Maybe I'm just old, but I don't tend to have places my players can buy many magic items. If a magic item is for sale they are usually low end ones, +1 dagger and the like. People don't sit around making potions that the party can buy, they might have some simple things like a few cure pots but not things the general public has little use for.
And if my party wants a +4 two handed sword of dragon slaying they had better be able to make it themselves, or quest for it. No one is sitting around making such an item just to sell it, too much risk and you better hope someone needs something and can afford something of that magnitude.
I have drilled into my players the need to take magic item creation feats, it not only allows them to make what they want it reduces their power. And trust me the cleric is making his +4 holy mace before he makes the sword for the fighter, more then that he usually charges the fighter list price because thats a ton of his time spent doing jack, and a player making an item is out a few game sessions more then likely. Even if he isn't he isn't getting other things done like social investigations, expanding his flock, or a number of ways players burn non-adventure time. So it wont happen often that the cleric burns that time for someone else.
Anyway that's me. How do you handle it?
I'm working up a system to replace mundane magic item benefits--bonuses to AC, saving throws, attack/damage, etc.--with level by level upgrades directly to the character. My goal is to keep the power level of the characters consistent with the intent of the game system while avoiding every character having to have a tone of trinkets. Magic items can then become truly special and unique, rather than "level-necessary" bumps.
I think it's largely a matter of personal style in how you run your campaign. In 3.5, the CR of a monster is based on the assumption of a party of four or five tackling the monster, equipped with gear appropriate for their level. The DMG supports easy-to-buy magic by giving gold piece values for towns and cities and saying that within the gold piece limit of a town, any item less than that limit should be readily available.
If you run a low magic item campaign, then at some point it might become necessary to downgrade encounters to the low-magic actual level of the party, rather than the "normal"-magic expected level of a party.
I think whether or not the party is happy with it is dependent on the party. If I knew, as a player, that the DM wasn't big on magic items, then I'd either take creation feats or gear my character to not want/need magic (perhaps the Vow of Poverty would be a good choice at that point, or Ancestral Relic which would allow a non-caster to make a signature magic item).
If I were in a low-magic campaign, and were a non-caster (say a front line fighter, or rogue) and found that the caster was trying to get full retail price to equip his party members, then I might have a problem. From the fighters perspective, his job is to stand up front and take the hits, and the wizard gets to stand in the back in exchange for _supporting_ the fighter. If the wizard were to start treating the fighter as if he were just a customer, then as a fighter, I'd start telling the wizard it was his turn to stand up front. But that's dependent on a lot of in-game dynamics, and the joy that role playing could be.
I've been in high-magic campaigns, and in low-magic campaigns. Neither was inherently better than the other, but a lot of what makes different-than-presented-in-the-dmg-or-campaign-sourcebook work is having players know how things will be at character creation. If the world doesn't have readily available magic, then the players should know this up front, so that they can create a character appropriate to the world. (It would be like creating a character for Dark Sun using Aquatic Elves, expecting to find water because the DM gave no indication of what the world was like, though any person growing up in that world to become an adventurer would surely know the reality there.)
Bottom line:
As long as players know what to expect and the DM understands the consequences of running a "non-default" world and both plan accordingly, it doesn't matter whether the campaign is high-magic or low-magic.
Maybe I'm just old, but I don't tend to have places my players can buy many magic items. If a magic item is for sale they are usually low end ones, +1 dagger and the like. People don't sit around making potions that the party can buy, they might have some simple things like a few cure pots but not things the general public has little use for.
And if my party wants a +4 two handed sword of dragon slaying they had better be able to make it themselves, or quest for it. No one is sitting around making such an item just to sell it, too much risk and you better hope someone needs something and can afford something of that magnitude.
I have drilled into my players the need to take magic item creation feats, it not only allows them to make what they want it reduces their power. And trust me the cleric is making his +4 holy mace before he makes the sword for the fighter, more then that he usually charges the fighter list price because thats a ton of his time spent doing jack, and a player making an item is out a few game sessions more then likely. Even if he isn't he isn't getting other things done like social investigations, expanding his flock, or a number of ways players burn non-adventure time. So it wont happen often that the cleric burns that time for someone else.
Anyway that's me. How do you handle it?
I run my game pretty much along the same lines as you. Mine is an old campaign updated to 3.5 / PFRPG. I've maintained the old assumptions about magic. It's rare and special. Low level stuff might be available on rare occasions. The good stuff is found or made. Selling items is difficult as well (no "magic shops"). You're more likely to be able to barter / swap items than buy / sell them. Those items the party can't make use of make great gifts to build bridges with NPCs...
I'm the polar opposite when it comes to magic items, mostly because I think it is a complete waste of my time worrying about where my PCs get their magic items, so long as they spend the appropriate amount of time and money.
If my PCs can afford an item, and I don't have an objection to it existing in my game, then they can go to a city with a high enough GP limit and either buy it outright or have someone craft it for them. Heck, gp limits hardly matter after level 9, at which point the party just teleports to the nearest major port or capital city to do their business. Spend the money, wait the appropriate number of days, get the item. Simple as that. Unless the adventure they are currently on is time-sensitive, it seldom matters that the item is "in the shop" for a few days. I also allow my PCs to upgrade items, for example, paying the difference between a +2 and +4 stat boosting item to have their existing +2 item improved to +4, and so on.
Generally, my PCs discuss what items they want to keep, sell, or upgrade with me whenever they take downtime, I approve any transactions, they make the changes on their sheet, and we all go about the business of running the campaign. In fact, I discourage my players from taking crafting feats because it means I need to keep track of XP too closely. I prefer to just construct my adventures such that they should give a roughly appropriate amount of XP and loot to advance to the next level, and have the party level up when they finish the adventure/storyarch.
-C. Robert Brown
I prefer my games closer to Robert's than the other end, whether DM'ing or just playing. Especially with the Pathfinder Beta rules though, most of the people in my group are pumped to take item creation feats, and in our current campaign (low-magic that it is) my character has multiple.
In the few campaigns I've run, my worlds are very magical, where simple magic gear and items are also simple to attain. Custom magic items are what's special in my campaigns, and they can often be very potent. Hunting down a very specific and potent magic item could be painstaking, but a level 10 PC trying to find a +2 Longsword will have an easy time.
I go with the GP limit guidelines.
If I were in a low-magic campaign, and were a non-caster (say a front line fighter, or rogue) and found that the caster was trying to get full retail price to equip his party members, then I might have a problem. From the fighters perspective, his job is to stand up front and take the hits, and the wizard gets to stand in the back in exchange for _supporting_ the fighter. If the wizard were to start treating the fighter as if he were just a customer, then as a fighter, I'd start telling the wizard it was his turn to stand up front. But that's dependent on a lot of in-game dynamics, and the joy that role playing could be.
Well like I said if the wizard is making a sword for the fighter, he isn't there for the next session very likely. So he's not only spending XP to make the sword, he's missing out on XP and money from the session. Many players either made secondary character to play when their main was not available, and this could happen for many reasons beyond magic item creation. A wizard opening a school, a priest building a hospital, a fighter buy a bar, all sort of RP reasons they wouldn't be able to be involved. The leadership feat was popular because I allowed the retainers/henchbeasts to be played as PCs and the main PC gained 50% of the XP the henchbeast got. (Don't know why we called them henchbeasts but we do)
Now in Pathfinder I see there is no XP cost, that will change things alot. One good reason for not having magic item stores was who is gaining XP enough to just crank out magic items was always an issue.
Still I'm old school, 1st ed old, and so are my players. We played back when you nearly never made an item, and if you did it was a huge deal. They had gp values in the DMG and UA back then, but players did not expect to be able to just buy them, that was there so they knew the value for calculating XP gained for recovering it and for selling purposes.
Anyway thanks for sharing your veiws, I will keep reading and replying this is a topic that interests me.
Not many at all. I have the occasional item is for sale but if it is worth more then 1800 gp (or so) you can't find it on the open market. Ever.
You can commission items (with a task/favour cost as well as the gp cost) or you can make them yourself (with a lower gp cost but you still must collect the necessary rare and mystical materials needed).
I have made Item creation feats a bit easier though. I have the following creation feat tree:
Brew potion (prerequisite: Ability to cast spells)
Scribe Scroll (prerequisite: Ability to cast spells)
Create Charged magic item (prerequisite: Brew potion or Scribe Scroll)
Crate permanent magic item (prerequisite: Create Charged magic item)
Oh and to encourage the whole questing-to-make-our-item thing I don't have a xp cost for item creation but instead you earn xp.
It's just a matter how you do it ofcorse but for me.
I make magic items magical, there not items that people want for spefic builds so they can be full spec-ed out with there purples.
In my campagin I made it so that the PC's had to quest for real magical items however I did give them some breathing space with magic non magical items be able to have magical properities, such as keen and such anything that could be repesented by fine craftmenship.
But it did make them enjoy there magical items more.
They never forget them or try an get items which they were 'just thinking about'
When you have to spend some hours getting an item it makes it considerablely more thoughtworthy than just I think this would be 'good' for my charater.
But hey I run a low magic world, there nothing wrong with shops with items, for me it just sounds cheezy but each to there own it's more about what the DM/Players are happy with.
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Low-end potions and scrolls are available, mostly at temples or mage guilds - which means in the larger settlements.
Some curio shops might have even a lesser magic item or two, and notorious wizards could be available for custom enchantements (amor and weapons), for a hefty price.
No bazaars of magic anywhere, unless the PCs travel to some exotic and usually dangerous place (as in Katapsh).
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Depends on the campaign and system for me.
In general, I prefer magic to be on the lower end of the scale - like in the Midnight setting, where magic items are reduced, and character power level is increased.
I'm really enjoying the new rules in A Song of Ice and Fire from Green Ronin were magic is essentially a GM only tool.
Having said that, when it comes to D&D itself, I find it's easier to just accept the tropes inherent in the system and limit magic items by their GP limits. My experience is that my players have more fun when they can create their character in a specific image, and that includes the magic items they have access to.
If my player has been having wet-dreams over a fighter with a flaming longsword in one hand, and an ice longsword in the other - then provided the player can afford it, and is near a town with a GP limit that covers it, then that player can have it.
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I'm pretty liberal with charged items, particularly potions and scrolls -- those little helpers can go a long way in terms of letting a party kick it into high gear for a tough encounter. If giving them cure potions and a few scrolls (possibly selected ahead of time to fill gaps I see in their ability sets -- if they lack a great sneaker, I might put an invisibility scroll or potion out there for that one time they absolutely need to do something stealthy) lets them do things of more consequence, I have no problem with that minor bump up.
Rings, magic weapons, wondrous items -- very rare. Very rare indeed. In my current group, no magic weapons for anyone right now and they're 4th level. They have the remnants of a magic sword that half-melted inside a demon when they used it (so, I quite deliberately made a constant item be a "charged" item; it was always going to melt at some point when they used it's special ability), and I'm going to let the barbarian with the awesome Craft:Weaponsmith skill rebuild it as a new sword eventually. Their next adventure will get them a couple more items, including another magic weapon... so soon, I'd have in a party of 4 4th-5th level characters, probably a total of 2 weapons, 1 wand, and 10 or so scrolls and potions.
By 9th level, every character will have at least one magic item of significant power -- but they'll have earned it and gotten it in some memorable fashion, and carefully picked to reflect their character, not a random roll on a loot table.
I'd call that "low magic". To make the game work w/o lots of magic, I have a few extra levels of masterworked items to fill in the need for better weapons and armor, and adversaries that you absolutely need magic to be effective against are either more rare or effectively are considered to be much tougher opponents (see a demon or devil? Might want to run!).
I absolutely detest magic-heavy games. Fine for casual purposes, but not my cup of tea at all. I prefer a slow ascent up into the realms of +5 Holy Avengers (which is a fine goal for your paladin, but should be a very intensive, played-out scenario all of its own, not a day spent shopping at the local flea market).
To put it into perspective, I just can't imagine Elric buying Stormbringer.
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I'm mulling over a system that divorces magic items from the gold economy. Lower end stuff can be bought, but once a certain limit is reached, items can't be bought with gold. You need something planar, like souls, to barter with. I'm thinking the item levels of 4E was a decent idea, but keeping them attached to GP prices defeated it. Rate items by level and say characters can have this many of each level. Makes maintaining wealth-by-level expectations less of a bookkeeping problem.
I'm the polar opposite when it comes to magic items, mostly because I think it is a complete waste of my time worrying about where my PCs get their magic items, so long as they spend the appropriate amount of time and money.
That's pretty much how I run my game, too; it's a play-by-email game, so it runs slowly enough without roleplaying out every item purchase.
But I'm thinking of running a face-to-face Rappan Athuk game where it'll be "what you see (in the module) is what you get, no magic stores".
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I tend to run somewhere in the middle. One shot items (scrolls, potions, oils, etc) are fairly common. Charged items are somewhat less so, but still available. Permanent magic (weapons, armor, wondrous items, etc) are much rarer.
So, in essence, there may be a potion shop or a scroll seller, but if you want a wand, you need to hunt down that wizard or cleric who is willing to do so and if you want a custom weapon of armor, you better be able to make it yourself or be willing to pay through the nose with coin and favors.
Of course, if I am playing in a preset campaign, I tend to run with (or close to) what is outlined for the campaign.
I don't tend to have places my players can buy many magic items. If a magic item is for sale they are usually low end ones, +1 dagger and the like. People don't sit around making potions that the party can buy, they might have some simple things like a few cure pots but not things the general public has little use for.
Yeah, I don't have MagicItem-Marts either.
In old-school D&D, magic items took months to create, and were limited to the most powerful of mages, few and far between. It was easy to justify nobody making or selling items.
Further, in old-school D&D, reaching 7th or 8th level was almost miraculous. It took years of the players' real lives to hit double-digit levels, and that was even more years of the characters' lives.
Then along came 3.x with the super easy XP charts, and now a character can go from level 1 to 20 in a year of his life.
Even NPCs gain XP much faster now. A simple city watchman may very well be level 6 or higher by the end of his rookie year. Farmers faced with the occasional goblin incursion will either die, or gain a few level. Old Farmer Joe is probably at least level 5 or 6 by the time his sons are old enough to take over the farm.
The days of the level 0 commoner went out the window with the super easy 3.x XP charts (although, while this seems crystal clear to me, nobody in the world of official publishers seems to have caught on to the fact that Farmer Joe probably reaches level 2 after pitchforking 7 or 8 goblins).
In any case, more levels means more feats, more opportunities for an enterprising acolyte or hedge wizard to decide to go into the magic item business.
More levels also means higher-level adventurers with more cash on hand, creating a higher demand for those enterprising crafters.
So, maybe a few vendors, on a few street corners, with low-end items isn't unreasonable. And maybe one or two well-fortified shops with a slightly more impressive, higher-end inventory in the big cities would make sense too.
At least by this interpretation of the XP charts and rules for creating items.
And if my party wants a +4 two handed sword of dragon slaying they had better be able to make it themselves, or quest for it. No one is sitting around making such an item just to sell it, too much risk and you better hope someone needs something and can afford something of that magnitude.
Yeah, I agree.
Nobody makes that in advance. Even in Pathfinder, the market is too small to hope to move that kind of high-end specialized inventory quickly.
However, consider Pete the retired archamage.
He had a long and happy life as an adventurer and he retired a rich man whereupon he bought a tower and a harem and a cellar full of beer. But, life has its little costs, and after a few years of the good life, Pete decides to open up shop selling magic items. But he's an archmage. Love pottions and VD cures are benath him.
So he moves to the big city and gets a couple billboards near the main road and the town market that advertise Pete's Magic Emporium, Home of Rare and Powerful Magic. Commission only, payment in advance.
Adventurers flock from far and, well, farther, to drop of buckets of gold and coffers of platinum to engage him to make their +4 dragonbane greatswords.
He takes their gold and gets to work. And in a few short weeks, they can come back and pick up their wares.
Even better, if they die in some far off land, Pete can take that sword down to the market and sell it at auction - yep, he gets paid twice. Sweet gig!
I have drilled into my players the need to take magic item creation feats, it not only allows them to make what they want it reduces their power.
Reduces their power?
How so?
Sure, they could have taken Dodge, or Iron Will, or Toughness. And doing so would increase their power. So not doing so seems to decrease their power. I get what you're saying.
But -
You've already described your world as lacking in MagicItem-Marts, and maybe don't even have any Pete's Magic Emporiums open for business.
So your adventurers have a treasure vault back home, heaped with gold, all getting moldy in their dank basement vault. They have nothing to spend it on. Wine and wenches don't cost much (besides, who has down-time for that?).
But one of your enterpising players decides to take one feat, just one little feat, and now he can turn all that moldy gold into new and powerful magic items.
I dare say, in a world where gold is nothing but a moldy status symbol, the ability to turn it into powerful magic items is well worth a feat.
Powerful indeed!
But I suspect that you know this already (read on)...
And trust me the cleric is making his +4 holy mace before he makes the sword for the fighter, more then that he usually charges the fighter list price because thats a ton of his time spent doing jack, and a player making an item is out a few game sessions more then likely. Even if he isn't he isn't getting other things done like social investigations, expanding his flock, or a number of ways players burn non-adventure time. So it wont happen often that the cleric burns that time for someone else.
"thats a ton of his time spent doing jack"
"a player making an item is out a few game sessions"
"burns that time"
Those are scary phrases, my friend. Scary indeed.
Are you punishing your player for making these magic items?
Think before you answer, because even if you're not deliberately punishing him, I suspect that, subconsciously, you are.
You've created a world with no MagicItem-Marts and no Pete's Emporiums. If your players have a magic item it's because you gave it to them. You. Complete control. If Fred the Fighter wants a +4 dragonbane greatsword, he can only have it if You let him find one in a dungeon somewhere.
Then alongs comes Clevon the Cleric and now Fred can ask Clevon for the sword, and Clevon can whip one up. You can't even stop him. Well, you could have bolts of lightning rain down from the sky and blast Clevon to bits. Or a giant chasm opens up and swallows Clevon, never to be seen again. But you don't want to go that far.
So you punish him.
Sure, Clevon, make that sword for Fred. But you will "be out a few sessions" and "doing jack".
It might go like this:
Fred: Hey, Clevon, we're back from the dungeon!
Clevon: Sweet! While you were gone, I finished this sword for you.
Fred: Uh, well, you see, in the two months you made that sword, the rest of us, well, cleared out three dungeons and went up 5 levels. We found 49 new magic items too.
Cleveon: Wow, that's great. And here's your sword.
Fred: Uh, thanks Clevon, but no thanks. I found this +5 flaming dragonbane greatsword on our last trip, so I won't need the one you made.
Clevon: Oh. Bummer.
Fred: By the way, how many levels did you gain here in town?
Clevon: Well, none, really.
Fred: Oh, too bad. Well, how many magic items did you acquire?
Clevon: Just this greatsword. And I can't really even use it.
Fred: Oh. Well, Clevon, you see, you've been a good cleric, you really have, but now we're all 5 levels higher than you. And you don't even have magical gear to make up for your lack of levels. We're going to have to replace you with a higher-level cleric who already has decent gear. You understand, right?
Clevon: yeah, right. No hard feelings...
What's worse, it punishes the player too. Nothing like showing up for the 4th straight week and watching your friends explore the dungeon, slay the monsters, and loot the hoards, while you sit on the couch munching Cheetos and wishing you hadn't decided to stay in town making a sword.
And no amount of rolling initiative and saying "Clang, clang" on your turn will make up for it - that gets old by the third week...
There are ways around it.
One - Don't have forests teeming with level-appropriate monsters right outside the town gates. Sure, maybe Clevon is staying in town to make a sword, but the rest of the party can't just walk out of town on a sunday stroll and slaughter a cave full of dragons and loot their hoards and be home in time for dinner.
Two - Don't have adventures drop into the party's lap every time there is a day of down-time. If the party is safely back in the big city, and there are no emergencies, no crises, and no treasure maps in their eager little hands, well, they might just decide to spend a few weeks drinking and wenching and living high on their wealthy hogs. They might even do a little research, looking for clues or rumors or hints to their next adventure, but it might take them a few weeks to find anything tasty. Giving Clevon time to make an item or two.
Three - give them menial stuff to stay busy, if you want. Maybe the locals are getting raided by orcs, and they turn to the party of 12th-level PCs to handle it. Clevon works on the sword while the party goes out and annhilates a couple dozen orcs. The party expands their heroic reputation and earns a handful of silver and no XP, so Clevon doesn't get punished.
If you DM like that, then Clevon will have time to make an item or two, once in a while (surely not all the time or he will unbalance the magical environment you've established), without being punished for it.
If none of that appeals, try letting Clevon make the items while he adventures. Sure, that goes against the RAW, but assuming he buys a masterwork greatsword in town, and asusming he prepares Greater Magic Weapon and Summon Monster I every day, why not let him work on enchanting the sword in the evening, after setting up camp and before going to bed? Let him use his feat without being punished for it.
Unless you're deliberately punishing him.
If you are, you might want to just consider letting him replace the feat with something you are more willing to let him use, like Toughness, etc.
I'm working up a system to replace mundane magic item benefits--bonuses to AC, saving throws, attack/damage, etc.--with level by level upgrades directly to the character. My goal is to keep the power level of the characters consistent with the intent of the game system while avoiding every character having to have a tone of trinkets. Magic items can then become truly special and unique, rather than "level-necessary" bumps.
That's a neat idea, and I've seen others suggest the same, but I have to say I'm glad the game doesn't work this way.
As a DM, I like having the option.
If the level chart says that everyone gets +2 to an ability score and +1 to hit and damge at level 6, well, then everyone gets it.
But what if I'm DMing and I feel that the party fighter is way overpowered compared to the other party members?
With magic items (RAW) I can make sure there are no magic swords or magic armor or magic items that boost STR or CON in the next dungeon or two.
The rest of the party finds stuff they can use and they gain in power to catch up to the overpowered fighter until balance is restored.
Can't do that if there's just a chart of stuff you gain at each level.
The opposite happens a lot, too.
That little bard is hopeless in battle and the player is getting frustrated. Or the 6th level ranger suddenly realizes that doing 1d8 damage with his bow is extremely puny compared to the fighter dishing out 1d12+5 damage, and now he's frustrated.
So, next treasure hoard is a magical weapon with a decent enhancement bonus and a side ability to improve bardic magic, and a magical composite bow, and now the bard and the ranger aren't frustrated any more.
Can't do that with a chart, either.
So, each to their own, and I'm glad you (and evidently quite a few others) are happy with charted ability increases, but for me, I'll stick to the flexibility of magic items.
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((To save space and all, your post is gold))
I do have a Pete or two, though they maybe hard to find and require you get some special ore to make what you want, you can if you have the money find a Pete.
As for the time, well I understand what your saying, I am punishing the player for being useful instead of powerful (item creation vs taking dodge and all). Bad form on my part I guess. But in general unless there is a good cause we just pass the time, they may miss a session but usually one were everyone is playing an alternate from their main. (Henchbeast night out kind of thing) I wouldn't actually prevent them from going on an adventure that the whole group was heading into. No it's stuff like well the Cleric is making the sword, the Wizard teaching classes to the King's son, the Fighter is taking the alts to the wedding of his brother. (the adventure ends up with the alts investigating something while passing time for the wedding, normally the fighter wouldn't be involved in it, though they might go to him once they have discovered one of the town deputies is really an assassin hired to kill him.)
I see your point though. I think to help the cleric and his like I could make those feats easier to obtain and use, maybe you can take two for one, and the more people who help the faster it is made, even the fighter can help with forging, testing, and leg work like buying supplies as needed. That keeps everyone busy together, and reduces the cost in feats to those who actually make the items.
Just as an aside, leveling speed in 3.X is well too fast for me as well. My level 19 cleric took over 8 years of rather often play to reach 16, playing once a year for about 10 he leveled 3 times.
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Just as an aside, leveling speed in 3.X is well too fast for me as well. My level 19 cleric took over 8 years of rather often play to reach 16, playing once a year for about 10 he leveled 3 times.
This is an issue for me, too, particularly in Adventure Paths. Players gain 2nd or 3rd level in a long afternoon, a week at most, and then the villages are filled with 4th level "retired" adventurers. I'm not sure one can retire from a particularly exciting vacation, y'know?
That's part of why I liked XP costs for magic item creation, and wished there was a way to burn off some XP for martial classes as well.
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It sounds like the slower advancement tables would be a better choice for your campaigns than "burning off" xp's. I hate losing experience as a player. That just doesn't make sense. What, did you burn the memory of the troll out of my brain? or did I just forget how I helped my party defeat the Orc horde... Experience, good or bad, is experience and even if you don't remember all the details of all of your experiences the things you learned from them inform who you are even to this day.
That's why I like the way PF took level draining or more accurately now, Negative Level Accumulation. You don't lose experience, you just take penalties, nasty ones, but just penalties all the same.
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Experience, good or bad, is experience and even if you don't remember all the details of all of your experiences the things you learned from them inform who you are even to this day.
yeah, but XP isn't the same as experience, unless you can explain to me how stabbing a goblin in the brain is going to make me better at Craft Pottery or teach me how to cast new spells. It's an abstraction representing personal power, and an XP cost represents burning off some of your personal "soul coal" to power the gadget.
I'm all for a slower progression table, on the other hand. And not an optional progression table like in the beta which requires me to find half a dozen filler adventures to let the players "keep up" when running an AP if I use that table. I also like Negative Level Accumulation, actually.
Just as an aside, leveling speed in 3.X is well too fast for me as well. My level 19 cleric took over 8 years of rather often play to reach 16, playing once a year for about 10 he leveled 3 times.This is an issue for me, too, particularly in Adventure Paths. Players gain 2nd or 3rd level in a long afternoon, a week at most, and then the villages are filled with 4th level "retired" adventurers. I'm not sure one can retire from a particularly exciting vacation, y'know?
That's part of why I liked XP costs for magic item creation, and wished there was a way to burn off some XP for martial classes as well.
There you are touching on the thing I mentioned as a footnote:
I haven't seen any official published material by any of the big publishers that has caught on to the fact that leveling (since 3.0 hit the game stores) is a trivial matter now.
Seriously, a rookie on the city watch gets the shift nobody wants: late nights in the seedy part of town. Every night is rousing drunks, some of whom like to resist arrest. Every night is breaking up barroom brawls. And on the good nights, there's formng strike teams and clearing warehouses of smuggler rings, or raiding dens of thieves, rogues, and other scofflaws. This guy gets into two or three fights every night, and he's level two before the end of his first week. Level three before the end of his second week, and level 4 before the end of his first month on the job. Probably level 7 by the end of his first year and lvel 10, maybe, by the end of his second year.
So any veteran on the city watch (2+ years is barely veteran status) should be approaching 10th level, if not over it, and anyone who's a grizzled old veteran with 10+ years on the city watch may very well be in the ballpark of 15th level (the leveling does slow down a bit - a 12th level guard arresting a bunch of level 1-3 rogues doesn't see much XP from the event).
There is no reason at all for big cities to have city patrols of 3 level 1 guards, a level 2 veteran, and a level 3 sergeant. That's just silly with 3.x or Pathfinder XP charts. What, everyone on that squad is in their first month of service?
It's little different for other commoners, though most of them get into far fewer fights than city watchmen. Farmers, of course, outside of those precious city walls, see constant danger from kobolds, goblins, orcs, etc.
They certainly do in the modules - heck, look at Rise of the Runelords, the players guide shows a map with outlying farms and there are 5 *known* goblin tribes permanently situated within a day's travel of most of those farms.
If a farmer fights off just one goblin, kobold, orc, wolf, or other "small" raider or predator, per month, he'll be level 4 in less than 10 years. And when something big happens, and he grabs his torch and pitchfork and joins up with his neighbors and they go rouse something really dangerous off of their lands, like ogres, griffons, etc., his rate of leveling goes way up.
Of course, these commoners could die. But unless your cities and farmlands are full of undead, then the guys walking the streets and plowing the fields must be the survivors - the ones who survived with XP and new levels.
No offense to Paizo, because I like the adventure paths very much, but RotRL is a glaring example of this silliness.
Sandpoint is surrounded by goblin villages. You can walk on foot out of sandpoint at breakfast time, attack any of these goblin lairs, and be home by dinner. And the goblins can do the same, striking anywhere near Sandpoint and its outlying farms and be home by dinner.
Statistically, the average citizen of Sandpoint would be level 3 by the time they're 20 years old, just fending off the goblins - certainly the average citizen who lives outside the wall/river that surrounds the town proper.
And yet, the adventure opens with the 1st level PCs fighting a half-dozen goblins and becoming heroes, people singing their praises in the streets and taverns - all for doing exactly what the villagers themselve do on a fairly constant basis their whole lives.
It's a strange and common dichotomy. Adventure writers create villages, towns, cities, and other civilized regions, populated with unwalled residences and far-flung farmlands, and fill these regions with level 0 commoners. They treat them like a real-world Earth village, or maybe Hobbiton, or some other sweet fantasy village.
Then pack the surrounding lands full of villains and monsters lurking around every corner, dungeons right under the villager's feet in many cases, dens of vile humanoids lurking in walking distance from undefended farmsteads (much like Owen Skywalker's farmstead on Tattoine, just a big hole in the ground surrounded by murderous sand people).
And these two inconsistent things that cannot possibly coexist in such proximity, are common elements in nearly every adventure path or large-scale adventure module ever published.
Level 0 commoners?
Not a chance.
Not if they have lived in a D&D world past the age of 15.
I'm working up a system to replace mundane magic item benefits--bonuses to AC, saving throws, attack/damage, etc.--with level by level upgrades directly to the character. My goal is to keep the power level of the characters consistent with the intent of the game system while avoiding every character having to have a tone of trinkets. Magic items can then become truly special and unique, rather than "level-necessary" bumps.That's a neat idea, and I've seen others suggest the same, but I have to say I'm glad the game doesn't work this way.
As a DM, I like having the option.
If the level chart says that everyone gets +2 to an ability score and +1 to hit and damge at level 6, well, then everyone gets it...
I should clarify, my system doesn't grant everyone the same thing at every level. Rather, common options are given a value and characters gain points each level that can be spent on these options or saved for later. So a Ftr5 might have a +1 Armor Competency Bonus, +1 Weapon Competency, and a +1 Natural Armor bonus. A Wiz5 however might have taken a +2 Intelligence Boost (once per day, lasts 1 min/character level) and Spell Recall (1st level spell, once per day). A Rogue might take a +8 on one skill and a +1 to all saving throws. They've all spent the equivalent of 5,000 points in my system, and have the equivalent of +1 items (weapons, armor, cloak of resistance), stat boosters, etc.
So, you've got the options, but no need for the magic mart.
This is an issue for me, too, particularly in Adventure Paths. Players gain 2nd or 3rd level in a long afternoon, a week at most, and then the villages are filled with 4th level "retired" adventurers. I'm not sure one can retire from a particularly exciting vacation, y'know?
There you are touching on the thing I mentioned as a footnote:
I haven't seen any official published material by any of the big publishers that has caught on to the fact that leveling (since 3.0 hit the game stores) is a trivial matter now.
Seriously, a rookie on the city watch gets the shift nobody wants: late nights in the seedy part of town. Every night is rousing drunks, some of whom like to resist arrest. Every night is breaking up barroom brawls. And on the good nights, there's formng strike teams and clearing warehouses of smuggler rings, or raiding dens of thieves, rogues, and other scofflaws. This guy gets into two or three fights every night, and he's level two before the end of his first week. Level three before the end of his second week, and level 4 before the end of his first month on the job. Probably level 7 by the end of his first year and lvel 10, maybe, by the end of his second year.
So any veteran on the city watch (2+ years is barely veteran status) should be approaching 10th level, if not over it, and anyone who's a grizzled old veteran with 10+ years on the city watch may very well be in the ballpark of 15th level (the leveling does slow down a bit - a 12th level guard arresting a bunch of level 1-3 rogues doesn't see much XP from the event).
There is no reason at all for big cities to have city patrols of 3...
I'd agree that leveling up is easier, but I think you're overestimating how fast it would come. I don't think the Watch sees several pitched battles a night for example. If they had multiple potentially lethal encounters each night I suspect they might have trouble finding recruits. Those encounters they do see are not, for the most part, lethal encounters. Arresting a drunk isn't in the same category as a fight to the death with an armed Orc. It's an "easier" encounter than it's CR would indicate and earns fewer experience as a result. You're not, one hopes, trying to kill the drunk. You're using non-lethal damage if it's necessary to make the collar. Unless he's a total idiot he's not looking to kill anyone either. If you're working the bad part of town you're not working it alone either. That splits the XP. Encounters that spill significant amounts of blood or take lives would be fairly rare.
In looking this problem over for my own game when I converted it to 3.0 I figured a watchman in a rough area would probably earn a level every 3 years or so for a while, slowing down as he levels up and sees less street level action. Rookies are 1st level warriors, veterin watchmen are probably 1st to 2nd level. Sargeants / corporals 3rd to 5th, and so on. Retirement might find a watch captain at 6th or 8th level after a career spanning 2-3 decades. Certainly no one any starting adventurer would want to mess with, but not the greatest fighter in the realm either. Farmers in dangerous areas would level up similarly, probably splitting their levels between commoner and warrior (assuming they are in a militia of some type). Again no one to mess with, but with families, day jobs and no particular desire to die they're not hero material.
This set up has yielded good results for me. NPCs are not total push overs to be abused by low level PCs. Neither are they overwhelming obstacles for mid to high level PCs. Generally you can take the age of the NPC and the job / local and figure rough class levels for them. Throw in a bit of variation to account for the odd things life comes up with and you are there (I set up tables for it). This leaves adventurers who court danger and level up faster than normal people to be the heroes.
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I just use the rules as written. If the items are within the character's budget, then they can get them for the listed price. I only make exceptions for specific items that I don't want in my world, for whatever reason.
They might need to find a supplier, and obviously wouldn't be able to go shopping if trapped on level seven of the dungeon when they level up, but every fantasy world has guilds and academies of wizards, some of whom, like Nex in Golarion, and the Red Wal-Mart of Thay in the 3.0 version of the Realms, can be assumed to produce items in bulk.
Even in game settings where magical academies aren't as prevalent, such as Greyhawk, there are always temples, which all the way back to 1st edition could pump out magical items as easily, or, in some cases, *even more so,* than wizards. (And Greyhawk, in particular, has the priesthood of Boccob, who consider crafting spells and magical items to be an act of holy sacrament to their faith, making them *fanatical* producers of magic items!)
I wouldn't go as far as the assumption I've seen from some 4E groups that your gold just automatically increases at each level break and your items can be swapped out for newer shinier ones, even if the 'ignore the loot' mechanic does sound like a bit of a convenience (and ends up working the same way as Living X or Pathfinder Society games, where there's no reason to strip the bodies since everyone is getting the exact same gold at the end of the adventure anyway, whether they ignore the bodies where they lay, or spend hours with a crowbar pulling down the wall-sconces to resell...).
If the players express an interest in a deliberately magic-scarce world, such as the world of Conan, then I'd go ahead and make items hard to come by and the focus of specific quests and adventures and storylines, but they've never expressed the slightest interest in that, and I'm certainly not going to waste my time writing up a campaign using play assumptions that my players don't want to play with!
My group loathes 'shopping,' for the most part, and that sort of stuff tends to happen 'between adventures' and isn't role-played. Obviously, tastes differ, and I've played with groups who will happily spend an entire 5 hour session between adventures wandering around town role-playing negotiating a good price on a new pack mule. More power to them. As long as the players are having fun, nobody's 'doing it wrong.'
It depends on the campaign I run. In the main campaign I am running at the moment I am strict with magic items. There are no magic shops for them to visit and I require questing for components should they wish to create magic items themselves (well, not all items would need quests, scrolls, for example, would not need questable components) . Essentially characters can only get a magic item if I give it to them somehow (say from defeated enemies, or as a reward). Furthermore, many of the magic items I give out are my own unique inventions rather than generic magic items.
The party is currently at level seven and the four members currently have five magic items between them, most of them my own unique ones, such as Scales of Destiny or Viper's Staff.
I think the Magic-mart should depend on whether you run a world that has many adventurers, and the PC's just happen to be a cut above the rest, at least until they die, or if people running off, and battling monsters is almost unheard of, and considered by many to be a good sign of being insane. If they are common then it makes sense that there should be people who cater to them, but if not, it shouldn't be hard to get magic items.
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No offense to Paizo, because I like the adventure paths very much, but RotRL is a glaring example of this silliness.
Sandpoint is surrounded by goblin villages. You can walk on foot out of sandpoint at breakfast time, attack any of these goblin lairs, and be home by dinner. And the goblins can do the same, striking anywhere near Sandpoint and its outlying farms and be home by dinner.
Aren't these goblins going to be fighting more then just the local human population? Using this kind of thinking you'd expect the surviving goblins to be over 5th level. Where are the first level characters going to start? Rats?
You've fallen into the trap of trying to use the RAW as the physics of your game world. I've been playing D&D for over 30 years and in that time I've met very few players that didn't dismiss using the rules as physics after just a little bit of thought because it really is just a short little hop down the bunny trail to something that belongs in Murphy's Rules or seems to come right out of Flatland. It's far better for the NPCs to just follow the world logic and to treat the game rules as just an abstraction used for task resolution. Your games should be better if you do this.
Gah, the forums ate my post. I'll put it more succinctly this time; I use RAW for 3.5e. I've used the Pete's Emporium model as well - the one time we roleplayed shopping that my players enjoyed it (also sadly the last). It was a gnome shop owner and his cantankerous halfling assistant. Said halfling later turned up dead as part of a mystery plot. It worked out well, really.
For the most part, my group and I prefer to have that stuff happen off screen - my players are split about 50/50 between preferring to find their loot and not really caring much about gear at all so long as it works.
DM_Blake also eloquently expressed my thoughts on crafting feats and how they can be something of a pitfall. I personally use model 4 - making items while adventuring. Only the party cleric has been terribly interested in it, but I like the idea of the group settling down for the night and he whips out his toolkit and starts working on that belt of giant's strength.
That said, this is my first campaign; I'd like to go a little more middle-of-the-road between the two as some people said. Unfortunately I've probably already spoiled my players. One of them in particular has expressed disdain for any setting in which magic is not fairly ubiquitous.
[stuff][counter-stuff]
(Haha, dammit - Samuel managed to communicate what I was trying to say in a fraction of the space, though I fell into the trap of some game rules too. Then, I like to waste time driving myself down the bunny trail to insanity.)
Long time reader, first time responder. I seem to read a lot of DM_Blake's large posts, and I knew it was only a matter of time before I would get in on one of the discussions. I have to agree with R_Chance to a great extent. I had a fairly robust post myself on the matter of goblins v. farmers, but as I noted above the forums eated it. Since I'm running out of time I'll try to make a few brief points.
First, goblins are always going to be better equipped than the farmland outliers, assuming the goblins are making a surprise raid. Commoners are proficient with one simple weapon - nothing else. Thus they have either poor AC or wear armor and a shield anyway and make their offense even worse than it already is. Even if they gain a level in warrior, I don't think people laboring all day long would be too inclined to wear even light armor, particularly in warm climates.
Second, goblin bands generally outnumber your standard homestead. If you assume it's Ma, Pa, a couple of children of-age, and a hired hand or two that's a fight between 4-9 (3.5e MM) and 5-6. Add in things like the goblin warchanters from RotRL and... Yeah. It's a question of why the goblins aren't all high level. (easily hand-waved by saying they kill each other, of course)
Third, and this is probably the biggest, fight or flight. Joe Farmer and his family aren't PCs. They will probably flee in the face of reasonably certain death, and gain reduced or no experience. The assumption that all survivors survived through bloodshed is flawed.
Finally, an assumption of one/month raid frequency, even in the 5-goblin-tribes RotRL seems a bit much. As portrayed, goblins have a fierce case of racial ADHD and it's said somewhere in there there's a lot of in-fighting. Between fighting themselves, licking their wounds (natural healing), and raids falling apart, it's entirely possible that not every farmstead sees a goblin raid with any real frequency.
(sheesh, so much for succinctness)
All that said, though, DM_Blake is generally right about the other stuff - nastier, stronger monsters wandering around right outside town and dungeons full of nasties right under the commoner's feet is in many cases silly, albeit a few might be justified. Then again, it's a fun kind of silly, and apparently a rather popular one.
(and because I love being anal, I have to mention the off-hand comment about Owen Skywalker's oh-so-impenetrable fortress - the main thing here is the sand people lack laser guns. Clearly the Skywalkers have the upper hand :p
That does make me wonder why the scavenging Jawas don't just invade, though. Guess it'd be bad for business or something.)
. My 2cp.
First we don’t have a Magic-mart but since we ALWAYS play realms there are plenty gods/powers of magic. Their temples can make and sell magic items (non-evil, on-dangerous) like bags of holding, cure wands, etc, etc.
Second the GP limit was put in place I feel for just that reason. You can’t get a holy avenger in a village but in Waterdeep or Halruua anything goes.
I don’t play "good" characters so The Book of Vile Darkness is an incredible resource. The sacrifice rules for craft exp solved the lvl loss for crafting stuff nicely. Plus as a cleric of undead/evil gods two birds with one stone. I decimated entire orc or goblin or Elvin tribes to get my items but never lost a single exp for my armor of undead controlling or my sacred, yes sacred(it does extra damage to undead, if you cant control it you'd better be able to destroy it.) mace.
That’s how we have been handling the magic item issue in our games. I too started out with first, then second, then 3&3.5 I am sorry to see the rules for gaining exp go the way of the dinosaur but I liked the idea in 3 that hey everybody should be able to have a little something. Pathfinder is something I as a player of magic using characters am really excited about. No exp loss and item creation feats that are streamlined for ease of play. I am very excited.
...content full of win snipped...
DM_Blake, I find your ideas intriguing and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
My group loathes 'shopping,' for the most part, and that sort of stuff tends to happen 'between adventures' and isn't role-played. Obviously, tastes differ, and I've played with groups who will happily spend an entire 5 hour session between adventures wandering around town role-playing negotiating a good price on a new pack mule. More power to them. As long as the players are having fun, nobody's 'doing it wrong.'
Ooooh, any room in your group?
:)
My group likes shopping.
In fact, this last weekend, nearly half of our 6 hour session was spent selling a handful of common weapons we looted from some thugs, buying arrows, and selling a bracers of armor +1.
In fact, unless you count all the merchants, we only had two long-winded roleplaying encounters and one brief combat encounter - 3 rounds of combat.
Now, I'm not saying that D&D is all about combat. But I do like a little more action in a game session than that.
And I loathe shopping too - but I endure it and try not to let the rest of the players, who evidently like this sort of thing, hear my teeth grinding...
Sandpoint is surrounded by goblin villages. You can walk on foot out of sandpoint at breakfast time, attack any of these goblin lairs, and be home by dinner. And the goblins can do the same, striking anywhere near Sandpoint and its outlying farms and be home by dinner.Aren't these goblins going to be fighting more then just the local human population? Using this kind of thinking you'd expect the surviving goblins to be over 5th level. Where are the first level characters going to start? Rats?
Your point is a good one, and it's partly true.
But I also believe the nature of the monsters, at least the common low-level offenders, is self-defeating.
Too many raids against humans (et. al.), too many raids from heroes, and the kobolds, goblins, orcs, etc., are constantly having their herds thinned.
They usually tend to be loosely organized, operating on a might-makes-right mentality, and overly fond of small raiding parties so they can get the loot and keep it for themselves.
Which is why the civilized races, who are more organized and mor thorough about working toegether to face the common enemy, always prevail - thinning those tribes of evil fiends before they grow too powerful.
Yet, still, humanoid heroes arise. Look at how many critters of these ilk are created in modules and APs with class levels, magic items, and significant power compared to their peers.
No, I don't believe it's too much of a trap to think that your average farmers and certainly your average militia/watch/standing army might benefit more from skirmishing with humanoids and hunting wolves and such than the humanoids themselves will benefit.
I recall one time spending some 4 hours shopping. We were buying gear for an extended investigation in a far off moutain range with no real chance to resupply. Anyway we bought tons of stuff, even two wagons. It was rather fun, right until the first encounter. Trolls. We were level 1 and 2 and about 6 of us and 8 trolls attacked....it was a short and brutal fight, not quiet a TPW but close. My cleric managed to escape somehow, I think I got on one of the horses and road off with one hit point left.
Needless to say the players were not really happy with that session. Next time we played everyone was a fighter of some type and wore the best armor they could buy.
I'd agree that leveling up is easier, but I think you're overestimating how fast it would come. I don't think the Watch sees several pitched battles a night for example. If they had multiple potentially lethal encounters each night I suspect they might have trouble finding recruits. Those encounters they do see are not, for the most part, lethal encounters. Arresting a drunk isn't in the same category as a fight to the death with an armed Orc. It's an "easier" encounter than it's CR would indicate and earns fewer experience as a result. You're not, one hopes, trying to kill the drunk. You're using non-lethal damage if it's necessary to make the collar. Unless he's a total idiot he's not looking to kill anyone either. If you're working the bad part of town you're not working it alone either. That splits the XP. Encounters that spill significant amounts of blood or take lives would be fairly rare.
In looking this problem over for my own game when I converted it to 3.0 I figured a watchman in a rough area would probably earn a level every 3 years or so for a while, slowing down as he levels up and sees less street level action. Rookies are 1st level warriors, veterin watchmen are probably 1st to 2nd level. Sargeants / corporals 3rd to 5th, and so on. Retirement might find a watch captain at 6th or 8th level after a career spanning 2-3 decades. Certainly no one any starting adventurer would want to mess with, but not the greatest fighter in the realm either. Farmers in dangerous areas would level up similarly, probably splitting their levels between commoner and warrior (assuming they are in a militia of some type). Again no one to mess with, but with families, day jobs and no particular desire to die they're not hero material.
I see your point.
However, I don't think the rules provide an XP penalty if you use non-lethal combat.
You're right though, that if your opponent is fighting with nothing more than untrained fists, you probably should reduce the CL and give out less XP.
Still, at your progression rate, you have your city police engaged in only a couple arrests, bar fights, pursuits, raids, etc., every month. Remember the postulate I provided was that the rookies get the unpopular shifts - late nights in the bad parts of town.
I think they would see more action than just a couple times a month.
Unless the city/town/region we're talking about is Hobbiton, or Mayberry, or something equally idyllic - which typical published D&D towns and cities are not (well, some of the small towns and villages are, occasionally, quite pleasant, but you would expect their police force to be about as tough as Andy Griffith and Barney Fife).
I'd agree that leveling up is easier, but I think you're overestimating how fast it would come. I don't think the Watch sees several pitched battles a night for example. If they had multiple potentially lethal encounters each night I suspect they might have trouble finding recruits. Those encounters they do see are not, for the most part, lethal encounters. Arresting a drunk isn't in the same category as a fight to the death with an armed Orc. It's an "easier" encounter than it's CR would indicate and earns fewer experience as a result. You're not, one hopes, trying to kill the drunk. You're using non-lethal damage if it's necessary to make the collar. Unless he's a total idiot he's not looking to kill anyone either. If you're working the bad part of town you're not working it alone either. That splits the XP. Encounters that spill significant amounts of blood or take lives would be fairly rare.
In looking this problem over for my own game when I converted it to 3.0 I figured a watchman in a rough area would probably earn a level every 3 years or so for a while, slowing down as he levels up and sees less street level action. Rookies are 1st level warriors, veterin watchmen are probably 1st to 2nd level. Sargeants / corporals 3rd to 5th, and so on. Retirement might find a watch captain at 6th or 8th level after a career spanning 2-3 decades. Certainly no one any starting adventurer would want to mess with, but not the greatest fighter in the realm either. Farmers in dangerous areas would level up similarly, probably splitting their levels between commoner and warrior (assuming they are in a militia of some type). Again no one to mess with, but with families, day jobs and no particular desire to die they're not hero material.
I see your point.
However, I don't think the rules provide an XP penalty if you use non-lethal combat.
You're right though, that if your opponent is fighting with nothing more than untrained fists, you probably should reduce the CL and give out less XP....
1st ed towns had vampires and liches on the random encounter chart, and a pretty good chance of either really. Always laughed at that.
Gah, the forums ate my post. I'll put it more succinctly this time;
What I learned a long time ago is, before you click Submit, type CTRL-A and CTRL-C to copy your entire post to the clipboard. Then if the post-monster (CR4 aberration) eats your post, simply back your browser, paste it in, and re-submit.
Yes, for me, it was a hard-learned lesson, fraught with many bruises and a case of Carpal Tunnel.
First, goblins are always going to be better equipped than the farmland outliers, assuming the goblins are making a surprise raid. Commoners are proficient with one simple weapon - nothing else. Thus they have either poor AC or wear armor and a shield anyway and make their offense even worse than it already is. Even if they gain a level in warrior, I don't think people laboring all day long would be too inclined to wear even light armor, particularly in warm climates.
True, but humans won't fight them 1-1 any time they can help it. And pick-axes, lumber axes, and pitchforks/digging forks are just about as effective as dog slicers and horse choppers. Though you're right, farmers rarely if ever fight in armor.
Second, goblin bands generally outnumber your standard homestead. If you assume it's Ma, Pa, a couple of children of-age, and a hired hand or two that's a fight between 4-9 (3.5e MM) and 5-6. Add in things like the goblin warchanters from RotRL and... Yeah. It's a question of why the goblins aren't all high level. (easily hand-waved by saying they kill each other, of course)
That's only initially true.
The homesteaders run, and usually get away because the raiders are generally more interested in a pantry full of food and a coop full of chickens than they are in butchering a farmer's daughter. Generally.
So they run up the road to Hochleitner's farm (sorry, cheap reference, anyone with me on that one?) and they gather a few other farm families from nearby farms and a couple dozen angry farmsteaders fall upon the hapless raiders, often catching many of the stragglers who are still looking for a plump pig or a hidden cache of pretty baubles to steal.
At least, sometimes.
Even when not, there's a lot to be said for home field advantage. A couple commoners with pitchforks can hold a doorway against all of Xerxes' army, for days if they have to.
Third, and this is probably the biggest, fight or flight. Joe Farmer and his family aren't PCs. They will probably flee in the face of reasonably certain death, and gain reduced or no experience. The assumption that all survivors survived through bloodshed is flawed.
Exactly.
But you don't have to look any farther back than American history, and the homesteaders migrating west, fighting indians along the way (yeah, I know, not all indian tribes were hostile, but some were).
Those indians might drive them off the ranch for a while, maybe even with some casualties, but they always came back in numbers.
Finally, an assumption of one/month raid frequency, even in the 5-goblin-tribes RotRL seems a bit much. As portrayed, goblins have a fierce case of racial ADHD and it's said somewhere in there there's a lot of in-fighting. Between fighting themselves, licking their wounds (natural healing), and raids falling apart, it's entirely possible that not every farmstead sees a goblin raid with any real frequency.
You'll note in my post I made provisions for wolves and such.
Wild animals and other D&D-ish predators (griffons, hippogriffs, ankhegs, etc.) are the bane of many a farmstead, and most of that is above the capability of ordinary level 0 commoneres to contend with.
While a farmer with a simple crossbow may drive off a wolf, or kill/chase a fox out of the henhouse, he's not likely to save his sheep from a predatory griffon.
Yet, somehow, they do. Or there would be no farms or ranches in D&D.
Which means they may have hidden talents (levels) we generally overlook.
And don't forget. The DMG even talks about other types of encounters, such as climate. I imagine a farmer might even get XP from surviving a harsh winter or a swarm of locusts or a plague.
There's other things besides raids. It's a harsh scary world out there, and level 0 commoners just can't survive to a ripe old age unless they're living safely behind city walls in Paladin-ville, or maybe happily in Hobbiton (until the scourging, of course).
So they die. Or level up.
Darwinism.
Either way, the ones you meet are the leveled-up survivers, mostly.
All that said, though, DM_Blake is generally right about the other stuff - nastier, stronger monsters wandering around right outside town and dungeons full of nasties right under the commoner's feet is in many cases silly, albeit a few might be justified. Then again, it's a fun kind of silly, and apparently a rather popular one.
Thanks!
And right on.
Shackled City, anyone?
Undermountain?
I'm thinking my next campaign will put the Worlds Largest Dungeon right under Sandpoint...
(and because I love being anal, I have to mention the off-hand comment about Owen Skywalker's oh-so-impenetrable fortress - the main thing here is the sand people lack laser guns. Clearly the Skywalkers have the upper hand :p
That does make me wonder why the scavenging Jawas don't just invade, though. Guess it'd be bad for business or something.)
Oh, you did NOT go there...
Laser guns? Please...
Nobody in that particular galaxy far far away has laser guns. They have blasters. And so do the Sand People (Tusken Raiders) - watch Phantom Menace and you'll see them up on the cliff walls sniping at the pod racers.
And when Luke and Ben find the blasted Jawa crawler, Ben says "These blast points; much too accurate for Sand People. Only Imperial Storm Troopers are so precise." or something to that effect.
(which is strange, because those same sand people, some 3 decades ago when Luke's dad was just little pod-racing Anikin, were able to accurately ping plenty of rounds into those super fast pod racers at impressively long range. A very impressive display of blaster skills. But apparently by Luke's day, the sand people forgot their heritage of fine marksmanship).
How's that for anal?
DM_Blake, I find your ideas intriguing and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
...content full of win snipped...
Woot!
No newsletter here, though I should start one. Or at least a blog.
However, I will be publishing a novel this summer. You can subscribe to that if you'd like!
1st ed towns had vampires and liches on the random encounter chart, and a pretty good chance of either really. Always laughed at that.
Ooooh, I had forgotten that.
*tips hat to Thurgon's acute powers of recall*
Yeah, that was pretty funny.
How many level 1 warriors does it take to zerg a lich?
And if they all die but one, does that one remaining guy get enough XP to ping up to double-digit levels?
They outta at least make that guy a sergeant after that...
DM_Blake, I find your ideas intriguing and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
...content full of win snipped...
Woot!
No newsletter here, though I should start one. Or at least a blog.
However, I will be publishing a novel this summer. You can subscribe to that if you'd like!
Post the name when it is coming out so we can look for it.
1st ed towns had vampires and liches on the random encounter chart, and a pretty good chance of either really. Always laughed at that.Ooooh, I had forgotten that.
*tips hat to Thurgon's acute powers of recall*
Yeah, that was pretty funny.
How many level 1 warriors does it take to zerg a lich?
And if they all die but one, does that one remaining guy get enough XP to ping up to double-digit levels?
They outta at least make that guy a sergeant after that...
You bet but a 10th level fighter (1st ed and all) with no magic items, he'd have needed to sell all the ones he got from the lich just to train. 1500 X rating X level for 8 levels, and 2k X rating X 10 from last level, if I recall the numbers correctly. More likely he will have enough XP to level, but not the gold needed. Poor bastard.
Well unless the lich had his spell books with him(like in a wagon with the size of them in 1st ed), well then that level 10 fighter is swimming in gold and will not be a city guard much longer. He may own the city. Spell books were super expensive and if you found one of a high level guy, you hit the lottery.
Heh, all this XP discussion for NPCs... I guess that means there are still people that do XP by the book. I have long moved to a system where I award level-ups when I consider it appropriate and XP is not tracked at all.
I see your point.
However, I don't think the rules provide an XP penalty if you use non-lethal combat.
You're right though, that if your opponent is fighting with nothing more than untrained fists, you probably should reduce the CL...
IIRC the DMG pretty much says to reduce xp by circumstance if it's unwaranted (or increase it if it is waranted). In the rough part of my main city the Watch travel in groups, typically about 4 watchmen. One is an old hand (probably level 2-3) while the others are regular watchmen or rookies (level 1, maybe 2). That splits the xp and despite more frequent encounters leaves them with about the same xp as some lone watchmen in the quiet neighborhood. Part of the art of survival for the Watch in the rough areas in my game is to be noisy. You don't want to surprise anybody and start a fight afterall :D You just want to run them off or make a quiet arrest (if they have nowhere to run to). The Thieves Guild in my city has a long standing unwritten deal with several of the city watch companies. If they are caught they surrender. The watch will "find" a bag of coins in the Watchpost (courtesy of the Guild) and the thief will "escape" at some point. The theif then has to repay the Guild. If they're in the houses of the wealthy / powerful of course, the deal is off. Each quarter in my city has it's own watch, some more corrupt, some less. Just don't mess around in the temple quarter... Church soldiers can be a bit rough on the criminally inclined.
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Low-level stuff can be bought fairly easily in my campaigns, but powerful stuff can't be gotten except by finding it in a pile of treasure, commissioning it, or making it yourself.
However, I'm also a fan of the approach that Monte Cook took in Ptolus with the Dreaming Apothecary: a politically (and alignmently) neutral order of mages that contracts magic item sales through its clients' dreams.
It addresses the "why is the magic shoppe not robbed?" issue, and it also provides a way to keep in line with the gear-by-level guidelines without requiring the PCs to take crafting feats. However, it really con only be done believably in a metropolis or extraplanar city.
In fact, I discourage my players from taking crafting feats because it means I need to keep track of XP too closely.
Item creation feats add flavor in a campaign. Especially if the PC creates that unic magic item after effort and research. After all its lame to let the players take feats to make their combos and wait from YOU to throw wands/scrolls/potions in the game. If someone needs a super-usefull wand of healing then he should craft it. And if someone wants a magic axe then he should also craft it and dont wait from you to give him a magic axe in the trasure (if thats the way you give treasure).
And if you dont want to keep track of xp then simple charge only gold for item creation. In formulas 5gold = 1xp... Or you can judge that 3gold = 1xp in your campaign for item creations.
You two are talking about Pathfinder, right?
Because there is no more XP cost for crafting magic items in Pathfinder.
Gone are the days of forgetting how to cast a fireball because you brewed too many potions...
I allow my players to have wish lists of items that I consider for placement in adventures. It allows them input and the possibility of customization without me putting everything in a store. Of course, the don't always get whatever they wish for, so there's some give and take.
I've also run a Ptolus game and I think Monte solved these problems with the Dreaming Apothecary and the "used items" stores. The used items were useful for lower levels and when you got into higher level, more customized stuff, you could directly order it from the mages.
Finally, I've never been very happy with the necessity of magic items in 3.5e. It just adds complication and I've always been worried out unbalancing things by allowing too many or too few items. I'd be much happier if the role of magic items were simplified.