Monday, August 15, 2016

The MMO Magic Item Economy and Mjölnir

The MMO-style magic-item economy has all but ruined fantasy gaming for us. D&D 4 was this high point of this insanity, where if you did not keep up with the natural 'progression' of magic items your character could not fight monsters rated at their level effectively.

Add to the fact random magic items were mostly useless for most builds, which required specific items and combinations to play effectively 'at level.'

It got so bad the game's designers suggested - in the rules - players come up with a list of magic items their characters wanted to find, and the referee should use that to award magic items from.

This was a fantasy game living in a fantasy land of insanity.

In the old days, if you found that +1 magic sword, you were set for life. It hit the check-boxes:
  • Gave you a +1 to-hit and damage, check
  • Could hit 'creatures only hit by silver or magic weapons', check
  • Was cool, check
The invention of the +2 sword started the insanity to +3, +4, the theoretical +5 maximum best sword, and then in the 3.5-era Epic Level Handbook, went all  the way up to +20.

Well, since they have +2 swords, we need +2 armors! And the lists of magic items blew up. The game was never the same, and AD&D made a mess of the magic item charts with percentage charts of incremental and really worthless upgrades, sure a +2 sword was "even better" but it really only gave a 5% to-hit chance bonus over a +1 sword and 12% or-so extra damage given a d8 damage.

Mjölnir is not a +5 Hammer

+2 swords were epic-sounding, but they weren't superhero-level gear like Mjölnir. Even a +5 hammer didn't come close to the Mjölnir we saw in Marvel Super Heroes, and we sat there feeling D&D characters lived in a world with really weak magic weapons that really at most with +5 had a +25% chance to hit and did 50% more damage than a normal melee weapon. Big deal, but that was the best you could do in D&D.

Mjölnir in Marvel Super Heroes could take out a truck or the Hulk, your choice. Or both.

Mjölnir in an MMO is this insanely damaging 300 DPS weapon that still feels like that gray weapon you started the game with because the world scales with you and you will never truly feel epic. You can splat a level-1 with it, but really, every day you spend out there grinding it doesn't really feel epic because the game assumes you need it to keep up with the content. Sounds like D&D 4 to us, and that's what they did with every item in the game, with forced upgrades in every equipment slot. Though in D&D 4, things maxed out to a +6, and it still didn't feel like the Mjölnir we know and love.

You will find a lot of high-level magic weapons in D&D with extra powers, like lightning bolts or other spells because the plus-damage thing really doesn't make them into the weapons we expect them to be on the silver screen.

Fixed Damage Modifiers are King

But there was a reason for that +2 sword after all, despite the minor 5 to 10% upgrade. The fixed damage modifier.

In D&D 3.5 the fighter's multi-attack leveled the playing field, and the concept of multiplying stacks of fixed-damage bonuses across multi-attacks created the MMO "damage per turn" thing we have going on today in Pathfinder and D&D 5 (done in different ways). The base damage die of your weapon in D&D matters a lot less than the amount of fixed +damage modifiers you can get - because those multiply and stack up fast.

I would rather have a +2 dagger that does a d4 than a +1 swortsword that does a d6. The average damage for the dagger is 2.5 + 2 or 5 points of damage, and the sword does 3.5 + 1 or 5 points of damage. Sure I could roll higher with the sword, but that +2 is guaranteed damage every turn, multiplied across multiple attacks. With five attacks, that +2 is 10 guaranteed points of damage versus the "higher damaging" but less enchanted shortsword with 5 points of guaranteed damage - across five attacks.

You see this on five attacks per turn or five attacks across five turns. Guaranteed damage is king.

This adds up when you stack strength-enhancing magic items and high ability scores for greater fixed-damage adders, and all of a sudden you are adding +5 for STR, +3 for a weapon and you have 8 points of guaranteed damage in an attack. Always go for the higher "plus" and the dice is secondary, especially if you consider multiple attacks per turn (or multiple turns of attacks). Eight points of guaranteed damage across five turns or attacks is 40 points of damage. It adds up.

We are back in the Farmville-style world of spreadsheet games and MMO "dps" numbers, and never feeling like we have a Mjölnir and could smack some sense into the Hulk (or a truck) with our weapon. We still have a problem with the D&D and Pathfinder concept of magic weapons and the implementation of them feels more like a numbers game than it does something living up to our idea of epic fantasy.

The Rules Do Not Allow Epic Greatness

Throw Thor in there, and the gamer in me feels like it breaks down and GM-fiat is needed to say, "well, Thor's +5 hammer can bust right through that 10-foot thick castle wall!" And the player with their +4 spear can't even poke through a locked heavy wooden door. If this was a comic book, the player with that +4 spear could hold it in front of them and run straight through several doors leaving a trail of splinters and kindling in their wake.

No, not working. The rules do not allow for what we expect to happen, especially for epic weapons and the superheroes we want to be (and expect the rules to handle).

Low-Powered High Fantasy

Warriors in the D&D games have always felt less than epic to us, like they were the classes meant to play the spreadsheet part of the game with numbers and modifiers.

Or just...play a wizard in D&D. That is where you will get that superhero experience of larger-than-life powers. This has always been a problem for us, and spells feel like their movie counterparts where the weapons and armor of warriors do not.

One exception is Tunnels and Trolls, where the damage from warriors is so high you could say "you do 200 points of damage in this turn with your spear, and since I said each door had 20 hits, you can slice through 10 doors as you move this turn. Enjoy yourself and try not to destroy the furniture." It's one damage roll for the turn, use it any way you want. 

You could do that in D&D too, but the game goes all simulation-ist with object strength and AC values - so pure mayhem in D&D is discouraged under a wet blanket of simulation. If you are fighting a truck, I am going to need rules for trucks now. In T&T, I say the truck has 100 hits, and you flatten it in one blow. Even with a normal hammer because T&T discourages the MMO magic item economy and you fight with mostly normal weapons. So yes, you could be awesome enough in T&T to take a ball-peen hammer and flatten a truck to a pile of crushed debris in one blow.

Or two trucks.

Just don't damage the furniture.

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