Wizards

>>chance of success for a level 17 wizard for this would be 74%

-%'s for rare items.

and a +2 is the most common weapon in the game? Wat?

Which game faggot?

lol what a faggot.

>+2 sword is the most common magic weapon in the game
Holy shit what
Haha

But seriously OP, the ability to easily make magic items (and the fact that the expectation to dish out magic items like candy) is one of the things that I hated about 3.x immediately upon first looking through the PHB.

>But seriously OP, the ability to easily make magic items (and the fact that the expectation to dish out magic items like candy) is one of the things that I hated about 3.x immediately upon first looking through the PHB.

And components changed.

>*and the fact that the expectation to dish out magic items like candy is baked into the mechanics

Don't know how I dropped that

Yeah, the components pouch was obviously OP when I first looked at 3rd edition. Even though I had never heard the term before, "caster supremacy" was basically what I was thinking.

>But seriously OP, the ability to easily make magic items

Which also took the "special" part out of magic items. And basically set up a magic shop on every village street corner.

5e gm here
I would argue for behalf of 5e but i cant its ridiculous
"I wanna craft a magic item that requires i be a 5th level wizard" (that is a regulation i have you cant fucking craft magical items as anybody other then wizards and maybe clerics)
Ok chop off like 2000 gold and 40 days will go by in down time and now you have a magical item

Hold on.

>Powerful enough to cast Permanency, i.e. level 17 or more
>Almost die to a group of ogres

I'm thinking this story might be just a wee bit made-up?

2e.

A group of ogres led by an ogre mage, was nothing to scoff at.

A typical ogre tribe has about a dozen combat-ready buggers, up to twenty. Certainly a challenge for a lower-level party, but a 17th level wizard could solo that shit even in 2e.

Hell, a 9th level wizard could solo it: the 4+1 hit dice ogres have is right on the limit where they don't get to save against Cloudkill.

>Cloudkill

You're assuming a lot. I remember ogre mages being pretty fucking wicked. (it's been a while tho)

>quests like this are never necessary for the wizard to gain components or spells.

It used to be there. And it used to make the system so much better. Now its just all murderhobo

It's only a level 6 spell if I recall. You also needed Enchant an Item, a spell specifically for.. making enchanted items. Cost XP and Con to do, so it wasn't something you'd likely do more than once or twice.
Scrolls and potions you could make sooner than that, by level 9 I think, and sometimes wands? I only played 1 2e game that was that high level, and we never used any downtime for that.

And tell me, dear uncles, what was it like in the days before the worst edition? How were components dealt with then?

>And tell me, dear uncles, what was it like in the days before the worst edition? How were components dealt with then?

They had to be found, or gathered, my child.

Try finding gum arabic, and bat shit.

To be honest, as awesome as making a magic weapon a quest is, you better get something than a fucking +2 if you have to go through all that. At least some other special ability to pair with it.

Is that so? I tried to do that in a 5e game I was running, but my players Grumbled muchly-- Most of them Gen Xers who mainly had played 3.5 but were seduced to 5e.

I would much prefer that they had to gather components. At least spend downtime doing it so I can roll how much of each they find.

Gum arabic - Be somewhere in the an arabian nights themed location and that's easy enough. Anywhere not inspired by the middle east and you use your vast adventurers dosh to buy some at a port.
Bat shit - Find a cave? How hard could that be to find, come on?

To be perfectly honest I play the game to, who could have guessed; play the game. I didn't come to game night to play "pick some flowers and toadstools, and go do arduous sidequests while we put the campaign on pause so you can feel good about making an item anyone else could have bought from a shop or commissioned an NPC to make."

You make a fair last point though, when my GM told me instead of rolling survival or nature or something to see how many ingredients to make potions I can find, instead it was handled by dumping gold and saying that bought the ingredients. Kind of ruins the verisimilitude when we can only make magic potions by throwing gold into a mortar and out pops a bottle.

You're in the frozen wastelands.
But say you're not.

You gonna take your little wizard ass out and explore a cave (caves often be the home of nasty things)? The rest of the party going too?
>C'mon guys, I know you were working on your projects/downtime shit, but I really need bad shit!

You could HIRE someone to find it for you. Which was also what a lot of our PC groups did to start out, they hired out to wizards to find ingredients.

>but my players Grumbled muchly
I have no doubts.

I can agree on that first point, actually. Part of the reason I gave into hand waving it was because it seemed like a chore to actually run them finding ingredients.

Ugh.

So much nope.

Just let me craft whatever can be crafted in downtime, and have magic items as just another traded product, with magic arms and armor just as common on NPC warriors as on PCs.

>You're in the frozen wastelands.
Should have packed accordingly then shouldn't you have?
>You gonna take your little wizard ass out and explore a cave
Only a small fraction of caves are death traps, go somewhere near civilization or offer to clean out the local bell tower.

>Should have packed accordingly then shouldn't you have?
And that is the key.

Wizards needed prep. And careful planning.

>Wanting to tract that many special effects constantly on everyone
Yeah no, forgetting what everything you have does because you have 3 pages worth of magic item descriptions is soooo much fun.

I think the implication is that that is where +2 weapons come from and even a seemingly insignificant enchant like that is a major investment that murderhobos who usually loot theirs off some dead guy don't have to suffer through.

>Forgetting
>3 pages

Unless you're collecting trinkets for some reason, it's probably more like 1 item per slot.

Several of them will be passive, like +number bonuses to stuff, in which case, the bonuses are pre-baked into your total because you're smart enough to realize you should have up to date numbers on your sheet, and you wear your gear far more often than you're naked.

>and you wear your gear far more often than you're naked.

Maybe YOU do. That's not how I roll.

Not all of my gear is going to be equipped at all time if the world is literally flooding in it. Oh if only I remembered I had item X while we prepped for Y, too bad I got it 4 months ago and its nestled under page 2 of bullshit.

Also static bonus magic items are fucking garbage and horrifically lazy and uninspired.

Sure. Your utility items won't be in use all the time.

Your complaint is like "how can you expect me to remember the spells I learned?"

Put them on cards if it's that hard.

>Be me, retard with crafting skill in anima
>Decide to make a magical item
>Monsters are way too strong, rare and dangerous
>Realize the easiest way to is to become a lord and kidnap people then sacrifice them en mass
>Do so
>After in game months of me and my buddies helping me become a lord and 'accidentally' removing political dissidents we get enough Powerpoints via human sacrifice to make magical items
>I make a magical tictac dispenser.
>Thank god this game has no alignment or we'd be going so deep into CE we'd need new alignment charts.

>Also static bonus magic items are fucking garbage and horrifically lazy and uninspired.

In a thread reminiscing how "good" were the good ol' times where you had to work for 8 sessions to make a flat +2 sword.

I'm aware. I completely agree with the sentiment not the result. A sword forged with such materials should do something cool. Something you know. Worth the all that effort.

Regular swords break, rust, dull, need constant maintenance. Have your players remember that. Have them spend some time sharpening their sword and keeping it clear of water and all that shit, then have that sword ultimately break anyway.

Then give them a +2 weapon that does none of those things.

Magic goes both ways: it doesn't just do flashy shit regular weapons can't do, it also deals away with whatever fundamental failings they might have. Keep that in mind and the pressure of coming up with fancy special effects will lessen.

(You'll still want to write them history, though.)

>Have them spend some time sharpening their sword and keeping it clear of water and all that shit, then have that sword ultimately break anyway.

Just assume my PC does that, same way it's assumed that he remembers to chew his rations, put out the campfire, string his bow, and tie his shoes before heading out.

I'm not about to waste 30 minutes of every session repeating the gory details of my fighter's morning routine.

Oh golly thanks gm for the price of a near unlimited number of swords I can have a single sword that doesn't require realistic book keeping that you've just introduced out of nowhere.

Wow that sure does sound like fun.

Hey, even if you don't spend a lot of time actually playing it out, your PCs still do it, and I'd imagine might be mighty pleased to have a sword that doesn't need any of that.

Given the description op gave us, multiple people and who knows how many hirelings died for what amounts to nothing. If you have a hyper competent group that could pull all that off with out a single casualty they'd still be expending a great deal of resources to do so.

Or they could have bought a few extra swords. Used each for a single encounter for the rest of the campaign, and then thrown it out. Because petty scraps of metal are beneath them.

Is this how people get job offers from Black Sun?

>Thank god this game has no alignment or we'd be going so deep into CE we'd need new alignment charts.
>Implying you can't be considered an evil asshole by anyone with common sense just because there's no convenient nine-point chart there to pin you down on

The thing is, 3.PF and 5e basically assumes you'll always have the right components on hand all the time. Even if not, bypassing the component requirement is so trivially easy that it's generally just not worth bothering with,

>died for what amounts to nothing
+2 was far from "nothing" in 2e.

This. Many of the golems or greater demons couldn't even be harmed by anything less.

>Forged by gods to a special purpose
>All but indestructible, can cut through -almost- anything
>Only thing that can harm a powerful demon
>Clearly intelligent

Example of a +2 sword, +3 at most.

Magic items thatbare really hard to make are certainly flavorful, but they don't make a ton of sense if you think about them. Every time you find a magic item in a dungeon, that item is the product of one of the most experienced, powerful spellcasters in history, like the top fraction of one percent of the population, spending weeks or years going through a living hell, collecting the rarest ingredients and finally accepting permanent disability so severe that few would dare to make more than three or four items in a lifetime. All to make one guy 5% better at swinging swords. And a lot of magic items aren't even as useful as that! It's just as much of a pain to make a cursed item, and cursed items are everywhere in old-school D&D. How many people would really make that kind of sacrifice for a practical joke?

Cursed items can be the magic decaying, cursed by a god or powerful spirit (or anyone with bestow curse), failed attempts at making a proper item, or any number of things.
Not all magic items were made by mages either, some could be blessed by the gods, created naturally by being made of a magical material, soaking in the blood of a titan for centuries, or just as many ways as a cursed item can be made.
It's just that CRAFTING one should not ever be as simple as making a regular item.

A fair point, but consider also that history tends to be a pretty long one - many thousands of years, in your average campaign setting. It fits a lot of really powerful wizards to that time, many of whom might well be strong enough to overcome the permanent penalties inherent in creating magic items.

And none of this isn't yet assuming some long-gone time of magical myth, a high-magic golden age when creating these things was so much easier than in the present day and everyone had plenty of time to get to it.

All in all it's easy enough to imagine how there could be so many of them.

You get it when you resurrect them because you realize zombies are unfatigable and hence can work 24/7.

I can understand why that makes you not like the crafting process, but for me that's more a reason to not like magic items of [var = var + n;]. Magic items should be strange and specific. A sword that instantly kills wolves it strikes and a shield that destroys fire around the wielder when they give a command word are far more interesting than a sword+1 and shield+2, and you can picture why they'd be valuable enough to create.
>the wolf population's getting out of control, and I'm pretty sure some of them are tainted by demons. Have this sword and go knock a whole bunch of them over.
>red dragon moving in? Well, this should help you out. Just remember, if it's breathing in a whole bunch, yell "Nix" right as it starts breathing out.

>not doubling the time you look after your sword even though it doesn't need it when it's magic
You're just asking for the thing to grow intelligent and take over your arm.

Because those wizards had massive networks of universities and conclaves to call on, rather than being that one weirdo who hangs around with unwashed barbarians and goes [shudders in magick] outside that no one would ever associate with.

>Be a Wizard
>Skullfuck reality on a daily basis with nothing more than a pinch of bat guano
>Level Bullshit spells end every encounter in seconds
>Don't really need the rest of the party
>Fighter's just there to laugh at
>Halfling rogue's head is a blowjob height
>That's about all they're good for

>Try to make a simple magic item, like the kind we find in every chest
>Extended fucking multiprong sidequest
>Ridiculous effort and cost of components
>Permanent ability cost
>Minor gain in effectiveness with resulting item

One of these situations is bullshit. And it's not the one people are bitching about here.

The issue isn't that wizards have it too hard making items, it's that they have it too easy the rest of the time. There's a long-running assumption that they can cast pretty much any spell they want so long as they're leveled for it, and they can usually do so at pretty much negligible cost to themselves.

To the guy upthread who said that *gum arabic* was hard to get: go suck a cock.

"The left hand of a wrongfully-executed man, taken while he was still swinging from the gallows" is a hard component to get.

"The tears of a mourning virgin whose love died at sea" are hard to get.

Gum arabic can be purchased at any Ye Olde God-Dammed Crafte Shoppe.

>mfw imagining a world of evil magician-kings while the good guys are stuck casting magic darts

>Gum arabic can be purchased at any Ye Olde God-Dammed Crafte Shoppe.

Any dm who has a magic shop is a fool. And I believe the other user said something about a frozen wasteland.

But, yeah. 2e had difficult shit to find. And that was a good thing.

You're rather overestimating how easy time wizards have in earlier editions. They're far more fragile, spells are a great deal easier to disrupt, and there's less of them overall. Specialist wizards are less powerful. And sure, you still get some pretty good spells, but which spells you get are entirely under DM's purview - no "two spells of your choice on each level up" bullshit.

You're pretty powerful, you'll pull your weight fine, but a high-level fighter's going to do his part as well.

Thieves still suck though.

> Thieves suck
The only thing 3.5 did right, was allow better customization of rogues.

I hated the 20% chance to hide shit.

Don't forget how even when the quadratic wizards thing kick in, fighters started to accumulate a free army at level 9+.

You played wrong, then.

Any character class had about the same odds at sneaking around: just take off your armor, put on some good shoes, and stick behind cover and on soft ground. It was all about roleplay.

Thief's additional 20% chance on top of that was not the be-all end-all of sneaking: it was a safety net, something added on top of that, something that allows him to sneak in complete silence.

Any class can try to not be unheard, but only a thief can make absolutely no sound at all.

At the very least they had to be close trading partners with adventurers, because to make their precious magic items they need ingredients that can basically only be gathered by high-level adventurers.

what's in a (good) wizards basement?

I have some players going into Amelior Amanitas's old tower (he's no longer there, died long ago), and all I know is that the dude was an alchemist.

What's down there other than potions?

Anything you can fit in a glass jar. Dirt, gas, weird mutated plants and critters, etc.
Piles upon piles of notes written in tiny scribblings that you can't understand even if you know the language.
A dangerously large amount of bombs in a corner barrel. They're so old that just handling them can cause them to explode.
A patch of mushrooms overgrowing in a dark closet.
A weird circle that smells like blood and a couple armors standing by the back wall.

If there is no alignment, you can only argue I'm evil!

thanks!

>wizards can have orbs as magical implements
>orb shaped like a bowling ball
>bowling wizard

THIS is how you wizard.

>Be me, Paladin in 2e
>Want Holy Avenger so I can smite greater evils
>Only Holy Avenger in the known realms is wielded by the leader of my order of Paladins
>Don't want to be the leader of my order, I prefer to do my smiting of evil on a more personal level
>Talk to my friends a wizard and a cleric
>They work their mighty divinations and discover how to create such a weapon
>We gather our friends and allies on agree to quest for the components and reagents for my weapon.

>The first item is a metal alloy made by the Marbleheart clan of Dwarves
>They will not grant their sacred steel to any not of the clan.
>My friend the Rogue offers steal some. I deny his unlawful ways
>I face their tests of worthiness and failed
>As I prepare to leave, I hear a mine shaft has collapsed trapping several miners in the debris
>I am the first to arrive and begin digging with my bare hands
>As I free the trapped dwarves I heal them
>I do not rest until all are accounted for
>After the last of the dwarves are freed the clan master calls for me
>For my heroism I am granted membership into to the clan as Forge-thane
>Receive sacred steel and gain access to their holy forges (not required but a likely bonus)

>The second required item is fire from the heart of an Fire Elemental Lord
>Travel with companions to the City of Brass
>Arrange passage to a kingdom ruled by Fire Lord
>Arrive in Fire Lord's kingdom
>They are Chaotic, which is normal for Fire beings but are decent folk
>Learn that the Fire Lord is in a war with an Earth Elemental Kingdom
>Bargain with the Fire Lord and agree to end the threat from the Earth Elementals in exchange for him lending me his Heart-Fire
>Travel to Earth Elemental Kingdom
>See they are good folk as well
>Earth Elemental King is a dickbag though
>Discover killing Earth King will destroy all his subjects
>Wizard offers to summon Earth King to the Prime where we can bind him forever
>Decline as it would leave his subject vulnerable to predation
>Eventually work out a political marriage between Fire Lord's son and Earth King's daughter
>After their marriage the two kingdoms merge, becoming the Land of Lava
>Creation of the new kingdom has mystical side effects, both the Earth King and Fire Lord discorporate and their power flows into their children
>No more Fire Elemental Heart-Flame
>I am disheartened but ask that the Lava Master provide heat to my friends in the Marbleheart clan making their forges even stronger and hope that it is enough to make up for no Elemental Heart-Flame

>Final ingredient is a Soul of Purity
>This disturbs me greatly, I do not believe in sacrificing another.
>Cleric finds a child who is pure as driven snow
>She willingly offers herself to help others
>I cannot accept, it is not right to sacrifice a person for this
>By this point dickhead demon has heard of my quest
>He tries to kill the child
>I stop him but barely
>The child is gravely hurt in the battle
>Neither mine nor the cleric's magics can heal him
>I stay by his side until he dies
>Do not allow the cleric and wizard to catch his soul and allow it to pass on.

>Return to the sacred forges with a plan
>Begin forging Holy Avenger myself
>The Lava-Master's heat is unbearable but I soldier on
>Blade is white hot and painful to look on
>My smithing hammer falls and I forge my own heart and soul into the blade
>Believing I will pass on when I complete the sword I pour my own soul into the steel
>I know that it will do great goodness after I pass, I care not for my own glory
>At last I am finished, all that is left is quenching
>I walk outside onto the snow covered peaks of the Marblehome
>I take a final breath and a lone tear rolls down my cheek as see the beauty of the world for the last time
>I plunge the sword into the snow sealing my soul within and black out.

>I awaken to feel a heavy weight on my chest
>The sword, Demon-Breaker lies there
>Once again I feel I have fail for if I live the magics did not hold
>Time stops and my god, appear at the foot of my bed
>He explains my quest for the things to make my Holy Avenger was about forging my soul to be worthy of a such a blade
>I rise and draw Demon-Breaker for the first time
>Holy Light floods the chamber
>We then take the war to the Shadow Master's realm
>In addition to my Order's army, the Marbleheart dwarves and Lava Master send armies to aid us
>Demon-Breaker lives up to its name and I drive her through the Shadow Master's heart.

It was the best campaign I'd ever been in.

That does sound fucking awesome.

ALL OF THE DAY BRO!

This guy gets it.

Magic item creation is neither busywork or chore, nor something to be skipped over in downtime - it's a quest.

5e requires similar things to make magic items.

Sure, but what about when the 12th level thief just wants a set of +1 throwing shanks?

Not since they put out the Downtime rules, strictly speaking.
But you gotta know when to ignore the rules. God knows you have to for 5e.
*legendary magic item creation

>the ability to easily make magic items (and the fact that the expectation to dish out magic items like candy) is one of the things that I hated about 3.x immediately upon first looking through the PHB
I had forgotten about my response to reading that.
I basically reacted like reading a detailed description of the mating habits of an umberhulk.
Interesting and impressive that they went that detailed with it, but I'm never gonna fucking use that shit.
Crafters craft.
Adventurers adventure.

And Monty Hall can make for a bad DM.
He's insanely shit as a player.

Well I was referring to the Downtime rules. Otherwise the creation can get a lil iffy. But I think the Downtime version works well. You have to devote time during the forging, and time to find the magical materials, as well as the proper proficencies and gold. So I think it's pretty similar to what OP described.

It is magic mothafucka, you best get to stealing the tail feathers of the Magpie King if you want some magical stickas.

>Any dm who has a magic shop is a fool.
Eh.
I look at it differently.

Many villages have a midwife, healer, or medicine man that's likely to have a couple components they can spare for some coin.
They won't have everything you need, but they have maybe a couple things and know where you can find them in ye ol' Plothook Caverns.

And then, after struggling and scrounging for components the whole campaign, your journey brings you to a city, a real full-fledged City.
And there you find a magic shop that is not adorned with dozens of artifacts and powerful mystical objects but instead is fully stocked with nearly every component you could possibly need.
Suddenly magical components, which in some games are such an afterthought as to be disregarded entirely, become a treasure trove of wealth and a shop filled with such will make your wizard salivate so much that they are more than willing to overlook the ridiculous markup cost.

Beautiful. The closest I've ever got to playing something like this was the old WoW questlines for Lock and Pally mounts. I suppose gaining levels through the regular combat and roleplay stuff for features, abilities, and skills is its own kind of Quest for Power, but it's often difficult or awkward to make a story out of it like this. I've never managed to convince my players to seek out or pick up a hook like this, but at least I can inject one of a kind items with their own stories and uses.
Though even those are inevitably sold for gp before they can become relevant.

>A sword forged with such materials should do something cool. Something you know. Worth the all that effort.
>+2 was far from "nothing" in 2e.
I think this just boils down a problem with description.
Literally nobody refers to their weapon as a "+1" in character.
It's a mechanical description.
Fluffwise, it should be "Blade of Hardness", "Westmark's Edge", or "Orcslayer".
Describing how a +1 on a sword makes it better is as nuanced in reality as a +1 level on a fighter makes them better.

>old WoW questlines for Lock and Pally mounts

There's a nostalgia hit. I completed the quests back when Scholomance was primarily ran as a 10 man raid. I scrounged a group together to 5 man it and then got a group to do the Dire Maul wing that no one wanted to do. I was in a shitty guild at the time so I basically had no guild support. It made earning that Dreadsteed all the sweeter. That fight in Dire Maul was so fun that I'd support other 'locks on that step by letting them use my items to start the fight. I probably did it about 10 times before they killed the questline.

>Only a small fraction of caves are death traps, go somewhere near civilization or offer to clean out the local bell tower.
Don't you think the higher-level wizards have already scoured all the belltowers in the civilized world clean of guano?

>There's a long-running assumption that they can cast pretty much any spell they want so long as they're leveled for it
Something else that makes older editions better, as pointed out.

>"Oh, you want to be able to cast Fireball? Well, there are some rumors of a wizard who once knew how to cast that spell..."

daaaaaaaaaaaayum

And here I thought the Cloak of Seasons I made out of the wing of a red dragon was bad-ass.

>And there you find a magic shop that is not adorned with dozens of artifacts and powerful mystical objects but instead is fully stocked with nearly every component you could possibly need.
>Suddenly magical components, which in some games are such an afterthought as to be disregarded entirely, become a treasure trove of wealth and a shop filled with such will make your wizard salivate so much that they are more than willing to overlook the ridiculous markup cost.
Alternatively, you all start in that city working for the shop owner to acquire spell components in bulk.

Thus began the tale of the Five Hands, who quested to return to the city with an entire wagon full of bat shit.

>Don't you think the higher-level wizards have already scoured all the belltowers in the civilized world clean of guano?
Clearly, higher level magesince would raise their own bats.

>Alternatively, you all start in that city working for the shop owner to acquire spell components in bulk.
I like it!
There have been far, far worse campaign beginnings.

>Thus began the tale of the Five Hands, who quested to return to the city with an entire wagon full of bat shit.
>Guys! We could fill it in a day if clear out Cavern Chitticaca, home of the giant bats!

>There have been far, far worse campaign beginnings.

We've used that one a lot in 2ed.

>group hired by merchant who deals with mages
>group hired by wizard directly
>group hired by the City, to gather components for the local mages training center
>group hired by a noble to get a component for his mage to cast some megaspell

It's a solid starting point for a campaign.

cap'd, thank you for sharing this story, user