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Darth Pseudonym
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This might be too "fiddly", rather than actively unbalanced.

A common mistake many DMs make when developing magic items is to pile a lot of complicated functionality into the item. It's not unusual to see that kind of thing in Legendary items and sometimes Very Rares, but not very much on the more common/lower power items.

Almost every item below Very Rare in the DMG can be described in one or two short paragraphs, so when I see charges that power four options that each have unique mechanics and different charge costs, my immediate instinct is that there's too much going on here. This is an item where the player will have to constantly refer back to the item description. That's not necessarily a bad thing for a Legendary item that's going to show up late in the game, and likely to be the character's signature item; but it can end up being disruptive for an item showing up at the very start of the characters' career.

Things I consider complex would include:

  • Items that use charges
  • An attack roll followed by a save
  • Selecting extra targets or identifying who's in the blast radius
  • Making a choice each time you activate the item (as in "should I use this?" followed by "in what way?")
  • Effects that last for a specific amount of time

I'm not saying you should avoid all of those; but the more of them that your item has, the more complex it is at the table, which means that one item sucks up more brain-space. Each one is a consideration or decision you have to make when you use the item -- and the more "fiddly" the item is, the more likely a player is to either forget about it when it would be useful, or actively ignore it so they can just get on with their turn.

For an item intended to be used around level 5, I would recommend pulling back the complexity, if you can find a way to do so without completely destroying the item's concept. As written, this feels too complicated for what it actually does.

It's more acceptable to have that kind of complexity on an item that has a powerful effect used rarely; if you have one big shot per day, it's okay if it requires careful aiming and saves, where that complexity would be undesirable in a minor effect you can use every few rounds.

A crossbow ranger? In this action economy?

This might be getting slightly off-topic, but I would question the choice for the ranger to still be using a crossbow at 5th level. A crossbow can fire only once per turn unless the ranger has purchased a specific feat (due to the Loading property), and the magical means of bypassing Loading aren't compatible with a magic crossbow. Firing one 1d10 shot per turn just isn't remotely as good as firing two 1d8 shots from a longbow, for a variety of reasons. Maybe the player is sticking to a crossbow for in-character reasons, but giving them a magical crossbow may well lead to the player being faced with the nasty choice of continuing to use a sub-par weapon or ditching an item you worked really hard on in favor of a plain old longbow.

So one thing that might help is if this item comes with a magical ability that removes the Loading quality, similar to the Artificer's "Repeating Shot" infusion, which magically generates ammunition and reloads the weapon after firing.

This might be too "fiddly", rather than actively unbalanced.

A common mistake many DMs make when developing magic items is to pile a lot of complicated functionality into the item. It's not unusual to see that kind of thing in Legendary items and sometimes Very Rares, but not very much on the more common/lower power items.

Almost every item below Very Rare in the DMG can be described in one or two short paragraphs, so when I see charges that power four options that each have unique mechanics and different charge costs, my immediate instinct is that there's too much going on here. This is an item where the player will have to constantly refer back to the item description. That's not necessarily a bad thing for a Legendary item that's going to show up late in the game, and likely to be the character's signature item; but it can end up being disruptive for an item showing up at the very start of the characters' career.

Things I consider complex would include:

  • Items that use charges
  • An attack roll followed by a save
  • Selecting extra targets or identifying who's in the blast radius
  • Making a choice each time you activate the item (as in "should I use this?" followed by "in what way?")
  • Effects that last for a specific amount of time

I'm not saying you should avoid all of those; but the more of them that your item has, the more complex it is at the table, which means that one item sucks up more brain-space. Each one is a consideration or decision you have to make when you use the item -- and the more "fiddly" the item is, the more likely a player is to either forget about it when it would be useful, or actively ignore it so they can just get on with their turn.

For an item intended to be used around level 5, I would recommend pulling back the complexity, if you can find a way to do so without completely destroying the item's concept. As written, this feels too complicated for what it actually does.

It's more acceptable to have that kind of complexity on an item that has a powerful effect used rarely; if you have one big shot per day, it's okay if it requires careful aiming and saves, where that complexity would be undesirable in a minor effect you can use every few rounds.

A crossbow ranger? In this action economy?

This might be getting slightly off-topic, but I would question the choice for the ranger to still be using a crossbow at 5th level. A crossbow can fire only once per turn unless the ranger has purchased a specific feat (due to the Loading property), and the magical means of bypassing Loading aren't compatible with a magic crossbow. Firing one 1d10 shot per turn just isn't remotely as good as firing two 1d8 shots from a longbow, for a variety of reasons. Maybe the player is sticking to a crossbow for in-character reasons, but giving them a magical crossbow may well lead to the player being faced with the nasty choice of continuing to use a sub-par weapon or ditching an item you worked really hard on in favor of a plain old longbow.

This might be too "fiddly", rather than actively unbalanced.

A common mistake many DMs make when developing magic items is to pile a lot of complicated functionality into the item. It's not unusual to see that kind of thing in Legendary items and sometimes Very Rares, but not very much on the more common/lower power items.

Almost every item below Very Rare in the DMG can be described in one or two short paragraphs, so when I see charges that power four options that each have unique mechanics and different charge costs, my immediate instinct is that there's too much going on here. This is an item where the player will have to constantly refer back to the item description. That's not necessarily a bad thing for a Legendary item that's going to show up late in the game, and likely to be the character's signature item; but it can end up being disruptive for an item showing up at the very start of the characters' career.

Things I consider complex would include:

  • Items that use charges
  • An attack roll followed by a save
  • Selecting extra targets or identifying who's in the blast radius
  • Making a choice each time you activate the item (as in "should I use this?" followed by "in what way?")
  • Effects that last for a specific amount of time

I'm not saying you should avoid all of those; but the more of them that your item has, the more complex it is at the table, which means that one item sucks up more brain-space. Each one is a consideration or decision you have to make when you use the item -- and the more "fiddly" the item is, the more likely a player is to either forget about it when it would be useful, or actively ignore it so they can just get on with their turn.

For an item intended to be used around level 5, I would recommend pulling back the complexity, if you can find a way to do so without completely destroying the item's concept. As written, this feels too complicated for what it actually does.

It's more acceptable to have that kind of complexity on an item that has a powerful effect used rarely; if you have one big shot per day, it's okay if it requires careful aiming and saves, where that complexity would be undesirable in a minor effect you can use every few rounds.

A crossbow ranger? In this action economy?

This might be getting slightly off-topic, but I would question the choice for the ranger to still be using a crossbow at 5th level. A crossbow can fire only once per turn unless the ranger has purchased a specific feat (due to the Loading property), and the magical means of bypassing Loading aren't compatible with a magic crossbow. Firing one 1d10 shot per turn just isn't remotely as good as firing two 1d8 shots from a longbow, for a variety of reasons. Maybe the player is sticking to a crossbow for in-character reasons, but giving them a magical crossbow may well lead to the player being faced with the nasty choice of continuing to use a sub-par weapon or ditching an item you worked really hard on in favor of a plain old longbow.

So one thing that might help is if this item comes with a magical ability that removes the Loading quality, similar to the Artificer's "Repeating Shot" infusion, which magically generates ammunition and reloads the weapon after firing.

added 784 characters in body
Source Link
Darth Pseudonym
  • 78.3k
  • 13
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  • 358

This might be too "fiddly", rather than actively unbalanced.

A common mistake many DMs make when developing magic items is to pile a lot of complicated functionality into the item. It's not unusual to see that kind of thing in Legendary items and sometimes Very Rares, but not very much on the more common/lower power items.

Almost every item below Very Rare in the DMG can be described in one or two short paragraphs, so when I see charges that power four options that each have unique mechanics and different charge costs, my immediate instinct is that there's too much going on here. This is an item where the player will have to constantly refer back to the item description. That's not necessarily a bad thing for a Legendary item that's going to show up late in the game, and likely to be the character's signature item; but it can end up being disruptive for an item showing up at the very start of the characters' career.

Things I consider complex would include:

  • Items that use charges
  • An attack roll followed by a save
  • Selecting extra targets or identifying who's in the blast radius
  • Making a choice each time you activate the item (as in "should I use this?" followed by "in what way?")
  • Effects that last for a specific amount of time

I'm not saying you should avoid all of those; but the more of them that your item has, the more complex it is at the table, which means that one item sucks up more brain-space. Each one is a consideration or decision you have to make when you use the item -- and the more "fiddly" the item is, the more likely a player is to either forget about it when it would be useful, or actively ignore it so they can just get on with their turn.

For an item intended to be used around level 5, I would recommend pulling back the complexity, if you can find a way to do so without completely destroying the item's concept. As written, this feels too complicated for what it actually does.

It's more acceptable to have that kind of complexity on an item that has a powerful effect used rarely; if you have one big shot per day, it's okay if it requires careful aiming and saves, where that complexity would be undesirable in a minor effect you can use every few rounds.

A crossbow ranger? In this action economy?

This might be getting slightly off-topic, but I would question the choice for the ranger to still be using a crossbow at 5th level. A crossbow can fire only once per turn unless the ranger has purchased a specific feat (due to the Loading property), and the magical means of bypassing Loading aren't compatible with a magic crossbow. Firing one 1d10 shot per turn just isn't remotely as good as firing two 1d8 shots from a longbow, for a variety of reasons. Maybe the player is sticking to a crossbow for in-character reasons, but giving them a magical crossbow may well lead to the player being faced with the nasty choice of continuing to use a sub-par weapon or ditching an item you worked really hard on in favor of a plain old longbow.

This might be too "fiddly", rather than actively unbalanced.

A common mistake many DMs make when developing magic items is to pile a lot of complicated functionality into the item. It's not unusual to see that kind of thing in Legendary items and sometimes Very Rares, but not very much on the more common/lower power items.

Almost every item below Very Rare in the DMG can be described in one or two short paragraphs, so when I see charges that power four options that each have unique mechanics and different charge costs, my immediate instinct is that there's too much going on here. This is an item where the player will have to constantly refer back to the item description. That's not necessarily a bad thing for a Legendary item that's going to show up late in the game, and likely to be the character's signature item; but it can end up being disruptive for an item showing up at the very start of the characters' career.

Things I consider complex would include:

  • Items that use charges
  • An attack roll followed by a save
  • Selecting extra targets or identifying who's in the blast radius
  • Making a choice each time you activate the item (as in "should I use this?" followed by "in what way?")
  • Effects that last for a specific amount of time

I'm not saying you should avoid all of those; but the more of them that your item has, the more complex it is at the table, which means that one item sucks up more brain-space. Each one is a consideration or decision you have to make when you use the item -- and the more "fiddly" the item is, the more likely a player is to either forget about it when it would be useful, or actively ignore it so they can just get on with their turn.

For an item intended to be used around level 5, I would recommend pulling back the complexity, if you can find a way to do so without completely destroying the item's concept. As written, this feels too complicated for what it actually does.

It's more acceptable to have that kind of complexity on an item that has a powerful effect used rarely; if you have one big shot per day, it's okay if it requires careful aiming and saves, where that complexity would be undesirable in a minor effect you can use every few rounds.

This might be too "fiddly", rather than actively unbalanced.

A common mistake many DMs make when developing magic items is to pile a lot of complicated functionality into the item. It's not unusual to see that kind of thing in Legendary items and sometimes Very Rares, but not very much on the more common/lower power items.

Almost every item below Very Rare in the DMG can be described in one or two short paragraphs, so when I see charges that power four options that each have unique mechanics and different charge costs, my immediate instinct is that there's too much going on here. This is an item where the player will have to constantly refer back to the item description. That's not necessarily a bad thing for a Legendary item that's going to show up late in the game, and likely to be the character's signature item; but it can end up being disruptive for an item showing up at the very start of the characters' career.

Things I consider complex would include:

  • Items that use charges
  • An attack roll followed by a save
  • Selecting extra targets or identifying who's in the blast radius
  • Making a choice each time you activate the item (as in "should I use this?" followed by "in what way?")
  • Effects that last for a specific amount of time

I'm not saying you should avoid all of those; but the more of them that your item has, the more complex it is at the table, which means that one item sucks up more brain-space. Each one is a consideration or decision you have to make when you use the item -- and the more "fiddly" the item is, the more likely a player is to either forget about it when it would be useful, or actively ignore it so they can just get on with their turn.

For an item intended to be used around level 5, I would recommend pulling back the complexity, if you can find a way to do so without completely destroying the item's concept. As written, this feels too complicated for what it actually does.

It's more acceptable to have that kind of complexity on an item that has a powerful effect used rarely; if you have one big shot per day, it's okay if it requires careful aiming and saves, where that complexity would be undesirable in a minor effect you can use every few rounds.

A crossbow ranger? In this action economy?

This might be getting slightly off-topic, but I would question the choice for the ranger to still be using a crossbow at 5th level. A crossbow can fire only once per turn unless the ranger has purchased a specific feat (due to the Loading property), and the magical means of bypassing Loading aren't compatible with a magic crossbow. Firing one 1d10 shot per turn just isn't remotely as good as firing two 1d8 shots from a longbow, for a variety of reasons. Maybe the player is sticking to a crossbow for in-character reasons, but giving them a magical crossbow may well lead to the player being faced with the nasty choice of continuing to use a sub-par weapon or ditching an item you worked really hard on in favor of a plain old longbow.

Source Link
Darth Pseudonym
  • 78.3k
  • 13
  • 200
  • 358

This might be too "fiddly", rather than actively unbalanced.

A common mistake many DMs make when developing magic items is to pile a lot of complicated functionality into the item. It's not unusual to see that kind of thing in Legendary items and sometimes Very Rares, but not very much on the more common/lower power items.

Almost every item below Very Rare in the DMG can be described in one or two short paragraphs, so when I see charges that power four options that each have unique mechanics and different charge costs, my immediate instinct is that there's too much going on here. This is an item where the player will have to constantly refer back to the item description. That's not necessarily a bad thing for a Legendary item that's going to show up late in the game, and likely to be the character's signature item; but it can end up being disruptive for an item showing up at the very start of the characters' career.

Things I consider complex would include:

  • Items that use charges
  • An attack roll followed by a save
  • Selecting extra targets or identifying who's in the blast radius
  • Making a choice each time you activate the item (as in "should I use this?" followed by "in what way?")
  • Effects that last for a specific amount of time

I'm not saying you should avoid all of those; but the more of them that your item has, the more complex it is at the table, which means that one item sucks up more brain-space. Each one is a consideration or decision you have to make when you use the item -- and the more "fiddly" the item is, the more likely a player is to either forget about it when it would be useful, or actively ignore it so they can just get on with their turn.

For an item intended to be used around level 5, I would recommend pulling back the complexity, if you can find a way to do so without completely destroying the item's concept. As written, this feels too complicated for what it actually does.

It's more acceptable to have that kind of complexity on an item that has a powerful effect used rarely; if you have one big shot per day, it's okay if it requires careful aiming and saves, where that complexity would be undesirable in a minor effect you can use every few rounds.