4E casts mage’s disjunction
Filed under D&D 4E Preview on January 24, 2008
Tagged: 4E, Dungeons and Dragons, magic items
Dragon magazine’s latest Design & Development column discusses the upcoming changes to magic items that 4E will bring. For those who have played CRPGs, the concept of slots to represent places on the body that items could be worn/held, and to limit the number of items that can be used at once. Dungeons & Dragons began to formalize and quantify this in their tabletop rules with v3.5.
The article begins with a declaration of intent:
One of our goals in 4th Edition was to reduce characters’ reliance on magic items. The most important portion of this goal involved removing a lot of the magic items that were essential just so your character could feel effective, like stat-boosting items, amulets of natural armor, and the like. We also felt like these items weren’t as exciting as magic items should be, yet characters depended on them heavily to feel adequate in proportion to their level. We felt that the cool stuff a character can do should come from that character’s abilities, not his gear.
While the marketing-speak of the last sentence might make this sound like a wonderful thing, I have my reservations. This is another change in a fundamental game mechanic that distances 4E from what defines D&D for me. No more rings of protection +1; magical “plusses” are reserved for Primary Slot items like weapons, armor, amulets and cloaks. In fact, you can’t even wear a ring until your character reaches 11th level because they aren’t “powerful enough to unleash the power of a ring.”
Items that belong to a certain slot will have a specific purpose:
- Weapons/Implement slot, which includes holy symbols (woah, magical holy symbols), rods, staffs and wands, will add attack and damage bonuses.
- Armor slot, which includes wizard robes, enhances AC.
- Neck slot (amulets and cloaks) increase Fortitude, Reflex and Will defenses.
- Arms covers shields, bracers and vambrances. Shields provide non-AC bonus defensive effects, while braces are now offensive items. This change also removes an available slot, as shields and arms used to be separate.
- Feet provide mobility and special methods of movement.
- Hands equal gloves, and help with attacks or actions that require manual dexterity.
- Head items include helmets, circlets, goggles and orbitals, which affect mental skills or the senses.
- I already mentioned the big change to rings. That leaves the waist. These items grant protection, healing or a temporary boost to Strength.
I find this mechanic to be severely limiting as a DM. What if I want to create a cloak of teleportation. According to this article, that doesn’t fit the purpose of that particular item slot. Does that mean it becomes an artifact? Am I going to have to come up with some house rules in order to make this item work in 4E? Yet again, I find myself scratching my head and wondering why the designers felt this change was necessary. I don’t see an obvious benefit that invalidates the previous system. It just feels like change for change’s sake.
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January 24th, 2008 at 12:26 pm
I wasn’t sure what to think of this myself. One thing about it does sound good, though:
Saying that most of the cool stuff a character can do should come from his class, not his gear, seems particularly non-World of Warcraft-like. Which is good. Already too much of 4E sounds too WoWish.
Even so, as with most 4E, we don’t have the full picture yet. Sometimes I think dropping hints is what’s scaring people. Maybe it’s best if we didn’t know all this stuff in advance.
January 24th, 2008 at 12:47 pm
I have my own reservations about how magic items are going to work, but there were a few cool things about it that I can’t discuss publicly. Hopefully they flesh out this new system a lot more prior to release. If they are going to put limits on what items can do what, however, they will really need an expanded magic item section so that each item is useful for all the new classes. It wasn’t as necessary to have super unique items before, when you could just assign any attribute to whatever item. Now it has… I already smell a new magic item compendium.
January 24th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
Am I reading between the lines correctly, Lukahn? Do you have an inside source?
I totally agree that not having the total picture is causing as much controversy as it is hype. I’m not sure how I feel about the focus on the class as the primary origin of a character’s abilities. Of course, D&D has always been about classes, so my resistance there probably has less to do with 4E and more to do with my taste in systems.
January 25th, 2008 at 10:09 am
I agree with Jeff in that I think the piecemeal approach for previewing 4e hasn’t exactly worked well. I admit that I haven’t liked some of the changes that I’ve seen in the previews … but each change is only a small aspect of the game. For example, I don’t like the ’slot’ system for magic items - but that’s just my initial reaction. Within the context of the new rules set, and seeing how the system works within the game, I might really like it.
On the other hand, can you imagine if they’d chosen not to preview anything? Cats and dogs, living together … anarchy.
This is really why I’m trying to hold judgement on the system until I can see the forest, and not just a few trees.
January 28th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
Kam, I live 10 minutes away from WotC, of COURSE I have an inside source (several, actually)… my wife used to work in the same building (not anymore, though, much to my sadness), so she also has friends that work for WotC.
I can’t say much, obviously, because of the NDA, but I think it’s ok to say that I’ve been involved in playtests, so I’ve seen the whole package (well, a big chunk of it anyway). I would agree with Mike, it’s better to hold judgement until you see it all working together. Piecemeal I imagine would seem pretty confusing!
January 28th, 2008 at 7:10 pm
“…but I think it’s ok to say that I’ve been involved in playtests…”
So, have we read about any of your sessions in the Playtesting column on Dragon?
January 30th, 2008 at 2:23 pm
This “11th level required to wear a ring” business sounds, well, preposterous. (Unless Bilbo was 11th level at the beginning of The Hobbit, of course.)
It really sounds to me like they’re trying to shift game mechanics into the way a videogame might work (I’ve heard more than one person say it sounds like World of Warcraft). I can understand the need for streamlined mechanics, but this is D&D. You can play by the book, but most of the campaigns I’ve been in don’t. This type of game mechanic sounds rigid, arbitrary, and unnatural, and I’m not sure it is going to fit very well in a game that thrives on imagination and flexibility.
But if they can figure out a way for attacks of opportunity to make sense, I might be convinced to overlook this.