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Mysteries are great in their own time and place but if every +1 is like pulling teeth it's just ech ... Mysteries aren't special if everything is mysterious, in other words.I agree.
Does the same principle apply to bad-asses? If everyone's a bad-ass, no one is?
Yeah. IMO everybody in the PARTY needs to be a badass in their own way (whether they be a badass fighter, a badass spellcaster, or a badass Skill Dudebro), but the rest of the world consists of "mere mortals" and epic threats that can challenge the party (or overwhelm them if need be).
I don't have a whole lot of experience with Forgotten Realms but my limited experience with it shows that this is not the case in that world (it seems like everybody, down to the lowliest peasant is at least 10th level and all the main character types are in Epic levels. -.-) and it's a big part of the reason I'm not super enamored with it.
Does the same principle apply to bad-asses? If everyone's a bad-ass, no one is?Just to butt into other people's conversation for a second here , my personal answer to this would be "yes". Some baddies need to seriously threaten the PCs, others need to crumple like paper with looks of shock still frozen on their faces, and others just need to be somewhere in-between. For me, at least.
magic items that simply boost combat related numbers, whether it is a +1 sword, a +3 Clip fed Repeater Pistol, a +2 Belt of Physical Perfection of a +5 Amulet of Natural Armor, are nothing special, and shouldn't be made into such. save the special stuff for Artifacts, Legacy Weapons, and high powered magical equipment with a mountain of properties that aren't just combat boosters.
a Generic magetouched sword that increases your attack and damage by +1 does not need a special description.
if the Weapon were Say Mjiolnir and had a mountain of properties, not all of which were static bonuses or related to adventuring and/or combat, i can understand a description, but it better be more than a +6 throwing and returning hammer that can cast a 20d6 bolt of lightning at will. and i don't mean combat wise, i mean in overall fluff abilities
taking a +6 throwing and returning warhammer, giving it the ability to create a 20d6 bolt of lightning at will and calling it Mjiolnir is a bit lazy. it needs more meat to be a truly epic magic weapon worthy of being given a description, not just a named specific warhammer with a powerful ability.
what i mean is, if you include a powerful magic weapon described as an ancient relic, it better be a powerful relic worthy of it's reputation
Excalibur wasn't simply a +6 longsword, it had a mountain of other properties, most of which were non-adventuring related, but instead related to kingship.
i really didn't like Forgotten Realms either. from what i read of it, it was a mary-suetopia where just about everybody except maybe the PCs were 10th level or higher with no justification and the main characters of the FR line were way into Epic and Even Mythic Levels, i mean, Elminister, a 40th level wizard, was a joke because he was a 1e Wizard ported over to 3.5e and still followed the 1e Philosophy. other than the fiat powers of being Mystra's chosen, he died to one pounce from a 10th level barbarian.
and if that wasn't a sign of Maru-Suedom, most of the FR characters were statted up beyond Epic and a great many were breaking out the immortals handbook because Epic wasn't Epic enough for them.
i mean you had normal lowbie PCs working for a world where just about every 10 year old girl was a 10th level PC classed character and where her grandfather was probably a 40th level Archmage and the Family Dog was probably a domesticated Nessian Warhound.
I've never had an eye roll, a "This is BS!" gritted teeth or any reaction other than a determination to employ whatever resources the PC could bring to bear on identifying that which had come into their possession. To me, and to them, that's a great deal of the game's fun.
To you it's fun. For you players you think it's fun because they don't roll their eyes even though they become determined to use whatever resource they could bring to bear just to end your little mystery.
Like I said, saying to your group "you find a +1 sword" might be boring or immersion breaking. But when casting Identify doesn't identify the magical properties it gets old, fast.
Of course if you have never used a magic item from the CRB, as you claim, then you've never had a + anything weapon in your game (because those are listed in the CRB).
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I'm just going to leave this here.
just because i read the article years ago and found it interesting, doesn't mean i agree with it. imagine how much effort goes into the description of each magic weapon when you do that. just let "mage touched weapons" be "mage touched weapons" and well, not every magic weapon requires a unique description
if every +1 sword is unique, than no +1 sword is unique.
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The grizzled warrior handed the ancient blade to the wizard and said, "Pray tell old friend, what mighty enchantments have been woven into this finely wrought steel?"
Seems to me that the warrior is begging for the wrong answer.
"It's enchanted... not sure what else you want me to tell you. Easier to hit things with and easier to wound with."
That's as specific as it's going to get, because that's exactly what it does - unless said warrior wants to bring the mathematics into it.
I'm just going to leave this here.just because i read the article years ago and found it interesting, doesn't mean i agree with it. imagine how much effort goes into the description of each magic weapon when you do that. just let "mage touched weapons" be "mage touched weapons" and well, not every magic weapon requires a unique description
if every +1 sword is unique, than no +1 sword is unique.
Oddly enough, the author of that article says the exact same thing.
Oddly enough, the author of that article says the exact same thing.I'm just going to leave this here.just because i read the article years ago and found it interesting, doesn't mean i agree with it. imagine how much effort goes into the description of each magic weapon when you do that. just let "mage touched weapons" be "mage touched weapons" and well, not every magic weapon requires a unique description
if every +1 sword is unique, than no +1 sword is unique.
i must be mis-remembering from like half a decade ago and remembering descriptions given to low powered magetouched weapons.
Never said I don't like role playing or item descriptions, but when my character takes effort to find out what his magical item is and the DM responds "no, sorry it's just too magical for you to know," then that is aggravating.
Have you ever thought if the possibility your players don't express their disappointment with you because you treat anyone who complains as a petulant child? Might stifle discourse a little...
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And if a player's idea of role-play is heaving a heavy sigh, rolling his or her eyes, and snapping, "I don't care about the stupid description! I cast Identify. Just tell me what it is, and what it does!"... petulant children
Seems more like he's playing a role quite well.
The role of someone who'd just rather you get on with it instead of making everything like pulling teeth.
Your game is not the norm. Every weapon in your game is special in some manner? Great.
But people are not "petulant children" just because they don't prefer that style of play.
Hell, it's even slightly immersion breaking that EVERYTHING has some epic story behind it and your character just HAPPENS to know what it is every time.
Like:
That doesn't mean I'm going to make people jump through innumerable hoops to learn that the enchanted gladius once wielded by Cincinnatus against the Sabines is +1, and glows blue whenever the Republic is in danger. Considering that in my game, the Roman Republic has been defunct for 1,200 years
Why does your party know this? Would they not just know that it's a magic weapon?
Unless there's some big story behind it or your character is a Roman history buff, they're going to neither know nor care that it once belonged to a guy 1200 years dead.
why does everybody know the epic story of every magic weapon? and why does every weapon have an epic story behind it? not every individual is a Roman history buff and not everybody cares about an Epic Story behind a tool they intend to use for a few levels and replace with an Upgrade later.
i wouldn't consider it the action of a petulant child to ask to proceed back to the game and give us the relevant mechanical details, rather than adding a bunch of fluff that everybody in the Party just happens to know about.
i might play a character of Roman Background whom probably lived through the empire but was too focused on their own survival to care much about current events. such as a fey creature whom grew up in Rome raised by a wealthy and mostly human family, but was too focused on working and pleasing the locals of the present to care about the past. hell, she could have even been the wife of a long deceased emperor but simply saw him as a 20 year fling in a lifespan of multiple millenia. so even a former Roman living in the Italian Local 1200 years after the events, just may have things that left her not caring much about the last 1200 years of her nation's history. she could even be thinking to herself "Italy, they go through Rulers like a Greek goes through Hummus. used to be Rome, but there are too many rulers to keep track of and too much history to process" so yeah, 3,000 year old nymph living in Rome/Italy and just not caring about current events or history because she is too focused on her own life to dwell on the problems of others,
Frankly, forcing players to walk around with a bunch of items with unknown properties is a lot of extra bookkeeping.
Player: I attack the orc with my new magic longsword!
GM: Is that the longsword from the bandit chief or from the gladiator?
Player: I don't know, I just wrote down 'magic longsword'.
When I was running Age of Worms, there are some potions that have a pickled Kyuss worm in them. Drinking them gave the normal benefits of the potion, but you also get attacked by the worm. I forget the reason, but it was supposed to be possible to identify the potion without seeing the worm.
Clearly, the intent was that at some point, the players would drink the potion and become afflicted with the worm. Dramatic moment, start to reveal the big bad, and all that. Sounds clever. Would be clever in a novel.
But in practice, it meant I had to keep track of which potion, exactly, the PCs were drinking and carrying. And to make it a surprise, I had to do it for the whole campaign, because if I suddenly ask them 'But write down that those potions are from the lizardfolk lair, and let me know when you drink one', they know something is up and the whole trick is ruined. So I had to track it all campaign, even though these potions didn't show up until something like the third or fourth installment.
The result was I made item cards for every single piece of loot, for the entire campaign, dramatically increasing my prep time.
If your players actually keep track of the whole history of every item they pick up, then I guess you can do it, but it still means you're duplicating a lot of the player-handled inventory in your GM notes, because for every 'bandit chief's magic longsword' they write down, you have to have 'the bandit cheiftain's sword is a +2 shock longsword, with the command word "cheese"' written down, all because you want to make them guess the command word.
Or if you use item cards for every single inventory item, where they're numbered, which lets the players do less bookkeeping, but still means the GM needs complete notes somewhere, numbered.
Frankly cool descriptions of magic are ... well cool, but Pathfinder is a mechanical game and players and GM's need to know the qualities of the magic being used. Further, it doesn't really help to replace concrete mechanical terms with vague terms not represented in the rules you are just replacing one set of terminology with another.
So...give your magic sword a cool name and back story but make sure the GM knows that "frost reaver the mighty weapon of my heroic ancestor" is actually a +2 flaming greataxe.
"Graphic description porn" can actually interfere with good immersion by breaking the flow of the game.there is a difference between immersing yourself enough to imagine, and developing such levels of detailed description, that it is basically graphic description porn. it is a mistake i learned with my many groups i played with, they don't want to hear the elaborate descriptions revolving around Umbriere's Victorian Style Spidersilk dress, when the words, Fancy Black Silken Noble's dress is sufficient.
i used to get quite graphic with every layer back in the day, down to her preferences of bloomers and hosiery over petticoats.
it definitely could, until i tried to tone it down as much as possible and try for more reduction every day.
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Jaelithe, keep in mind that when people say "doing X would get old fast", they're speaking in the context of the standard/default level of wealth/magic. Thing is, I'm getting the impression from your posts that you don't realize what that standard is.
The default assumption of the game is that say a 9th-level fighter will have approximately 46,000gp worth of magic items, with roughly 12,000gp worth of weaponry, another 12k or so worth of magic armor/protection, etc. Everyone's game will be a little different, but that's the baseline that the system is built around.
You've eventually revealed that in your games, the level of magic availability is nowhere near that. That's fine. I just think you fostered a miscommunication when you failed to mention that difference up front.
Since nobody (neither you nor anyone else) mentioned any deviations from the baseline, the assumed context of the entire dialogue has been that baseline.
So when people said "having all magic items be mysterious would be a hassle", since they didn't specify an alternate context, the point they were communicating was actually "having all magic items be mysterious would be a hassle when you have the magnitude of magic items suggested in the rules". I'd venture a guess you wouldn't actually disagree with that.
Similarly, when you said things like "Every magic item is unique and unknown", since you failed to specify an alternate context, the point you communicated was that you had far more of those unique and mysterious magic items in your game than it sounds like is actually the case.
Again, there's nothing wrong with playing a low-magic/low-wealth game; as you've demonstrated, it enables a whole different flavor that isn't practical in standard-wealth/standard-magic Pathfinder. Just be aware that when you comment on things about your game, you need to specify the differences between your game and the standard so that people have the necessary context to correctly interpret your comments. If you don't, then you get dialogues like the above where your statements are taken in the context of "default Pathfinder", and in that context they take on entirely different meanings and ramifications.