On Magic Items and a Sense of Wonder
An old post at d20 Source talks about "bringing back the magic" to D&D. Essentially, it laments that the "magic" of magic items has been lost since magic items are treated little better than beefed-up mundane equipment and offers some suggestions for making magic items more "magical".
While I don't disagree with anything in the article, it seems to overlook the fact that magic items in D&D are treated the way they are because that's one of the memes of the game - namely, a plethora of magic items is part of the expected norm of the game. This started well before WoW made it standard that all your gear was at least "green" even at very low levels. It was common in 3.x, and quite common in previous editions, despite grognard arguments to the contrary. 3.x even codified it with the "Wealth by Level" table (granted, all wealth doesn't have to be in magic items, but it's an easy way to distribute treasure and players have come to expect it).
I would prefer D&D be more like Warhammer FRP or Tekumel, where magic is rare, unique, and always has a story as well. But if you want to stay within the bounds of the expected rules, that's not really an option with 3.x. 4E, at least, shrinks how many items you can wear, but (based off the character creation options), it still assumes a character is going to have at least three if they're higher than first level. There are some alternate suggestions in the DMG2, so that's an option...
One area where there's more of a "sense of wonder" is artifacts. Now, prior to 4E this wasn't much of an option - artifacts belonged to the realm of those of very high level, and even then it was generous to call them "extremely rare". In fact, I can't think of any game I've been a player in where we encountered an artifact, and I can count on one hand - and have fingers left over - the number of games I've put them in (not counting the deck of many things*, which I try to drop in once to each campaign I run). With 4E, you can finally get some mileage out of artifacts due to their "tiered" nature and the concordance mechanic. That's not to say they are or should be common - I haven't used any in my game yet, actually. But now they can be a little something more than an ultra-powerful magic item that a player reads about and thinks "well, there's something we'll never see."
*: So, where's the 4E version of the deck?
While I don't disagree with anything in the article, it seems to overlook the fact that magic items in D&D are treated the way they are because that's one of the memes of the game - namely, a plethora of magic items is part of the expected norm of the game. This started well before WoW made it standard that all your gear was at least "green" even at very low levels. It was common in 3.x, and quite common in previous editions, despite grognard arguments to the contrary. 3.x even codified it with the "Wealth by Level" table (granted, all wealth doesn't have to be in magic items, but it's an easy way to distribute treasure and players have come to expect it).
I would prefer D&D be more like Warhammer FRP or Tekumel, where magic is rare, unique, and always has a story as well. But if you want to stay within the bounds of the expected rules, that's not really an option with 3.x. 4E, at least, shrinks how many items you can wear, but (based off the character creation options), it still assumes a character is going to have at least three if they're higher than first level. There are some alternate suggestions in the DMG2, so that's an option...
One area where there's more of a "sense of wonder" is artifacts. Now, prior to 4E this wasn't much of an option - artifacts belonged to the realm of those of very high level, and even then it was generous to call them "extremely rare". In fact, I can't think of any game I've been a player in where we encountered an artifact, and I can count on one hand - and have fingers left over - the number of games I've put them in (not counting the deck of many things*, which I try to drop in once to each campaign I run). With 4E, you can finally get some mileage out of artifacts due to their "tiered" nature and the concordance mechanic. That's not to say they are or should be common - I haven't used any in my game yet, actually. But now they can be a little something more than an ultra-powerful magic item that a player reads about and thinks "well, there's something we'll never see."
*: So, where's the 4E version of the deck?
posted by MythosaAkira | 10:02 PM
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