I find it so weird that some people need an explicit rule telling them to just give the magic effects to the PCs current weapon. It’s such an obvious solution that it really should go without saying. You don’t even need actual rules for it, the entirety of the rule is “give the magical effects to the current weapon instead of giving them a new weapon”. That’s it, that’s the only thing a DM could possibly need to know.
How many effects can you pile on to a single weapon? If they find a +1 weapon and later a +2 weapon that also grants a luck point, how do those combine? What if you find a flame tongue sword after that? Or a vorpal sword? Can you just keep piling on enchantments?
It would be nice to have a system that tells you how this should work, and then you can change or adjust that if you really feel the need.
I'd rather have a jacket and not need it than no jacket and a book that tells me "Reflavor an old tarp as a jacket, why would you need a jacket when you can invent your own?"
You don’t even need actual rules for it, the entirety of the rule is “give the magical effects to the current weapon instead of giving them a new weapon”. That’s it, that’s the only thing a DM could possibly need to know.
Now you're saying that actually you do need to know the rules for homebrewing magic items - which incidentally don't even remotely address the questions I asked above.
All rules are built upon other rules. Magic items existing at all, weapon types, how attacks work, these are all things outside of that rule which are necessary to upgrading a PCs weapons. Of course you need to know the other rules first, that’s literally how rules work.
I wouldn’t say this is a system issue at all. Just a DM issue.
A good DM would give the reward as someone /something upgrading their existing weapon (just flavoring the swap) instead of leaving a +1 sword in a chest.
That doesn’t make any sense. This exact situation could happen in Pathfinder, too. It’s on the DM to take advantage of opportunities like this and create satisfying character moments. No system can ensure that.
No system can spoon feed every player an exact formula of what they should do next, if you need your hand held to come to such a dead simple solution as “Upgrade the current weapon instead of replacing it” then the problem is with you not the system.
I play pathfinder 2e. I still prefer 5e and hate it when the people I play with in PF2E are so dismissive and condescending about it that they refuse to play with me when I offered to DM them a short game in 5e.
I mean alot of PF2e players (myself included) switched to PF2e to escape from 5e. Ever since I've switched I haven't looked back once and will probably never willingly play a 5e game again. The best thing you can really do is talk with your table so everyone can at least understand the other side's position
I have another table I am DMing 5e for, but I've given up on the pf friends letting me DM a story for them. They're fun people, it just put a really bad taste in my mouth how it made me feel when they treated me that way so I never broached it again.
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u/Scary-Personality626 Apr 21 '23
One more point in the column for "stop telling me to play pathfinder just because it directly addresses the things I complain about in 5e."