User talk:The Wizened Throne

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Recent Items & General 5e Design

Hey there The Wizened Throne, I saw you created a slew of common and otherwise low power level items. Seeing these, I saw that they have negative properties. This is a problem as negative things do not offset positive ones in general due 5e design philosophy that negative effects are almost always avoided and are considered null in terms of balance. If this wasn't done, it would cause all sorts of issues with balance and cause character midmaxing. It is also perhaps overkill, but the Equipment Design Guide has more info about creating all sorts of equipment if you want some pointers on creating equipment.

In addition, while most of the items would still be common items, some of the item's effects are far beyond the power level of a common item (any bonuses to attack and damage rolls, the movement stones, perhaps a few others as well). If needed, I can go through all the items and point out which ones and explain why its rarity needs to be adjusted. Thanks for your time, --Blobby383b (talk) 15:48, 10 December 2021 (MST)

I am more than happy to go through and change the rarity of the items I created. Are there certain items which need to be rare rather than uncommon?

I understand the need for consistency, but I also feel that removing any negative effects greatly limits the design space for homebrew content. If I made the negative effects more severe would that fix the issue? I would hate to strip all the items of what makes them interesting.--The Wizened Throne (talk) 11:51, 12 December 2021 (MST)

From my first look through, it didn't appear like any item needed to be rare. Besides that, really, making the negative effects more severe wouldn't help as in terms of power they are considered null. For some more info on negative effects in general in 5e, a few races printed early in the edition used to have negative ability scores (orc, kobold), but they were edited out in future printings, classes in general do not have negative features, and a cursed item is balanced around the item's rarity and ignores the item having a curse. The decision to design 5e this way was made as in 3.5e, the fact that you could have negative features led to a large number of balance issues and other problems (off the top of my head, in particular a large number of races had negative ability scores that could be used as dump stats and high other ability scores).

There are tons of other ways to make weak items that give small bonuses interesting besides having negative effects. You could give the item charges and have the effect last for a duration when it is used. You can give a small bonus and the ability to make the bonus larger for a duration. You can add other minor niche properties (first in initiative order do X, provide additional darkvision, the weapon could not require you to use your object interaction to draw or stow it, etc.). You can give conditional bonuses that if X, Y. You can make the item have charges that are never regained, and other things. Just because one avenue of design is closed off, doesn't mean that there isn't plenty of other room to design things. I look forward to seeing what ideas you can come up in the future. --Blobby383b (talk) 13:22, 12 December 2021 (MST)

I have edited most of the items to better balance them. I only changed one to be uncommon. Tell me further edits are required. Thank you for the advice about balancing, you were right that there were more interesting ways to limit the effects.--The Wizened Throne (talk) 12:04, 13 December 2021 (MST)

After looking through the items, I have to say that I do really like the direction you took a lot of the items with their small, but unique effects. My only real concern in particular is with the Stun Stone (5e Equipment). For the stun stone, you can see my comments on its talk page as the issues are complicated and if needed, conversion on that specific item can/should continue there instead of on your talk page.--Blobby383b (talk) 21:57, 13 December 2021 (MST)