What people want and what makes them happy rarely coincide.

[Ice9]

Ultimately there has to be a reason for the unfairness. If things are unfair because as the DM you so willed it, then you're really telling the players that you have decided that things are going to be unfair and how they are going to be unfair and that every single unfairness is because you decided to favor one player over another - maybe you'll like them better next time.

That is why dice and charts are so damn useful. They divert blame for the inherent unfairness of things away from the DM and towards the dice or the charts. Because things are going to be unfair. And if they aren't unfair because of an impersonal element, they are unfair because of the vindictiveness of some person. And if you're the DM, that's you.

Wait, whaaaaat? If this is really your position, it's inconsistent as hell.

Weren't you previously talking about monsters having items according to their paradigm, and the PCs just have to deal with that? In fact, all your examples - Salamanders with flaming spears, fighting a samurai for a katana, fighting frost giants and not getting a katana - assume that treasure is not purely random, but instead depends on who you fight.

And the GM is the one picking who you fight. Even if they use a module, it's still pretty obvious that "Betrayal in the Court of the Hobgoblin Daimyo" contains 100% more katanas than "Temple of the Prehistoric Sea Trolls". So no, the GM does not get a free pass. The GM never gets a free pass, unless every enemy is randomly determined.

The only way I could see your "impartiality" making sense is if the type of foe has absolutely no bearing on the treasure. Which could mean two things:
A ) Treasure is disconnected from foes entirely. The Ogre drops an Unholy Greataxe and Boots of Haste, but in the fight he was using a non-magic club and no shoes. This is the same method 4E uses, and has been widely derided.
B ) Foes use entirely random treasure. So it's entirely possible the next Stone Giant you fight will be wearing Boots of Elvenkind and using a Crossbow / Whip combination. Which is pretty much the opposite of what you've been implying, and would IMO look stupid as hell, but it is technically possible.


Edit: God dammit, this thread is about items now. How many threads must go down the cesspool of pointlessness?

[TheFlatline]

Also: if the DM being seen as unfair and showing favoritism is such a big issue that we cannot let him pick treasure for us, how can we let him decide what monsters fight us, and how? Should we demand open rolls there too, and random tables?

Actually, you'd be surprised how much loot distribution and monster selection bias coincides. I'm playing in a game where as time goes by the monsters are more geared towards three of the six party members to kill, and those three incidentally get 90% of the loot since it's shit specifically geared towards them. It hasn't gotten down to "immune to class X" bullshit, but it's getting close.

It just boils down to favoritism.

[Lago PARANOIA]

So what I want to know is, if people really think that you should get gear whenever and however you want it in accordance with the bonus accumulation system limits, why have wishlists at all? Why not just make 'have a Sword of Omens' or 'have a dragon mount' as a class feature?

You spend some off time selecting from a compendium and then you're all 'oh by the way I picked up a +4 flaming sword during my level up'. If the idea of getting a +4 flaming sword or a +4 frosty sword is so repellant, why include the DM in that process at all? It'll work out the same thing as a skill or a feat or a race selection. It's definitely more balanced, more satisfying, and less deceptive than the wishlist kabuki. If you don't think that there should be any outcome other than 'I get exactly what I want according to the bonus accumulation schedule', why introduce possible failure points? It'd be like asking your parents for a Super Nintendo for Christmas, earmarking something in their monthly budget for it, going to the store with them and watching them purchase it, and then wrapping it up and pretending to be surprised by it at Christmas. I suppose you can derive some fake excitement by pretending that there's a chance that your parents did a bait and switch and donated the SNES to charity and put socks in a similarly shaped package, but what's the point of that elaborate ritual of self deception? After the 10th time you do the Christmas wishlist dance only a fucking idiot would still think there's any surprise. How about just giving me the goddamn Super Nintendo?

[TheFlatline]

You don't just "get" shit like that because it eliminates one of the carrots on a stick- the joy of "finding" something.

The double standard reminds me of 5 year olds getting excited that they found easter eggs their parents just hid for them 2 minutes ago.

My problem with random loot is that the random loot tables skew towards mages and fighters. Fighters need all the help they can get, but whereas fighters will only really use one sword at a time, that 8th pearl of power II is still useful to the mage.

[RadiantPhoenix]

After some consideration, I think that, provided the magic items are not pallet-swaps or strictly-better/strictly-worse, a sufficiently large random treasure table will generate more interesting results than wishlists, because it will come up with things I hadn't thought much about, and that will provide a more intellectually stimulating game experience.

[Winnah]

Random nonsense that probably has nothing to do with the OP.

Your Sword Saint character totally should have 'Magic'Sword' as a class feature.

As for wishlists, I find the concept strange and off-putting. If someone tried to force that shit on me in a game, I would call my character Neo and then incessantly tell other members of the party that "Reality is a lie" and "I can see the numbers..." Breaking the 4th wall, Deadpool style, with meta roleplay might be fun for a game or two. Fun for me, anyway.

Scripted advancement uses the Illusion of choice model. Your initial character may have a lot of options available, but their advancement and gear aquisition is effectively locked once play begins. Sure, you can still advance your Wizard with a Druid or Monk level if you really wanted to, but chances are high that your only real option is to continue advancing Wizard.

[hogarth]

So what I want to know is, if people really think that you should get gear whenever and however you want it in accordance with the bonus accumulation system limits, why have wishlists at all? Why not just make 'have a Sword of Omens' or 'have a dragon mount' as a class feature?

First of all, I wouldn't use the terms "whenever and however I want it".

Here's my opinion: I want the probability of getting fucked over in terms of useful gear (in the medium- to long-term) to be zero percent. Not a "low probability". Not "close to zero". ZERO. Whether that means that I sell some vendor trash and barter for what I want, or whether that means that I go on a quest for it, or whether the GM plants it in a treasure horde just for li'l ol' me, I don't fucking care. About half the time, it seems that Frank thinks that's just dandy as well.

Similarly, with regards to Winds of Fate, if I have a special anti-ghost attack and I'm fighting ghosts, I want the probability of using that attack at some point to be 100%. If my character goes through his entire career fighting ghosts with a great anti-ghost attack that he never gets to use, FUCK THAT.

Why not have useful equipment be a class feature? That's how Champions/HERO works, for instance, and I think it's just dandy. So I wouldn't have a problem with it at all.

[Username17]

Weren't you previously talking about monsters having items according to their paradigm, and the PCs just have to deal with that? In fact, all your examples - Salamanders with flaming spears, fighting a samurai for a katana, fighting frost giants and not getting a katana - assume that treasure is not purely random, but instead depends on who you fight.

And the GM is the one picking who you fight. Even if they use a module, it's still pretty obvious that "Betrayal in the Court of the Hobgoblin Daimyo" contains 100% more katanas than "Temple of the Prehistoric Sea Trolls". So no, the GM does not get a free pass. The GM never gets a free pass, unless every enemy is randomly determined.

That sounds like a pretty shitty game. The DM is offering potential fights. In most cases, the choice of whether to do them or not rests with the players. Even if a module is involved, it comes down to the potential DM saying "I'm going to run Legacy of Spiders, who wants to play?" No one is holding a knife to the players' throats. If they don't want to play Legacy of Spiders (which i guaranty you will drop Drow loots), they can play something else or let someone else play.

Railroading is bad. Players should be able to choose their characters' paths. But even with the most ricockulously railroady DM, the player can still give up his seat and do something else. A player is sitting at the gaming table because the DM offered an adventure seed and the player accepted it. The final choice of where the PCs are going rests with the players.

-Username17

[Fuchs]

So what I want to know is, if people really think that you should get gear whenever and however you want it in accordance with the bonus accumulation system limits, why have wishlists at all? Why not just make 'have a Sword of Omens' or 'have a dragon mount' as a class feature?

First of all, I wouldn't use the terms "whenever and however I want it".

Here's my opinion: I want the probability of getting fucked over in terms of useful gear (in the medium- to long-term) to be zero percent. Not a "low probability". Not "close to zero". ZERO. Whether that means that I sell some vendor trash and barter for what I want, or whether that means that I go on a quest for it, or whether the GM plants it in a treasure horde just for li'l ol' me, I don't fucking care. About half the time, it seems that Frank thinks that's just dandy as well.

Same here. And since Frank cannot read: I stated repeatedly that the katana-user eventually gets A magic katana, not THE magic katana he heard about if he can't go on a side quest for THE magic katana.

Get it now? If the group doesn't want to quest for the lightning katana, then they will encounter a keen katana somewhere down the line - sometime soon enough so it's still useful for their level.

And I do believe that anyone who throws a fit when the katana user finds a fire katana on the main quest even though the group opted not to quest for the frost katana is an asshole who misunderstood the point of playing a RPG together. And I don't play with assholes. People who can't let others have fun at my table get the boot.

I also don't care how the katanas, axes or flails or whatever the player wants are gotten - through class feature, barter, reward or loot.

What counts is that if a player needs a certain piece or class of gear to have fun, he gets it. Since having fun is the point of a game.

[Ice9]

That sounds like a pretty shitty game. The DM is offering potential fights. In most cases, the choice of whether to do them or not rests with the players. Even if a module is involved, it comes down to the potential DM saying "I'm going to run Legacy of Spiders, who wants to play?" No one is holding a knife to the players' throats. If they don't want to play Legacy of Spiders (which i guaranty you will drop Drow loots), they can play something else or let someone else play.

Fine, but where's the impartiality? Even in the most open-world campaigns, some adventures are closer to hand than others, and some are harder to access. How is it unfair for a GM to intentionally place a venomous longbow in a treasure horde, but totally fine to set up the world such that said longbows are easily acquired from the goblin raiders currently menacing the town you're in, whereas for an avalanche hammer you would have to travel several hundred miles to the frozen wastes, find the reclusive snow giants, and fight them? If you have to hide behind supposed impartiality for the players not to hate you, something has gone horribly wrong with your game.

And for that matter, how the hell does "everything should be random" sync up with "areas should have appropriate enemies that use appropriate equipment" anyway? Those are damn opposites.

[shadzar]

note about "vendor trash": this is an MMO term and should stay there. if you have this problem in a TTRPG, the easy way to remove the problem is to remove the "vendors" that buy and sell magic items.

everything is useful you just need to find whee to use it. again it is the problem with "build" mentality. it attempts to make the character the thing to build rather than the architect.

[Desdan_Mervolam]

Why not just make 'have a Sword of Omens' or 'have a dragon mount' as a class feature?

The quick answer is "If my character has a class ability that says 'Is holding a +3 Firey Longsword', and a thief sneaks into my inn room at night and runs off with it, my character has been fucked over, in the sense that a significant portion of my ability to stay competitive has been forcibly removed from my character for the foreseeable future, at least until I find that thief, get my sword back, and then force-feed the blade of my sword to the thief".

Done carefully, such a thing could be a good adventure seed. I've read at least one really good Usagi Yojimbo arc where Usagi's diasho has been stolen and he has to get it back. The problem is, Usagi is playing a solo campaign at best. In a more standard campaign, just as people may not want to go on your quest to kill the Head of the Brotherhood of the Red Hand to take his fiery greataxe, they may also not want to drop everything to go help you track down the jackass that stole the fiery greataxe that the game rules say you should be holding. Even if they agree to do it anyway, it's taking away time that could be spent on the main quest and they may not be happy about that.

Equipment is a problem no matter what, really.

[Shadow Balls]

The problem with 4th edition isn't that whole wishlist thing but a combination of the system being shitty, vendor trash selling for 1/5th instead of 1/2th, and the system assuming that you have x stats at y level even more stringently than previous editions.

Are you trying to tell us that wishlists were good in principle, they just weren't fungible enough?

What I am saying is that if you get anything other than exactly what you want in 4th edition you are fucked. But that is because the system is shit, and not because being able to get whatever tools you want is bad.

Take your gold, go into a magic mart, buy exactly the tools you want and then get back to the interesting part of the campaign, and stop wasting everyone's time jacking it to pointless wastes of time.

[Chamomile]

Equipment is a problem no matter what, really.

Which kind of implies that the solution might be to get rid of it completely. In the source material, magic weapons are actually very, very rare, and often synonymous with "artifact." Not a single member of the Fellowship of the Ring has a magic weapon that isn't named and possessed of some incredible setting importance (and some of them, like Sting, are only marginally more useful than a normal sword). Barring Arthur and Excalibur, practically no one in Arthurian Myth ever ends up with a magic item of any kind (unless you count Galahad being able to sit in the chair that kills people). My knowledge of Conan is a bit scant, but as far as I know, he never once ends up with a magic weapon.

My more recent fantasy literature is mostly confined to YA novels I used to read in middle/high school, in which magical weapons basically never happened or were occasionally wielded only by the protagonist, who received it in a horribly cliched rip-off of the "your father's lightsaber" moment that must've been stupidly prevalent if my sporadic interest in the fantasy genre still saw it often enough to grow sick of it.

In video games, while the character upgrades his weapon regularly, this never makes it to the plot. Sora doesn't replace his Keyblade, he just gets keychains that alter it based on the people he meets, which is actually kind of a cool way of tying the "friends in my heart" theme to character advancement, but Sora still has the Kingdom Key through the whole thing, it just looks weird. Tidus' weapons had a few different skins and a lot of weird little abilities that I completely ignored in favor of my strategy of grinding the sphere grid until I could murder everything effortlessly, but he switches his weapon exactly twice in-plot, and both times they're apparently completely normal (if weird looking) swords. Whatever magical abilities they may or may not have had in game, they are never, ever brought up in terms of the story, even in passing. The only mention of weapons at all in Final Fantasy XII is when Basch loots himself one after getting busted out of prison. My interest in WRPG's hit at around the same time my computer and my finances both went straight to hell, but as far as I know, none of them have regularly trading in magic swords for even more magic swords built into their setting.

[violence in the media]

And I do believe that anyone who throws a fit when the katana user finds a fire katana on the main quest even though the group opted not to quest for the frost katana is an asshole who misunderstood the point of playing a RPG together. And I don't play with assholes. People who can't let others have fun at my table get the boot.

I also don't care how the katanas, axes or flails or whatever the player wants are gotten - through class feature, barter, reward or loot.

What counts is that if a player needs a certain piece or class of gear to have fun, he gets it. Since having fun is the point of a game.

Your screechings about this are getting more and more hugboxy with each passing page of this thread. Yes, we are all friends and we are all sitting down at the table to have fun together; but sometimes that includes actively fucking with each other and having an MC that is actively working to prevent that is annoying and *gasp* unfun.

What do you do with the following players/PCs?

The secretly evil PC in the paladin party?
The PC that steals/skims treasure from the party?
The PC that attempts to poach another PC's cohort, love interest, or other friendly NPC?
The PCs that sabotage each other in order to promote themselves and their accomplishments in the eyes of the party or NPC populace?
The PC that documents and secretly reports the crimes of another PC?
The PC that actively opposes another PCs sidequests and adventure seeds, on the basis that those two PCs don't get along?
A PC that murders (overtly or discretely, your pick) another PC's family?
The PC that decides it is their job to monkeywrench things, for whatever reason.
The party that decides to dump a PC down a hole, ditch them, or refuse them a ressurection on the basis of the discovery of any of the aforementioned deeds?

I mean, do you boot these people with the rationalization of them being disruptive assholes? If so, you'd have booted the majority of some of the groups I've gamed with or MC-ed for. Hell, I don't think I'd have gotten to game at all in the early 2000's at that point. Some of those character types I don't think have ever been absent from any game I've participated in, outside of one-shot convention games. There is always someone flirting with alignments or behaviours "inappropriate" to the party, just like there is always someone "misreporting" treasure value appraisals or pocketing the most valuable gemstone. I cannot envision the sort of cooperation you're advocating--I have never experienced it.

[shadzar]

What do you do with the following players/PCs?

i think you just listed everything that makes OotS interesting to read....

[tussock]

Not a single member of the Fellowship of the Ring has a magic weapon that is named and possessed of some incredible setting importance.

Shwa? Only Anduril, Narsil reforged, the very weapon which cut the Ring from Morgoth's finger in the first place, carried to signal the Return of the King. Glamdring and Sting barely rate by comparison. The barrow blades had no names because of how they were found, but they could strike and kill the invulnerable Witch-King of Angmar on account of their setting history, which was a key point in the key battle which would change the future of the entire world.

The Fellowship had artifact rings, magic weapons, magic armour, magic cloaks, magic boots, magic clasps, a phial of pure light, magic food and drink, magic boats, magic horses, permanent magic potions, magic staves, ... and they picked most of it up along the way in just a few encounters. And hell, they're only 3rd and 4th level characters.

[Fuchs]

And I do believe that anyone who throws a fit when the katana user finds a fire katana on the main quest even though the group opted not to quest for the frost katana is an asshole who misunderstood the point of playing a RPG together. And I don't play with assholes. People who can't let others have fun at my table get the boot.

I also don't care how the katanas, axes or flails or whatever the player wants are gotten - through class feature, barter, reward or loot.

What counts is that if a player needs a certain piece or class of gear to have fun, he gets it. Since having fun is the point of a game.

Your screechings about this are getting more and more hugboxy with each passing page of this thread. Yes, we are all friends and we are all sitting down at the table to have fun together; but sometimes that includes actively fucking with each other and having an MC that is actively working to prevent that is annoying and *gasp* unfun.

What do you do with the following players/PCs?

The secretly evil PC in the paladin party?
The PC that steals/skims treasure from the party?
The PC that attempts to poach another PC's cohort, love interest, or other friendly NPC?
The PCs that sabotage each other in order to promote themselves and their accomplishments in the eyes of the party or NPC populace?
The PC that documents and secretly reports the crimes of another PC?
The PC that actively opposes another PCs sidequests and adventure seeds, on the basis that those two PCs don't get along?
A PC that murders (overtly or discretely, your pick) another PC's family?
The PC that decides it is their job to monkeywrench things, for whatever reason.
The party that decides to dump a PC down a hole, ditch them, or refuse them a ressurection on the basis of the discovery of any of the aforementioned deeds?

I mean, do you boot these people with the rationalization of them being disruptive assholes? If so, you'd have booted the majority of some of the groups I've gamed with or MC-ed for. Hell, I don't think I'd have gotten to game at all in the early 2000's at that point. Some of those character types I don't think have ever been absent from any game I've participated in, outside of one-shot convention games. There is always someone flirting with alignments or behaviours "inappropriate" to the party, just like there is always someone "misreporting" treasure value appraisals or pocketing the most valuable gemstone. I cannot envision the sort of cooperation you're advocating--I have never experienced it.

It's simple: If the players are ok with their PCs working against each other, then it's ok in the game, no matter what the PCs might think if they were real. The PCs can murder each other for all I care, as long as the players have fun.
But if a player can only have fun by ruining another player's fun, well - one of them has to go. That means all those potentially problematic PCs are cleared beforehand by all players.

Call it hugboxy, I call it "making sure every player at the table has fun".

[violence in the media]

It's simple: If the players are ok with their PCs working against each other, then it's ok in the game, no matter what the PCs might think if they were real. The PCs can murder each other for all I care, as long as the players have fun.
But if a player can only have fun by ruining another player's fun, well - one of them has to go. That means all those potentially problematic PCs are cleared beforehand by all players.

Call it hugboxy, I call it "making sure every player at the table has fun".

I'm sorry I wasn't clear about this, but the bolded section never happens. The MC might get some forewarning that shit's about to go down, but it's usually well into "curse your sudden, but inevitable, betrayal" territory. A lot of times, this sort of thing isn't even pre-planned in a way that a player could come to the MC and/or group at the start and say ,"Hey, I'm thinking of running a secret cannibal character and I want to inject a dose of horror into the game by eventually eating one of your families, what do you all think?" More likely, game events would find someone with the capacity to hide it transformed into one of the ravenous dead and they'd decide at that point that Moonshadow's kin look particularly delicious, because fuck that elf.

[Winnah]

There appears to be a disconnect between those people wanting to follow some kind of advancement formula and those that want a more 'organic' path of development for their characters.

[Seerow]

There appears to be a disconnect between those people wanting to follow some kind of advancement formula and those that want a more 'organic' path of development for their characters.

I for one think it would be hilarious to see those who want players to have no say in loot also having no say in other character advancement stuff. Imagine if the DM based on how the players role played decided what their never levelup would be in, or what feats/spells they got.


Then we could call every player who complained about wanting to determine how their character progresses a basket weaver who cares more about his character than the verisimilitude of the world, because he'd rather stick to the stringent path he decided on rather than go where the DM believes the character is going. After all, if you spend the last level beating people in the face with a stick, you're going to get better at beating people in the face with a stick, not picking up a level in Wizard. It hurts the game to retroactively assume the player's been studying Wizardry in his downtime so that he can pick up the new class.

Oh and prestige classes all have their fluff strictly enforced. If you want to be an assassin, you need to go on the side quest to kill someone in cold blood and join the assassin's guild. If your party doesn't want to help you with that side quest, well sorry, no assassin levels for you. Same goes for most other prestige classes. And many of those prestige classes will only exist in some far away place, no we can't just make it somewhere closer if the party doesn't want to go to the other side of the world, because I already told you the organization behind that prestige class is over there! Guess you'll just have to wait until you get teleport AND until the party is willing to take the time to do the sidequest to get in with you.


Isn't organic character advancement just great?

[shadzar]

That means all those potentially problematic PCs are cleared beforehand by all players.

i dont know what the fuck game you are palying, but in D&D the other players see things through their characters, so they see a human and "guess" it to be a human, but the players know nothing of any alignments or such beyond their own.

the DM and the player playing the character are the only ones to see that character sheet.

no player has rights to say what another player can or cannot play, that is all up to the DM.

i want to see a thread detailing your games, because there is some weird shit going on and assumptions you make about how the game is played outside of your sheltered group.

[Username17]

I for one think it would be hilarious to see those who want players to have no say in loot also having no say in other character advancement stuff. Imagine if the DM based on how the players role played decided what their never levelup would be in, or what feats/spells they got.

Wait... you have to imagine what it would be like to play a wizard who gains spells in his spell book based on what happens to be in the spell books of wizards he fights? That's how Wizarding has always worked.

-Username17

[PoliteNewb]

There appears to be a disconnect between those people wanting to follow some kind of advancement formula and those that want a more 'organic' path of development for their characters.

I for one think it would be hilarious to see those who want players to have no say in loot also having no say in other character advancement stuff. Imagine if the DM based on how the players role played decided what their never levelup would be in, or what feats/spells they got.

For the record, I would be fine playing a character with randomly rolled stats, class, and race...even random class every level, and where my ability increases are. Feats and skills I would prefer not to be random...but if the DM were to say "here are skills I feel match up with what you did last adventure, so that's what you raise" or "you used your bow a lot, so I think you got Point Blank Shot", I'd be fine with that...in fact, I've played campaigns like that (not D&D, but same method).
(all of this assumes my DM is not a dick, but that goes without saying, because I wouldn't play with a crap DM...I would walk, and have done so in the past)

Of course, I realize a lot of people would hate that, and that's fine...this isn't a judgment, just a difference in what people find 'fun'.

Oh and prestige classes all have their fluff strictly enforced. If you want to be an assassin, you need to go on the side quest to kill someone in cold blood and join the assassin's guild.

I already do this.

Isn't organic character advancement just great?

It isn't for everyone, but yeah, it can be fun.

Of course, all of that is beside the point...because comparing internal facets of your character (who he is, what skills he possesses) to external facets (what sort of physical objects he encounters in the world) is a pretty big stretch. There are games which make gear inherent to the character (Champions has already been noted), but D&D is not one of them, and never has been.

[Swordslinger]

It isn't for everyone, but yeah, it can be fun.

Of course, all of that is beside the point...because comparing internal facets of your character (who he is, what skills he possesses) to external facets (what sort of physical objects he encounters in the world) is a pretty big stretch. There are games which make gear inherent to the character (Champions has already been noted), but D&D is not one of them, and never has been.

Yeah it's one thing to have a character who can create a magic sword for himself, but to actually dictate what happens to drop in a treasure hoard is going too far.