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[Drakona]

Originally Posted by LamilLerran

Suggestion: perhaps when characters spend an item point, the new item is up to 5 levels above them rather than being from 1 tier up.

Yeah, Lotharbot and I independently came up with the same idea. It's the right thing to do.

I hemmed and hawed for a while about how wide the window should be. On the one hand, of course, you're right: five is the right number. It breaks the items up within their tiers with perfect granularity. On the other hand, when you first get your bigger item points, you can only use them for generic items. That's not too exciting. Nobody seems to want or carry the generic +x items, so I'd like a little wider of a window to work with. I bumped it up to level + 6, to allow interesting items to be accessible at every level.

Yours was probably the right call from a game balance perspective. But I like mine from the perspective of casting a wider net for moments of awesome to apply.

One obvious consequence of this is that you shouldn't lose your old item points when you enter the new tier. At level 11, +3 items in loot should no longer take your +3 item points; they're now the appropriate level for you. But you could still use those +3 item points to improve that level 10 weapon you've been waiting to take to 15. Otherwise you'd only have a night or two to manage it.

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I introduced this system to the players the other night. The reaction was pretty positive. I asked, "Anybody feeling a little cash-strapped?" and got a pretty strong response. Evidently, I hadn't been the only one feeling that way. Unsurprising, really; I like story, and really only had the one item I cared about for story reasons. Our more treasure-oriented player had really been feeling the burn.

Since the characters were right at the start of level 6, we started off right away with two item points each, good for a level 11-15 item (and right now good up to level 12). The only other change I made was to remove use #3--improving an item off-screen. Basically, it's equivalent to the old wish-list scenario. If you really want to do that, we can talk and set something up. As it is, it's kinda hokey.

The pacing turned out to not be a problem. I said, "So . . . about once a session something really, really cool happens." And everybody knew what I was talking about. And when our ranger was attacking with a power that allows two attacks, and critted on BOTH attacks (double 20's, baby!), the entire table immediately recognized that that was the moment.

We'll see how it holds up long term.

A couple other nitpicks have surfaced in the intervening week. If you're inclined to be a serious bean-counter, it behooves you to carry around a generic +1 sword and improve that to +3, and then sell your old +2. I don't feel a great need to close this loophole, since it requires you to manage something awesome with a generic +1 sword while visibly abusing a system and breaking versimiltude. I don't think it'll fly. But there is the possibility. Likewise, buying items out of treasure costs the party gold, while forging them with item points is free. But it's a small difference, and the forging requires patience and effort, so I'm not too concerned.

Also, this is pretty easy to do with weapons and implements, but we're not quite sure how to do it with other things. Similarly offensive items, like a Shield of Knocking Things Over or Armbands of Hitting Really Hard shouldn't be too difficult. I'm more worried about utility items that do things like boost healing surge values or grant darkvision. It would require some serious creativity to stunt with those. We may have to be more liberal about the requirements when it comes to improving non-weapons, or the players may just have to rise to the occasion. We'll see.

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I'll do a writeup and send an email out to my players with the rules and a bit of a fluff explanation. I'll post it here when I do, so others have the option to use the system as well.