I've been poring over
the D&D5 PH again. I still like what I see. There's far too much
to comment on everything, but a few aspects have caught my eye.
One of my pet hates in
a lot of fantasy games and settings is the prevalence of Ye Olde
Magic Item Shoppe – a shop, usually run by a level
20 wizard, selling a wide range of magic items.
Such places miss the
point about enchanted objects. Such things should be rare and
wonderful and extraordinary – not just commodities made in their
thousands in a magical factory somewhere. There needs to be a sense
of wonder.
D&D5 agrees – the
PH expressly comments that “you won't normally come across magic
items... to purchase. The value of magic is far beyond simple gold”.
Yes!
The new PH also
contains about four pages of trinkets – odd objects that characters
can have in their possession. I've seen a review on Amazon hotly
complaining that these trinkets are useless, with no powers or
benefits for the character possessing them.
This proves that the
reviewer has not understood the point of these items. The trinkets
are plot hooks. Objects a DM can seize upon to build a scenario, or
even a campaign around. I've used such things more than once in
starting a campaign – one character had an amulet that after many
sessions proved she was of noble blood (and that the noble family in
question intended to sacrifice her for evil purposes – but that's
another story). Another character had a bracelet which turned out to
be one third of an artefact that would open a portal to another
world. Trinkets are the kernels of stories.
And that, once again,
is why I like the look of D&D5. It is not setting out to create
complicated mechanics systems so you can minimax characters – it is
trying to tell stories.
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