Deck of Many Things: Epic or cancer?

As is, cancer.
Every campaign should have their own, better version. I'm planning on writing one up when I get the chance.

It depends on if you have players that are mature enough to play a tabletop game without being whiny babbies about "game balance" as if D&D is League of Legends. But we all know who the cancer in D&D actually is, and it's not the Deck of Many Things.

Wizards in general, HP bloat, skills that are obscurely or never used, humans being the best race outside of specific situations?

I'd say that poster was closer to the truth, given that they don't understand why balance is important in cooperative games.

Balance isn't terribly important as long as you have sufficient niche protection.

Niche protection is an aspect of balance.

On top of that, you need to balance the niches. If one persons niche comes up three times as much as another's due to being more broadly applicable within the premise of the game, no amount of niche protection will help. The GM can deal with it, sure, but making the GM bend over backwards to make someone feel useful rather than it coming up naturally in the course of play is bad design.

Niche protection IS balance, idiot.

In my 5e games, I like giving people the opportunity to learn secret (homebrew) martial arts and allow them to do magical item/potion crafting even if they're not spellcasters. That's not to say I don't allow spellcasters to learn magical secrets, but the party caster is nine times out of ten the member of the party that needs the least amount of stuff to pull their own weight.

Neither, it's simply useless and out of place for the majority of campaigns because of it's power to completely warp the game and the path the players have set upon.

This pretty much shows why 'Magic' is a really bad thing to define as a 'niche', since it can do basically everything and the only way to make up for it is for the GM to put in extra work.

Used well it can be an asset. Used poorly it can be problematic.

The basic deck tends to be problematic due to its "win big or lose big" nature.

I think the greater deck of many things from Encylopedia Magica was pretty good. It had a lot more results of varying power as it was based on a full tarot deck rather than just the trumps.

It's only bad if you have ill-defined magic(such as D&D), where magic doesn't really have any meaningful limitations.

If I had to redesign the Dungeons and Dragons magic system, this is what I'd do:
>You have spell points instead of spell slots.
Complain about mana all you want, it makes more sense and is more versatile.
>Accordingly, there are no spell levels, everything has a spell point cost instead.
>Instead of increasingly powerful spells, there are spells and spell specializations. When you memorize a spell specialization, you also have to memorize the 'base' spell.
For example, to memorize, say, Dominate Person, you would also have to memorize Charm Person.
>Any spell effect that has effects more powerful than a 5th level spell MUST be done as a specialized ritual or by some sort of divinity.
>Magic has hard and fast rules. Break them, and it will break you. Depends on the setting, but can include: Magic cannot be used as a weapon, magic cannot revive the dead, magic cannot harm anyone wearing a specific item.
>Everyone has spell points. Yes, EVERYONE. They can do things other than cast spells.
>Wizards know more spells than anyone else, and can choose from additional benefits when specializing with a spell.
>Sorcerors get more spell points than anyone else, and get to boost their spells by over-channeling.
Et cetera.

>Epic or cancer
It's Epic Cancer

Epiiiic!
For the win.

funin.space/compendium/item/The-Deck-of-Many-Things-Heroic.html

For anyone curious about the 4e deck of many things. It's an interesting Artifact, granting the bearer a selection of luck based abilities while they have it, depending on how pleased it is with them. Drawing a card from it ends your relationship with it (for now, anyway), with how much favour you have with the deck influencing the draw.

Some of the effects are powerful, while others are very unpleasant, but even the worst ones are framed as a chance to undertake a fun quest of some kind, while all the boons still make sense within the system and level range they're designed for.

That it's arcane caster only (given -1 concordance for not using arcane powers), seems kinda shitty to me, but that's the only thing I don't like about it.

Literally Epic Cancer.

>"badly" designed
>praises 4e

Idiot contrarians shouldn't be allowed to post, but site traffic would all but disappear if that happened.

Go fuck yourself. 4e was fine as its own game. It just didn't fit what everyone thought D&D ought to be.

That's why there's a limit on the number of cards you can pull, and then it disappears.

Do you have a link to just the Deck, or do I need to hit up the 2e trove and unearth it?

Back in the 3e days, I was GMing my own campaign with these custom dungeons I'd make, and in one of the dungeons (a tome of some asshole wizard), the players fell for a trap room. In the center of the room was a full deck of many things, and the only way out was by removing every single card from the deck (there was writing on one of the walls telling them so). There were four players, and they were like 6th level at the time.

I figured they'd split them up pretty evenly, but instead they wanted to rock-paper-scissored for each one. I fudged the rule at the time about announcing how many you wanted to draw and what not, and the cards being replaced.

All in all, though, they didn't walk away too powerful or broken. I think three of them died, but they wound up getting wishes and used them to bring back two of their buddies. The third guy wound up playing the character they drew from the knight card. And then another guy lost all his magic items but wound up getting a really sweet magic item. It probably also helped that I split the XP and only let them level once off the encounter.

I don't know, I guess they walked away from that encounter way more powerful overall but they also kind of paid for it, and it wasn't like I couldn't keep throwing shit there way. We kept playing that game for at least a year and only stopped because another guy and I moved away. Then again, this was a long time ago and I wasn't the greatest GM back then (still not the best) so I may have fucked shit up with it.