For sure, but items tend to have a “cool factor” that class features don’t, and can be used to encourage certain styles of play.
So off the top of my head, the Guardian’s Shield’s (not to be confused with the shield guard) could have the following power:
When an ally you can see deals more than (some amount of damage, which can even scale by level) in a single blow, you may use your reaction to move up to your speed towards that ally. If you end this movement adjacent to this ally, all enemies have disadvantage when attacking them. This effect ends at the beginning of your ally’s turn or if you move away from them.
The fighter gets tactical movement and a powerful defensive option. The assassin gets to use their big damage abilities. The mere use of the ability signals to everybody that shit is about to get real for the person who just walloped a bad guy. And you can have a bunch of bad guys pile on the assassin with dramatic/epic/hilarious results as many of the attacks miss.
You have a large enough group that it’s fine (in some ways even good) if a player is happy to fade into the background during roleplaying or other sections. By all means, open opportunities for him sometimes but, if he mainly likes moving his guy around and rolling combat dice, then that’s not the worst thing and better than trying to force him into a spotlight he’s not interested in. Some players who love D&D are still mainly there for the dice rolling and crits.
You’re about to hit 5th level. The barbarian, fighter, and ranger are all going to get second attack. The sorcerer and druid are going to get 3rd-level spells. That sneak attack damage isn’t going to seem quite so beefy in comparison.
Many monsters will only take full damage from magic weapons by that level. It is a “should” which is not a “must”.
Note that IRL, full plate does not need a squire to put on and take off, nor does it clank. The only real noisy armor I have ever witness was metal scale armor. Oh and btw- scale armor is pretty much gone IRL by Roman times. Should be brigantine.
I happen to have some analysis of damage output of various classes, recently, and between rogue, fighter, wizard, and cleric, the rogue actually ended up in last place, even if they’re consistently getting advantage (and hence Sneak Attack). And that’s even before considering the problems with all of their damage being in one single attack: That makes them a lot more susceptible to runs of bad or good luck (and randomness is not the PCs’ friend), and means a lot of their damage can be wasted as overkill, against weak or injured enemies.
Sorcerers are limited in their flexibility, by not being able to change their spells known. In principle, this is made up for by their metamagic… but you need to take some care to select the right spells, and metamagics that complement those spells. Your sorcerer player might want to look up some character-build suggestions online.
OK, a dumb question: what is the actual advantage that magic weapons confer? If we’re talking about damage, a quick review of the next level’s opponents shows that they only have resistance to one kind of magic damage, so it looks like ordinary bludgeoning, piercing, slashing etc. should be effective?
If it’s a question of +n to hit or added damage, can I achieve those mechanics just by saying it’s a superbly crafted war axe or such? Or do I need the weapons to do something that only magic can do?
As for finding weapons: the canon is that the weaponsmith in this town is rubbish. It’s the dwarves in the nearby town that make the good stuff, so the smith here competes on low low price, not quality. What I suspect has happened recently is that a young and ambitious dwarven couple, having struggled to compete against established and well-reputed businesses in dwarf town, have spotted the gap in the market and set up shop in our town.
Anyhow, any guidance on how I work out, based on upcoming opponents, what a good but not amazing weapon would look like? I’m assuming there’s some relationship between the targets AC and hitpoints and the average amount of damage I should set the party up to deal in a round.
Thanks - so I’m thinking sometimes the opponents will be unaware allowing the possibility of a devastating ambush so Merric gets his time in the sun. Others it will be a confrontation where he has to worry about protecting himself as well as supporting the frontline warriors.
Which opponents? Which of the 3 town locations are you doing? IIRC, in Rumblings there’s only one location where there are attackers where magical weapons would be useful (but not required), but it’s the one location that isn’t walled, so I assume you’re doing one of the other two?
But if you’re doing that one:
The magmins with the fire giants in Triboar take half-damage from all kinds of non-magical attacks. That means all ordinary weapons only do half damage to them. Even +1 masterwork weapons. But even just a +1 magic weapon will do full damage.
ETA: Never mind, by your smith reference, I take it you’re doing Bryn Shander. None of those giants and allies require magical weapons to hit or fully damage.
Bingo. Good to know. That said magic weapons will obviously be useful going forward. Ideally, the party will realise this themselves and solve the problem of finding them, quite possibly by undertaking a small quest for someone.
Q: can I have an NPC enchant an existing weapon? Feels more organic than buying it in a shop. (Looting from a corpse remains an option).
There should be a non-negligible chance that the giants themselves have magical weapons on their persons (not their own weapons, I mean a human-sized one or two taken from previous victims - useful as a toothpick or nutcracker, maybe?)
It’s certainly possible, although as a DM, I generally require enchantments like that to be woven into the manufacture of items. That certainly seems to be the intent of the rules for this in the DMG as well. Maybe if it’s a Masterwork weapon, I’ll be more inclined, but otherwise, I feel it needs more effort to make them than just spending some gold to have some spells cast on you mundane sword.
But in my games, magic weapons also aren’t something you can just buy in a shop.
But don’t forget, there’s also spells to temporarily enchant weapons, should the need arise.
Ok, so how are they made? Is it something my Spellcasters can do now, or could do soon? I’m happy to have them do a quest of some sort to earn them from someone who does have the skill, so there’s a clear sense of hard won ownership because I definitely want them to be earned.
(But also, between bows, axes, handaxes, short swords, war picks, javelins etc. we’re talking a lot of weapons here. Some battlefield scavenging will also be needed, I think.)
There can be a lot of methods. In addition to the “enchant any item,” “enchant only excellent items,” and “enchantments built into items from the beginning,” I’ve given the very rare “transferable enchantment,” e.g., a magical silver wire that holds the “Bleeding” enchantment and that can be removed from one weapon and rewrapped around another weapon (by a skilled silversmith and spellcaster working together) to transfer the enchantment to a new weapon.
@Stanislaus, as you’re seeing, the answer to all of your questions is “whatever you want,” because Rule 0 of D&D is “the GM can do whatever they want.” So it might be helpful to back up a bit and consider the core mechanical purpose and rules for magical items.
The purposes of magical items are:
To reward players.
To empower players with new abilities.
To make characters more powerful.
The rules for magic items are:
A player must ‘attune’ to powerful items to utilize them.
A player may not be attuned to more than three items at a time.
That’s pretty much it! The rest of it is up to you and how you want your game to run. You might decide that there are no ‘magic’ items whatsoever in your game and that all magical effects are the result of technology or extraordinary craftsmanship.
The Dwarven Thrower is a warhammer that returns to its wielder after being thrown. Maybe that’s the result of an enchantment, or maybe it’s like Captain America’s shield and - like Spiderman points out - it somehow ignores the laws of physics.
Likewise for the creation of magical items. Maybe every single magical item is a rare and bespoke creation, requiring high-level wizards and multiple spells and exotic ingredients. Or maybe there’s a vendor on every streetcorner selling magiacl doodads. Or maybe enchantments are like materia in Final Fantasy VII, existing in gems which can be socketed and transferred in different items. Totally up you.
At the end of the day, you’re absolutely free to justify whatever makes sense to you and your campaign. The only really important things to consider are the delicate balance of not handing out too many or too few items - the former removes their cool factor and the latter feels frustrating to players - and remembering that each new combat items makes it trickier to balance combat encounters.
This is something that’s hard for me to accept, but is super-important: people have fun in different ways at the table. You can certainly invite folks to participate in roleplaying scenes (as I said, I’ll often go around the table and explicitly ask each person what they’re doing, so that the quieter players get a chance), but if someone’s having their fun mostly during combat, that’s legit.
That said, table etiquette rules are especially important with younger folks, and it may be worth having an clear conversation about cell phones at the table & how not to make them an obnoxious distraction.
The primary function of magical weapons in 5e is that having magical weapons is cool and a standard fantasy trope. That’s about it.
5e was balanced around a party not having magical weapons when the CR system was developed and also designed to be entirely playable from the PHB which does not contain magical items [edit: Aside from Potions of Healing]. Spells like Magic Weapon exist to overcome mundane weapon resistance (plus cantrip spamming). Unlike previous versions of D&D where magical items were a primary way of gaining power, magical weapons in 5e are toned down and most of your power is supposed to come from class features as you level.
All that said, magical items are very much part of the D&D fabric and exist in most (if not all) modules and players will expect to see some eventually. And that’s all cool and good. But don’t worry that they’re being cheated or mechanically hurt if they don’t have a bunch of +1 bonuses in their pockets.
One thing to remember is that, if a critter needs magic to hit it, any sort of enchantment can make a weapon “magical” for those purposes. A dagger that can purify water once a day counts the same as a generic Dagger +3 for ability to stab fire elementals. Weapons with weird little abilities can be more interesting and fun than ones with +X slapped on them without impacting game balance. The Weak Magic Item Generator is a good place for inspiration.
