The thing is, while these sorts of items may be common among adventurers, adventurers aren’t common in the world. Personal backstory not withstanding, adventurers are individuals that have risen above the common rank for one reason or another. I’d say having an arcane focus would qualify for that. I vaguely recall one handbook or another even saying somewhere that a commoner’s stats usually sit around 8 or something, so even a level 1 adventurer is a cut above.
I thought a regular person was supposed to be 10 across the board
Sure but they don’t know Thieves Cant or how to harness their rage or they don’t have the favour of a God or anything.
I vaguely recall one handbook or another even saying somewhere that a commoner’s stats usually sit around 8 or something, so even a level 1 adventurer is a cut above.
I already knew all of the stuff you mention in this, and this part is just actually wrong outright. I’ve never heard of any of the rules saying commoners would have such low traits, and have always heard it as - 10 is the average amount for a human/commoner. 7-9 is slightly below average, anything below is remarkably low, 1-2 is near death. Now, yes, even a level 1 adventurer is uncommon and more powerful on a base-line than a commoner, but IMO that shouldn’t mean magic should be cheap for them. I suppose I do say uncommon at least, though. Common would probably work too, but requiring attunement would make sense considering it’s supposed to be a sort of conduit for an individual’s magic, and magic is usually considered very personal as far as fantasy tends to portray it.
I’m always thrown that the concept of managing inventory is always treated as such a huge burden. Most of the time its just a list you update with quantity and weight. It always feels like such a low lift thing for everyone to hate so much. Like seriously, even if you just want people to track how many arrows they fire some will get grouchy.
I can sort of understand - a lot of players unfortunately just kinda wanna roll dice and kill monsters. I say, though, that if that’s what you wanna do, play a martial. (Note: I fully realize the way martials are designed is still bad and they absolutely need to be able to do more than just hit things, but as of their current design my point stands.)
Well you are on the money, nobody wants to manage inventory.
Kinda wild as DnD was born out of Gygax and Kaye’s TSR (Tactical Studies Rules) and their desire to develop tabletop simulation games… Role Playing games have gone a whole other direction since at least 2000, maybe earlier, to focus on the role playing, which is cool. Give the players what they want and all. But having played pre 2nd edition as a kid and spending countless hours reading through all the 1st edition manuals, i kinda miss it, even if it was mostly rules interpretation… And knowing i’m just not ever going to have the kind of friends, attention span or time to play that sort of thing again.
yeah my first experiences with DND were AD&D 2nd edition and wow when I started to play 5th, there were so many things that were weird. You are given so much power early as a spell caster compared to the old days. Like I was weirded out by the concept of cantrips. I was used to it being a level 1 spell dealio but now you basically get a handful of spell you can just constantly cast and then material components don’t really even matter these day its so weird. Like I get it but it does remove a ton of the mystique of being a spell caster.
I totally agree! I think it would be a net benefit for the game if we just remove cantrips entirely - magic is too cheap. I get that that would make a lot of players mad. Maybe a compromise would be reduce the damage of attack cantrips…by a LOT. And then make pretty much most non-attack cantrips level 1 spells. Yes, including prestidigitation.
Either way, all these comments mentioning how AD&D and 2e and whatnot does it makes me want to play them. I’ve already looked into playing 3.5e and 4e, but honestly I’m just slowly realizing that 5e is…kind of bad? So maybe that’s unrelated…
