D&D 5E Does/Should D&D Have the Player's Game Experience as a goal?

[Hussar]

Yes it does. That's why the system submits to the DM. They know that trusting in a DM's judgement is the best way to have a good gaming experience.

That's presuming that the DM's judgement is infallible. And that the DM is confident enough to make those judgements.

How many hours of crappy gaming is worth that learning curve?

I've gotten to the point where I'm so reticent about the magic items in 5e that I simply don't give any out anymore. Because every time I do give out any magic items, the players simply abuse them as hard as they can, unbalancing encounters and making the game zero fun for me.

 

[Oofta]

See, here's the funny thing. You're actually wrong. I could load up my low level party with a bunch of rare items (Potions of Supreme Healing, one each) and it would make zero difference to the party power level, OR, I could give one rare item to each PC and MASSIVELY increase their power level - as in nearly double their DPR.

All using the same level of magic items. This is worse than no system at all because the rarity scale in no way actually addresses the power level of the items.

I agree that any system that does come out will not be perfect. Absolutely not. But, we can have a system out there, and then that system can be tweaked repeatedly from feedback from the fandom. That's what Unearthed Arcana feedback is for after all. It's not like WotC doesn't have access to millions and millions of played character sheets that they could then use to develop a relative power list for magic items. If Item X appears on 60% of character sheets of a given class, then that item is obviously very powerful/useful and should be valued as such, or perhaps even nerfed in order to bring it back in line with other items of the same level.

I mean, right now, a Cloak of Protection is an uncommon item. A Ring of Protection is rare. They do EXACTLY the same thing. +1 to AC and saving throws. These items, other than one is a cloak and the other a ring, are identical. How is the rarity value even remotely helpful here? And, heck, because of this, the Cloak is FAR more easy to come by using the Xanathar downtime rules. And about 1/10th the cost.

That's where transparency comes in. Why is the cloak so much more readily available than the ring? What's the reasoning here?

So you can take a look at items and get a decent idea of how it will impact your party? Good to know. So can I.

I have no idea what kind of system you want or what it would look like. D&D 4E was very prescriptive of exactly what you should get and when but it worked because PCs were so tightly controlled and on a treadmill. We don't have either of those (thank goodness) in 5E.

 

[Oofta]

That's presuming that the DM's judgement is infallible. And that the DM is confident enough to make those judgements.

How many hours of crappy gaming is worth that learning curve?

I've gotten to the point where I'm so reticent about the magic items in 5e that I simply don't give any out anymore. Because every time I do give out any magic items, the players simply abuse them as hard as they can, unbalancing encounters and making the game zero fun for me.

You're assuming an infallible guideline is possible, why not an infallible DM? Or ... neither one exists but a DM can react and adjust after an encounter or two. I wonder which one is more realistic.

 

[MichaelSomething]

That's presuming that the DM's judgement is infallible. And that the DM is confident enough to make those judgements.

How many hours of crappy gaming is worth that learning curve?

I've gotten to the point where I'm so reticent about the magic items in 5e that I simply don't give any out anymore. Because every time I do give out any magic items, the players simply abuse them as hard as they can, unbalancing encounters and making the game zero fun for me.

A small price to pay for DM Empowerment.

And for balanced magic items, how about a magic box that generates 1d20 crab ragoons every day?

 

[Imaro]

So because the system is not perfect and cannot account for every single campaign out there, we should never have any system at all?

We're not talking about perfection, we're talking about a pointless/arbitrary system that would have the same merit (honestly, probably even less) than if a DM decided on a case by case basis how to handle particular magic items.

And, frankly, because there are a number of fairly generic campaign settings out there - one could pretty easily add in some guidelines, or at least suggestions, for how to handle deviations from the baseline. So, maybe water generating items in a desert campaign might be valued higher (say by a given percentage), so on and so forth. None of this is particularly difficult (although it is perhaps time consuming considering the large number of items we're talking about) and considering that two editions actually DID it, it's hardly impossible to do.

Emphasis mine: So is it easy... or hard??

So now we are adding magic item guidelines in every D&D campaign setting... but wait... wouldn't it vary even by adventure... again how powerful is a ring of water breathing vs a wand of flight if your adventure is taking place totally underwater? So now what every adventure published needs to rate all the magic items in 5e as well... This idea is absurd when a DM with a modicum of common sense (and I mean you're claiming it's not hard) can figure out the ramifications of certain magic items for his campaign and adventures better than anyone else.

As far as 4e goes, considering how robust the system was - a given party was expected to be able to handle encounters from -4 to +5 their level - minor fluctuations in power level between inherent bonuses and actual magic items were deemed mostly irrelevant. That's why the inherent bonus system worked, and by most reports, worked very well. Which, of course, you would know all about seeing as how you repeatedly feel the need to keep dragging 4e into the conversation.

Didn't you just reference 4e in the previous paragraph?

If the game was that robust why did we need the inherent bonuses? Regardless you're not actually refuting my point... This is also a testament that magic items in and of themselves in that edition, by your own words were only "minor fluctuations in power". The point is in 5e they are actual rewards that increase power above the baseline as opposed to being necessary to maintain the baseline.

 

[Hussar]

So you can take a look at items and get a decent idea of how it will impact your party? Good to know. So can I.

I have no idea what kind of system you want or what it would look like. D&D 4E was very prescriptive of exactly what you should get and when but it worked because PCs were so tightly controlled and on a treadmill. We don't have either of those (thank goodness) in 5E.

Oh, goodie. More edition warring. Let's ignore 3e entirely shall we?

 

[Hussar]

You're assuming an infallible guideline is possible, why not an infallible DM? Or ... neither one exists but a DM can react and adjust after an encounter or two. I wonder which one is more realistic.

Nope. You're ignoring the whole "let's tweak these results based on feedback" part.

 

[Hussar]

A small price to pay for DM Empowerment.

And for balanced magic items, how about a magic box that generates 1d20 crab ragoons every day?

If i knew what a ragoon was, I'd have something of an answer.

 

[Oofta]

Oh, goodie. More edition warring. Let's ignore 3e entirely shall we?

What about it? It was nearly as bad. Both tried to lock down play along a single path, that any two tables would be playing the same game. It was one of the things I didn't like about 3E - that they tried (and failed) to make rules for everything. With 4E they just doubled down on it.

 

[Oofta]

Nope. You're ignoring the whole "let's tweak these results based on feedback" part.

You'd have to do it for every campaign, likely literally every encounter. You're talking about feedback on literally millions of incompatible scenarios. Or ... one DM can figure out what works best just like we've been doing for half a century.