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Except 3x and PF systems were built with the intent of characters needing a certain amount of plus gear and weapons to fight the rising AC and to hit of monsters. So inevitably as a player you were looking for the next plus in the next big city cause you knew you'd need it for the next book in the adventure path.
5e isn't built with a character needing more and more plusses or Christmas tree affect, granted as other People have said, the DM makes or breaks this style of play and certain people like a certain style of play. I've always liked that cool first magic item for my character and hang on to it as it's a momento of the start of my adventuring days...something I'll hang on too and not just sell a toy the next town over for the +2 version of it.
I think that's why I got burned out with 3x / Pathfinder, I found myself as a player looking at my +2 ring of protection and wondering if I can trade it in on the +3 in Absalom or whatever large city we were near. I wanted an AC 30+ or I'd be mince meat soon.
I've used legacy type items back in my 2e days so that a character held on to certain items from their early adventuring days and unlock certain powers. Not every item but some so it stays with them as they grow.
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Except 3x and PF systems were built with the intent of characters needing a certain amount of plus gear and weapons to fight the rising AC and to hit of monsters. So inevitably as a player you were looking for the next plus in the next big city cause you knew you'd need it for the next book in the adventure path.
I think that's why I got burned out with 3x / Pathfinder, I found myself as a player looking at my +2 ring of protection and wondering if I can trade it in on the +3 in Absalom or whatever large city we were near. I wanted an AC 30+ or I'd be mince meat soon.
Altho the Christmas tree is a nice general rule of thumb, there's nothing so hard and fast about it. I mean, sure you dont wanna suck, but if youre 1 to even 4 AC behind the curve, you just spell up or use tactics. I mean maybe the other player is above the curve on AC, but you concentrated on rods for spells instead.
It's never been a significant issue in any PF game I have played in.
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It sounded to me before like you were saying the GM could just fix all the problems with magic stores and Christmas tree effects just because he's the GM and controls things. I still don't see how you do that.
They sort of can, it just requires extra and unnecessary work, since you can send weaker encounters against your players to deal with the fact they are lower in wealth than they should be.
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While I'm not a big fan of Magic Mart, I do get that sometimes a player wants something particular for his character. In those cases, I encourage a search for a quest that will uncover such an item or at least commissioning it from a wizard who needs them to go get ingredients or complete some tasks while he makes it. They still get to select their items, but have to work for them rather than just picking them off a rack.
I've even found for simpler items that roleplaying the shopping, such as forging a good relationship with the temple for healing potions or having to put up with the insulting gnome enchanter for your wands, makes disposable items a bit more memorable.
Suppose you include a way in your game to transfer the enchantment on a found weapon or piece of armor to a different item? A spell or crafting feat might be able to accomplish that.
That's a pretty good idea. I'm totally adding this idea to the idea pool. Perhaps there's legend of an old, Dwarven forge that can transfer enchantments into a newly-made weapon.
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I'm running 5th ed at the moment, where you cant buy magic items.Yeah, I noticed that. Made me wonder why money was a thing at all.It seems to me that the 5E expectation is that the money they find adventuring funds the various downtime activities of the PCs. (One of which is craft magic item fwiw, but the intention appears to be that one's loot will go into things like building strongholds and so forth).
The 5E DMG does provide rules for buying magic items - however my impression is that most 5E DMs prefer making them unbuyable. They're also very much on the quick-and-dirty end of the spectrum and don't even pretend to be any kind of economic simulation.
"Pretending to be any kind of economic simulation" is one of my pet peeves with D&D/3.x.
It isn't. It isn't even a good pretence, but because the pretence is there I keep wanting to take it more seriously.
For 5E, since my preference is usually for games that aren't focused on downtime, I'd rather just hand out less loot.
I think that approach is becoming very common.
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It sounded to me before like you were saying the GM could just fix all the problems with magic stores and Christmas tree effects just because he's the GM and controls things. I still don't see how you do that.They sort of can, it just requires extra and unnecessary work, since you can send weaker encounters against your players to deal with the fact they are lower in wealth than they should be.
Or give them a higher point buy or one Mythic Tier. Or a pool which adds to a stat, or.......
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Hi all just a quick rant but after I had been looking at few post I just have to say .
IS it me or have magic items just become another resource to be brought and sold as needed players and by default thair characters see them as no more than aids in making them machines that are mathematical more likely to smeg the next encounter.
So they can get more loot to take to ye olde magic mart and buy another gross of scrolls potions and other magical gear to fit in with there pre-planed character concept.
Where is the wonder gone and the excitement when players find a new item among a treasure trove, I'm not saying players should not be able to buy minor magic items in big citys , but when I see people comparing the price of things to find the most cost effective way of doing things then sorry in my mind your missing out on the point a bit magic items like staffs,wands and other items should be rare and wonderful.
Not just something to be crossed of as you use them like torches arrows and rations
Because you can only stay naive and innocent on how the game operates for so long.
The thing to get your players excited about and invested in, is not the magic items, but the story and if they aren't the players who can get interested in the story, than there isn't anything to be done.
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They sort of can, it just requires extra and unnecessary work, since you can send weaker encounters against your players to deal with the fact they are lower in wealth than they should be.
The only thing that I don't agree with is that this work is unnecessary. Because it creates a different feel if you're playing this way and this feel might be what you're actually going for. It makes the PC's a bit more mundane and that's something I really would like to encourage because it allows you to tell more down-to-earth storylines than possible with standard Pathfinder.
So the problem is in my view not that it makes characters weaker compared to the standard. It's more that it does mainly with the non-spellcasting classes so it pronounces the power gap between spellcasters and the rest.
In the end it doesn't matter if your fighter has a +10 longsword of uber-awesomeness because the wizard still steals the spotlight. So if you want to make magic items special, you first have to make sure that magic generally is something special. Which, if uttered as my preference, each time causes people to tell me that I'd better play another system.
The thing to get your players excited about and invested in, is not the magic items, but the story and if they aren't the players who can get interested in the story, than there isn't anything to be done.
Problem is that all this magical garbage heavily interferes with all kinds of interesting storys that are not the standard D&D/Pathfinder story. I mean, just think about all those stories included in Appendix N which actually translate very badly into an D&D3.5/Pathfinder kind of play.
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Problem is that all this magical garbage heavily interferes with all kinds of interesting storys that are not the standard D&D/Pathfinder story. I mean, just think about all those stories included in Appendix N which actually translate very badly into an D&D3.5/Pathfinder kind of play.
There are times in Pathfinder that you find weapons with stories. Take the Goblin Hero that wielded the magic longsword he took from a human. He was known by the other goblins for that weapon. Now a PC might look at it and think ooh bonus to attack and damage. But if you turned around and made it so that other goblins from that tribe, or that knew that hero, recognized the sword, the story can suddenly add little bonuses here and there without you having to alter the campaign set in front of you. Just as GM make the occasional goblin shaken for a round or two upon seeing that sword.
"OH NO, that's blah blah blah's sword...you, you actually killed him?"Then, just to keep things interesting, have another fly into a rage when he sees it
"I know that sword! You thief!"
This could be used in multiple campaigns, the Titanmauler Barbarian that thinks a named Ogres hook is cool and keeps it, the wizard who finds a useful wand that a winter witch wielded..etc...etc
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The only thing that I don't agree with is that this work is unnecessary. Because it creates a different feel if you're playing this way and this feel might be what you're actually going for. It makes the PC's a bit more mundane and that's something I really would like to encourage because it allows you to tell more down-to-earth storylines than possible with standard Pathfinder.
It makes those without spell casting ability more mundane. Those with magic of their own are still very much not mundane.
There is a really simple fix: follow the actual rules for market.
I've seen too many games ran as if you can buy anything whose book price is lower than your character sheet gold. Just go to any city, and everything is available, if you have the money.
Don't do that.
Maybe put in game a recurring Mercane who (for some mysterious reason that may even lead to side quests) always has the exact item a player wants. But that Mercane will be encountered "randomly" and rarely, not just whenever players ask.
Other than that, make sure that PCs have an appropriate wealth by level not by letting them buy any exact item they wish, but making them find appropriate loot (useful for their characters without necessarily being the mathematical best they'd buy with money) that is there for a reason and with a story.
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It's been that way for over a decade now, and I(as a player) never found much wonder in magic items, and a lot of players feel that way. Making them rare doesn't translate to "more special" for everyone.
For the players that do see them as special, giving them something that is not in any official book still makes their eyes twinkle. What I plan to do next time I run a campaign is to use the unchained rules that allow enhancement bonuses to be built into the character. That way they can spend gold on magic items for the "cool factor" vs the "need factor".
That's what I'll be doing going forward. Magic items other than scrolls and potions will become rare, and those that do appear will be unique.
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Pathfinder is the pen and paper version that caters to people who like to crunch numbers and constantly upgrade gear.
I liken it to many of the PC MMOs out there. Those computer games realised that for many players in the world, it was the search for the best gear possible that drove their gaming. The plot is secondary to that need.
Well, pen and paper games worked that out long before computer games. Pathfinder is just the latest version of that trend.
Other games, like 5e and some futuristic settings, make magic gear rare and money rare as well. It is expensive to buy just mundane gear in 5e. Full plate costs upwards of 1000 gold. At level 7 my party has only just gotten access to that type of money.
As a Mage, all that cash disappears in to your spell book. It costs a very pretty penny indeed to scribe spells.
You don't need gear so much either. Your character has the majority of what they need built into the class
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I personally don't think that magic items being able to be bought in a magic mart so easily would take away the "magic" and see it more as a presentation issue.
I mean, I've run games in a modern manapunk setting where everyone has tonnes of magic items (even the walls of everyday-people houses were enchanted with prestidigitation), and it was still magical because of how the magical items were described and utilised.
Admittedly I'm also the type who sees "magic" in trees that go from green to purple, the night sky, or really odd looking houses, and has been playing with a 3D printed fish toy for the past two days... so I may have a skewed perspective.
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Presentation matters.
The +1 Longsword you found in the tomb of a lost elven king is always going to have more "kick" than the Frost Brand you bought at Lucky Louie's Discount Cutlery...
Until a +1 isn't good enough to hit the things you're swinging at and you need the +3 from the frostbrand
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The problem I've found with the whole presentation aspect is that the players just don't care. Sure, you could have them find an intriguing magical item with a cool design, a bit of backstory, and a unique effect; that will just make them want more for it when they haggle it away in order to buy their next iterative bonus to their armor, headband, weapon, etc...
Magic items in 3rd edition games are, as noted, part of the wealth advancement track. This means that characters of a certain level will expect to have generally around a certain amount of gold, and if you give them cool magical items with the intention that they keep them, more often than not they'll just sell them so they can get whatever it is they need for their build of the day.
The only way I see around this is to face the problem at the root, and get rid of the need for so many magical items in order for PCs to be considered capable. 2nd edition worked pretty well for this, and so does 5th. Other systems have also been invented, in the Unchained books. However, if you play Pathfinder as is, you've got to accept that magic items are run of the mill and that your players will almost always buy their big 6 items, and use everything else they find to fund their spending habits.
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You can do that. But regardless of the story attached to it and how cool the GM or even the players think it is, the game mechanics push you to upgrade.
You're not going to keep using that +1 goblin longsword when you can replace it with a +3 Furious longsword. Even if it doesn't have a cool story.
Gear needs to upgrade with the characters. There are multiple ways to do that - the simplest of which is the default: Find or buy better gear.
The game has rules for upgrading magic weapons, if you have the time and money to do so. (Granted the goblin example would've only worked in the first book of that module) In fact most of the pathfinder modules that I've run, specifically tell you to give players time for stuff like that.
But even if you don't have the time/money and have to upgrade, it could still be used for the next magic weapon, armor, or item you find. (so not just limited to melee) A good example was a wizard in another game we played took an ice wand from a named winter witch, and even after it ran out of spells, kept it tied to her belt. This drew ire both from people that didn't know she wasn't a winter witch, and from the enemy that knew she wasn't. Yet at the same time helped in bluff checks to pass as one
Granted all of these are very circumstantial, and you never want to overdo it (lest it lose it's 'magic' or alter the game too much) but it adds flavor to the game and can have a strong impact on how your PCs interact with the world around them. Save from the, detect magic, throw it in the bag, sell, divide, repeat.
Problem is that all this magical garbage heavily interferes with all kinds of interesting storys that are not the standard D&D/Pathfinder story. I mean, just think about all those stories included in Appendix N which actually translate very badly into an D&D3.5/Pathfinder kind of play.I'm not sure Appendix N stories translate well into any version of D&D. Maybe low-level B/X or AD&D 1st edition, but that's a stretch.
Appendix What?
Not all stories are going to translate well into D+D style systems. D+D/Pathfinder is at it's heart, a mechanics driven wargame with roleplaying bolted on. It's a game system that inists on mailing almost every detail down to mechanics. I certainly would not try to recreate Dr. Who style adventures because of the wargaming nature of the game.
Cubicle 7 and Storyteller on the other hand iare mechanics light, but it also requires more work by and more faith in the GM's ability to create challenges. Items become less of a stat creation as more of this will do this at this point in the story. Story-based systems are also considerably more player-driven as accomplices in how the running details of the story are written as well as played out.
But just for some perspective. Fafrd and the Grey Mouser are known for their deeds and the names of their swords. But those named swords aren't constant companions, they're just the names they give to whatever blade they are holding at the moment. They go through a lot of them in the course of their stories.
I aimed in my last campaign to:
(a) give PCs selectable bonus progression - you have a mini-budget to buy enhancement bonuses to the usual stats, and
(b) to give out magic items that allowed characters to do things they wouldn't otherwise be able to do.
For example, an item that allows a fighter to switch places with a willing ally three times a day as an immediate action. If that ally was being attacked, the fighter takes the hit in their place.
Or an item that allows him to swing his sword and create an area-effect attack.
Or a short-range teleport that requires an Acrobatics check to avoid a mishap.
Or a powerful illusory disguise that allows the entire group to pose as another species (orc, zombie) to infiltrate an enemy base.
I'd call it a partial success. Never really got much Wonder going, and it killed the fun of "Yay we found loot we can sell for 16,000gp now I can buy the thing I wanted" Diablo-esque grinding. But that may have been due to the specifics of the campaign more than the idea itself.
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And as you said earlier, I'm not actually sure any version of D&D really did. Not without some serious restrictions and house rules.
I'm not disagreeing, but at least the inspiration could be seen in the product. 3.5 and by extension, Pathfinder in contrast doesn't seem to be inspired by those sources, though you could make a point that Pathfinder took some inspiration by the products inspired by those sources (contrary to 3E). But that's mainly on the side of the setting.
My main problem with Pathfinder isn't even the system itself because that can be modified to emulate any kind of story you want to get out of it. The problem is more that even when the designers explicitely write in the books that you are allowed to do so, most people seem to expect that you use the Rules as Laws to be obeyed.
Pathfinder is the pen and paper version that caters to people who like to crunch numbers and constantly upgrade gear.
Until a +1 isn't good enough to hit the things you're swinging at and you need the +3 from the frostbrand
Not all stories are going to translate well into D+D style systems. D+D/Pathfinder is at it's heart, a mechanics driven wargame with roleplaying bolted on.
Examples for phrases that sometimes drive me nuts (and I mean no offense to you three by that). Because it's not the system that makes us crunch numbers and constantly upgrade gear. It's not the system that makes us "need" +3 weapons. It's also not the system that makes us behave as playing a wargame.
It's us because we are to lazy to make the game our own, instead invent excuses for not making the game our own and then complain about that the game doesn't do what we like it to do. Because it's simply true what Mike Mearls once said and what I have in my signature in any forum that allows for signatures:
"Think the rulebook has all the answers? Then let's see that rulebook run a campaign!"
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Pathfinder is a game where a lot and an ever increasing amount of answers are within the books. Yes they have the line "you can change this" but the assumption is that you're using the very detailed and expansive rules.
Why play a modified pathfinder where you've gutted the entire system to fit your view? Why not pick another system that is more inclined to be played the way you're wanting to play.
The system tells us a party of 4 is APL 10, and that for that party a fairly easy fight is CR10. The system is assuming that the lv10 PCs have appropriate lv10 gear. The system has like 95% of it's rules material on fighting while other systems have many more rules or guidelines for non-combat stuff.
Like, I'm sure you can modify candyland or chess to emulate any kind of story, but that doesn't make candyland or chess a game to emulate those stories.
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Appendix N, relevantly, includes Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and Grey Mouser stories. If you want to emulate stories of that type, I'm not sure recent versions of D&D would be good choices (outside parts of the OSR).
Leiber played D&D with those two characters, so indeed, they do work.
Edition wars are silly, any edition of D&D can be a great fun game with the right DM and a good bunch of players. Conversely, with the wrong DM and a bad bunch of players, it is gonna suck no matter which Edition you play.
I have played them all, they all have good and bad points.
Appendix N, relevantly, includes Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and Grey Mouser stories. If you want to emulate stories of that type, I'm not sure recent versions of D&D would be good choices (outside parts of the OSR).Leiber played D&D with those two characters, so indeed, they do work.
Edition wars are silly, any edition of D&D can be a great fun game with the right DM and a good bunch of players. Conversely, with the wrong DM and a bad bunch of players, it is gonna suck no matter which Edition you play.
I have played them all, they all have good and bad points.
He played those characters, with a version of AD%D that was not nearly as crunch laden as 3.X and it's successors... First Edition. It makes a major difference
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There are way better systems for low magic. Swords and Wizardry, 5E, FATE, Mouse Guard, and even GURPS come to mind. Without automatic bonus progression, Pathfinder is just not a good chassis to build low magic onto - even a simple bard can outshine an entire party of barbarians and rogues, just by virtue of not relying on equipment. Having run low magic Pathfinder, I am pretty sure that it's always much more work intensive than low magic 5E. I wouldn't recommend it for someone coming into RPGs that wants a game where magic items aren't needed to succeed.
At some point in the midst of house-ruling and fudging DCs/ACs and removing monster special abilities, you need to ask yourself if there isn't another (potentially free) system that already does what you want Pathfinder to do.
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Why play a modified pathfinder where you've gutted the entire system to fit your view?
Because it's much less overall work to take an existing system that has a lot of rules, then proceed to trim or alter in order to fit what you need, than to try to come up with rules for naval combat or non-standard PC races out of whole cloth.
I mean, a significant part of the appeal of pathfinder is that there are three dozen classes and hundreds of race options, each which have archetypes or alternative features. So the rules exist to support what you want, for the most part. I mean, even if I'm playing a different game (in the D&D family, I run 13A a lot) I will often look to pathfinder's considerable volume of rules in order to figure out stuff "I want my grandfather to be a fire elemental" might look like in a PC race.
Why play a modified pathfinder where you've gutted the entire system to fit your view?Because it's much less overall work to take an existing system that has a lot of rules, then proceed to trim or alter in order to fit what you need, than to try to come up with rules for naval combat or non-standard PC races out of whole cloth.
I mean, a significant part of the appeal of pathfinder is that there are three dozen classes and hundreds of race options, each which have archetypes or alternative features. So the rules exist to support what you want, for the most part. I mean, even if I'm playing a different game (in the D&D family, I run 13A a lot) I will often look to pathfinder's considerable volume of rules in order to figure out stuff "I want my grandfather to be a fire elemental" might look like in a PC race.
It's even less overall work to take an existing system that has more of what you need than to trim or alter a rules heavy game to fit.
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Pathfinder is a game where a lot and an ever increasing amount of answers are within the books. Yes they have the line "you can change this" but the assumption is that you're using the very detailed and expansive rules.
Whose assumption? It's only relevant if it's the assumption of someone I'm playing with, and in my home games (it's admittedly different with PFS or generall with PbP games), rulebooks tend to have a really subordinate role (no matter the system).
Why play a modified pathfinder where you've gutted the entire system to fit your view? Why not pick another system that is more inclined to be played the way you're wanting to play.
Because over time I've grown comfortable with D&D 3 and variants and it's actually easier for me to make modifications then learning a new rules system (or even read it, to be honest, because I hate reading rulebooks). I can't even say if 5E (or any other system) would be more to my likings because I couldn't even bring myself to take a look in the books on my shelf so far.
Apart from that, the systems I know would all force me to do substantial work (not everytime for the same reason, but still). It isn't as easy as just changing the system, and that's not even considering that you first have to find players willing to play an even more exotic game then D&D already is.
The system tells us a party of 4 is APL 10, and that for that party a fairly easy fight is CR10. The system is assuming that the lv10 PCs have appropriate lv10 gear.
Yeah and that is great because it gives me a means to estimate how a change I make will influence the game experience. That is why I actually like the CR system, because it has made making modifications much more easier than before. Still, not a dogma, just a comment on how things work if you're following the base assumptions.
There are way better systems for low magic. Swords and Wizardry, 5E, FATE, Mouse Guard, and even GURPS come to mind.
It's not even necessarily about low magic. To me, it's more about the PCs general power with regard to the setting. It can be fun going over the top sometimes, but generally I prefer a more down to earth approach. I don't even need to make many modifications to reach this within the Pathfinder standard. Level 1-10, slow xp progression, no full casters. I could probably tell most of the stories I'm really interested in under these conditions. I can even afford to make magic items rarer in occurrence because , again, no full casters, so everyone is affected by this change.
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It's even less overall work to take an existing system that has more of what you need than to trim or alter a rules heavy game to fit.
I'm with PossibleCabbage on that. It's kinda like with the setting discussion regarding the Realms when 4E arrived. Until today, I have not understood why it should be easier to play in the new Realms and basically having to invent all those details instead of staying with the old realms and simply ignoring those details you don't like. Expect if you're saying that all those details are unnecessary anyways with which I would heavily disagree.
Same with the rules. I don't like a feat, a class, an archetype, any kind of subsystem? Well easy, just don't use it. But if I'm actually looking for a certain option, chances are that I will find it in the collected Pathfinder rules database (including 3PP stuff).The search won't probably take long and if I don't like the details, I can still modify it, but it surely will cost me less time as if I had to come up with this stuff by myself.
That's why I kinda shy away from 13th Age though it's the one system I'm actually interested in apart from Pathfinder. Because it would make me do work I don't particularly like and that is already done by PFRPG.
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Pathfinder expectations = following the rules.
Kirthfinder expectations = following kirth's homerules to pathfinder rules.
Homebrewed Pathfinder expectations = enough changes to warrant the person explaining that this is modified example above.
following rules = banning of a few classes/feats/stuff but not altering rules or the expectations set by the game, aka wealth is close, magic is available, enemies values fall in expected range.
homebrew/things to announce = E6, E8, low magic, start with NPC classes, low gold, low or high point buys, free feats or ignoring feat prereqs, ABP, alternate combat actions from unchained, Words of power, etc.
hence on the boards, if you don't say you're doing something different people will talk based on Pathfinder, which is the pathfinder rules. If altering them to suit you is your solution, congrats. But that doesn't change what the game is or advertises itself to be.
RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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It's even less overall work to take an existing system that has more of what you need than to trim or alter a rules heavy game to fit....
Same with the rules. I don't like a feat, a class, an archetype, any kind of subsystem? Well easy, just don't use it.
To be fair, you've got to put the post you're replying to in context: the general flow of the discussion wasn't about banning a class or choosing not to use an optional or modular subsystem. Maybe that's what YOU meant, but that wasn't previously clear.
I mean, the main topic of the thread is magic items. "Magic items as character progression" is not a quick-and-easy ban, or a subsystem to be discarded without consequence. It's a fundamental pillar of how Pathfinder is structured. Using your "just don't use it" suggestion isn't like banning a class or leaving out Retraining; it's more like cutting everyone's good saves down to bad saves, bad saves down to zero, full BAB down to 3/4 BAB, and 3/4 BAB down to half BAB; and then expecting there to be no consequences.
Banning the Leadership feat or the Gunslinger class doesn't alter the rest of the game. But a change like the above means you now have to either modify every monster you pull out of a Bestiary (and moreso as levels rise) or start homebrewing all your monsters yourself.
Cutting out wealth-as-progression from Pathfinder isn't like banning a feat, it's like banning the entire mechanic of having feats at all. There's a big difference between what you're apparently talking about and what Chess Pwn was commenting on.
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To be fair, you've got to put the post you're replying to in context: the general flow of the discussion wasn't about banning a class or choosing not to use an optional or modular subsystem.
No, it was that "less overall work to take an existing system that has more of what you need than to trim or alter a rules heavy game to fit."
Which I answered with a two-part argument: First, for big parts of the system, it's relatively easy to simply ignore the stuff that you don't like. And second, even where it isn't, choosing another system might force you to to do so much work at other parts, that the one advantage it might have is seriously outweighed by the disadvantages it brings with it. (and obviously I should have expressed this point better instead of just using 13th Age as a vague example).
Simply said: I don't know any system with a better approach to the magic item issue, that hasn't other substantial issues I don't want to put up with in exchange.
But a change like the above means you now have to either modify every monster you pull out of a Bestiary (and moreso as levels rise) or start homebrewing all your monsters yourself.
The thing is, it doesn't have to. It can be as simple as just choosing monsters from an accordingly lower CR. I'm not saying that this won't have any effect (I mean just the fact that you get less XP for such monsters will slow the level progression down if you don't modify anything), but it's not as if you had to put works of hour in it just to make the game playable again.
And I'm not necessarily of the opinion that a CR X encounter should be fairly easy for a APL X group, and I outrightly hate that you often have to use APL +4 encounters to really challenge your party, so that the PCs wouldn't be able to handle this stuff with the same ease as before is actually a good thing in my book.
Now in reality, you're naturally right because this change would do much more than to change the party-monster balance (and I already commented on that, especially as far as full casters are concerned). So I'm not saying that it won't have any consequences. Also I didn't advocate for throwing this whole part of the system out of the window. But there are already established ways how to make the PCs less independent of magical gear, so I'm absolutely not buying into any argument that it can't be done without changing the system so much that you better choose another system.
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Magic became cheap and easy, it's development was out sourced to those damn knife-ears tree huggers.
Back in my day the family only had a single +1 weapon, none of this fancy enchanted on fire business. You had a slightly better chance at slaying a goblin and that was it. And we appreciated these things! We'd even bury them with ourselves, kids these days just trade 'em like boiled sweets, the moment they get a hand on one the only thing their interested in is the appraise check to see the gold it'll be worth.
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My players don't trade out their magic items. They save them if they get a better one, or pay to have an existing one upgraded. I'm kinda proud of 'em for that. Plus it helps there are no magic marts in my campaign world. The magic they have is found in loot piles of BBEGs or other powerful opponents. And even then they're pretty rare.
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My players don't trade out their magic items. They save them if they get a better one, or pay to have an existing one upgraded. I'm kinda proud of 'em for that. Plus it helps there are no magic marts in my campaign world. The magic they have is found in loot piles of BBEGs or other powerful opponents. And even then they're pretty rare.
There are no magic marts but they can pay to upgrade items they've found. How does that work? They seem functionally the same to me.
EDIT: That's genuine curiosity, in case it reads as an accusation. I'm not saying it's inconsistent, I just wonder how it works in practice.
My players don't trade out their magic items. They save them if they get a better one, or pay to have an existing one upgraded. I'm kinda proud of 'em for that. Plus it helps there are no magic marts in my campaign world. The magic they have is found in loot piles of BBEGs or other powerful opponents. And even then they're pretty rare.
In our games, our characters tend to either keep their stuff, end up sacrificing an older (but sentimental) something for "the cause" or give it away to friendly NPCs.
We rarely sell stuff, or buy it.
(Unless it's via the Kingdom Building rules. Some definitely do the upgrading thing, though - generally the crafter of the group.)
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Where has all the magic gone
and where are all the CoDz...Myself, I'd have gone with Peter, Paul and Mary.
Where has all the magic gone, long time passing?
Where has all the magic gone, long time ago?
Where has all the magic gone?
Gone to the big six, every one
Oh when will they ever learn, oh when will they ever learn?
Fluff the magic roleplayer
lived by the seaand frolicked in the openness
in a land called D&D...
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He played those characters, with a version of AD%D that was not nearly as crunch laden as 3.X and it's successors... First Edition. It makes a major difference
Appendix N, relevantly, includes Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and Grey Mouser stories. If you want to emulate stories of that type, I'm not sure recent versions of D&D would be good choices (outside parts of the OSR).Leiber played D&D with those two characters, so indeed, they do work.
Edition wars are silly, any edition of D&D can be a great fun game with the right DM and a good bunch of players. Conversely, with the wrong DM and a bad bunch of players, it is gonna suck no matter which Edition you play.
I have played them all, they all have good and bad points.
Plenty of Crunch, trust me. Especially with added houserules and everyone had added houserules- that's how Fafhrd lost his hand.
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Plenty of Crunch, trust me. Especially with added houserules and everyone had added houserules- that's how Fafhrd lost his hand.He played those characters, with a version of AD%D that was not nearly as crunch laden as 3.X and it's successors... First Edition. It makes a major difference
Appendix N, relevantly, includes Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and Grey Mouser stories. If you want to emulate stories of that type, I'm not sure recent versions of D&D would be good choices (outside parts of the OSR).Leiber played D&D with those two characters, so indeed, they do work.
Edition wars are silly, any edition of D&D can be a great fun game with the right DM and a good bunch of players. Conversely, with the wrong DM and a bad bunch of players, it is gonna suck no matter which Edition you play.
I have played them all, they all have good and bad points.
I think you're a bit confused. Fafhrd lost his hand because that's the way it was written in story. Do you really think that Fritz Leiber used d20 dice to determine how his stories would progress? IF that were the case, he'd have gotten his hand back with a Regenerate.