Mudcore - the hard, gritty, resource-managing, disease-catching, bath-avoiding style of play...and that's just the players! :) My group is currently going through the identification and decision-making process around a drop of 4 magic items they found after completely clearing a lair. They know they can use some of the items, but they're unsure of the powers. These do not unbalance the game - they are one of the games key variables - the way they're used is pivotal - but there are just as many ways in which they can end up being countered or removed.
5e was pushed during the playtest and early days as the 'low or no magic item' D&D edition. The idea was that the characters were 'balanced' for play without needing items, pushing back on 3rd and 4th edition's 'expected items by level' approach. You can see elements of this pushback in the 5e DMG. I think sometimes people bring this attitude to their 1st edition games but early D&D was stuffed full of magic items, it was a feature not a flaw.
Use the cowboy coin standard. "I need a room for the night, feed for my horse, a bath, a bottle of whiskey, a steak dinner, a box of shells and a woman." *drops one big heavy coin on the counter*.
I use the Silver standard because it makes having a gold Coin like having a Platinum coin and the convenient way of carrying lots of wealth... like it was used in the historical medieval age. It also fixes the "paying an inn with gold coins". It just makes more sense as an economy. Adventurers, wizards, mercenarys and kings are paid in gold, merchants and burguers use silver and peasants use coppers and barter to get along most of the time. Maybe is because I'm european and not american, but having troves of gold seems to me that you cheapen it's worth. As it comes to world level balance... I have a homebrew point buy system myself with just 0+4 levels. 0 is starting (really 1, but with few XP points) and 1 is like level 1-5, 2 is like level 6-10, 3 y like level 11-15 and 4 is like level 16-20. My thinking is most people are level 0, soldiers/apprentices/normal guys of note are level 1, bosses of those guys (captain/master/bishops) are level 2, regional chiefs (Dukes/Kings, Magisters, Cardinals) are level 3 and then Legendary characters are level 4, some of them alive. When it comes to magic Items I have Permanent Items (Magic Items) and Temporary Items (Enchanted Items). The first ones are rare and I usually give 1-2 per adventure. Temporary items are used by enemies and they have magic for 1 day (until dawn or dusk), 1 moon (a month), 1 season (3 months) or 1 year (until next Solstice of Winter)... after that time they are Masterwork Items. I am one of those guys that dislike having too much magic stuff in the party's mule saddlebags, because it "cheapens" the wonder of magic in my setting and makes true Magic Items more special. This way I can deck enemies with Temporary Items, they can use them for a while or just during that adventure and if they like them they can ask the wizard/priest to craft one for them after gathering the components through commerce and maybe even an adventure... Those monsters drop the reagents to craft those magic items, so you can trade for the ones you don't have. It also drains the economy of the possibility of Magic Item inflation that should exist after a history of 2-5 millenia of eternally working magic items going from hand to hand. I also use a System so every character can only use a few items or spell buffs, so we don't end up decked in 15 items per character, which I find kind of ridiculous XD In my rules, which come from D&D 3rd, 5th and Specially Pathfinder 2E at max level you can have as a bonus +12 for experience gain, +6 from attributes, +3 from Items and +4 from Clases. Magic items are just +3 but they have other buffs than can be used to increased effectiveness, like extra 1d6 fire damage, concealment etc Magic Items are just 12% of the possible effectiveness of your character, but suceeeding the CD by 10 (example, Cd 15 and you get a 25+ on your throw) is a critical hit. That means double damage, extra effects for spells and skills etc Having even a +1 increases your power A LOT, so it is something characters want but it won't cripple them not having them. I don't use item saving throws... they take wayyyyy more time that it's worth, every fireball, every crushing trap...every AOE effect can destroy stuff and combat is long enough to handle that. So what I do is that if the item can only be damaged if it is attacked specifically by an enemy for a tactical reason or a RP reason or the player exposes it to something dangerous for more than a round. It feels stupid to lose a spellbook that you have under leather canvas, with leather and bronze coverings, inside a satchel... because some fireball hit you and burned it instantly like it was plasma. But if you stay in a raging fire I will damage the items, yes. But things that make sense. First round the satchel. Second round the canvas, third round the coverings and in the fourth round the spellbook has burned. My way of reading damage is that if it isn't aimed it doesn't deserve to cripple stuff in such a way and magical items, permanent magical items, should have enough protection as is to survive. If a magic steel sword has survived 2 centuries in a damp cave without rusting to oblivion it should survive a small acid droplet that the warrior quickly slides away with a flick of his wrist. In a magical world the superficial damage can be fixed by Wizards or Priests after every adventure for a small fee, so that's my take.
Heh. Welcome to true old-school fantasy, Aaron! ;) And I'm glad you guys had fun at the con! Wish I could have been able to go, but I'm swamped with work and life as is... Some notes/responses: I still generally run using the silver standard, mostly while in urban settings - local brigands are not going to have hundreds or even dozens of GP on them just because the PCs are higher than 3rd level (unless I have a very specific reason to hand a particular brigand a bag of possibly-marked or cursed gold). However, the farther away from "civilization" one gets, the greater the risks, and great risks bring great reward; there will likely be lots of untouched silver, gold, unclaimed/lost magic items, and more when venturing deep into the lair of some craven beast (or cunning mastermind)... :) I also tend to prefer more dangerous combat (Mythras over D&D), but there's always a place for campaigns with the more "heroic-tier" combat and high-scale hit points, especially when getting into really high-magic settings - or Dark Sun, oddly enough. :) All that said: I'm a huge lorehound as both a DM and a player, and magic items tend to be my "output" for inserting history and lore into my campaigns, especially if there's a Bard/scholar/researcher/mage with Legend Lore spell/etc. in the party. When time permits, I also usually write out long handouts representing mostly (but not always 100%) relevant information from ancient texts/tomes, lost journals, and even certain divination spells that can view events past, present, and future.
In AD&D, magic items that are of no use to any given players are still worth tons of money, and ergo XP, when sold. More often than not my players are selling stuff off because it means rapid advancement - and especially at lower levels the experience gain is far more valuable than having magic. Sometimes, though, the odd tears are shed when the magic they find is both valuable and useful. Recently, the discovery of a bag of holding prompted a 'keep or sell' debate as it's most certainly a useful item, but the sale yielded a level for everyone with coin to spare. But these dilemmas are a massive part of the game and should be embraced!
So I do medieval reenacting, and frankly, Mudcore is about as unrealistic as over the top high fantasy; realism isn’t gritty and filthy, it well thought out, with coherent systems and logic behind things, and understandable worldbuilding. Find what works for your players and what works for you, and what’s fun, and don’t cite “Historical accuracy” or “Realism” to justify mudcore, just say that’s the kind of game you want to run if that’s the case
I think the big thing with magic items is there should be ALOT of single use or limited charge magic items that get used up over the adventures, permanent magic items should be rarer, this is usually taken into account by treasure tables but i do see a lack of scrolls or potions alot of the time during play
Magic items that Fighters can use should be common. Magic items for other classes should be rarer. Temporary magic items such as scrolls, potions and ammunition should be common. Permanent magic items should be rarer (in my opinion)
I don't use them all the time, but there were some nice tables for generating communities in the 3.5 DMG that have informed how many NPCs of various levels appear in towns and cities in my world. Sometimes, using them also gave me some questions to answer, particularly when they indicated one particular city was home to level 22 or so commoner.
The way I DM is usually that the world is somewhat realistic, people have no powers, magic is rare, elves are mystical creatures, kinda like LOTR and the players start just as mundane, but over the time they become powerful and special in this world because some kind of special event is going to happen, a cataclysm of sorts, an all out war, someone ascending to godhood in secret etc. I just start it slow and low, then we gather speed along with the highs and at the end they're epic with high stakes
I've gotten complaints from people for giving them items they can't use. Edit: I had one guy who wouldn't go shopping, but I eventually handed him a book and he bought something from it.
@@AaronthePedantic This was a long time ago, so it might have been a symptom of the times. None of the people I knew were the type who would spend an hour trying to sweet talk some shopkeeper. I had a couple who would try to squeeze every possible piece of information out of each NPC.
Thing is the players are heros. Hell i even call HP hero points. When your hero points run out the blade finally finds its Mark. So i dont mind giving out magic items. Some are useless or silly or only a RP item. Even in my non high magic world there is magic some might be simple like a Smith hammer that can never break and the hilt stays cool.
THIS ^^^. You can have fun playing "D&D" in numerous ways. I prefer the "serious fun" of AD&D and my players had a great sense of accomplishment and investment when they had to take care of each other during a delve, rather than just during combat. Exciting things often emerged from the mundane. Lantern's out of oil or out of torches? Ranger needs to hunt because rations were lost while fleeing from a beast? Running out of ammo or spell components, encumbered? All of these things can be hand-wave away but, I believe, you lose the heart of the game (any game).
One of my DMs use a cross between silver/Cooper standard. So a Cooper is equal to a $1 USD. And basically most of the time for adventures we get paid in high Cooper/low silver. Theese are the standard medium wage jobs Anyway it made sense why magic is seen as scary and dangerous. And why only organizations had control over them, as well as the big noble families. For gen pop, even some level 1 magic was expensive, thus they had very little understanding of magic. Wanna know what magic thing over there does but not ask the local mage, you need a 1000 Cooper(dollar) pearl, want a pet you can talk to telepathically got 1000 Cooper, Magic invisible ink at least 1000 Cooper, wanna get married, make holy water, dedicated a person to a god for a day, give a funeral, give a magical confessional or do a coming of an age ceremony, each 1 cost 2500 Cooper. Wanna hurl a sphere of elemental damage at a person, got a diamond worth 5000 coopers Not to mention why do people even middle class people have such hard time coming back from the dead with Ressurection magic. Easy lowest level spell res spell works within the minute you died and is 30,000 Cooper(dollars) worth Diamond. The next best thing is raise Dead, works within the last 10 days someone has died and is 50,000 Cooper worth Diamond. We live in magical gas light era and most ppl outside of nobility and the occasional aristocracy could have enough money for any useful magic. It made sense why anyone with magic would dedicated themselves to a magic noble family, or the church. You probably don't have enough money to fully study/understand the dangerous power you have.
There is a misperception that AD&D was “mudcore” but actually had a ton of magic items and magic. The difference is that it was hard to get the items. But there was plenty. I am generous with magic items. I routinely make custom items for my PCs. However, invariably my PCs figure out a way to combine it with something else to make it overpowered. I introduced a system where magic items fail on a natural 1, only retaining its “pluses”. In terms of "game lore" all my magic is technology so it invariably fails at some point. So this allows me to get rid of overly powerful magic items, keep the PCs in in the "hunt for loot" loop, and gives me side quest fodder for when the PCs wan to try and fix the magic item. I also use item wastage rules (my games I 5e). If you fail a saving throw against an AOE make save for all your items, if you roll 10 or more it's destroyed. Permanent magic items have advantage and items with plusses gain that as a bonus as well.
Did they do a video on this recently? :X I'm behind on my video watching with the con and all the games I've been playing. Most of my exposure to these conversations has been in Discord and Twitter
@@AaronthePedantic Yeah, during their eleventy hour show they discussed/debated the merits of too much/too little treasure. Your wife broke their balls a bit during that.
Realistic D&D is not a thing. Verisimilitude is barely achievable. It's not a bad thing, I play D&D exclusively; it's just not a good ruleset to play anything realistic.
well it needs a lot of homebrew and/or my favourite technique : forgetting/ignoring that certain rules exist This way I can make a fairly realistic D&D 5E game. But I totally agree that taking the system as it is written, it's not a good ruleset for that. I'm just the kind of person stubborn enough to make it work like I want it to rather than what it's designed to be.
@@AaronthePedantic oh absolutely, those things are clear targets- more a lack of stuff to overcome resistances or damage type variation, not to mention at low levels stuff like sleep just solves encounters
Magic breaks the game This has been a fact from the beginning, but a way to help fix this is to present problems that allow each type of character to shine. A anti magic area will put casters into a diffrent level along side a fighter or barbarian
"If everyone's super, nobody's super." One of the conceits that makes this kind of D&D work better is filling the setting with powerful people. In AD&D, for instance, every bandit group is led by 9th level Fighters IIRC and may have Magic Users. You're fairly likely to run into name level Clerics, Fighters, and MUs while in a city. There's nothing really superheroic about you until you're in the 15+s. Anyway, I dig mudcore stuff as well, I just run Lion and Dragon for that, and I've got WFRP for more fantastical takes on it
Mudcore - the hard, gritty, resource-managing, disease-catching, bath-avoiding style of play...and that's just the players! :) My group is currently going through the identification and decision-making process around a drop of 4 magic items they found after completely clearing a lair. They know they can use some of the items, but they're unsure of the powers. These do not unbalance the game - they are one of the games key variables - the way they're used is pivotal - but there are just as many ways in which they can end up being countered or removed.
"...and that's just the players! :)"
Zing!
5e was pushed during the playtest and early days as the 'low or no magic item' D&D edition. The idea was that the characters were 'balanced' for play without needing items, pushing back on 3rd and 4th edition's 'expected items by level' approach. You can see elements of this pushback in the 5e DMG. I think sometimes people bring this attitude to their 1st edition games but early D&D was stuffed full of magic items, it was a feature not a flaw.
Use the cowboy coin standard. "I need a room for the night, feed for my horse, a bath, a bottle of whiskey, a steak dinner, a box of shells and a woman." *drops one big heavy coin on the counter*.
I use the Silver standard because it makes having a gold Coin like having a Platinum coin and the convenient way of carrying lots of wealth... like it was used in the historical medieval age. It also fixes the "paying an inn with gold coins". It just makes more sense as an economy. Adventurers, wizards, mercenarys and kings are paid in gold, merchants and burguers use silver and peasants use coppers and barter to get along most of the time. Maybe is because I'm european and not american, but having troves of gold seems to me that you cheapen it's worth.
As it comes to world level balance... I have a homebrew point buy system myself with just 0+4 levels. 0 is starting (really 1, but with few XP points) and 1 is like level 1-5, 2 is like level 6-10, 3 y like level 11-15 and 4 is like level 16-20. My thinking is most people are level 0, soldiers/apprentices/normal guys of note are level 1, bosses of those guys (captain/master/bishops) are level 2, regional chiefs (Dukes/Kings, Magisters, Cardinals) are level 3 and then Legendary characters are level 4, some of them alive.
When it comes to magic Items I have Permanent Items (Magic Items) and Temporary Items (Enchanted Items). The first ones are rare and I usually give 1-2 per adventure. Temporary items are used by enemies and they have magic for 1 day (until dawn or dusk), 1 moon (a month), 1 season (3 months) or 1 year (until next Solstice of Winter)... after that time they are Masterwork Items.
I am one of those guys that dislike having too much magic stuff in the party's mule saddlebags, because it "cheapens" the wonder of magic in my setting and makes true Magic Items more special. This way I can deck enemies with Temporary Items, they can use them for a while or just during that adventure and if they like them they can ask the wizard/priest to craft one for them after gathering the components through commerce and maybe even an adventure... Those monsters drop the reagents to craft those magic items, so you can trade for the ones you don't have. It also drains the economy of the possibility of Magic Item inflation that should exist after a history of 2-5 millenia of eternally working magic items going from hand to hand.
I also use a System so every character can only use a few items or spell buffs, so we don't end up decked in 15 items per character, which I find kind of ridiculous XD
In my rules, which come from D&D 3rd, 5th and Specially Pathfinder 2E at max level you can have as a bonus +12 for experience gain, +6 from attributes, +3 from Items and +4 from Clases. Magic items are just +3 but they have other buffs than can be used to increased effectiveness, like extra 1d6 fire damage, concealment etc Magic Items are just 12% of the possible effectiveness of your character, but suceeeding the CD by 10 (example, Cd 15 and you get a 25+ on your throw) is a critical hit. That means double damage, extra effects for spells and skills etc Having even a +1 increases your power A LOT, so it is something characters want but it won't cripple them not having them.
I don't use item saving throws... they take wayyyyy more time that it's worth, every fireball, every crushing trap...every AOE effect can destroy stuff and combat is long enough to handle that. So what I do is that if the item can only be damaged if it is attacked specifically by an enemy for a tactical reason or a RP reason or the player exposes it to something dangerous for more than a round. It feels stupid to lose a spellbook that you have under leather canvas, with leather and bronze coverings, inside a satchel... because some fireball hit you and burned it instantly like it was plasma.
But if you stay in a raging fire I will damage the items, yes. But things that make sense. First round the satchel. Second round the canvas, third round the coverings and in the fourth round the spellbook has burned. My way of reading damage is that if it isn't aimed it doesn't deserve to cripple stuff in such a way and magical items, permanent magical items, should have enough protection as is to survive. If a magic steel sword has survived 2 centuries in a damp cave without rusting to oblivion it should survive a small acid droplet that the warrior quickly slides away with a flick of his wrist. In a magical world the superficial damage can be fixed by Wizards or Priests after every adventure for a small fee, so that's my take.
Heh. Welcome to true old-school fantasy, Aaron! ;)
And I'm glad you guys had fun at the con! Wish I could have been able to go, but I'm swamped with work and life as is...
Some notes/responses:
I still generally run using the silver standard, mostly while in urban settings - local brigands are not going to have hundreds or even dozens of GP on them just because the PCs are higher than 3rd level (unless I have a very specific reason to hand a particular brigand a bag of possibly-marked or cursed gold). However, the farther away from "civilization" one gets, the greater the risks, and great risks bring great reward; there will likely be lots of untouched silver, gold, unclaimed/lost magic items, and more when venturing deep into the lair of some craven beast (or cunning mastermind)... :)
I also tend to prefer more dangerous combat (Mythras over D&D), but there's always a place for campaigns with the more "heroic-tier" combat and high-scale hit points, especially when getting into really high-magic settings - or Dark Sun, oddly enough. :)
All that said: I'm a huge lorehound as both a DM and a player, and magic items tend to be my "output" for inserting history and lore into my campaigns, especially if there's a Bard/scholar/researcher/mage with Legend Lore spell/etc. in the party. When time permits, I also usually write out long handouts representing mostly (but not always 100%) relevant information from ancient texts/tomes, lost journals, and even certain divination spells that can view events past, present, and future.
In AD&D, magic items that are of no use to any given players are still worth tons of money, and ergo XP, when sold. More often than not my players are selling stuff off because it means rapid advancement - and especially at lower levels the experience gain is far more valuable than having magic. Sometimes, though, the odd tears are shed when the magic they find is both valuable and useful. Recently, the discovery of a bag of holding prompted a 'keep or sell' debate as it's most certainly a useful item, but the sale yielded a level for everyone with coin to spare. But these dilemmas are a massive part of the game and should be embraced!
So I do medieval reenacting, and frankly, Mudcore is about as unrealistic as over the top high fantasy; realism isn’t gritty and filthy, it well thought out, with coherent systems and logic behind things, and understandable worldbuilding. Find what works for your players and what works for you, and what’s fun, and don’t cite “Historical accuracy” or “Realism” to justify mudcore, just say that’s the kind of game you want to run if that’s the case
Well said!
I think the big thing with magic items is there should be ALOT of single use or limited charge magic items that get used up over the adventures, permanent magic items should be rarer, this is usually taken into account by treasure tables but i do see a lack of scrolls or potions alot of the time during play
Reject mudcore, RETVRN TO PVLP
’Tis TrV I say
Magic items that Fighters can use should be common. Magic items for other classes should be rarer.
Temporary magic items such as scrolls, potions and ammunition should be common. Permanent magic items should be rarer (in my opinion)
I don't use them all the time, but there were some nice tables for generating communities in the 3.5 DMG that have informed how many NPCs of various levels appear in towns and cities in my world. Sometimes, using them also gave me some questions to answer, particularly when they indicated one particular city was home to level 22 or so commoner.
The calling card of that darn 'Great Thief' keeps turning up in empty dungeons.
Osric has a note in the section on Money, page 27 that is the reasoning behind the piles of gold.
The way I DM is usually that the world is somewhat realistic, people have no powers, magic is rare, elves are mystical creatures, kinda like LOTR and the players start just as mundane, but over the time they become powerful and special in this world because some kind of special event is going to happen, a cataclysm of sorts, an all out war, someone ascending to godhood in secret etc. I just start it slow and low, then we gather speed along with the highs and at the end they're epic with high stakes
I've gotten complaints from people for giving them items they can't use.
Edit: I had one guy who wouldn't go shopping, but I eventually handed him a book and he bought something from it.
Man, I can't get players like that.
@@AaronthePedantic This was a long time ago, so it might have been a symptom of the times.
None of the people I knew were the type who would spend an hour trying to sweet talk some shopkeeper. I had a couple who would try to squeeze every possible piece of information out of each NPC.
Thing is the players are heros. Hell i even call HP hero points. When your hero points run out the blade finally finds its Mark.
So i dont mind giving out magic items. Some are useless or silly or only a RP item. Even in my non high magic world there is magic some might be simple like a Smith hammer that can never break and the hilt stays cool.
Excellent video well covered topic
THIS ^^^. You can have fun playing "D&D" in numerous ways. I prefer the "serious fun" of AD&D and my players had a great sense of accomplishment and investment when they had to take care of each other during a delve, rather than just during combat. Exciting things often emerged from the mundane. Lantern's out of oil or out of torches? Ranger needs to hunt because rations were lost while fleeing from a beast? Running out of ammo or spell components, encumbered? All of these things can be hand-wave away but, I believe, you lose the heart of the game (any game).
One of my DMs use a cross between silver/Cooper standard.
So a Cooper is equal to a $1 USD.
And basically most of the time for adventures we get paid in high Cooper/low silver.
Theese are the standard medium wage jobs
Anyway it made sense why magic is seen as scary and dangerous. And why only organizations had control over them, as well as the big noble families.
For gen pop, even some level 1 magic was expensive, thus they had very little understanding of magic.
Wanna know what magic thing over there does but not ask the local mage, you need a 1000 Cooper(dollar) pearl, want a pet you can talk to telepathically got 1000 Cooper, Magic invisible ink at least 1000 Cooper, wanna get married, make holy water, dedicated a person to a god for a day, give a funeral, give a magical confessional or do a coming of an age ceremony, each 1 cost 2500 Cooper. Wanna hurl a sphere of elemental damage at a person, got a diamond worth 5000 coopers
Not to mention why do people even middle class people have such hard time coming back from the dead with Ressurection magic.
Easy lowest level spell res spell works within the minute you died and is 30,000 Cooper(dollars) worth Diamond.
The next best thing is raise Dead, works within the last 10 days someone has died and is 50,000 Cooper worth Diamond.
We live in magical gas light era and most ppl outside of nobility and the occasional aristocracy could have enough money for any useful magic.
It made sense why anyone with magic would dedicated themselves to a magic noble family, or the church.
You probably don't have enough money to fully study/understand the dangerous power you have.
@Andrew McGuire ahahaha I almost missed that one
@Andrew McGuire Is this a Zelda reference?
Agreement achieved!
There is a misperception that AD&D was “mudcore” but actually had a ton of magic items and magic. The difference is that it was hard to get the items. But there was plenty. I am generous with magic items. I routinely make custom items for my PCs. However, invariably my PCs figure out a way to combine it with something else to make it overpowered. I introduced a system where magic items fail on a natural 1, only retaining its “pluses”. In terms of "game lore" all my magic is technology so it invariably fails at some point. So this allows me to get rid of overly powerful magic items, keep the PCs in in the "hunt for loot" loop, and gives me side quest fodder for when the PCs wan to try and fix the magic item.
I also use item wastage rules (my games I 5e). If you fail a saving throw against an AOE make save for all your items, if you roll 10 or more it's destroyed. Permanent magic items have advantage and items with plusses gain that as a bonus as well.
These are great ways to handle things IMO.
I see you watched Legion of Myth
Great show
Did they do a video on this recently? :X I'm behind on my video watching with the con and all the games I've been playing. Most of my exposure to these conversations has been in Discord and Twitter
Aaron you are gaming, that's correct!
@@AaronthePedantic Yeah, during their eleventy hour show they discussed/debated the merits of too much/too little treasure. Your wife broke their balls a bit during that.
Mudcore is the correct way to play. :smugpepe:
It is a damn good time, ngl. 😁
I have all ways assumed that gold coin was not purge gold and mixed with other metals as was the case in history
Tsr dnd hyperinflation go brrrr
Yes! I'm glad you came around on your one wrong opinion. 😜
Lol
Can you take a look at Midnight legacy of Darkness for 5e?
If I get ahold of it, I will!
Realistic D&D is not a thing. Verisimilitude is barely achievable. It's not a bad thing, I play D&D exclusively; it's just not a good ruleset to play anything realistic.
well it needs a lot of homebrew and/or my favourite technique : forgetting/ignoring that certain rules exist
This way I can make a fairly realistic D&D 5E game. But I totally agree that taking the system as it is written, it's not a good ruleset for that. I'm just the kind of person stubborn enough to make it work like I want it to rather than what it's designed to be.
Idk my real problem with the magic item thing is it really makes our friends martial classes suffer when casters just really don't?
Yeah. The game expects Fighters to all of their extra verbs from items and domain goods that cost money.
Spellbooks and holy symbols get item saving throws as well! 😜
@@AaronthePedantic oh absolutely, those things are clear targets- more a lack of stuff to overcome resistances or damage type variation, not to mention at low levels stuff like sleep just solves encounters
@@Hepabytes I guess gritty survival might help mitigate caster creep? But it is a tad long tbh
Magic breaks the game
This has been a fact from the beginning, but a way to help fix this is to present problems that allow each type of character to shine.
A anti magic area will put casters into a diffrent level along side a fighter or barbarian
Mudcore ❤️ 4 evar... (I'm not interested in fantasy super heroes)
"If everyone's super, nobody's super." One of the conceits that makes this kind of D&D work better is filling the setting with powerful people. In AD&D, for instance, every bandit group is led by 9th level Fighters IIRC and may have Magic Users. You're fairly likely to run into name level Clerics, Fighters, and MUs while in a city.
There's nothing really superheroic about you until you're in the 15+s.
Anyway, I dig mudcore stuff as well, I just run Lion and Dragon for that, and I've got WFRP for more fantastical takes on it
I’ve always liked the Game of Thrones model.
Players getting out of hand? Just say no.