Weapon Styles, Basket Weaving, and Concept Obsolesence

[Chamomile]

We established explicitly that no one is advocating a weapon specialist class several pages ago. The argument is primarily between people who want PCs to be able to determine what type of weapon they're using and Frank and Lago, who want it to be determined randomly.

[RadiantPhoenix]

I think there are two separate issues:
* Stripping the marble facing stones from the pyramids
* Implied low-level thinking

The first one is why you can't take the magic out of one item and weld it to a new one, the second is why your character has to be so much more than just, "I use an AXE!" that you shouldn't flip out over a Lance of Clouting being the best weapon to use right now.

[Username17]

We established explicitly that no one is advocating a weapon specialist class several pages ago.

Fuck you're a dick. People suggested a Sword Master Class. You asked if people had really done that and I pointed out that they had. Now you're claiming (again) that no one said that.

You know what? Fuck you. I'm putting you on ignore. If you can ask a yes or no question, receive an affirmative answer, and then turn around and say that everyone agreed the answer was negative, you're as bad as Shadzar.

-Username17

[Orion]

Yes, but the "Swordmaster" class under discussion did not actually receive any mechanical incentives to use a sword. Which is what Chamomile was talking about.

[Damocles]

If people want to use a specific weapon simply cause they like them, let them. Jeesh.

If you like weapon diversity so much why isnt Tome Soulborn written to make 'weapons of blue soulfire' rather than 'swords of blue soulfire'?

[NineInchNall]

It is.. Read the soul blade ability again.

I don't understand why anyone thinks that exacerbating the problem of item dependency by including specific item dependency is a good thing.

But maybe I'm just retarded.

[Damocles]

It. Is. Read the soul blade ability again.

Well, looks like I've had a small bout of retardation. But I'll adapt! If characters preferring a specific weapon is dumb, and Frank would advocate that, then why write a class that has the ability to choose whatever weapon it wants?

Also NineInch, I'd be wary of ever posting again, your post count is lucky 7's!

[Username17]

Let's move this to Druids, because people have less sympathy for them and don't feel the need to distort the game because of years of training based on them being a shitty class that needs the DM to sandbag so they can contribute.

You're a druid. You want a Tiger. Maybe you have mechanical reasons for that, maybe you just really like tigers. I don't even care. The following answers are acceptable:

• My class allows me to summon a tiger, so I will be accompanied by a tiger wherever I go.
• If we go to the jungle, I'll get a tiger. If we stay in the Frozen North, I'll settle for a polar bear.

What is not OK, and will never be OK is to require "finding" a tiger in your adventures and then demanding that the DM put one there and/or that the other players go on a sidequest so that you can get one.

If you are dependent on using things that occur in your adventures, you have to abide by whatever the things that actually occur in your actual adventures.

-Username17

[Damocles]

Let's move this to Druids, because people have less sympathy for them and don't feel the need to distort the game because of years of training based on them being a shitty class that needs the DM to sandbag so they can contribute.

You're a druid. You want a Tiger. Maybe you have mechanical reasons for that, maybe you just really like tigers. I don't even care. The following answers are acceptable:

• My class allows me to summon a tiger, so I will be accompanied by a tiger wherever I go.
• If we go to the jungle, I'll get a tiger. If we stay in the Frozen North, I'll settle for a polar bear.

What is not OK, and will never be OK is to require "finding" a tiger in your adventures and then demanding that the DM put one there and/or that the other players go on a sidequest so that you can get one.

If you are dependent on using things that occur in your adventures, you have to abide by whatever the things that actually occur in your actual adventures.

-Username17

Go ahead and disregard the soulborn bit, this explains the same concept as what they do with their weapon.

So how about this, as long as the player wanting to wield a specific weapon agrees to make said weapon setting appropriate, or adventure appropriate, whats the biggie? Seems like this entire time we're assuming someone is demanding a katana in a world with no asia equivalent.

[shadzar]

Seems like this entire time we're assuming someone is demanding a katana in a world with no asia equivalent.

Because they did just that. Save for it began with a rapier, adn the DM owes it to them because that is what they chose to have, like the tiger.

the unyielding player refuses to accept that something doesnt exist in the world and happens to have the ONLY one; yet the rest of the world now must posses it so that they can loot it.

or other than rapier, the other example was given was some crazy segmented sword-whip thing.

thus so many have tried to explain the consistency of the game is more important that a poor attempt to choose a tool for an aesthetic by a single player.

[Damocles]

Seems like this entire time we're assuming someone is demanding a katana in a world with no asia equivalent.

Because they did just that. Save for it began with a rapier, adn the DM owes it to them because that is what they chose to have, like the tiger.

the unyielding player refuses to accept that something doesnt exist in the world and happens to have the ONLY one; yet the rest of the world now must posses it so that they can loot it.

or other than rapier, the other example was given was some crazy segmented sword-whip thing.

thus so many have tried to explain the consistency of the game is more important that a poor attempt to choose a tool for an aesthetic by a single player.

This argument should've never taken place then. Any worthwhile player wont take details of a DM's world, before even playing, and stamp their balls all over them and demand the world change. The creation of the Katina-wielding samurai shouldn't happen in the first place if the world has no katanas, or samurai.

Now, if some magical transomancer or something (made up word for a guy who somehow uses magic to transfer magic from one object to another) has high int, an idea, and a decent reason to be good at inventing things, it might be okay that he transomance a icy longsword's ice-magic into his one of a kind invented chain-whip-sword-potato.

[Username17]

So how about this, as long as the player wanting to wield a specific weapon agrees to make said weapon setting appropriate, or adventure appropriate, whats the biggie? Seems like this entire time we're assuming someone is demanding a katana in a world with no asia equivalent.

Well, the weapon specialization crowd mostly wants to talk about swords vs. axes because it is more superficially reasonable. After all, over the course of many levels it is very likely that you will get several swords and several axes, so other players might not even notice that you intend to use one or the other regardless of what happens in the campaign.

The problem of course is that getting specifically a Sword or an Ax is not guaranteed at any point. At the extreme end, which even the weapon fappers will generally concede: the Sword of Kas is a sword and not an ax. Conversely, the Ax of the Dwarven Lords is an ax and not a sword. Over the course of the campaign it is sometimes necessary to use Adamantine or Ghost Touch weaponry in addition to whatever it is that your normal weapon does, so the chances of you needing to "switch weaponry" is actually fairly high. The chances of all of things you need to switch into being specifically an ax are pretty low.

To address that fact, the weapon fappers have broadly suggested a few main options:

• The Wishlist
  The player writes down that they want weapon drops of specific types. Then the DM hands out those weapons at intervals. The problem with this is that in addition to potentially straining verisimilitude (especially if the items are weird), it changes the way the player interacts with the treasure in the game. The item drops become expected and normal, meaning that every time they kill a goblin that doesn't have the next thing on the list it is disappointing, and if the DM personalizes the equipment in any way or delays it for any reason the player feels (somewhat correctly) that the DM is fucking with "their stuff". By inverting expectations, it changes treasure from a source of reward to a source of punishment.
• The Sidequest
  The player wants a specific item, and makes a gather information check to find out where he can get one, and then the team goes off on a sidequest to get it. However, this requires the player to get a whole table of people who can't agree on pizza toppings to all agree to go on a sidequest that is frankly pretty stupid. The stated goal is to acquire a weapon that one of the players thinks looks cool. Other players may well vote to go after griffin eggs or avenge their sister or something instead. The sidequest is a plausible way to introduce specific items, but it requires the player to successfully convince the other players to vote to do it. Some people have seriously said that if the players voted to do something else instead, that as DM they'd just wave the wand and make this sidequest complete itself - which cheapens everything that any of the players ever does and breaks the fourth wall in with a bulldozer.
• The Market
  The player doesn't get what he want? No problem, he just trades whatever he actually got for exactly what he wants. This has several problems. The biggest is that it cheapens everything that any player ever has. Everything is just a store bought rack model that is freely tradable for another one in blue, so nothing is really valuable or interesting. More subtly but perhaps worse is the historical data we have from 3e and 4e - that players will in fact sell all their interesting specialty equipment for AC boosts and similar useful but uninteresting numeric bonuses.
• Reforging!
  Similar to the Market, but instead of actually getting new items, the specific enhancements found are merely moved from one item to another. This is in many ways more insulting than the market, because it means that magic items don't even persist - they are just power crystals that people move from one item to another. No "sword" has any history or can have any history, because it only lasts as long as a single person kept that collection of power crystals on a sword - for the previous owner it was on a warhammer or some shit.

And those are the ways people try to save the concept of people using exactly what they want to use and also keep the concept of people using the things they find in their adventures. And they are all very shitty.

-Username17

[Damocles]

[*] Reforging!
Similar to the Market, but instead of actually getting new items, the specific enhancements found are merely moved from one item to another. This is in many ways more insulting than the market, because it means that magic items don't even persist - they are just power crystals that people move from one item to another. No "sword" has any history or can have any history, because it only lasts as long as a single person kept that collection of power crystals on a sword - for the previous owner it was on a warhammer or some shit.[/list]



-Username17

That magic enhancement transferring thingamabob, I don't think is all that shitty. Sure, being magical in general might give an item a slight history, but probably not one of such great renown that transferring it should matter.

For items like Whelm, the Sword of Kas, Excalibur, Mjolnir, etc, they're past the point of magical and have moved into either legendary or artifact status. No transferring those magics.

For generic magic, most likely found as commonly as stink on shit for most adventurers in most campaigns, transferring has a place.

[shadzar]

^^ remember D&D is based largely upon LotR and the magic item destroyed in that was through a process not unsimiliar to reforging. the act of melting the ring to begin with is what made it lose its powers. just the only fires hot enough to do so were those same ones that created it...

sounds like forging to me.

so forging a weapon CHANGES its properties right off the bat, and the shape of the weapon is in part what binds that magic to it.

Narsil was no more and became Andúril during its reforging.

This argument should've never taken place then. Any worthwhile player wont take details of a DM's world, before even playing, and stamp their balls all over them and demand the world change. The creation of the Katina-wielding samurai shouldn't happen in the first place if the world has no katanas, or samurai.

but then the asshole DM is still squashing the player ability to design their own character because they dont allow everything and the DM should allow ANYTHING printed in the books that the designers decided up a way to add to the game.

because the player spent moeny on the book form the company, they have a right to use it in ANY game they wisha nd the DM msut accept that because he/she is beholden to the company first.

that is the difference between gaming philosophies and an age old argument going back to the brown splatbooks.

IF the DM has a right to disallow anything for any reason.

some say no, the DM must allow any and everything the company makes because that is his job as a DM, while other believe the DM has a DUTY to make the game work and is enjoyable for ALL players....again the DM IS a player, and not an employee of the players that have PCs.

so you come to several possibilities:

a. the DM decides what is allowed
-asshole DM

b. the DM allows any starting character, but doesnt guarantee the viability of that design functioning as was created throughout the entirety of the game.
-asshole DM

c. the DM does exactly what the players want whether he likes it or not because he should be happy to even have players to run a game for and owes everything in the game to those players to show his thanks for having them play in his game.
-the only good DM.

that is how THEY view the options.

its all the neverending player v DM shit and who has more rights the player to have complete narrative control over their character, or the DM to have narrative control over the world.


blahblahblah....

[Fuchs]

Let's move this to Druids, because people have less sympathy for them and don't feel the need to distort the game because of years of training based on them being a shitty class that needs the DM to sandbag so they can contribute.

You're a druid. You want a Tiger. Maybe you have mechanical reasons for that, maybe you just really like tigers. I don't even care. The following answers are acceptable:

• My class allows me to summon a tiger, so I will be accompanied by a tiger wherever I go.
• If we go to the jungle, I'll get a tiger. If we stay in the Frozen North, I'll settle for a polar bear.

What is not OK, and will never be OK is to require "finding" a tiger in your adventures and then demanding that the DM put one there and/or that the other players go on a sidequest so that you can get one.

If you are dependent on using things that occur in your adventures, you have to abide by whatever the things that actually occur in your actual adventures.

-Username17

I disagree. Item drops are not any different from other campaign aspects. It's absolutely ok to expect the GM to cater to the player's wishes when that's possible without offending anyone else. If we start a "Big City and Royal Court, full of plots, intrigues, and swashbuckling action" campaign I expect us to stay mainly in the big city, and the DM to provide us with adventures and adventure opportunites according to that theme. That was the deal, if the DM has us stumble through a misty gate to Monster Island in the first adventure, where we fight monsters and struggle for survival in the wilderness then that's not ok.

If I play a knight I expect to get to do knightly things. There's tons of examples (Save damsels in distress, court a noble lady, support a king, fight in tournaments, travel the lands and right wrongs, slay a dragon, restore the true heir to his place, oppose the evil half-brother of the king, etc. etc.), I don't expect all of them, but I expect to get to do a few of them.

The DM controls the entire world, so of course we depend on him to provide us with adventures that are fun for us. No matter what we do, he picks what we fight and what we find.

[Fuchs]

To address that fact, the weapon fappers have broadly suggested a few main options:

• The Wishlist
  The player writes down that they want weapon drops of specific types. Then the DM hands out those weapons at intervals. The problem with this is that in addition to potentially straining verisimilitude (especially if the items are weird), it changes the way the player interacts with the treasure in the game. The item drops become expected and normal, meaning that every time they kill a goblin that doesn't have the next thing on the list it is disappointing, and if the DM personalizes the equipment in any way or delays it for any reason the player feels (somewhat correctly) that the DM is fucking with "their stuff". By inverting expectations, it changes treasure from a source of reward to a source of punishment.
• The Sidequest
  The player wants a specific item, and makes a gather information check to find out where he can get one, and then the team goes off on a sidequest to get it. However, this requires the player to get a whole table of people who can't agree on pizza toppings to all agree to go on a sidequest that is frankly pretty stupid. The stated goal is to acquire a weapon that one of the players thinks looks cool. Other players may well vote to go after griffin eggs or avenge their sister or something instead. The sidequest is a plausible way to introduce specific items, but it requires the player to successfully convince the other players to vote to do it. Some people have seriously said that if the players voted to do something else instead, that as DM they'd just wave the wand and make this sidequest complete itself - which cheapens everything that any of the players ever does and breaks the fourth wall in with a bulldozer.
• The Market
  The player doesn't get what he want? No problem, he just trades whatever he actually got for exactly what he wants. This has several problems. The biggest is that it cheapens everything that any player ever has. Everything is just a store bought rack model that is freely tradable for another one in blue, so nothing is really valuable or interesting. More subtly but perhaps worse is the historical data we have from 3e and 4e - that players will in fact sell all their interesting specialty equipment for AC boosts and similar useful but uninteresting numeric bonuses.
• Reforging!
  Similar to the Market, but instead of actually getting new items, the specific enhancements found are merely moved from one item to another. This is in many ways more insulting than the market, because it means that magic items don't even persist - they are just power crystals that people move from one item to another. No "sword" has any history or can have any history, because it only lasts as long as a single person kept that collection of power crystals on a sword - for the previous owner it was on a warhammer or some shit.

And those are the ways people try to save the concept of people using exactly what they want to use and also keep the concept of people using the things they find in their adventures. And they are all very shitty.

-Username17

So what? Let's state it again: Magic items are not special just for being magical, not anymore. That idea went out with MMOGs, now we see what they are: Tools for characters or plot devices.

Trying to make the tools special by forcing people to use what they find doesn't help, it just turns them into shitty tools people don't really want to use but have to.

If you want magic items to be used as found, use more plot devices. But give up on the idea anyone who played MMOGs is gonna think a magic weapon is special just because the GM rolled it and said it was special. That shit does not fly anymore. All a magic weapon and most magic items are nowadays are tools to enhance your character. Same as mundane stuff, just with bigger numbers and more options. But any smart player will know it's just numbers and options, not something special, and it could have been something cooler looking if the GM wasn't a dick.

Most MMOG (ex-)players are sick of the idea that they have to wear a blue shirt and a pink hat and wield a death scythe to be able to kill a red dragon. They want to look cool while doing adventures. That's why things like appearance tabs and ways to transfer stats from one piece to another are in almost all modern MMOGs.

Deal with it.

[OgreBattle]

But tigers also live in the Frozen North...

[Desdan_Mervolam]

The DM controls the entire world, so of course we depend on him to provide us with adventures that are fun for us. No matter what we do, he picks what we fight and what we find.

This bears emphasis. You, the DM, place everything in the world, even if you use random charts to pretend you don't. And by Frank's own admission, a non-zero amount of the time you don't use charts to pretend you're not placing things. You're deciding that the orc bandits use shortbows and falchions like in the book, and so the Orc Bandit King uses a magic falchion. There's nothing wrong with that, as long as you don't pretend you have some sort of neutrality towards the players just because you only consider the NPCs when you place treasure.

[shadzar]

its all the neverending player v DM shit

There's too many ways for a GM to fuck with a player and shut down their character.

If a GM wants to screw a character he can always do so.

and thus my point is proven.

[Ice9]

So AFAICT, the arguments against being able to reforge a magic axe into a magic sword is that it makes the item "less special". It messes up the aesthetics of the item.

Well who the fuck cares? Apparently, the aesthetics of the characters are meaningless and only stupid people care about them, so what makes items any more important? Basically, if your going to call players basket-weavers for caring what their character looks like, I'm going to call any GM that cares about the following a basket-weaver:
* What the monsters look like.
* What the dungeon looks like.
* What the magic items look like.

Yes, you heard me. If you're such a special snowflake that you demand that the Efreet King's palace be made of bronze and fire, and guarded by Salamanders with flaming spears, then you are a basket weaver. The proper way is obviously to roll things up randomly and make do with what you get, just like you advocate all players doing.

So for example, maybe the Efreet King lives in a palace made from living trees, and is guarded by Ogre Mages in half-plate who wield rapiers and bucklers. That's a proper non-basket-weaving result.


TL;DR - If the only choice is between "items have good aesthetics and characters go around in clown suits" or "items are less special but characters can actually have style", then I'm going to pick the latter.

[Ice9]

Oh, and you know what's funny? I actually am a big fan of the "uses any and all weapons" warrior type. In fact, I would like to see a class where you have incentive to be switching weapons from round to round in combat, plus using improvised stuff. So if the idea behind this was just "classes and feats shouldn't lock a character into specific weapons", I would be all over it.

But no, you had to go full retard with this fucking "clown suits for the win" position.

[Dean]

I also think that reforging is a valid concept. I think it should not be applicable to artifact level items but I think anything lower should be able to be reforged. You could even tag particularly character relevant items with a keyword. Something like "Repute" which had social benefits. If a weapon had "Repute" and you reforge it it loses repute. This would allow you to turn flaming swords into flaming axes just fine but Dragontongue (A flaming, keen sword with repute) could only be reformed into a flaming keen axe. You may then name that axe and go about getting your own legends now.

Really if Druids can make new pets out of the animals they find in the course of adventuring I think Fighting classes should be able to make new weapons out of the weapons they find in the course of adventuring. I think to some degree the importance of what a fighting character prefers to wield is a legitimate part of that character. I think that there should never be a mechanical bonus for one weapon over another but still. Let people imagine what they want. I don't want to tread on anyone's imagination.

[Fuchs]

Not to mention that reforging a weapon can be made into a cool, memorable scene too.

[hogarth]

• The Wishlist
  The player writes down that they want weapon drops of specific types. Then the DM hands out those weapons at intervals. The problem with this is that in addition to potentially straining verisimilitude (especially if the items are weird), it changes the way the player interacts with the treasure in the game. The item drops become expected and normal, meaning that every time they kill a goblin that doesn't have the next thing on the list it is disappointing, and if the DM personalizes the equipment in any way or delays it for any reason the player feels (somewhat correctly) that the DM is fucking with "their stuff". By inverting expectations, it changes treasure from a source of reward to a source of punishment.

Frank, it doesn't matter whether you state your preferences out loud in an official wishlist or not -- getting a +3 blowgun will always be more disappointing than getting a +3 longbow in D&D. If you want to talk about a hypothetical RPG game like Frank's Red Hot Fantasy Trip (tm) where every option is awesome all the time, go nuts. But expecting players to shit themselves with gratitude over whatever random magic items you give them is stupid in a game full of white elephants.

[Username17]

For items like Whelm, the Sword of Kas, Excalibur, Mjolnir, etc, they're past the point of magical and have moved into either legendary or artifact status. No transferring those magics.

Welcome to Tautology Club. I get to be president because I get to be president. If you define items that matter and are important as being untransferable, then you have by definition defined every single item whose enchantment you can transfer as one which is unimportant and does not matter. Wherever you draw the line, that's the line where magic items can start to be interesting or important.

Personally I would draw that line between masterwork and magical. You apparently would draw that line between +5 and +6, which is basically insulting. You have in effect told the players that there is little or no chance of them getting anything that is world-meaningful or interesting before level 13 and that chances are the first meaningful item they will see will show up at about level 16. That's pretty fucked actually.

But no, you had to go full retard with this fucking "clown suits for the win" position.

Actually, you're the one who is advocating clown suits. You're doing it in two ways.

First, as you'll recall from your original tirade about clown suits with bonnets and ragged trousers, that getup was defined by the top tier equipment. Since the people fapping to reforging as a solution are in fact not suggesting that it be applied to top tier equipment, that particular "clown suit" issue is completely unaffected. You are coming up with a way for peoples' outfits to remain completely static until they get top tier gear, at which point they go 100% clown suit.

Secondly: why the fuck do you think the other players are voting to not go on a side quest so that you can wield a level appropriate double ax? Sure it might be because there are seven people at the table with various ideas of what should be done next and the guy who wants to start training griffins as the next side quest is way more eloquent than you. But it also might be because the other people at the table think that double axes are fucking retarded and are more than a little bit embarrassed every time you talk about them. In short: if you can't get the other players to enable your weapon addiction by agreeing to undergo the sidequests to upgrade the weapon of your dreams, it is very possible that it is because you are trying to wear a clown suit and the other players don't want you to.

In short: there is absolutely nothing in your proposals that make clown suits any less likely, and indeed handing out democratic overrides to players reduces checks and balances that would otherwise occur naturally to keep clown suits in check.

-Username17