Last night +Ken H decided we needed to do some bookkeeping before starting our session of Monteport. Book keeping in the way of attunement...I was "What the hell is that?" In the DMG, on pages 136 & 138, there is a rule that some magic items need to be attuned to the person so that an individual can reap the magical benefits. A maximum of three items can be attuned to a person at one time. And not all magical items need to be attuned.
I understand it, but not a fan. It's a bit fufu for me. You sit with your magic item during a short rest to get attuned.
Here's my take on it, for whatever it's worth. It 's a rule to restrict characters that adventure within a magical item rich campaign. Like a restrictor plate. It's there to regulate the power, in this case, the power gained by having a bunch of magic items.
My opinion is if your going to have a magic rich campaign run with it. If you want players to have fewer magic items than don't place them in your world. +Joshua Macy said it felt fiddly, and that's a great word to describe it.
Now I am not bashing. Not at all. And I think it's interesting that Ken put it into play. It created a lot of discussion and thought. And I am not a huge fan of thinking. I know +Chris C. liked the rule a lot. Adding a different element of strategy. I don't remember the opinions of +Rob Conley or +Douglas Cole.
I'm curious what others think of attunement and how its played out in your game. While I am not a fan of the rule, I am curious to how it plays.
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Here is Douglas Cole's take from our discussion last night: http://gamingballistic.blogspot.com/2015/01/attunement-in-d.html
ReplyDeleteGrar. Google ate my comment. I think the overall concept of having to attune to magic items is really cool, but at the moment it's strictly a metagame thing, and it could be so much more.
ReplyDeleteTim, if you read pp 284-285 in the DMG, you will see more info about the rational behind attunement. It is in the section that provides guidance to DMs on creating homebrew magic items.
ReplyDeleteThanks, I will read that section. I haven't seen it yet.
DeleteIt is all about controlling the use/abuse of magic items by min/max players.
DeleteThe contrast is this article by Mike Mearls, which focuses on (a) the story and rarity of the item and (b) how attunement, Identify, and Detect Magic fit together.
Here is what I am thinking, in terms of a potential house rule on attunement:
ReplyDelete1. Characters increase the limit of attuned items by level: Lvl 1-5=3 items; Lvl 6-10=4 items, and so on.
2. Some items that require attunement will still have a feature available when unattuned. For example, a +1 sword that can shoot magic missiles would still be +1 even when unattuned, but the missiles would be unavailable. So some items could still be used in a limited way, even in their unattuned state.
3. Some items could still be used unattuned but there could be the possibility of failure (some sort of success/failure roll) and something really bad could happen with a critical failure. There could be a crit failure table (ala GURPS) or each item could have a specific bad thing happen. I like the idea of things crapping out, backfiring, or creating an unexpected big boom.
I like this because it involves very little extra work on the player's part. I would have to create more detailed info when magic items are involved.
I haven't tried playing with this rule yet, but when I read it, it sounded to me like it had good RPing potential.
ReplyDeleteI liked the idea when The Arcanum introduced it in 1984, though the in-game rationale is a good addition.
ReplyDeleteanother idea ripped from RQ poorly executed - hoe about one per level or based on a stat?
ReplyDeleteIt exists, specifically to enforce bounded accuracy to keep the game from breaking. Look at the items that are attuned. Non-armor non-shield bonuses to AC, wands, items that emulate class abilities, saving throw improvements.
ReplyDeleteChanging the system is fine, as long as you take care to limit AC's to 30 and keep at least 2 saves low, and don't mind losing niche protection.
You know when CCG's realize they've designed the card pool poorly to allow too much recursive draw, so they kludge on a per-turn draw limit in the rules? That's what this feels like. If you want bounded accuracy then just have those bonuses not stack, or stack to only +1/item.
ReplyDeleteI think what they have done is actually pretty elegant.
DeleteIt's like, there are a bunch of specific rules that must be enforced in order to retain balance. Instead of creating a sequence of complicated rules to govern them, they limit magic items that push those boundries, in toto to three. This means that someone who devotes all their attunements to AC can get a 18+3+2+3+1+1+1=29 AC, but then not have any of the other features that it's intended to limit.
I like it conceptually, but not as a way to limit min/max play (although it is clear from the 5e DMG that this is a rationale, pp 284-285). Anything I try to create is either simple & lame or complicated & less lame. Probably just toss it out, maybe just limit stacking of item modifiers.
ReplyDelete