Ehhh also most of the big treasure types (A-H) are found in big wilderness lairs or are held by especially dangerous monsters. H is nearly exclusive to dragons if I've got my head on straight at the moment.

Then, there's the skew towards expendable items in the tables once you do determine an item is present.

Quote from: Imp;598788Ehhh also most of the big treasure types (A-H) are found in big wilderness lairs or are held by especially dangerous monsters. H is nearly exclusive to dragons if I've got my head on straight at the moment.

Then, there's the skew towards expendable items in the tables once you do determine an item is present.

Exactly.  It's a bit late for me to get into all the numbers, but I may still tomorrow.  It's essentially like Uncle Gary explains in the DMG:  fair odds of getting armour or a weapon, decent odds of getting something miscellaneous, and pretty good odds of getting potions, scrolls or wands.

Where I think D&D really could do better with magic items is with 'attunement' or 'activation'.  

Right now, the assumption is you kill someone, you take their stuff, you use it.  If you get lots of stuff, you end up with 'extras' and you have to find something to do with them.  Either sell them off to buy what you really want, or equip hundreds of followers; what have you.  

But imagine if you could give someone an Excalibur type weapon and the PC could choose to use it, but only by activating it first.

Similarly to the way that an artifact has a 'destruction condition', each magic item could have an 'attunement condition'.  So, for example, you find a ring of invisibility and to activate it, you have to wear the ring during the rising of the next new moon.  Suddenly you don't have people playing 'magic-item-swap'...  Some items could have some pretty unpleasant conditions.  The BBEG is using a +4 sword?  Sure, you can take it and use it, but first you have to wield it to slay 12 innocent virgins.  Your PCs still want to use it?

Hoards, also...

75% of the time when my PCs find something magic, it is being used by the owner, and used against them first.

Quote from: LordVreeg;59882275% of the time when my PCs find something magic, it is being used by the owner, and used against them first.

Yup.

It's why my groups very rarely get their hands on potions or scrolls...

Quote from: deadDMwalking;598817Where I think D&D really could do better with magic items is with 'attunement' or 'activation'.  

Right now, the assumption is you kill someone, you take their stuff, you use it.  If you get lots of stuff, you end up with 'extras' and you have to find something to do with them.  Either sell them off to buy what you really want, or equip hundreds of followers; what have you.  

But imagine if you could give someone an Excalibur type weapon and the PC could choose to use it, but only by activating it first.

Similarly to the way that an artifact has a 'destruction condition', each magic item could have an 'attunement condition'.  So, for example, you find a ring of invisibility and to activate it, you have to wear the ring during the rising of the next new moon.  Suddenly you don't have people playing 'magic-item-swap'...  Some items could have some pretty unpleasant conditions.  The BBEG is using a +4 sword?  Sure, you can take it and use it, but first you have to wield it to slay 12 innocent virgins.  Your PCs still want to use it?

Activation, like learning magic words and such, is underutilized in games. Even outside of any potential magical effects, it's in-genre. You don't know if your oil lamp has a genie until you do something with it (rub the lamp, say a command word, or whatever).

The other thing I'd like to see used more often is intelligent and/or willful magic items. If more items had something in common with Stormbringer or the one ring, I think that would bring a bit of the sense of wonder back. Even before accounting for the nature of their power or whether they were common.

There's rules for this stuff, but for whatever reason they don't get used much IME. I'm sort of wondering why that is now.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;598562More generally, I think trying to put the magic back in a "+1 sword" by limiting their availability is mostly wasted effort.

Oddly enough, players in my experience seem to place more value on non-magical +1, +2 and +3 swords than on minor magical gewgaws. Everyone appreciates a quality tool. 19 of them aren't a burden, they are an arsenal. Your notes on enhancing the flavour of arcana are along the right lines, but I wouldn't make every mechanical advantage magical in nature.

I am a sucker for magical trinkets. The more unpredictable the result the more they interest me.

I thought D&D was the place the weird and wild magic went on.  Magic shops?  Common as hell on Oerth.  In game terms, in some places they are absolutely essential.

Most D&D realms are like this, but there are plenty of other settings where this woudn't be right, such as Warhammer's Old World.

Hey!  I just thought up a new TV series!  Hell on Oerth!  It's about the building of a railway from Greyhawk to Dyvers, and the Suel immigrants the Circle of Eight pay a crap wage to build it and freed slaves from the Pomarj.

Quote from: TristramEvans;598569So, older D&D is...Adventure Time?

From what I've heard, that show was influenced by D&D games.

RPGPundit

Quote from: CRKrueger;598744Damn dude, took you long enough.

Silly me, I want to promote free speech.  I didn't ban the guy for what he thinks about RPGs; I banned him because it was pretty clear he didn't give a fuck about disrupting the site in order to push forward a conflict based on what he thinks.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;598962From what I've heard, that show was influenced by D&D games.

RPGPundit

It very much is, and has D&D references in it all over the place.


"I cast my magic missiles!"

"The Flame Princess really isn't all that bad."
"So you mean, like Chaotic-neutral?"

Quote from: RPGPundit;598963Silly me, I want to promote free speech.  I didn't ban the guy for what he thinks about RPGs; I banned him because it was pretty clear he didn't give a fuck about disrupting the site in order to push forward a conflict based on what he thinks.

RPGPundit

Anyone I have placed on Ignore, you eventually Ban, as I am sure you can see.  You did very well, in my eyes, to try to allow as much rope as possible here.  I sometimes see that the only real sin here is lack of appreciation of the other posters time and legitimacy.

Quote from: beejazz;598901Activation, like learning magic words and such, is underutilized in games. Even outside of any potential magical effects, it's in-genre. You don't know if your oil lamp has a genie until you do something with it (rub the lamp, say a command word, or whatever).

The other thing I'd like to see used more often is intelligent and/or willful magic items. If more items had something in common with Stormbringer or the one ring, I think that would bring a bit of the sense of wonder back. Even before accounting for the nature of their power or whether they were common.

There's rules for this stuff, but for whatever reason they don't get used much IME. I'm sort of wondering why that is now.

I do have a number of items that are special when a PC gets them, but can be 'attuned' for better effect.  Took my PCs a while to learn and realize....

Quote from: Blackhand;598958I thought D&D was the place the weird and wild magic went on.  Magic shops?  Common as hell on Oerth.  In game terms, in some places they are absolutely essential.

Most D&D realms are like this, but there are plenty of other settings where this woudn't be right, such as Warhammer's Old World.

Magic shops are a 3E thing. Here's a quote from Carl Sargent from the introduction to Night Below (a very underrated adventure campaign, btw):

"PCs should never be allowed to buy magical items (who's going to sell them? You think that wizard spent months enchanting a wand of frost just so he could sell it?). There are times, however, when a little trading between PCs and NPCs may be appropriate."

This wasn't in 1979; Sargent wrote this in 1995. And he wasn't some freelancer with a peculiar take on magic in D&D; Sargent was a TSR employee and the principal author of Greyhawk material at the time.