Oh man, I gotta put these away. No joke, it’s 11:46pm as I write this and not only am I drinking a Pepsi, I’m eating chocolate chips – yea, just plain old chocolate chips. They thought they would be baked into a cookie or something but no, they went right into a cup to be devoured in front of this text.
So yea, anyway I’m pretty much twitching at this point… I hope this article makes sense tomorrow…
I miss standard equipment.
While realizing this one day (and glaring accusingly at the Adventurer’s Kit) I thought, “so what’s the problem?” After all, it’s not like the items within the Adventurer’s Kit aren’t listed out, right?
Buying equipment was one of my favorite aspects of character creation back in the day (pre-3.x)… do I have a mirror? check. Rope? check. Sewing thread and needle? Wait, who in the hell needs needles… ehh, who am I kidding… check (what?! you never know who might need stitches!). Again, you can purchase items in 4e the same way as before if you want, one item at a time, taking what you like and skipping what you don’t.
The difference (at least for me) is that these little individual items are no longer important to the game, particularly when the focus of the game is combat.
Now, don’t get me wrong, after all <...here's where I insert the standard disclaimer/defense of 4th Edition... how I am a fan, I buy the books, etc. You get the idea...>
Our character sheets used to have many lines for equipment, and often times it was right up front with the important aspects of your sheet. I would stare at every single item sometimes, trying to imagine how any one of them might help us out of our current predicament.
“This dragon really has us cornered… how can this needle and thread help me right now??”.
It sounds funny, but so often we would try the craziest things and you know, it worked from time to time!
In 4th Edition, we’re essentially told, “hey, those are there, but just pay 1 price and you get all of the stuff listed”. So we do, but when the going gets tough, we have our powers and our hit points/defenses. Those get the cards, those are in our faces. Items? What items? You wanna do what with it? What would the difficulty be, and if you succeeded, how does that success translate into these numbers everyone else is content to work with? Damnit Weem, why are you making things difficult…
…
What this leads to is ignoring standard equipment almost entirely while in combat, and hand-waving it outside of combat…
DM: “Do you have a grappling hook?”
Player: “Uhhh… I have an adventurers kit I think”
DM: “Yea, ok, sure – roll”
Aside from the fact that the Adventurer’s Kit doesn’t have a grappling hook, we are essentially just blowing off the details with that one phrase. As a DM I’m guilty for sure. If I ask a player if he has an Adventurer’s Kit and he says no… well… whatever, you have one now, why would you not.
“But Weem”, you are thinking, “who cares? My players and I don’t care about those details anymore, they aren’t important.”
That’s cool, and completely legit. You know what, I’m right there with you for the most part – at least when it comes to 4e.
So what is it I am trying to say?
I think we can make standard equipment sexy again (okay, that might be a stretch… let’s shoot for a “great personality”)
Some Ideas
I think it’s not only important to make standard equipment more useful to players in encounters (combat AND skill-related), but to also help the DM make those encounters more dynamic and interesting. Here are some ideas I’ve had…
Equipment-Friendly Environments: As you develop an encounter, take a glance at the equipment list. Consider how certain items might be used in interesting ways. For the encounter, you might write a few quick ideas with an associated difficulty for success, or for thinking of it. For example…
- Flask: Could be hung on the wall lever to keep the North door open (Insight DC: 25)
During the encounter, you could call for the Insight check. Whoever succeeds (or perhaps whoever rolled highest in the event of multiple successes) thinks of the idea. And if they don’t have a flask? Well, that’s a bummer for them… next time they are in town they might just buy one! They may even think, “Damn, no flask, but I have 50 feet of rope I could hang on the lever” – either way, you have them thinking about tools that are not weapons. I think of this almost like traps, except where traps are environmental elements trying to KILL the players, these equipment elements can be used to AID them in solving puzzles or defeating an enemy.
By writing these down ahead of time you assure they can be applied to the encounter without delay. Essentially, you are taking a few items and giving them a face in this world of numbers we now require.
Hazardous Equipment: Equipment can aid, but it can also be a hassle. The thing you don’t want to do is make equipment so much of a hassle that the players are over thinking how it is carried, or where, or even if at all.
Today, @Wizards_DnD posted a #dndenc buff that read…
“Another gust of icy wind blasts through the room. PCs’ speed is reduced by 1, but they gain resist 5 cold.”
I really liked this because, while there was a negative, there was also a positive in there. It had me thinking, you could (upon slicing a PC with an enemy’s sword for example) have the following exchange…
DM: “What’s in your bag?”
PC: “The usual stuff… I have an adventurer’s kit”
DM: “Okay. Well, as you are hit, your bag is cut and all of the contents spill out in your square and in a burst 1, so all around you. These squares are now difficult terrain. However, the light from your sunrods, now on the ground, distract all enemies within 2 squares of you until the end of your next turn. Their AC is reduced by 2.”
NPC Bartering: Not everyone wants money. Bartering was once very common, and it wouldn’t be a stretch to have an NPC (who sees the PC’s squirm at his prices for example) ask instead for some of their possessions…
“Tell ya what… you gimme that rope you got there… and the grapplin’ hook the Elf has, and we’ll call it even… sound fair?”
Again, you are highlighting equipment. You indicate that it’s important and develop immersion at the same time. The player might not think about his/her equipment, but that doesn’t mean the world should ignore it.
And so…
I love and miss standard equipment, or at least the prominence it once had in games I played in. If you feel the same, perhaps I may have sparked some ideas you can use. Otherwise, I hope you could get something out of it of some kind.
Thanks for stopping in and reading. Feel free to follow me on Twitter if you aren’t already!
I’ll just leave you with a few quick things if you have the time and are interested…
Some Items NOT in the Adventurer’s Kit
These are a few things players might think their Adventurer’s Kit has, but it doesn’t…
- Candle
- Chain
- Flask
- Tent
- Thieves Tools
Some Items 4e Doesn’t Have
Here are a few (just a few!) things that some older versions of D&D had that 4e does not have (or I should say, 4e does not list)…
- Belt Pouch!
- Caltrops!
- Canvas
- Chalk!
- Clothes
- Fishhook
- Hats
- Holy Water
- Ink
- Iron Spikes
- Lock
- Manacles
- Mirror
- Oil
- Pot
- Sacks
- Sealing Wax
- Steaks and Mallet
- Spyglass!
- Vial
- Whistle
Related…
- +2 Needle and Thread – A follow-up article to this one.
- This article, re-posted on EN World
Yeah, I remember always buying chalk and a signal whistle when playing 3e. Just in case I get lost in a dungeon some day or we don’t have a map. But actually I never used them. and there was always the question “Buy soap or not?” Barbarians never did, mages always did but what about the rogue?
I have, on more than one occasion, whipped out my 2ed Player’s Handbook during a 4ed game just to get prices on equipment. The scale of economy is different between the two games, with 4ed characters generally having more money. It didn’t matter, though. My players were totally happy buying an ox, cart, yoke, grain, and water so that they could have some way to haul their loot around!
You’re speaking my language, pal! One of my fondest game memories was when I defeated an 8-headed hydra with a halibut. No joke.
Think carefully about something, though; this is not really a 4E problem. No earlier editions had rules or even guidelines for using a needle in combat, either. Your ability to use a 10′ pole has not been diminished one iota. One of the main reasons “we” often resorted to using items and equipment in ways not explained in the books was that if you really engaged the rules, you died. Hard. Often. Doubly so at low levels. The rules themselves were WAY more lethal and so the best way to survive them was to go outside them.
Now in 4E (and to a lesser extent 3.x), you can survive quite nicely (most of the time) entirely within the rules as written, so we don’t stray from them nearly as much. Even when we do, we tend to codify our transgressions in ways that look like rules, i.e. powers. I agree that 4E’s emphasis on powers, standardization of magic items and transparent mathematics does not necessarily encourage creative use of items, but I think it’s unfair to say that the phenomena is the game’s fault. If anything, it’s ours for being so comfortable conforming to the written word.
I miss anything that helps or prods players to think outside the box. Great thoughts here; I offer two more bits of advice:
1. Never let you players write “adventurers kit” on their character sheet. The entry in the PHB is a convenient way of helping players get the basic gear in one fell swoop, but it’s not actually an item. Have them actually write down the components of the kit on their character sheet.
2. Create a new power card and give a copy to each player. The power is “Think Outside the Box”; it’s an at-will; the action type varies, and the text is something like “use a skill or a piece of equipment in an unusual way.” Since players usually look through their collection of power cards when considering their next action, slipping this idea into that mix will remind them that their list of powers isn’t a restriction on what they can do.
I totally understand the need for 4e to move away from the micro management as it were, of small mundane items and focus on the bolder more impressive tools of the trade.
I thought about ramping up the items, like bonuses to skills when using the items, for different purposes – rope that gives you +2 acrobatics/athletics/dungeoneering.
Again, I read Weem’s blog and my mind is whirring.
1. I’m adding equipment cards for all current equipment. Makes keeping track easy.
2. I plan to add insight checks to innovative uses for equipment. good suggestion
3. I like having equipment giadding qve small skill bonuses, perhaps in certain situations. as per the +2 article.
4. I also plan on giving “nostalgic” equipment as treasure. When they search the bad guys, they get a needle and thread, or a bag of candles, or a unique thief tool that helps undo latches (+2). I also plan on giving out ritual components this way, but that’s another blog entry.
your list of things that D&D 4e doesn’t have is both hilarious, impressive, and disturbing. God, why no Caltrops…