D&D 5e has failed

[hamstertamer]

It's interesting here that you're taking that Zack guy's position with respect to magic item availability, in that (my understanding of his position is) a hole in the rules is more valuable than rules in some instances, because that hole is where narrative control belongs to the GM+players.

Oh, go soak your head. 'A hole in the rules' is a fucking equivocation and you know it.

This means that if there's a far away land with adamantine mines and mystical forgers producing weapons that are at the same time cheaper and better than those made elsewhere, then the demand for these weapons will come from all the world (or, if the weapons are awesome enough, from all the multiverse).

Whoa whoa whoa. Where's this assumption that magical item crafting is primarily a fungible resource allocation problem coming from? If to craft a Holy Avenger you need to bathe a stick of adamantite in the blood of a hero that redeemed themselves from the forces of evil, you can't just go to the Blood Mines and get yourself a rod. If you need a branch of darkwood kissed by three nymphs and four dryads in order to make a Staff of the Magi, that might be a quest in of itself.

I've never played with anyone that thought they could "select their magical items out of a catalog or out of an officially approved source" before.

3E D&D and 4E D&D worked exactly like this. You got a pile of fungible tokens at certain intervals and could trade them in for magical items that were outlined in the PHB/DMG/officially approved sources without having to ask the DM first.

Nah, that's just a weird type of play-style. I never played nor seen in real life a game of D&D where players dictated what magic items their characters would have, especially without asking the DM first. Honestly, finding magic items is one of the most important parts of the game.

[Lago PARANOIA]

So anyone who can brow beat both Nymphs and level 3 Paladins can just go ahead and make infinity of those really easy. Way easier than the level 3 party questing for the items.

Believe it or not, I'm actually pretty okay with this in abstract. The process of rounding up nymphs and forcing them to kiss darkwood branches and/or setting up bumbling paladins for a fall in order to raise them back up and bleed them out are in of themselves quests that A.) the PCs can initiate if they want to and B.) can spawn new plot hooks. Imagine if you will a situation where the Eastwood druids really really didn't like what you were doing and declared war on your nymph kiss organization while you were waiting for the next lunar eclipse. The adventure then becomes 'the PCs protect their questionable assets against environmentalist guerillas'.

Granted, we might want to raise the bar a little bit to add more versimilitude/less repeatability. Perhaps by getting kisses from nymph royalty and making the paladins be a minimum of 7th level? Regardless, I'm pretty cool with the basic idea of players finding novel and unexpected ways to hijack the campaign's metaplot to go on their weird power-scrounging sojourns. Those tend to be the coolest D&D stories anyway.

[Seerow]

Whoa whoa whoa. A game world where this facet of magic item creation is true doesn't necessarily mean Low Magic. Harry Potter and Naruto are very low on crafted, let alone named weapon kit and I wouldn't call either of those settings Low Magic.

I don't know about Naruto, but Harry Potter is a world where every 11 year old gets a magic item by default, and a couple of kids in their teens can open up a wondrous item shop. You may not see a lot of things being made specifically as weapons, but magic item crafting is definitely out in force for Harry Potter.

[virgil]

Whoa whoa whoa. A game world where this facet of magic item creation is true doesn't necessarily mean Low Magic. Harry Potter and Naruto are very low on crafted, let alone named weapon kit and I wouldn't call either of those settings Low Magic.

I don't know about Naruto, but Harry Potter is a world where every 11 year old gets a magic item by default, and a couple of kids in their teens can open up a wondrous item shop. You may not see a lot of things being made specifically as weapons, but magic item crafting is definitely out in force for Harry Potter.

'bout to say, in the Potterverse, magic items can be made off-screen by kids who haven't even graduated from school. There are established and explicitly named magic item shops, with prices in gold pieces.

Naruto is a bit different, but it's a setting that doesn't care about loot. You never see body pills being shared, poison can be made in sufficient quantities to drown people and despite their obvious utility they are seemingly unused unless you pay royalties to the puppeteers. It may be high magic, but it tells a story that is vastly different from D&D, which does care about treasure.

EDIT: In retrospect, there are still exploding notes, barrier tags, summoning scrolls (be it man, beast, or sword), sealing tags, etc. The line between magic items and gear is blurred when it gets to the point you can just buy them.

[Sakuya Izayoi]

My system for arbitrarily pricing magic items would probably be a 2d6 table similar to an old school reaction table. In the middle, the purveyor is equally willing to hold onto the item for its given price, and haggle. On high rolls, he's held on to the item for too long and is ready to liquidate it to pick up new inventory. On low rolls, it is a cornerstone of his collection, and he is immediately distrustful of anyone trying to talk down his price. Values might be extrapolated from that as well - low rolls would tend to roll bigger dice for values - does it really matter if your 100g bauble is priced at 100,000g, when the average peasant doesn't know any better, and believes you have a prestigious business because you have inventory worth 100,000g? Since there isn't a mageBay being flooded with crap everyone found in their local ruin, prices ccoming out of the vendor's butt isn't wholy unrealistic.

[Lago PARANOIA]

@Seerow, virgil: Exactly. A lost civilization bursting to the seams with magic where their influence was felt even to this day doesn't necessarily mean that the current civilization can find certain things that they want that was produced from the civilization. The Potteverse and Narutoverse produce so many exploding tags and wands that there are literal warehouses full of them and both universes produce magical swords. That in no way means that scavengers from later generations should be able to excavate more than a handful of swords after picking the ruins clean. Hell, there's not even an expectation to come across more than a tiny fraction of the actual stuff the civilizations made in bulk. If your magical geegaw loses power after being left alone or needs to be attuned to a certain user or just breaks down over time like lightsabers, why should any of it be around in this day?

And not to put too fine of a point on it, but there's even a meta-reason as to why the gear and equipment of the lost-but-totes-sweet magic civilizations don't show up in the present era much compared to the ruins and monsters and aqueducts. You might not have noticed this as D&D and D&D-derived settings waaaaaaay overhype the hell out of these magical doodads, but magical swords and armor are in fact pretty crappy expressions of power, let alone wealth. Settings which have enough magic in them to have people living on floating continents with demon maids and electrified T-Rexes running about probably have much better ways to assert force, even in common soldiers, than waving magic-upped pieces of wood and metal around. Even in King of Dragon Pass, a game which has a lower technological and magical base than generic D&D, you need to have a really kickass sword before it becomes better than a set of drums that can send the enemy army into panic or a horde of triceratops that people can ride into battle.

[nockermensch]

Not familiar with Harry Potter, but Naruto follows the rule found on most shounen manga that inner power trumps external power. There are exceptions, but in general on shounen manga I expect that the plucky protagonist armed with a bamboo sword will cut better than a fop armed with the best sword money can buy.

[Lago PARANOIA]

but Naruto follows the rule found on most shounen manga that inner power trumps external power.

Except for the fact that the characters use power pills, exploding tags, magic scrolls of which some of them are summoning scrolls, magic puppets, power seals, gene therapy, and even organ snatching. Naruto is a high-magic setting in a way that Bleach and One Piece are not and the characters craft and use all sorts of crazy-ass equipment. Nonetheless, magical weapons are rare in the setting. And they're rare for the same reason why they're rare in other settings with magic civilizations with crazy-ass shit in them; when you get down to it, a +5 flaming shocking sword is a pretty lame expression of magical power. In D&D land it'd be the pinnacle of technology but in these universes looking at the sword from both a metafictional perspective and an in-universe perspective render it a trinket.

Thus it's no wonder that even if millions of people in the old civilization had the knowledge and ability to set up workshops and crank out enough Holy Avengers to give every citizen in Waterdeep one if they wanted they would've decided that it was a waste of their time. Their craftsmen are working on actual important shit like magical eugenics and flying moonstone Gigas and getting the floating island power generators working.

[virgil]

but Naruto follows the rule found on most shounen manga that inner power trumps external power.

Except for the fact that the characters use power pills, exploding tags, magic scrolls of which some of them are summoning scrolls, magic puppets, power seals, gene therapy, and even organ snatching.

While the inner>outer power isn't the right analogy, it is a sign of the general uniqueness. Essentially all of Naruto's higher-end magic items are only ever used by one person at a time, maybe their bloodline/dojo such as seen with power pills and magic puppets. Gear is just an expression of snowflake status in the Narutoverse. It is physically possible to hand power pills and gene therapy to your ninja armed with magic puppets & demon summoning scrolls, it's not going to happen, and those who suggest such a scenario are going to come off as this guy

[Krusk]

Nah, that's just a weird type of play-style. I never played nor seen in real life a game of D&D where players dictated what magic items their characters would have, especially without asking the DM first. Honestly, finding magic items is one of the most important parts of the game.

I've been playing since the mid 90's and Ive never played a game of DND that started past 2nd level where this wasn't the case. We have one DM who is considered weird because she asks us to "not buy major wondrous items" but thats the extent of her requests and she doesn't even read the rest of the items we buy. (I think someone once told her wonderous items were overpowered or something and she clung to it)

[Red_Rob]

It definitely depends on the DM. During our last campaign the DM would just say "You find 3 Lesser magic items, pick which ones you want", because they were focused more on the action than on the loot drops.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Gear is just an expression of snowflake status in the Narutoverse.

I say that you should think of Narutoverse gear like we think of wizardly spell scrolls in D&D. You need to have a base level of badassery to use them and even if you are badass enough to permanently learn and use the contents of particular scroll a lot of wizards won't bother to learn it for any number of particular reasons. And wizards have their reasons or at least a way to pass jutsu ninja gear scrolls to the next generation. Some spells require an investment above and beyond learning the spell to get the most out of it (heroics, divine power, fabricate); some have an XP or GP cost that certain wizards can't or aren't willing to pay; and some just have a moral cost that wizards don't want to pay. Thus a wizard throwing out a Fireball or an Animate Objects or a Summon Monster 7 isn't making some special snowflake expression of badassery that other people can't replicate no matter how rare a particular spell is.

The Narutoverse works the same way with its gear and indeed nearly all of their secret techniques. Some of the stuff is relatively common like summoning scrolls and exploding tags. Some of the stuff is rare because it requires a lot of training time and/or secret insights someone wanting to use the gear might not have like body bugs and puppets. And some of the stuff is rare because it's morally skeevy like gene therapy and organ harvesting. It's quite possible that you can find a ninja's lair or corpse and raid it for unused summoning scrolls or magic eyeballs or magic weapons or whatever and then after some finite amount of time add it to your arsenal.

In other words, the Narutoverse A.) is a high-magic setting, B.) expresses its high magic in ways that are fungible to a limited extent for characters in the setting and C.) has ways for people to acquire and even make handheld magical weapons that resemble weapons found in other settings and D.) has a reason as to why said weapons are rare. It's a hard counterexample to the idea that high-magic settings need to have enough transferable magical crap -- especially that of an particular expression of high-magic, such as magic swords -- lying around for there to be an economy.

[brized]

Why would a magical sword ever be the pinnacle of technology in D&D land, where linear fighters and quadratic wizards are integral to the rules and the setting? Seems more to me like a piece of cutting-edge gear for handicapped people.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Why would a magical sword ever be the pinnacle of technology in D&D land, where linear fighters and quadratic wizards are integral to the rules and the setting?

Because the default D&D setting is 'Dark Ages/Medieval Europe, but shittier'. Seriously, why don't you come up with a list of widespread inventions or innovations that occurred in this area during this timeframe in the real world? Most of them will end up being applicable to and only useful for warfare.

[Dogbert]

Seems more to me like a piece of cutting-edge gear for handicapped people.

In a game that's all about magic "haves" and "have nots," truer words were never spoken.

[tussock]

It doesn't make economic sense. Even if magic items can't be reliably made and require poetical and/or nonsensical items, they still need to be priced as art objects.

No they don't. In the medieval world, there was no price on land as we know it today, but there was on all sorts of people. In the modern world there's no price on people, but there is on land. Which things are traded is cultural, and you can just posit a culture where magic items are not for trade and people will just flip out and kill you (or call the guard, run away, whatever) for even suggesting they swap their rightful +1 sword for some of your gold.



Or go the 1st edition route where magic loot can be sold for gold, which is XP, or kept for somewhat less XP, but no one will sell magic to the murder-hobos for mere gold when there's Ogres to be killed instead, which is a task normal people will not take on no matter how much gold you pay them.

[name_here]

It doesn't make economic sense. Even if magic items can't be reliably made and require poetical and/or nonsensical items, they still need to be priced as art objects.

No they don't. In the medieval world, there was no price on land as we know it today, but there was on all sorts of people.

Why are you always wrong?

[codeGlaze]

In regard to "inner power vs outer/external power" ...

What if magical weaponry simply allowed expression of your inner power easier?

So a +1 can only really *handle* low level skill/abilities/power with out breaking/burning out...etc.

While a +5 allows you to UNLEASH THE BEAST! properly. Yet a low-powered character wouldn't benefit as much as a higher powered character.

[Stubbazubba]

My homebrew system posits that magic items are shells of varying quality that can form bonds with their wielder, drawing out their inner power and hardening themselves with it. If someone picks up a magic item they're not thus attuned to, it loses that benefit. The wielder of a magic item can pick up another one of sufficient quality and attune it the same way as one they had previously. This way even if you lose a specific magic item or just want to change from a Longsword to a Greatsword you can take the enchantment with you. You still have to find/buy/craft a suitable vessel, but the enchantment is a part of you.

[mean_liar]

That's very close to how I houseruled magic items - you have Wealth-by-Level in magic items which were spirits attuned to and drawn in by your emerging apotheosis (ie., level).

I can't remember which d20 Rokugan supplement I copped and modded that from, but that system of magic item management we're talking about actually did show up in a published DnD product.

[tussock]

It doesn't make economic sense. Even if magic items can't be reliably made and require poetical and/or nonsensical items, they still need to be priced as art objects.

No they don't. In the medieval world, there was no price on land as we know it today, but there was on all sorts of people.

Why are you always wrong?

Oh, go on with you. I'm only wrong half the time.

So, a quick read says, up until 13th century they stuck with the old Germanic systems of established peasant families with hereditary 40-acre (or multiples) holdings, with the pre-plague land clearances resulting in unregulated land division, which sparked new regulations to ensure the nobility always got their cut. With the plague the strictness of the old hereditary system collapsed in most places, people started subdividing the old peasant hides because no one could afford the whole thing when the inheritances got messed up. Though the lord and local council always had a veto and could undo the sales for up to a hundred years for various reasons.

Note that you still had to produce a valid claim on the old hide to buy any of it. Some sort of relationship to the previous owners, so such small divisions were all owned by people with the same surname, and routinely recombined over the years. Though they can lease to more people in some circumstances, and those can in turn sub-let, always with various parties having veto.

The fee and registration structures they set up over the 14th and 15th centuries, for the purpose of unwinding any sales the lord's grandchildren didn't like, form the base of modern land transaction laws arrived at in the 17th and 18th centuries in most places, which lead to the large untitled bourgeoisie killing off the nobility in the late 18th by stirring up a rebellion of the proletariat with promises of equality under the law.

That would be the law, in its majestic equality, which forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread. Suckers.

---

When I say it "has no price as we know it today", that's where your murder-hobo with a million gp in his pocket can't just rock up and become a major landholder. That's what wars are for, don't you know, which would be where you hit 9th level and they give you a barony, or a tower, or a parish, or a guildhall. Back when the game gave a shit.

[FatR]

Seriously, why don't you come up with a list of widespread inventions or innovations that occurred in this area during this timeframe in the real world? Most of them will end up being applicable to and only useful for warfare.

Full rigging sailship, windmill, open-field agriculture system, non-loadbearing walls, wooden barrel, stained glass, double-entry bookkeeping, mechanic clock... If start including things whose origin is uncertain (like spinning wheel) or that were just most widely used in Europe despite certainly or likely being invented elsewhere, the list will get much longer. It would be much longer if I had more than passing interest in medieval civilian life too.

[Hicks]

The wheelbarrow. The modern horse harness (which allows horses to pull heavy loads without choking themselves) was invented in China during the 5th century, and was adopted in Europe in the 8th century. The strirrup, the invention that allows calvary to exist, went widespread in Europe in the middle ages. Three field crop rotation. Movable type (China in 1040, Guttenberg perfected in 1450). I'm just gonna leave this here for everybody who never played Age of Empires II .

[Username17]

Seriously, why don't you come up with a list of widespread inventions or innovations that occurred in this area during this timeframe in the real world? Most of them will end up being applicable to and only useful for warfare.

Full rigging sailship, windmill, open-field agriculture system, non-loadbearing walls, wooden barrel, stained glass, double-entry bookkeeping, mechanic clock... If start including things whose origin is uncertain (like spinning wheel) or that were just most widely used in Europe despite certainly or likely being invented elsewhere, the list will get much longer. It would be much longer if I had more than passing interest in medieval civilian life too.

I'm calling bullshit on that.

And the side chambers were three, one over another, and thirty in order; and they entered into the wall which was of the house for the side chambers round about, that they might have hold, but they had not hold in the wall of the house.
And there was an enlarging, and a winding about still upward to the side chambers: for the winding about of the house went still upward round about the house: therefore the breadth of the house was still upward, and so increased from the lowest chamber to the highest by the midst.

-Username17

[FatR]

I'm calling bullshit on that.

It's nice to see you using the Bible as exact historical evidence when it suits your argument, but even a brief course on the evolution of architecture should tell you than in the Greko-Roman world walls universally were the main load-bearing element (hence: tiny windows whenever a building grew big enough), and only in medieval times technologies required for buildings like gothic cathedrals (big windows) came into use. Whether such technologies existed before or not (the Roman Empire, despite its eminent success with application of well-known technologies was not exactly a place where learning flourished and probably the chief reason so many Greek classics remained unknown in the Western Europe during the Dark Ages was that no one bothered to translate them into Latin), there was no clear line of inheritance leading to the medieval Europe.