you anything? In a fully open, chose-your-adventure A quest-optimizing player (or player group) can find ways to have it both ways. Rather than fighting the goblins, then the orcs, then the ogres, then the giants, then the dragons and continuously upgrading levels, gear and challenges all at the same rate they group can decide to pull a zerg-rush and either die in session one to restart the game or succeed in taking the ogres first to get their XPs and phat loots. They can then take said XP and loots to not merely defeat, but leverage their equipment advantage to hunt down every last source of XP from the orcs and gobbos with minimal risk - meaning that they will be overlevelled by 1 or 2 when they face the giants - again giving them an advantage they may be able to leverage into staying above the power curve for the entire campaign after a lucky first session.

The whole point of tabletop is that it's not a static-predefined environment like a CRPG nor a change-only-on--expansion environment like a MMORPG but that the world and the nature of quests change in response to the players' actions. Yeah, players need some choice in how difficult a quest to undertake, but there also need to be reasons beyond boredom why they don't just stay in the woods killing boars to hit level 60. Instead there is an actual MC who can decide that the Orc chieftain is just gonna take his horde and their goblin lackeys to go pillage elsewhere rather than face an intrepid band of ogre-slayers.

Rather than a strict system telling the DM what the players should have at a given level, the game instead could provide a DM with guidelines and suggestions for what would happen if he introduced various kinds of items into his campaign. Thus, the DM is armed with knowledge, but free to do whatever he or she sees fit.

What kind of doors does that open?

Well since you're coming at this from a nostalgia perspective, lemme remind you that opens the doors to the days of 2e insanity where an 8th level fighter can't hurt a 3 HD wererat even by abusing the grapple rules and throwing it off a cliff, but CAN hurt them by grabbing the one the wizard slept and using it as a nonproficient weapon - since creatures natural weapons counted as able to get through their own damage reduction. Really, I actually played in that game in October and November of 1991. And that's such a shitty story that it's a major part of the reason I chose to play other systems than D&D for the following 9 years.

[RadiantPhoenix]

... performance-enhancing [stuff] ...

I think they have this problem in the Olympics...

[tzor]

But what are you supposed to do when Fighter A has a magic sword and Fighter B has jack shit? Console Fighter B by telling him magic swords are optional -- just ask Frank and Monte? Bullshit.

But what really is a "magic sword?" It really breaks down to three things.

A crappy bonus ...
A cool special effect ...
(In some editions) A plot mcguffin ...

The crappy bonus may seem important, and a +2 is still 10%, but fighter bonuses can easily be just as much.

The cool special effect is good, 'cause that often means more damage (I slice your guts open and give you third degree burns at the same time). But it all dpends on the level of relative coolness.

The plot mcguffin is the real killer (you must have "magic" sword to do damage or you must have "flaming" sword to damage troll) and back in 1E that was the real reason to get magic weapons.

...

In the end, the presence of magic items boosts the effective level of the character (or the lack thereof from the standard reduces the effective level of the character). Just like the idea that a character two level lower than the other is not going contribute equally, so too will a massive difference in effective level. Some compensation should be given as a result ... perhaps a greater share of experience to the one without the magic, so they advance at a slightly faster rate and thus become better because of slightly higher level.

[Lago PARANOIA]

But what are you supposed to do when Fighter A has a magic sword and Fighter B has jack shit?

This is supposed to add 'mystery' back into 4e? Fuck that shit. Mystery items are fucking terrible. Turning every enchantment into an AD&D artifact will not improve the game. Especially when the mystery items being proposed will most likely only be providing mundane situational modifiers.

Yes. Seriously. Some people are supposed to go without magic items. If you want magical items to feel special then there has to be a chance that you'll not get it otherwise you'll take it for granted. And if you don't want to make it unduly hard for people without magical items then you have to assume that they don't have them.

Now then I don't think that the DM should be the sole arbitrator of magical items. They're a staple of hack and slash and people will be peeved by their absence and having to play mother-may-I with the DM. That's why magical items should be random.

Now there's a great deal of variation you can do on that. You could make getting magical items a nearly once-in-a-campaign event. You could do the Diablo II thing and have players rolling constantly for random drops of incremental upgrades. You could do a hybrid where most magical items you got were incremental but now and then you rolled a Holy Avenger at level 2.

There's more to it than that but I've gone over it before.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Monte? Haven't 15 years of MMORPG grindfests on top of the 15 prior years of CRPGs taught you anything?

Actually, if MMORPG grindfests have taught me anything is that people love random reinforcement schedules so much that they'll go through hours of bullshit for the hit. People will literally spend hours clicking on a treasure chest for an incremental upgrade and bizarrely call the process 'fun', imagine how ecstatic people would be if you tied upgrades to something that was already fun like blowjobs or cake.

[Seerow]

Monte? Haven't 15 years of MMORPG grindfests on top of the 15 prior years of CRPGs taught you anything?

Actually, if MMORPG grindfests have taught me anything is that people love random reinforcement schedules so much that they'll go through hours of bullshit for the hit. People will literally spend hours clicking on a treasure chest for an incremental upgrade and bizarrely call the process 'fun', imagine how ecstatic people would be if you tied upgrades to something that was already fun like blowjobs or cake.

Get 1000 blowjobs so that randomly one will be the best you've ever had or ever will have again? Sounds like a hell of a game.

[Lago PARANOIA]

No, get 1000 blowjobs so that randomly you'll win 50 dollars.

Now there is an argument to be had that with a random reinforcement schedule where the payout is too high it can be demotivating. Both because people stop caring less about the process and also because it incites non-constructive jealously in people who have yet to win. Which is what you want if you're designing a grindfest, otherwise you'll lose players, but not if the game in of itself is supposed to be fun. If you really want to fuck it up then you'll make it so that you can't function without being the winner in the lottery.

IOW giving people a random chance to win 500 dollars if they're in your arcade and have played 10+ hours is a good idea if you're trying to promote interest in classic arcade games, giving people a random chance to win 50,000 dollars is not even if you adjusted the payout schedule so you 'lose' the same amount of money.

[K]

Actually, with the exception of keeping the +3 nomenclature, this article is pretty spot on. I notice the repeated digs he makes at 4th edition, and I brace myself for the 4rries to writhe in angry anguish.

The assumed level of magic items is an important point. Fire Giants are a 10th level monster (or whatever) and their numbers are set to the assumed level of equipment that the fighters are "supposed" to have. If the game is written with the assumption that the Fighter is decked out in +3 shiznit, then the naked Fighter is going to be fighting under par and feel like a pussy. In fact, all the characters are going to feel like weaklings, because they need to be decked out in bling just to scrape by against naked lizard people. On the flip side, if the assumption is no magic items, then the players are going to feel like bad asses because when they inevitably get a +2 flaming sword, it's going to make them kick noticeable amounts of ass and beat up enemies that they know are "higher level".

-Username17

I can agree with this use of magic items. Players should be able to defeat challenges with base nonmagic gear, though rewarding success with more potential for success seems like a zero-sum game because you raise the difficulty each time.

The part where Monte and I part ways is where he decides at the end that magic items should not be for players, but for DMs to hand out as rewards.

I mean, I see no problem with players deciding that they want to be a King Arthur with Excaliber or Lion-O with the Sword of Omens or Elric and Stormbringer, and forcing players to spend half the campaign not being that concept because the DM hasn't handed you a magic sword or given you a clue to where one can be found is not acceptable.

Customization for the player should always be open to organic advancement as well as planned advancement. I mean, if you get an item that makes you fly and then you suddenly decide that getting more flying feats is what you want, then cool, but don't piss on the guy who starts his character with the plan of being the Assassin with a jeweled dagger that swallows life energy.

[Lago PARANOIA]

What people miss out on the whole 'I want magical items to be special but also not to have the chance to go without it' paradigm is that magical items are special because you can go without them. The Sword of Omens and King Arthur's Scabbard and Frog's Masamune are pretty big deals, but if the other characters are guaranteed to get something just as cool at the same time then they stop being special and function more like classes.

Which is fine if that's what you want; in a lot of stories it's just assumed that the characters can get lightsabers or supernatural kung-fu or power armor whenever they want. But it sure as hell doesn't make those particular items special.

[DSMatticus]

The frequency of item hand-outs has to be balanced with the vertical power advancement those items give. Currently, D&D (3.5) has the scheme where items and experience are both very, very important parts of your vertical power. That's not a big deal, because the item hand-outs are so frequent that everybody tends to advance at the same rate. Making items less frequent means characters are more likely to vary in power.

So along with K's objection about having some influence on your magical gear selection, I'm wary of whether or not Monte knows that "items as essential character power" and "items are rare" are at odds with eachother, and need to be balanced carefully. For example, to do what Monte's suggesting, the idea of the +X sword really needs to disappear. I don't think he quite gets that, and just wants to go back to older editions where the magic loot system... sucked. Hard.

[Daztur]

Well this column is certainly better than the last. Having magic items be good add-ons to characters, not something fundamental to making the math work right would be a great improvement. Nothing terribly original there, but it is good to have someone realize that "characters are assumed to have X, Y and Z bonuses from magic items at level A" is pretty pointless.

[Maxus]

don't piss on the guy who starts his character with the plan of being the Assassin with a jeweled dagger that swallows life energy.

Ah, Entreri. He got better as Drizzt got worse.

[K]

Well this column is certainly better than the last. Having magic items be good add-ons to characters, not something fundamental to making the math work right would be a great improvement. Nothing terribly original there, but it is good to have someone realize that "characters are assumed to have X, Y and Z bonuses from magic items at level A" is pretty pointless.

I'm happier to have someone at least in the ballpark. At this point, I'll give 5e a 35% chance of not sucking.

[Psychic Robot]

monte's newest article is pretty accurate even if it is mostly a bunch of yammering about nothing

At this point, I'll give 5e a 35% chance of not sucking.

I'd take 3e with better math

[Lago PARANOIA]

What degree of control should people have over their magical item selection? I'm personally not in favor of anything more narrow than 'ranged weapon'. Yes, I am totally against martial proficiencies, signature weapon styles, signature weapon properties, and all that VAH-bullshit-schtupping-as-real-schticks nonsense.

Other things that Lago doesn't like: personal magical items that give out more horizontal advancement than 'cloak of invisibility' or 'ring of detect thoughts', cursed gear, more than four personal magical items total, and any expected combination of personal magical items where it takes more than two paragraphs to explain what they all do.

[Dr_Noface]

How about a Black Forest / Tome style system:

Goals:

1)We want PCs to find, make and use expendable items regularly, and not save them up initially to have the late game be on easy mode.
2)We don't want PCs (or NPCs) to sell off "cool" forms of wealth (land, titles, boats, armies,etc) to buy more powerful magic items.
3) Some players don't want their character concept dependent on specific magic items.
4) Some players want specific magic items for their character and character concept.

Very Vague Solutions

So lets say you have 3 tiers: Heroic, Paragon, and Epic. Tiers are split into 10 levels. Levels work the way the do now, except the power differential over the ten levels is not as big as it was in 3.5.

Changing tiers is more radical than just gaining a level. Moving up a tier requires a quest followed by a training montage and results in a big leap in power for the PCs. Whole campaigns can be played in just one or two of the tiers.

Powerful magic that took the form of lengthy/costly rituals in one tier becomes easier/faster to use for a character in the next tier.

A powerful magic item (ie a magic item you must adventure for in some fashion) for a Heroic/Paragon/Epic tier is dubbed a Heroic/Paragon/Epic item. You also have Farmer tier items, for most mundane things.

Characters can spend class features/feats on gaining a same tier magic item. Since this item can be lost/damaged it can be a little more powerful/more versatile than innate class features /feats. This can be flavoured in various ways (crafting a masterpiece, random magical convergence, a demon possessing your blade, etc).

Items from a lower tier (or most mundane items) can be crafted or bought without need for adventure. PCs and NPCs of the same tier will have similar levels of lower tier wealth (in different forms). As a result they will not typically trade same tier magic items for lower level wealth.

1) is a weird one.