Great video Mike! One note about the LotR 5e book: unless I'm mistaken, it does NOT include any rules on how combat works, and really glosses over the actual 5e core rules, if mentioning them at. Instead it refers the reader to PHB, or 5e basic rules. So while it adds a whole suite of classes, ancestries, and rules for travel and council (social encounters), I wouldn't quite call it a complete game book. And if folks reading this are interested in a complete RPG built to represent LotR from the ground up, I'd definitely recommend the original system by the same publisher, The One Ring. Beautiful book, and so far I've had a bunch of fun with the starter set.
100%. The Lord of the Rings on Beyond is a supplement at best. If you want the full LotR RPG experience, buy the original book/PDF directly from the creators.
That LotR port look very barebone and made concession to fit DnD Beyond instead of the other way around. It feels like a Fortnite skin rather than an actual separate games. I assume that this is due to cost. Changing the DnD Beyond tools is probably too expensive to do for their cut of the expected sales of one product. I am wondering if they will put more efforts into it when they do the IPs on their own since they'll get a better return for their investment (all of the profit minus the IP cost). But frankly if that the treatment for the Lord of the Ring, the biggest fantasy IP ever, I doubt that future IPs will get a significantly better treatment if cost was the main factor. Looking to see Hasbro proves me wrong however.
One thing i do that makes my life easier for running monsters is i often assign a player to keeping track of how much damage a monster or multiple monsters have taken. Just have them count up and announce how much damage they have taken at the end of turns. One less thing on my plate, helps keep certain players engaged, and doesnt hurt anything because i assume they have a good idea of how much damage the monsters have taken already so having the exact number in front of them doesnt break the game
Speaking of LotR, the Cubicle 7 version of the 5e LotR setting (Adventures in Middle Earth) had a great travel mechanic that could work well with the Points of Interest mechanic you mentioned. Also, Cubicle 7 updated these travel mechanics in their recent Uncharted Journeys book.
Thanks for sharing that excellent d100 list! Definitely plan to use things from that in future games, and I'll combine it with your earlier tip to roll twice on tables :)
Mike: As a connoisseur of the staedtler lumicolor markers.. it was a must have as a 2LT.. and I carried my "map markers" with me through deployments in Iraq / AFG/ Philippines etc.. they are quite dependable. I still have 2 or 3 packs with me now in my office and use them regularly for planning team stuff. We would carry our grid square maps on convoys / movements etc.. and we woudl mark them up with the lumicolor markers ahead of time. It was ESSENTIAL. They sell them in clothing and sales on most military bases!
I decided to get myself some really good things this December, I got the digital humble bundle from Free League that has, among others, Dragonbane for less than the price of Dragonbane which I was searching for. And I also got me the digital version version of the Dark Sun 2e box set. I went through the material on the box during the weekend and planning how to translate it to other games and having a blast with it. I also waiting on some physicals books, I'm getting DCC in paper bought in my own country, so happy about it. Yeah, I bought my own gifts because nobody else knows what I like or want.
Minor note: Assuming a DM does use the DMG crafting rules by-the-book, a character would need to have all spells a magic item can cast prepared during the entire crafting process, and Instruments of the Bards have spells that would require heavy multiclassing to have every single one of those spells prepared.
I have used staedler markers for over 30 years but they are harder and harder to find (already nordisco seems to be out). In my experience they last years and the colors other than black work really well too (blue and green and brown mostly, but also red). They might not last as long for you since you play so often. I also prefer broad tip for use on my chessex mat (vastly superior to the piazo mats). Long ago I had a mythical extra broad tipped one which was great for drawing thick walls or coloring in, but I never found one again! The crayola ones come in a distant second with the Expo vis a vis coming in an even more distant third.
The Free League books are amazing works of art I enjoy just collecting them with both the One Ring RPG and 5e version I am a couple of books behind but after Xmas they are on the list to get. And what I have liked is the LGS I bought them from, which is part of Bits and Morter, so I got PDFs for free from the publisher, so I get both a physical book and a reference PDF. I'm definitely going to pick up their humblebundle
Magic item prices pg.134 and crafting pg.129 were in the 2014 dmg. The magic item price existed however the were bad they had wide ranges like 501-5,000 gp for a rare item, the dm was expected to choose a price in that range. The crafting was interesting i would give that section a second look it has some of the things you talked about like requiring a special material furthermore crafting items of a rarity required a level for example level 3 for a common item. The magic items crafting rules are not great but they are interesting. I completely agree about requiring materials its something that was in Xanathars. I much prefer the crafting in Xanithars and am disappointed they didn't carry over to 2024. They require a formula,special material, tools and time. the time requirement is much better that the one form the 2014 dmg. My issue with requiring materials is I would have liked a list of suggested part for each item or a simple chart like x material of CR and type of monster for y rarity of items or something. or something like you could replace the gold cost with a monster material of a given CR like if a items has a 4000 gold cost material from a CR 7 monster can be used instead. As for how the time works out for crafting i think you have the wrong idea about it. I don't think the expectation is you work 10 days straight doing nothing else. The section the the 2024 rules specify with work is 8 hours and does not need to be consecutive. Furthermore two people can work together to half the time. The way i see it working is you craft on your downtime. Example you party travels overland to a dungeon for 3 days they march for 8 hours you have your random encounters ect then have 8 hours of downtime one player can craft the rest can do other downtime activity then you rest for 8 hours and continue. let say the journey is 3 days there and back so in that time the player can craft a common magic item. Regardless of all that I agree you jest shouldn't allow crafting. Great video and thank for everything you do.
So, wet erase markers which are great & seem to last a good length of time. They can stain your Chessex grids if you leave some of the colors on your grid for more than a few hours. I've noticed it most with Blue, but YMMV. I have the best use with brown, but again YMMV depending on the mat.
30:16 They are way cheaper in Europe since its a German product. You can get 8 (with all colors of the rainbow) for 10 Euro and might even get them cheaper in bulk.
I run my 3 weekly games (5e and ShadowDark) from a laptop. I can't imagine not havung everything just one tab away. I use a Google Sheet to track HP and main stats for combat.
Easiest way to control Crafting is to only have it available through Bastions. This means you can only make items at level 5, and you can only make basic stuff, once every 7 in game days. At level 9 you will be able to make good stuff, but by level 9 that's not a big deal. If you're not using Bastions, limit Gold and or Down time that is available to the Players. Or have each item they want to make require a Blue Print. The Rules are super Basic. But that allows the DM to limit crafting how they see fit. I like playing with Rulings rather than Rules as a DM.
@33:00 Yeah, way too easy. Even if you find some prices for the items (Tales of the Valiant and other 3rd party people have reasonable prices per power so uncommon boots of flying are way too expensive for tier one characters to make but by the time you can afford it - you are late tier 2 and it's not a problem). The real problem is if you have a BASTION you have a person doing it FOR YOU! So we need to NOT ALLOW these capabilities overlap. BTW - we asked for prices... I have no idea why they didn't do it.
Honestly, the problem with crafting ballence isnt really a problem with crafting ballence, it's simply the fact that how easy to get magic items are is defined by one variable (rarity) with like 6 potential values. This is simply not enough to represent the variety of magic items out there in a ballenced way. This seems to be an artifact of the way 5e origionaly decentered magic items, with the idea being that they were rare and a character would only get one or two. This isn't a problem in base 5e run RAW, but the problem is, people LIKE magic items, and want more. However, the fact that rarity is the only distinguishing quality means you need to use a custom pricing table for buying items to not break things (looking at you broom of flying). Honestly, i found that the lack of systems for magic items (such as pricing, or a system that allows you to account for magic items when building encounters) was one of 5e's bigest issues, and im really disappointed for these systems to rely on the overloaded rarity mechanic (which was clearly not desiged for this), as supposed to just adding a price to items in new books and giving a lookup table for legacy content only. Compare this with pathfinder 2, which has 3 varibles for items: rarity (which allows the dm to disallow more unusual/flavor specific items by simply saying "common items only", but which has nothing to do with power), Price (which is specificaly defined for each item, as supposed to having a lookup table), and item level (which is a measure of power. You can allow characters to buy items up to thier character level, and then hand out higer leveled items, or uncommon and rare items, and the ballence will just work (assuming you follow the wealth by level guidelines). Granted, this sytem has its own probllems (such as characters being massively underpowered if you don't hand out "fundamental" runes to make weapons and armor scale, which can make loot a little perdictable.) But it's at least aligned with the usual play pattern, and designed in a way that functions as intended as a result.
Of course DnDBeyond is awkward for LotR. It is awkward for D&D 2014. WotC clearly just doesn't have the background in tech to be able to manage their purchased platform successfully.
Not a fan of crafting magic items either - but I've applied a challenging rule that means the player really needs to be dedicated. For any item they wish to craft, in addition to the materials and the cost of attempting to create the item, they need to make a successful (DC10) crafting role EVERY DAY of the process in order to succeed. That's a challenging streak of success roles - and if one fails, the whole project is kaput - and the money's still spent. That's why actual magic items found on an adventure are so special - it took a LOT of luck to craft them.
New DMs generally are playing with New Players. New players are just trying to learn how to play the game. They arent looking for exploits. I think the Crafting issue is a very Niche problem, if it actually is a problem at all.
I don't think the problem with crafting is the general idea, I think it's the specifics WotC implemented our table's crafting is: 1) Each character knows only a handful of crafts discovered while adventuring (plays into old world, lost knowledge theme), DM controls what can be found 2) The costs are reasonable (Sane Magic Item prices by Saidoro) 3) Below epic tier crafting takes days at most, many games include downtime player activities and I've never found this disruptive
In my games, I let player craft a magic item rather than take a feat. I figure the time spent training a feat could be spent making an item. Kinda an iron man thing, he doesn't level up by working out, but by tinkering
If that works at your table: awesome! What I would say though, is that I’ve always seen feats as being a representation of what they’ve learned whilst adventuring. There’s gotta be *some* kind of justification… But the more I type… I think that might actually only be my head canon! Whoops! 🫣😂
Great video Mike! One note about the LotR 5e book: unless I'm mistaken, it does NOT include any rules on how combat works, and really glosses over the actual 5e core rules, if mentioning them at. Instead it refers the reader to PHB, or 5e basic rules. So while it adds a whole suite of classes, ancestries, and rules for travel and council (social encounters), I wouldn't quite call it a complete game book. And if folks reading this are interested in a complete RPG built to represent LotR from the ground up, I'd definitely recommend the original system by the same publisher, The One Ring. Beautiful book, and so far I've had a bunch of fun with the starter set.
100%. The Lord of the Rings on Beyond is a supplement at best.
If you want the full LotR RPG experience, buy the original book/PDF directly from the creators.
Yeah, I noticed that after I got the PDF copy. Oops!
That LotR port look very barebone and made concession to fit DnD Beyond instead of the other way around. It feels like a Fortnite skin rather than an actual separate games.
I assume that this is due to cost. Changing the DnD Beyond tools is probably too expensive to do for their cut of the expected sales of one product.
I am wondering if they will put more efforts into it when they do the IPs on their own since they'll get a better return for their investment (all of the profit minus the IP cost).
But frankly if that the treatment for the Lord of the Ring, the biggest fantasy IP ever, I doubt that future IPs will get a significantly better treatment if cost was the main factor. Looking to see Hasbro proves me wrong however.
One thing i do that makes my life easier for running monsters is i often assign a player to keeping track of how much damage a monster or multiple monsters have taken. Just have them count up and announce how much damage they have taken at the end of turns. One less thing on my plate, helps keep certain players engaged, and doesnt hurt anything because i assume they have a good idea of how much damage the monsters have taken already so having the exact number in front of them doesnt break the game
Speaking of LotR, the Cubicle 7 version of the 5e LotR setting (Adventures in Middle Earth) had a great travel mechanic that could work well with the Points of Interest mechanic you mentioned. Also, Cubicle 7 updated these travel mechanics in their recent Uncharted Journeys book.
Really nice video, Mike.
Your work is very appreciated.
Thanks for sharing that excellent d100 list! Definitely plan to use things from that in future games, and I'll combine it with your earlier tip to roll twice on tables :)
Mike: As a connoisseur of the staedtler lumicolor markers.. it was a must have as a 2LT.. and I carried my "map markers" with me through deployments in Iraq / AFG/ Philippines etc.. they are quite dependable. I still have 2 or 3 packs with me now in my office and use them regularly for planning team stuff. We would carry our grid square maps on convoys / movements etc.. and we woudl mark them up with the lumicolor markers ahead of time. It was ESSENTIAL. They sell them in clothing and sales on most military bases!
I decided to get myself some really good things this December, I got the digital humble bundle from Free League that has, among others, Dragonbane for less than the price of Dragonbane which I was searching for. And I also got me the digital version version of the Dark Sun 2e box set. I went through the material on the box during the weekend and planning how to translate it to other games and having a blast with it. I also waiting on some physicals books, I'm getting DCC in paper bought in my own country, so happy about it. Yeah, I bought my own gifts because nobody else knows what I like or want.
Minor note: Assuming a DM does use the DMG crafting rules by-the-book, a character would need to have all spells a magic item can cast prepared during the entire crafting process, and Instruments of the Bards have spells that would require heavy multiclassing to have every single one of those spells prepared.
Multiple bards working together?
I am pretty sure Chessex sells the Staedtler markers, but I could be mistaken
Thanks
I have used staedler markers for over 30 years but they are harder and harder to find (already nordisco seems to be out). In my experience they last years and the colors other than black work really well too (blue and green and brown mostly, but also red). They might not last as long for you since you play so often. I also prefer broad tip for use on my chessex mat (vastly superior to the piazo mats). Long ago I had a mythical extra broad tipped one which was great for drawing thick walls or coloring in, but I never found one again! The crayola ones come in a distant second with the Expo vis a vis coming in an even more distant third.
The Free League books are amazing works of art I enjoy just collecting them with both the One Ring RPG and 5e version I am a couple of books behind but after Xmas they are on the list to get. And what I have liked is the LGS I bought them from, which is part of Bits and Morter, so I got PDFs for free from the publisher, so I get both a physical book and a reference PDF. I'm definitely going to pick up their humblebundle
Magic item prices pg.134 and crafting pg.129 were in the 2014 dmg. The magic item price existed however the were bad they had wide ranges like 501-5,000 gp for a rare item, the dm was expected to choose a price in that range. The crafting was interesting i would give that section a second look it has some of the things you talked about like requiring a special material furthermore crafting items of a rarity required a level for example level 3 for a common item. The magic items crafting rules are not great but they are interesting.
I completely agree about requiring materials its something that was in Xanathars. I much prefer the crafting in Xanithars and am disappointed they didn't carry over to 2024. They require a formula,special material, tools and time. the time requirement is much better that the one form the 2014 dmg. My issue with requiring materials is I would have liked a list of suggested part for each item or a simple chart like x material of CR and type of monster for y rarity of items or something. or something like you could replace the gold cost with a monster material of a given CR like if a items has a 4000 gold cost material from a CR 7 monster can be used instead.
As for how the time works out for crafting i think you have the wrong idea about it. I don't think the expectation is you work 10 days straight doing nothing else. The section the the 2024 rules specify with work is 8 hours and does not need to be consecutive. Furthermore two people can work together to half the time. The way i see it working is you craft on your downtime. Example you party travels overland to a dungeon for 3 days they march for 8 hours you have your random encounters ect then have 8 hours of downtime one player can craft the rest can do other downtime activity then you rest for 8 hours and continue. let say the journey is 3 days there and back so in that time the player can craft a common magic item. Regardless of all that I agree you jest shouldn't allow crafting. Great video and thank for everything you do.
So, wet erase markers which are great & seem to last a good length of time. They can stain your Chessex grids if you leave some of the colors on your grid for more than a few hours. I've noticed it most with Blue, but YMMV. I have the best use with brown, but again YMMV depending on the mat.
Thanks for a great show as usual!
30:16 They are way cheaper in Europe since its a German product. You can get 8 (with all colors of the rainbow) for 10 Euro and might even get them cheaper in bulk.
Thanks for the excellent content
I run my 3 weekly games (5e and ShadowDark) from a laptop. I can't imagine not havung everything just one tab away. I use a Google Sheet to track HP and main stats for combat.
Easiest way to control Crafting is to only have it available through Bastions. This means you can only make items at level 5, and you can only make basic stuff, once every 7 in game days. At level 9 you will be able to make good stuff, but by level 9 that's not a big deal.
If you're not using Bastions, limit Gold and or Down time that is available to the Players. Or have each item they want to make require a Blue Print.
The Rules are super Basic. But that allows the DM to limit crafting how they see fit.
I like playing with Rulings rather than Rules as a DM.
The LOTR 5e seen here is just Free League's adaptation of their own LOTR game based on the Year Zero system.
@33:00 Yeah, way too easy. Even if you find some prices for the items (Tales of the Valiant and other 3rd party people have reasonable prices per power so uncommon boots of flying are way too expensive for tier one characters to make but by the time you can afford it - you are late tier 2 and it's not a problem). The real problem is if you have a BASTION you have a person doing it FOR YOU! So we need to NOT ALLOW these capabilities overlap.
BTW - we asked for prices... I have no idea why they didn't do it.
Honestly, the problem with crafting ballence isnt really a problem with crafting ballence, it's simply the fact that how easy to get magic items are is defined by one variable (rarity) with like 6 potential values. This is simply not enough to represent the variety of magic items out there in a ballenced way. This seems to be an artifact of the way 5e origionaly decentered magic items, with the idea being that they were rare and a character would only get one or two. This isn't a problem in base 5e run RAW, but the problem is, people LIKE magic items, and want more. However, the fact that rarity is the only distinguishing quality means you need to use a custom pricing table for buying items to not break things (looking at you broom of flying). Honestly, i found that the lack of systems for magic items (such as pricing, or a system that allows you to account for magic items when building encounters) was one of 5e's bigest issues, and im really disappointed for these systems to rely on the overloaded rarity mechanic (which was clearly not desiged for this), as supposed to just adding a price to items in new books and giving a lookup table for legacy content only. Compare this with pathfinder 2, which has 3 varibles for items: rarity (which allows the dm to disallow more unusual/flavor specific items by simply saying "common items only", but which has nothing to do with power), Price (which is specificaly defined for each item, as supposed to having a lookup table), and item level (which is a measure of power. You can allow characters to buy items up to thier character level, and then hand out higer leveled items, or uncommon and rare items, and the ballence will just work (assuming you follow the wealth by level guidelines). Granted, this sytem has its own probllems (such as characters being massively underpowered if you don't hand out "fundamental" runes to make weapons and armor scale, which can make loot a little perdictable.) But it's at least aligned with the usual play pattern, and designed in a way that functions as intended as a result.
Damn. I missed the sale on LotR. Aaarrrrgh!
wow I'm early. only 12 likes
can’t craft items if they’re always adventuring
Regarding DND Beyond vs. Tales of the Valiant: ToVs success is a protest against WotC, it would feel like betrayel to me if they made deal.
Of course DnDBeyond is awkward for LotR. It is awkward for D&D 2014. WotC clearly just doesn't have the background in tech to be able to manage their purchased platform successfully.
Not a fan of crafting magic items either - but I've applied a challenging rule that means the player really needs to be dedicated. For any item they wish to craft, in addition to the materials and the cost of attempting to create the item, they need to make a successful (DC10) crafting role EVERY DAY of the process in order to succeed. That's a challenging streak of success roles - and if one fails, the whole project is kaput - and the money's still spent. That's why actual magic items found on an adventure are so special - it took a LOT of luck to craft them.
I am once again begging the TTRPG community to stop feeding the IRL internet troll by talking about him when it is not strictly, severely necessary.
not that everyone has to, but some of us like him!
Agreed.
New DMs generally are playing with New Players. New players are just trying to learn how to play the game. They arent looking for exploits.
I think the Crafting issue is a very Niche problem, if it actually is a problem at all.
I don't think the problem with crafting is the general idea, I think it's the specifics WotC implemented
our table's crafting is:
1) Each character knows only a handful of crafts discovered while adventuring (plays into old world, lost knowledge theme), DM controls what can be found
2) The costs are reasonable (Sane Magic Item prices by Saidoro)
3) Below epic tier crafting takes days at most, many games include downtime player activities and I've never found this disruptive
In my games, I let player craft a magic item rather than take a feat. I figure the time spent training a feat could be spent making an item. Kinda an iron man thing, he doesn't level up by working out, but by tinkering
If that works at your table: awesome!
What I would say though, is that I’ve always seen feats as being a representation of what they’ve learned whilst adventuring.
There’s gotta be *some* kind of justification…
But the more I type… I think that might actually only be my head canon! Whoops! 🫣😂