The Gaming Den

Lago PARANOIA wrote:@ACOS
In the context of choice, empowerment and entitlement are the same thing. Like, literally the same thing. Any argument that tries to draw a distinction is doomed to fail on first principles.

If you said something like 'between races, classes, feats, spells, traits, etc. players have too much empowerment and I prefer to draw a line in the sand at magical items', your argument would make a lot more sense. I'd still think that, at least in the context of D&D as she is played, would be mistaken but it'd at least be coherent.

Eh, I see what you're saying.
Let me see if I can pretty that up a little:
By "empowerment", I was referring to players' ability to make informed, meaningful choices for and about their characters, contrasted with impromptu DM hand-waive fuckery.
"Entitlement" was meant in the sense of a petulant child waving their arms as they insist "I want it all, and I want it now". I used it as short-hand for "excessive self-entitlement", which leads to temper-tantrums.
The idea being that if a thing is in the PHB, the assumption is that it is freely open to player use. Conversely, if it's in the DMG, players are less likely to throw a tantrum if the DM disallows it or is otherwise selective in its availability.

ACOS wrote:The idea being that if a thing is in the PHB, the assumption is that it is freely open to player use. Conversely, if it's in the DMG, players are less likely to throw a tantrum if the DM disallows it or is otherwise selective in its availability.

The thing is, for a game of its power level D&D is already kind of average, even below-average in the amount of empowerment it gives players. Even if we disregard the whole 'earn your levels, biyatch' thing D&D requires players to play mother-may-I for character development that other games don't require them to. A lot of DMs would throw a bitch-fit if someone said that their player started with the ear and life debt of a world-famous mafioso, yet Shadowrun lets you start with that shit without even caring. Exalted lets you start out with followers and worshipers and shit. And unless I'm totally misunderstanding player anecdotes Ars Magica allows and even encourages people to come to the table with a huge list of pre-researched spells.

I do feel that there is a level of empowerment that becomes dismotivating; indeed this was one of my major crusades in 2012. But I feel that D&D as she is played is still on the left slope of the empowerment vs. motivation curve, even if you throw in magical items. Not to mention that D&D's magical items are not all that empowering in theory or in practice. 4E D&D placed its magical items right in the PHB, after all, and no one cared.

Both Shadowrun and Exalted have certain kinds of settings in mind, and extend storyhooks that further that sort of game development.

D&D has a sort of generic implied setting, but in practice people tend to throw a lot of it out and make their own 'feel' for their campaign. Additionally, if there aren't pre-established plot hooks as strong as that gangster example for other players to choose among, it would tend to make that one player the center of attention and the focus of the gaming sessions.

It's a lot more complex than "D&D doesn't give people empowerment".

I think there is a good-intentioned reason for wanting to be in control over the distribution of magic items as a GM. You want it to feel like The Legend of Zelda when you get a new item, where there's a dramatic pause and a cool jingle when you get a new toy. Not like Diablo or Skyrim, where you get a new item and all that happens is that a number goes up, and its not exciting, because everyone else's numbers go up too. Implement items especialy poorly, and you end up in a 4e situation where you have 30 whole levels of Skyrim bandits.

Sakuya Izayoi wrote:I think there is a good-intentioned reason for wanting to be in control over the distribution of magic items as a GM.

The road to hell...

Dogbert wrote:

Sakuya Izayoi wrote:I think there is a good-intentioned reason for wanting to be in control over the distribution of magic items as a GM.

The road to hell...

Right. For the sake of, as you've put it, the viking hat DMs, I'd put the magic items in the PHB, given the choice.

That, or I'd strike some sort of balance. Enough magic items in the PHB that the players can plan reasonably well for the future, but give the DM a good macguffin artifact creation kit

If you're not doing 3e-style WBL (which you shouldn't, because it screws up all kinds of things both in the setting and with respect to character advancement and treasure acquisition) why would you put magic items in the PHB?

So yeah I got my hands on a copy of the 5e DMG.

Okay, I appreciate what they tried to do with these "Downtime" rules, but has anyone see the rules for running a business? Is it just me, or do they not make any sense?

Apparently I just roll on a table to see how much money I earn, irrespective of what the size and nature of the business is.

The maintenance costs are determined by the business, but the amount of earnings you get have no relation to the business.

The table goes something like this:

1d100 + days spent working at business (max 30) -> Result

1-20 -> pay 1.5x maintenance cost for each day
21-30 -> pay full maintenance cost for each day
31-40 -> Pay half maintenance cost for each day
41-60 -> breakeven on cost for each day
61-80 -> cover cost for each day. Earn a profit of 1d6x5 gp.
81-90 -> cover costs for each day. Earn profit of 2d8x5 gp.
91 or higher -> cover costs for each day. Earn profit of 3d10x5 gp.

What the fuck is going on here? Is the profit for each day, or total, no matter how many days of management/work you put in? I think it's the latter.

It seems the best option then is to have a business empire of numerous farms and/or hunting lodges (lowest daily maintenance cost at 5 silver per day). You definitely DON'T want to have a rural roadside inn (20 gold per day).

Because based on the table, your profits don't scale at all to the nature of your operations. So you want the lowest costs possible in order to maximize your money. That means you only want farms and hunting lodges, and having an inn or guildhall is stupid. Which is lame, because it's cool if an adventurer owns an inn or a guildhall.

Let's think of it this way; if building the character you want to play requires a certain set of magic items, and the game ostensibly supports the character you want to play, then those magic items should actually just be class features that you happen to hold in your hand, and class features belong in the PHB. And it doesn't really matter where all the other shit goes, because the character you wanted to play is complete regardless.

At the end of the day, the DM - by virtue of being the guy actually running the game - has to be able to run the game that he's comfortable running.
And magic items is one of the levers he has at his disposal for doing that. By just dropping the whole magic item list in the PHB, you've now set the tone that a Candle of Invocation is just as valid for routine purchase as a mundane steel shield. By doing that, you've effectively neutered one of the DMs levers for running the kind of game he might want to run. And shitbag DMs don't even figure in to this - shitbags are going to find a way to shitbag, no matter what you do.

Increasing player entitlement leaves the DM less room for negotiating player empowerment. And yes, those are indeed different things - related, but different. Entitlement is an independent thing, whereas player empowerment has an inverse relationship with DM empowerment.
IDK, maybe someone with a gift for linguistic expression (something I've never been able to get a handle on) can do a better job of this.

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@ business rules:
Okay, so 3.5 business rules were passable, as long as you just glossed over stuff and didn't actually think about it. These 5e ones, as you've described them, are just a giant sack of potatoes.

I'd keep the big list of magic items in the DMG because it gives incentive for buying both the PHB and the DMG.

Otherwise the DMG is looking kind of bare and a DM could just run his game with the PHB only

Schleiermacher wrote:If you're not doing 3e-style WBL (which you shouldn't, because it screws up all kinds of things both in the setting and with respect to character advancement and treasure acquisition) why would you put magic items in the PHB?

If there are monsters that require a magic sword to harm, then it makes sense to put some magic swords in your rulebook.

I think the economics guides in the DMG are screwed up because "D&D is supposed to be about adventuring, not running a business"... so they provide a means of generating an answer, not a *good* answer.

I am somewhat sympathetic... although a lot of the problem would go away if they stopped associating magic items with specific GP values.

Occluded Sun wrote:I am somewhat sympathetic... although a lot of the problem would go away if they stopped associating magic items with specific GP values.

The whole problem would go away if they took the opposite approach and gave every ability in the game a value. I.e., the HERO approach of associating every power with a point cost (whether it's from an item or not) and then saying that you only get the powers you pay for.

That's actually an interesting idea, Hogarth, because then you could sort of help out the mundanes by giving them more class points for buying gear-powers.

Yeah, but that also takes the game away from its class basis. One advantage of a class-based system is that if you've balanced the classes, you reduce the gap between character effectiveness that results from system knowledge.

Ferret wrote:That's actually an interesting idea, Hogarth, because then you could sort of help out the mundanes by giving them more class points for buying gear-powers.

I'd use attunement for this, feels more appropriate in D&D.

hogarth wrote:

Occluded Sun wrote:I am somewhat sympathetic... although a lot of the problem would go away if they stopped associating magic items with specific GP values.

The whole problem would go away if they took the opposite approach and gave every ability in the game a value. I.e., the HERO approach of associating every power with a point cost (whether it's from an item or not) and then saying that you only get the powers you pay for.

This sort of thinking is what led to the 3e Monk class. He gets so many powers, that he must be overpowered, right? I mean, other than the fact that all of his powers are collectively not quite as good as "basic tool use." But there are a lot of them, and in the context of a normal character, they'd almost all be nice to have.

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote:This sort of thinking is what led to the 3e Monk class. He gets so many powers, that he must be overpowered, right?

I'm not sure how that's unique to the 3E monk class as opposed to the 1E monk class, say.

It's true that assigning a point value to every power in a balanced way is difficult (if not impossible), but at least you don't have to listen to the dumb idea that it makes sense to apply some kind of balance to class abilities and no balance whatsoever to equipment abilities.

At the point when equipment becomes just another part of class abilities and you only get powerups you paid for with your character points, loot ceases to exist. I posit that this reduces fun at the table. Remembering of my own feelings regarding magic items as a player in various editions, I can say that even the mandatory magic item budget is, in the end, a shit idea. Magic items should be entirely excluded from the baseline expectations of competency (which was never true in DnD, even in AD&D your fighters had to have magic swords with certain level of plusses to participate past low levels) and serve as extra rewards players are not entitled to if you want finding a magic item in the treasure trove to mean anything. Of course, in such model writers need to put extra work in their magic item list, to ensure that it not largely consists of things that straight-up buff PCs in combat. You don't see much in the way of swords +2 or pearls of power in fantasy, even in fantasy that directly rips off DnD.

However, this model doesn't mean that magic items can't have a tier/level/value system of their own, so a GM can keep his gifts to the party balanced.

In fantasy you get character defining items which represent large boosts to their competency.

In the end a cloak of invisibility is always going to hugely powerful or nerfed so far into oblivion that the player stops finding it interesting.

FatR wrote:At the point when equipment becomes just another part of class abilities and you only get powerups you paid for with your character points, loot ceases to exist.

Obviously experiences will vary, but in my games the vast majority of loot is sold off so that the PCs can buy what they really want. I admit it is nice to find something you actually want once in a while, but that really just means that you're getting that item at half price (since you're not buying it with other items sold at 50% value).

FatR wrote: You don't see much in the way of swords +2 or pearls of power in fantasy, even in fantasy that directly rips off DnD.

You don't see much in the way of magic items in fantasy fiction at all (at least compared to D&D), but I would say that magic swords are way up near the top of the list.

In my experience, players like items that improve their core competency better than those elusive items that are "extra rewards". YMMV.

FatR wrote:However, this model doesn't mean that magic items can't have a tier/level/value system of their own, so a GM can keep his gifts to the party balanced.

Ah...relying on good old GM fellatio to get what you want. Who doesn't love that?

Is it me, or does the Arcane Trickster's level 1 ability does nothing, other than making the hand invisible? I mean, it's not like the hand is restricted from anything added in the Trickster's writeup in the first place.

hogarth wrote:

FatR wrote: You don't see much in the way of swords +2 or pearls of power in fantasy, even in fantasy that directly rips off DnD.

You don't see much in the way of magic items in fantasy fiction at all (at least compared to D&D), but I would say that magic swords are way up near the top of the list.

That's one of the issues I've run into with Midgard. The standard magic sword in Norse mythology has "kills with every hit" as it's core ability. The standard magic sword of Norse myth is Vorpal--except that it's not limited to slicing heads off.

Well, the Irish have Fragarach, which can go through any armor (although it's possible that the gods might be able to make something that can resist it if they put in the effort) and, when you point it at someone, will immobilize them and compel them to answer questions truthfully, even gods.

Then there's Moralltach (or something to that effect) which makes people rot to death or some such. And a pair of spears which left wounds that couldn't be healed.

Gae Bolg is an insta-kill weapon...

Yeah, I'll agree a pretty common magic item power in myth is "It kills fools." Obviously awarded out of DM Pity.