D&D 4E: Seekers of the Sand

In an effort to try and get paid for my efforts I finally put something up on Drivethrurpg today (technically yesterday, but it was not approved until today): Seekers of the Sand.

It is a collection of “desert”-themed evocations for the seeker–because I know everyone is chomping at the bits for more seeker stuff–that fill up your Heroic tier selections, along with a paragon path if you go past that point, and some magic items to round everything out.

It runs five bucks, because when it was about half as long someone I showed it to said that they would pay that much if I added more stuff, so I did. It did not reflect the cost of me Photoshopping my own cover. That luxury is free.

Lemme know what you think. Hopefully it is worth the cash and I did a good job balancing them against existing powers (there is a 3-page preview, so you can check out almost half of it for free). I have some other thematic stuff in mind for other classes, so if this is something that interests the 4th Edition crowd that would be good to know.

D&D Next: October Playtest Packet

The new playtest packet went up yesterday, along with a Legend & Lore article on the same topic. Most of it concerns magic items, though some monster traits have been changed and XP values reduced. I guess the Caves of Chaos adventure got updated to reflect these changes, too.

Bestiary
When I say that the XP values have been reduced, I mean by 100 or more points. Goblins go from 120 to 10, bugbears from 480 to 140…the orc leader goes from a lofty 670 to 290. Admittedly I have not actually looked at the XP chart until now (well, since the first playtest release anyway), and it is nice to see that players will no longer level up after killing a gaggle of highly ineffectual of zombies (which are now worth a 10th as much).

Beyond XP most monsters seem to have something new, even if that new thing is an altered trait. For example orcs get to stick around for another turn before dying, gnolls get reaction attacks when something dies nearby, goblins get advantage for a turn if they go first, Mob Tactics caps at +5, Bruiser (formerly Armor Piercing) now triggers on a 5+, etc.

Some things are a lot more dangerous in spite of reduced XP; the wight takes half damage from non-magical weapons (oh, and its attacks reduce your max hit points for a day), the troll has Skill Mastery for sensing hidden creatures, and the minotaur can take disadvantage on an attack to deal +10 damage…even the ogre loses its Dense trait (disadvantage on Intelligence saves.

Magic Items

The real treasure this time around is the magic item document, which runs a hefty 27 pages (beating out any other doc by about 10 pages).

The default assumption is that magic items are not assumed to be part of character advancement (so you do not need to include them) and that they are exceedingly rare (so there is no real market for them). Like 4th Edition there is a rarity system involved, but unlike 4E there are six categories: common, uncommon, rare, very rare, legendary, and artifact. Each category has a gold piece range instead of a fixed value, and there are random tables that vary by encounter difficulty (easy, average, or tough).

So far, so good.

Hrmm…identifying items, you say? Here is where I can see some disparity between players. In 2nd Edition I remember having to use an identify spell to get things done. 3rd Edition let you get away with detect magic and an educated guess…in some cases, at least. 4th Edition made things even easier by allowing a simple Arcana check (or skipping the middle man and just telling them what it was).

Next takes a more varied approach. You can require divination magic, trial and error, examination, allow certain skill checks, or whatever combination you want (to the point where in some cases the item might just reveal its properties). Basically all the bases are covered, so even if you do not like having characters doing the whole taste-test and jump routine, you have other options. Personally I like that more than a singular spell/skill being called out as being an option for analyzing magic items. 

Magic item attunement is a new thing. Some items require that you be attuned to them, which takes 10 minutes, and you can only be attuned to a set amount (either three or your Charisma modifier, depending on how the DM wants to play things). In particular I like the Test of Wills experimental rule

I really like the four tables of magic item details, which help you determine who made it, its nature, and minor properties and quirks. While some results are purely cosmetic–especially on the Creator and Nature tables–most provide some sort of mechanical impact; Draconic items grow warm when a dragon is within 100 feet, elven (and drow and air elemental) items weigh half as much, and slothful items impose a -2 to Initiative.

The next 19 pages are devoted to sample magic items. Nineteen pages. While there is a random table for the generic +1 fare, almost all of them are specific types. For example, efreeti chain is a rare suit of chainmail that gives you a +2 bonus to AC, fire resistance, allows you to walk on molten rock as if it were solid, and let you speak, read, and write Draconic and Primordial (oh hi 4E shout out).

Items with charges seem like a mix of 3rd and 4th Edition; most items have set charges by default, regain a variable amount each day, and have a 1 in d20 chance of crumbling if you use them all up. Personally I loved focus items from 4th Edition and would like to see them return, but this is a nice concession from the wand/staff-as-gun trope from 3rd Edition.

What else…oh, there is a potion miscibility optional rule for 2nd Edition fans, rings that grant small AC and save bonuses, scrolls (and a scroll mishap optional rule), gauntlets of ogre power that set your Strength to a set value (19 in this case), ioun stones that increase your stats, and more stuff from past editions. I was never a fan of stat-boosters in 3rd Edition given the reliance and assumptions about stats, but seeing as treasure is not assumed and just cannot be purchased I do not think it will bother me as much this time around.

There currently are no rules for creating magic items. I would not mind seeing something similar to 3rd Edition, which provided more flexibility and allowed you to lump item properties and powers together. Even some guidelines on general power levels so that I can have some sort of eyeballing foundation to work with. Yeah, it was prone to abuse, but I actually liked it more than 4th’s largely stripped down items (which was kind of fixed by the later run of books introducing Rare items).

Whelp, now to go update Keep on the Shadowfell…again.

Legend & Lore: Magic Items in D&D Next

I remember 2nd Edition games being largely bereft of magic items: even if you count potions the first magic item that we found was a sword at 2nd or 3rd level, with the second meaningful thing was a suit of armor that was accrued somewhere in the 5th-level range. 3rd Edition had an assumed wealth-by-level–I guess intended to help mitigate the swingy Challenge Ratings–and official adventures doled out magic items like they were going to rot.

Do not get excited, it is just 3d6 x 10 gp piled on top of 2d6 x 1000 cp.

4th Edition largely did away with the plethora of magic doodads, by only assuming that you would need magic weapons/implements, armor, and neck items. The tables made it so that in a given level only most of the party would get one magic item, and have to pay for the rest (assuming they had the scratch, generally in my games the characters were pretty far behind when it came to cash).

They also added in an inherent bonus system for games that wanted to take it a step further, or even abstain entirely. While this was good, I think that it failed in that when you compared item powers with character powers, it often become too much book keeping to handle (assuming the item powers were even worth the bother).

5th Edition promises to take steps in two different directions, both mostly good.

The first is that the game only assumes that you will be upgrading armor. 4th Edition basically let you always start with the best armor that your class could buy, which was kind of like OD&D in that it was pretty easy to start with full plate and a heavy shield right from the start. While nice I honestly prefer how things went down in 2nd and 3rd Edition, where characters upgraded their armor several times.

Personally I would like to see a system where armor could provide non-magical benefits, whether from craftsmanship and/or other materials. You could have more than one masterwork bonus that could increase AC, let you use Dexterity (or part of it, at least), perhaps damage resistance, in addition to materials (like adamantine and darkwood) that layer on other benefits. Ideally it would give characters a reason to invest more heavily in a craft skill and/or quest for materials (or at least harvest them from dead monsters).

They plan on keeping the staple +x y items around for those that want them, but “officially” capping the bonus at +3. This both requires minimal design, and is also literally the easiest thing I can think of to houserule around if I wanted to. This will allow them to spend the “meat of magic item focus” on designing “wholly unique weapons, implements, and armor” instead of using menus from 3rd Edition and qualities from 4th. One example is a sunder rock mace (I would have gone with rock sundering mace), which might have a +2 bonus, deal triple damage to objects, and smash tunnels into the landscape.

But, why not just put object sundering and tunnel smashing on a list so that DM’s could add it to hammers, picks, or shovels? I mean, if they do not it is just going to happen anyway. All making specific items is going to do is force DM’s to work a bit harder cobbling their own items from existing things. I am totally cool with tables for item properties and pre-fabs with several properties.

That aside, I do like the idea of a potential table that lets you add a bit of history to an item. Continuing with the sunder rock mace (please change it to rock sundering mace) example, Mearls mentions that a few rolls might reveal that it was used against a demonic incursion, so when underground it can guide you to a dwarf stronghold and grows warmer when a demon is near (frankly I hope they have lots of tables for things like random encounters, NPCs, and character backgrounds).

Ultimately I really like the first part (though, again, masterwork and materials would make it better), and am okay with the second one. Even if they do not list individual properties, it will still be easy to just drop them onto something else. I just hope that the designers mention at least a rough idea of when an item should be given to a party.

DDN Blog: Sword +1, Flame Tongue

I spent yesterday reading through the playtest documents for D&D Next, and will post my initial impressions sometime this weekend. For now though I am trying to play catch up with some previous blog entries, starting with this one (for the record, the earliest magic item I can recall nabbing was a two-handed sword +1, +2 versus undead).

I do not get where Schwalb is coming from. He opens up by stating that acquiring a sword +1, flame tongue felt unique and important, and was like owning a piece of D&D. Is he saying that because it was a hard-coded item in the game, like a maul of the titans, something that the authors invented? Is he saying that magic items have become somehow less important or evocative because a DM in 3rd and 4th Edition could simply append the flaming trait to any melee weapon they want, instead of just a longsword?

I prefer the game to provide the DM with the parts necessary to build their own magic items, rather than rely on what the publishers give us, so option 1 holds absolutely no appeal to me at all. Good DMs will just invent their own things anyway, so by not informing us of what being fire does for a weapon just makes us have to work harder to disassemble and apply it to something else. Providing us with examples and guidelines will both help prevent doling out over-powered creations, while at the same time allow DMs to do this if they want.

I also want item creation rules, as I think that crafting magic items should be something that the characters can aspire to do. It does not have to be something easy to come by or assumed. It can be more complicated than using magic dust or shelling out gold; the characters might have to adventure far and wide to figure out how to make something, gather the materials, and possibly even find the right conditions. I want characters to be able to forge their own legends if the story allows or even demands it, not just hope to stumble upon an existing one.

The short of it is to give both DMs and players the parts to play with, without assuming that everyone must play with them.

Top 10 Items From Mordenkainen’s Magnificent Emporium

In my review I did not go into any detail on more than one or two items, so here is a list of items that made me go, “Damn, that is awesome and I would so want that if I ever got a chance to play.” I tried to avoid picking just rare/high-level stuff, but for obvious reasons they tended to have a high wow factor.

Frost Brand Weapon (level 8+ rare)
It works on any melee weapon, deals d8’s on crits, and gives you fire resistance of at least 5 (scales by bonus). It has a close-blast encounter attack that deals damage and immobilizes–making it good for defenders and melee strikers–but also has a minor-action encounter that extinguishes fires in a massive burst and allows allies to make saves against ongoing fire damage. The downside is that it always deals cold damage, one of the more common resistances in the game.

Cloak of the Phoenix (level 20+ uncommon)
This is a neck item with a daily power that triggers after you are dropped; enemies within a 3 square radius take automatic fire damage, all effects on you end, and you gain hit points equal to a surge. The downside is that you lose the rest of your surges. Higher level versions restore half your hit points or all of them.

Wand of Fire (level 15+ rare)
Another one of my favorite character archetypes is a tiefling pyromancer/wizard that emphasizes fire magic. The wand of fire lets you maximize your damage dice on a fire attack once per day, and once per encounter you can both exempt all allies from the area effect of a fire attack and cause one adjacent object to catch fire.

Diamond Cincture (level 10 uncommon)
Depending on the item’s level it comes with 1-3 diamonds, with an identical bonus to Fortitude. As a minor action you can spend a healing surge, causing one of the diamonds to crack and darken, which also reduces the bonus to Fortitude by one (they come back after an extended rest, though). I like this because it can basically give anyone wearing the equivalent of a dwarf’s healing surge usage, and it not only takes up the waist slot (the most useless of slots, to me) but it also gives you an item bonus to Fortitude. I cannot see any defender not wanting this.

Ring of X-Ray Vision (level 25 rare)
This blast from the past gives you a bonus to Perception, prevents adjacent creatures from having concealment, and lets you see through objects; 20 feet of cloth, wood, or similar vegetable matter, 10 feet of stone, or 1 foot of metal (except for lead, gold, and platinum). You can sustain the power, but it suppresses the Perception/concealment property, unless you hit a milestone already. It is not such a big deal, because the power is an encounter one.

Guardian’s Whistle (level 4 uncommon)
This low-level wondrous item lets you teleport an ally within 10 squares to any square adjacent to you. Though it can only be used once per day, this would be great for getting an ally into or out of trouble as the situation warrants.

Ebon Armor (level 3+ uncommon)
This grim-dark armor gives you necrotic resistance, but also allows you to gain temporary hit points when an enemy next to you dies. The best part? Those are both properties.

Robe of Useful Items (level 2+ common)
This magic armor can produce a generic, non-magical item of up to 10 gp in value. The power is cited as a daily, but after an hour the item vanishes and you regain the use of it. In the hands of a typical player, this basically removes the need for light sources and having to carry lots of supplies (for example, you can just conjure a rope). In the hands of a creative player? Well, then it could really shine. My only gripe is that higher level versions do not let you conjure more items.

Life-Draining Gauntlets (level 6+ rare)
I am a huge fan of necromancy, and these gauntlets provide a scaling bonus to necrotic damage and let you gain temporary hit points once per day after hitting a creature with a necrotic attack. Simple, but effective.

Potion of Cure Light Wounds (level 1 uncommon)
Formerly an adventuring staple in 3rd Edition, these finally make their appearance, giving you back 1d8 + 1 hit points at the cost of a surge. While not nearly as good as potions of healing, they are cheap at 20 gp a pop. Another good thing is that they work even if you do not have any healing surges left, but only when you are bloodied.

Two Custom Rare Items

I created a pair of rare items for my Heirs of Ruin Dark Sun campaign that the players won’t get for three or four levels. As it typical for my games, they will “level up” along with the party should they keep them, gaining new abilities in a similar fashion to legacy items from 3rd Edition. 

Personally I’m not particularly concerned if they are balanced with other rare items. I like to give my players extra incentive to keep items like this, and by giving them a bit of extra oomph it should feel more rewarding if they get them (especially since in Dark Sun the enhancement bonuses do not really mean shit).

Magic Item Wishlists

It’s probably just the orange light bulb from the Pulp Fiction Briefcase.

In the last 2nd Edition campaign I played in, we rarely if ever found treasure. I remember getting a +1 two-handed sword (+2 versus undead!) at third level, and I think a suit of +1 chainmail went to the cleric at sixth. I don’t recall how frequently it was assumed that players should find treasure, but I think we were getting hosed pretty badly, but at least it was something that everyone could use. Conversely, I remember running Age of Worms in 3rd Edition, which was fraught with numerous magical trinkets that did little except to serve as fanciful vendor trash, to be pawned off when the party got to a town that had a sufficiently high gp reserve.

4th Edition operates under a very different assumption: players are supposed to furnish wish lists to the DM, so that he/she can tailor valuable rewards in a more…appreciable manner. Wish lists are kind of a touchy subject with 4th Edition, as it’s the first one that I recall explicitly telling the DM to ask for them. Some people take it to mean that the DM should only dole out the items that characters specifically ask for, which can be fine–especially if you are running one-shots, or games where the players cannot easily sell/disenchant/enchant their own loot–though I take a more relaxed stance.

See, as a DM it can be difficult for me to remember what each player has, what their character can use, and what the character wants. To me, a wish list is a way for me to quickly reference all of these things when I’m generating treasure rewards. I try to keep my treasure logical and thematic, so player’s aren’t always going to get the exact thing that they want, and my players know that. When I was running At The Mines Of Madness, one of the players wanted a specific kind of magical scimitar. I don’t remember what it was now, but I ended up giving him a byeshk sword, which was A) a weapon he could use, and B) really useful considering that they were fighting wall-to-wall aberrants.

What he wanted? No. Useful? Hell yes. It’s because 4th Edition is the first D&D edition that I’ve played where the players really don’t need treasure in order to overcome obstacles, that this is something I feel a lot safer doing. In past editions, you might have needed a magical sword to overcome a creature’s damage resistance, and if you went further back, some were immune to weapons without a sufficiently high enhancement bonus. In 3rd Edition, items with static bonuses to ability scores are virtually mandatory. Not so anymore, as characters are mostly defined by their class as opposed by their magic item suite.

Recently a fellow player and I decided that our group should post character information on Google Docs so that the DM would have an easy and convenient way of tracking our personalities, goals, journals, and…wish lists. As a player, this is something new for me. Unfortunately (fortunately?) there’s a lot of items in the game, and I’m playing a class that I’ve never played before (cavalier). I’ve decided to meet the DM halfway, literally by filling out roughly half of my own wish list with a few items and leaving the rest blank, so that I can be better surprised (which is how I suspect a lot of players do it).

Anyway, that’s my thoughts on wish lists: use them as guidelines, not set-in-stone instructions. Try to cater to the character’s needs, but don’t sacrifice the integrity of the game if it doesn’t make sense.

Magic Item Rarity

4th Edition has spoiled us in terms of magic items. I remember in a 2nd Edition game where the first item I got was at level 2, and it was a +1 two-handed sword (+2 vs. undead). How did I get it? Well, another player playing a thief climbed up a lengthy vertical passage, and opened a coffin filled with mold. She barely made it back after being poisoned, and we only survived because the cleric dragged us to town and got us detoxed. Nowadays they’re everywhere and their number is legion. Every level the DM is expected to hand out five of them, which means that for your typical party players can each expect to get one of varying power since in this case everything is not equal.

With the release of Essentials items will be assigned a rarity of common, uncommon, or rare. Common items can be readily crafted or purchased, and do minor things like grant a passive bonus to something. Uncommon items are both purported to be impossible to craft or purchase, right before the article moves on to say that they are, “seldom up for sale and few people know how to craft them.”  From what I’ve gathered, almost all the items that currently exist are getting pegged at uncommon, while the really minor shit like burglar’s gloves will be common. Rare items, on the other hand, must be found or crafted at the DMs whim if you gather up enough frog legs and basilisk urethra.

I jest but actually use that system in my games already; sometimes when players kill certain monsters they can make Arcana/Nature/Whatever checks to harvest components that can be sold or used later. Now don’t get me wrong, I do like the simplicity of D&D’s residuum, allowing players to assess at a glance their magic item creation budget. However, I also like the idea of players butchering up monsters for various body parts that they could use to make stuff later. It’s a fantasy staple that I can understand why isn’t an official mechanic to the game due to the hundreds of monsters and magic items, but gives my players a chance to garner up a chunk of a treasure parcel by harvesting cockatrice blood and feathers for later use.

Ultimately the system serves to restrict certain items from the players, but also I suppose adds some mystery to the game. Player’s might hear about a sword that can shoot fucking lasers (now thats craftsmanship), but they can’t just plop down a barrel of magic dust and make one themselves. No, they’ll likely have to go on some quest or other to kill someone that has it, or gather up dragon blood or some such to make it themselves.

Bardic Items, Closing the Magic Treasure Gap

I like this article because I just so happen to have a bard in my current campaign that specifically wants to use songbows and only songbows. It really is just about “closing the gaps”, giving you nine magic items to round out the level 1-4 selection as well as level 9 and 29 magic instruments (for the group at epic tier that was wondering where the hell they were).

The first few items–+1 bard’s songblade and +1 bard’s songbow–aren’t anything special, merely providing the basic magical staples that are both weapons and implements.

The howling songbow has a property that lets it deal thunder damage to creatures granting cover to the target, which is kinda cool since it gives you incentive to go after enemies that are slightly harder to hit.

Tuning songblades have a property that imposes a save penalty against ongoing thunder damage and a daily both deals ongoing thunder damage but also grants an attack bonus while the creature has it.

Venomous songblades have a weaken-save-ends effect, but don’t actually inflict poison damage at any time. On the other hand, venomous songbows have an ongoing poison damage daily power.

Finally, the wailing songbow has a property that penalizes a stricken targets Stealth modifier and an encounter power that lets you ignore concealment, so long as you’ve already hit the target during the encounter (cause the arrows scream when they hit someone, you see).

As for instruments, the lyre of supplication counts as a +6 item and has a daily domination power built into it for good measure, while the mesmerizing harp is a meager +2 item that has a sustainable daily power that reduces a creature’s Will defense.

Treasure Parcels and Magic Items

I kept getting people coming from the site My Girlfriend is a DM, but when I would try to go there I would get a WordPress login screen that didnt do shit when I made a WordPress account, logged in, and gave it another shot. Well, today I figured, “What the fuck, lets give it another go,” and was rewarded for my labors by an actual front page. Their most recent article (as of this writing) discusses another article from Critical Hits about magic items and magic item-flavor, which I guess I’ll touch on by proxy.

I kinda follow the treasure distribution method, by which I mean that players can hand me wish lists and I make the best of it. If I can drop something they really want into the mix, great! If I cant? Tough shit. Disenchant/sell it and move on. I try to meet them halfway, to be sure, but I’m not going to sacrifice logic for theme and/or consistency. Magic items in 4th Edition are not as necessary as they used to be, so they’ll live if they their tiefling wizard doesnt get a master’s wand of scorching burst asap.

If they dont like what they find, they typically just pawn it when they can, but now they are starting to see some reason to my rhymes and hanging on to some of the odder shit because I like to foreshadow things or give them an edge. If I want to throw a hard encounter with undead at them, I’m liable to put in some gravespawn potions to give everyone an easier time. This rewards the players who recall and think about their inventory. Of course, sometimes they just fucking forget about it, to their detriment.

For my players: does anyone recall that magical tattoo from The Hounds of Ulster? Jerks.

As for keeping magic items magical, I rarely just drop in a magic item with just its label intact. In Songs of Erui magic items can be created through the standard means of arcane magic, but many are made by taking objects with powerful spirits and carefully shaping them. A spirit might inhabit a vein of metal that is used to make a sword, or a tree that is made into a bow. Sometimes spirits are also forcibly bound to something, as well. This allows me to easily make legacy/intelligent weapons that grow in power after becoming acclimated to a specific user.

Giving a powerful item a history is also a good way to add to the narrative of the game, especially if the owner isnt dead and/or has relatives that know about it. It can also be a necessary component for later in the game, as a symbol to prove something (lineage, honor, bravery, etc) or even a key of some sort (like a rod that can unlock a door or staff that can activate a portal).

Even fairly common items like potions might not look or act like the average market fare. Found some potions on gnolls? They’re thick and viscous, like blood, and taste terrible. You can drink them, but dont plan of finding a lot of buyers if you’re looking to sell them. Sometimes I like to add in some minor kicker effects. Like, orc-brewed potions might grant a damage bonus but impose a defense penalty for a turn in addition to the normal effect.

I also add a lot to item crafting if the players want to entertain that particular indulgence. Monster parts, powerful locations, or gifts from powerful beings can reduce the cost of a magic item, allow a character to create an item more powerful than they could, or even imbue an item with a special property. In Erui, ley lines can be used to reduce the cost/pretend you’re one level higher than usual.

For example, in The Bone Forest, the players discovered an ancient druid ziggurat. It was built atop a ley line nexus and had an affinity for storm magic. I would have allowed them to reduce the time spent creating magic items, and if they had thunder/lightning shit would have let them make higher level magic items since it would represent them harnessing raw magic energy instead of just doing it themselves.

This is a bit more difficult to do, and I mostly just eyeball things and go from there. If I think they are getting too much shit, I hold off later. Its not hard to make up the gap or widen it later if things get out of hand one way or another. This probably wont work well for sticklers that really like to adhere to the treasure rules.

As an example, the party found lightning-charged crystals underneath the druid ziggurat, and after some careful scrutiny discovered that they were highly unstable but could be used to make some magic items tied to lightning (reducing the cost or letting you make an item of 1 level higher than normal), sold for some cash, or just lobbed like a grenade. You know, whatever works!