Biggus Geekus: Magic Items

This would have been another topic I would have liked to be able to jump in on, as Melissa and I have extensive experience designing magic items, having created a half-dozen magic item compendiums—our 10+ Treasures series—and while they were initially for Dungeon World many were converted for Dungeons & Delvers.

Around 14 minutes they bring up immovable rods, and Joe is right as my first 3rd Edition character—a gnome fighter/wizard—found I think three of them, and I did use two to climb around, and at one point climbed up into the air, arranged them in a sort of triangle pattern, and used them a sort of floating seat to monitor a town from high above. He also had a chicken for a familiar, and I would often set up one as a perch for it.

At 17 minutes, Randy mentions a cloak of resistance and how, even if you had a cloak of the bat—bonus to Hide checks for some reason, lets you hang upside down, limited flying, and can also turn into a bat when flying—you would keep the cloak of resistance because you "need" that saving throw bonus.

Maybe.

Sure, in 3rd Edition this was true because of how the math scaled, but I could see a player keeping both and just using the bat cloak whenever he wanted to hide and/or fly, as there was nothing stopping you from switching between both on a whim. However, if you want to avoid players prioritizing the numbers the solution is easy: don't have the math scale like that, with the assumption that by a given level characters will have items that further boost the numbers. 

If you wish to further insulate your game and group from number crunching, you can also not include items that are just +whatever to a number. For example, don't include +x weapons and armor. Just have magic weapons be magical, and grant some other, possibly situational benefit. I suppose it could grant a bonus to hit, but try to avoid it being always applicable. Maybe a sword only grants a bonus to hit after an enemy has attacked you, or inflicted damage. Maybe the bonus even fluctuates based on how injured you are, or the damage suffered on a round-by-round basis.

I have no issue with a set of "standard" magic items. I think these are great for ideas and examples, just not as something that players should expect to find, assuming that any given item even exists in the context of the game world.

Randy states that he would like to see magic items enhance characters in ways that aren't always in sync with their abilities. I agree, and this is easily doable if, again, the game doesn't scale in accordance to strict math (ie, how it worked in 3rd and 4th Edition). If there is no expectation by level x that you will have y bonus or modifier just to have roughly a 50:50 shot at something, you can get away with a lot more.

For example, in 3rd Edition a frost giant has an Armor Class of 21, which is mostly due to an arbitrary "natural" armor bonus of +9. Now, this total AC isn't set because it makes sense "in-game" (as in, a frost giant's skin is more durable than metal plates), but because the giant is a CR 9 monster, so it gets inflated to a point where it would be considered an "appropriate" challenge for a party of around 9th-level.

In Dungeons & Delvers? It's AC is only 15, which is entirely due to armor worn. In 2E it might go even lower since armor will only grant DR, but creatures get a Defense bonus based on combat experience so we'll see. This means that you don't "need" +x weapons and +x armor to mitigate hits. Instead, you can find spinneret, a magic dagger that can produce strands of webbing, or the living rampart, a shield that can animate as a zombie-like creature.

Randy gives an example of how this could feasibly get out of hand, by giving a fighter a +5 sword that can teleport and turn him invisible at 3rd-level. Yes, this is extreme but it's also an interesting idea, and my immediate thought is to create a magic sword that lets a fighter teleport up to 30 feet, but only when "charging" an enemy, allowing him to bypass difficult terrain and other obstacles (which is definitely going in 2nd Edition).

I could even see a weapon that renders the fighter invisible, but only during combat and only against enemies he isn't fighting: whatever enemy he faces can always see him. The idea of the weapon would be that the fighter cannot be backstabbed or as easily ganged up on, allowing him to confidently face his foe in one-on-one combat. As a twist, you could make it so that whoever he is facing also gains a bonus to hit him (this is also probably going to make its way into 2nd Edition).

At 31 minutes magic item shops are brought up. I don't have an issue with players being able to purchase a magic item, or craft or commission one. However, it wouldn't be that they just go to a store or wizard or whatever, and find a variety for sale. It would be more like they might learn about one, or find an NPC with one, and might be able to purchase it, though more than likely they would need to do something for the NPC instead.

This is because, if they had a magic item they didn't want, they would be able to feasibly sell it to someone, so the reverse should also be true. Not necessarily commonplace or even at an affordable price, however.

A workaround for potions is to primarily rely on alchemical potions, which is what we did in Dungeons & Delvers. So, characters can buy non-magical healing potions, and it would make sense to be able to purchase them, it's just that they act a lot slower and only heal small amounts. Actually magical potions do exist, and can have much more potent effects (for example, the magical healing potion tops off your WP instantly).

I've never liked how Dungeons & Dragons handles scrolls, where they crumble on use, and if you copy it into your spellbook it still crumbles for no reason except "game balance". In Dungeons & Delvers you can find magical scrolls, which anyone can use, and have varying means of activation (there's a table for it), and don't have the actual spell inscribed on it: they just store the magical effect. 

Mundane scrolls and pages from spellbooks can be copied as often as desired, don't cost absurd amounts because it doesn't make any sense, and anyone can also attempt to learn them, it's just that wizards have an easier time, and have Willpower points to offset the cost (everyone else has to burn HP to cast the spell).

At 36 minutes Randy pitches the idea of a high-magic world having an order of wizards that essentially makes all the magic items, and/or "pays" the party in magic items.

My issue with this concept is that if you have an order of powerful wizards that can craft magic items and use them as payment, that magic items become so common that you end up with something like 3rd or even 4th Edition D&D, where they're really just a modifier that you get and add and don't really matter much.

Another issue would be, why hire the party at all? They could easily have apprentices manage gardens and provide them with all the food, water, clothing, and other supplies they need, and would only need to offer to teach them magic now and then. If a major problem arises they could just handle it themselves, because in D&D magic is safe and predictable, and it would be trivially easy and more cost effective to just travel wherever to retrieve or annihilate whatever and teleport back home.

I think it would make more sense to have them as villains, using magic to enslave others, setup teleportation networks to move materials and slaves around, spy on people, etc. Even better if you let them sacrifice creatures for magical energy.

Around 40 minutes someone mentions magic items being made by "the ancients", to which Randy counters that they wouldn't just "poop out" some random +number stuff. I think it would make sense for the powerful stuff to be made by gods or some ancient race or civilization that had a deep understanding of magic. I could also see really powerful stuff requiring especially rare components to craft, and/or needing additional investiture of gods or god-like entities.

The lesser stuff would be made by mortals, providing minor benefits, needing to be recharged, and/or having various drawbacks. Alternatively, some "lesser" stuff might have once been powerful stuff, but its magic has waned over time (in which case it could be possible to upgrade it back to its former glory, or at least make it better).

In Dungeons & Delvers we included numerous special materials, many of which can be used to craft weapons and armor with special properties. You can also harvest parts from certain monsters, which can be used to craft alchemical items as well as potentially magic items. We'll go into more detail in 2nd Edition, but wizards will need to establish towers in order to craft magic items, as these allow them to harness and focus ambient magical energies (which can also be used to generate persistent magical effects, such as wards and teleportation devices).

At 40 minutes Joe mentions eating monsters. He's mentioned this before and this is something we're going to add in 2nd Edition. You can already drink the blood of dragons to maybe get a useful magical ability, so why not let players potentially gain benefits from eating parts of other monsters? It could even be part of the Cooking skill, where a prepared monster part has better chances of granting a useful benefit.

Then someone mentions having magic items with costs. These can work, just don't do what some OSR weirdos say and impose a cost or side effect on every magic item (or, at least state that they "should" all work this way). However, a cost can be an effective limiter that makes more sense than the pseudo-Vancian nonsense "x times per day".

For example, a magic item I created and I forget which books it's in are magic boots that effectively let you teleport, but it's always a set distance and you have to make an immediate exhaustion check as if you ran that distance non-stop.

Another example that is in Dungeons & Delvers is longarm of the law, which is a halberd that lets you know any crimes a creature has committed by touch (only ones that it hasn't been punished for), slows criminals when wounded, but won't ever let you kill a creature: you have to instead bring it in for legal punishment. Another downside is that if you commit a crime, its weight doubles and any attacks made are Hindered until you are punished.

At 46 or so minutes, the idea of giving out magic items at specific levels is brought up. A downside to that is that if an item "should" only be doled out at a high level, the odds of it ever seeing play are reduced. Also, its abilities might not be as impressive (ie, a staff that lets you cast lighting bolt isn't as neat if you get it at a level where you would expect to see wizards casting it, anyway). Of course, this is yet again easier to avoid if you also avoid the math issues of 3rd and 4th Edition.

At 58 minutes Joe states that he thinks much of magic item creation will be ritualistic. This also makes sense to me, and I'd probably require a wizard to do this in his tower or some other "place of power", as well as a bunch of materials that possess thematic properties to what he is trying to make. For example, making a frostbrand sword might require ice from the paraelemental plane of ice, frost giant blood, various bits from a caucasion dragon, etc. It might also need to be done in an arctic region, and during the winter season.