"Soul-bound" magic items, homebrews, economy

Worlds of Warcraft (the MMORPG) uses a concept called "bind on equip." What that means is that a magic item can be traded around freely as long as it's not used. Once it's used by a person, however, that item only works for that person and can't be traded around anymore.

This poses interesting economic ripples, which, because this is a D&D forum, I won't go into.

However, I think that is an interesting concept, and while I didn't intentionally theft the idea, a couple sessions ago I did something very similar for one of my characters...

About 700 years ago, a singularly gifted elf was able to craft several special magic items. Each of these items were standard low level items (+1 shield, +1 morningstar etc) with the exception that he was able to attune them via a special magical ritual to a person. Once attuned, the person would bring out other properties in the item (could be anything from an additional +1 to flaming burst etc etc), but in the hands of anyone not attuned it would simply be a +1 item.

In something that is much too complicated to need to explain here, one of my characters became attuned to a set of weapons. In his hands they are pretty cool, much cooler than they would be in for any other party member or any other person in general.

But this got me to thinking... One of the most common complaints I hear about magic items (from DM's) is that they are too common and ruin the economy and are unrealistic. So what about a system where all (or almost all) magic items are bound to a person.

An example would be:

Character A finds a magical star ruby in a dungeon. (The particulars of how these magically imbued gems exist can be explained in any number of ways.) He knows that this star ruby can be used in a ritual to attune his essence and the gems essence into a sword to make it a +1 sword.

So he acquires a masterwork longsword, and finds someone who can perform the ritual on him. During this ritual, the magical star ruby is consumed, as is a bit of his own essence (but not enough to cause harm to the character). The sword has been imbued with magic to make it a +1 sword for him. In anyone else's hands, it's still just a masterwork longsword.

Now this changes the economy a lot since you can't get half price of the magic item when you sell it -- it's just a normal item. This also causes each item to be more special, especially if you tailor the magic to the player (for example, you can say that the resultant magic is not always predictable, so in addition to a +1 bonus, the paranoid rogue who enchants his sword also gets a +4 bonus to spot and listen checks, etc etc).

It can also make for interesting plot devices. Let's say a character wants a carpet of flying. The only way to get one would be to get "the feather of a giant eagle" and "an essence of a vampire" and then perform a ritual with someone who knows the ritual. It would require a "fine, hand-crafted rug made with lambswool." Each of these items (and finding the person who can perform the ritual) may be an adventure in itself. It would also explain why there aren't 10000 carpet of flyings in the world. And once created, only the person who was in the ritual can make it fly -- to everyone else it's just an expensive rug -- and when the person dies, so does the magic item essentially.

This causes other interesting ripples. For example, you can equip villains with magic items and not worry about the players getting them. There is no incentive for NPCs or PCs to ambush people just to get items from them. Instead, they may be kidnapped and coerced into using their magic items. It also explains (since magic items are rarely destroyed in most universes) while there isn't a massive number of magic items that exist.

Anyways, I haven't really thought this all through. But I figured it might be an interesting thought for people to chew on and discuss. I'm sure there are disadvantages to this system as well.

I'd be interested in hearing people's comments, and whether there is any system like this that already exists and that people may be using.

Personally I kind of like the idea, but I see so basic problems with it.

1> As you said it changes the economy, which means characters will not gain as much treasure form encounters as is. This can be
a good thing for DMs who want a lower wealth party then normal. It is also easy to just add more mundane treasures such as gold, gems, or art.

2> This means that the PCs have to quest for every magical item they want. Thats not so bad if the fighter wants to quest for a
+5 Dragonbane longsword, so he can slay the dragon and rescue the
princess. However this can cause troubles with campaigns as the party has to stop and go on a quest every time one of the players
wants/or needs a new magical item. Also players may not be to thrilled to go on the quest if only another player's character will be rewarded(in that they get a new magic item).

3> Questing involves overcoming challenges, which in turn means
earning experience, which in turn means gaining levels, which can
lead to the problem of high level characters and litle magical equipment. Again this may be a good thing to DMs who want a low magical item campaign, but only if it is also a low magic one.

I like the idea and had come up with it also, although some of my friends thought it was silly and had no place in D&D. I'd like to see the concept used in an isolated campaign and find out how it works in practice. I'm sure there are lots of issues involved that aren't apparent on the surface, but I like the concept.

Well, another approach to the complaint that magical items are too common (i.e. getting magic items are not a cool/special as getting magic items use to be) is having each character work on their items. Staves of Ascendence (and there was one about a sword.... but I can't remeber the name) did something like that.
Basically, PC's work on developing a single item and as they level, the item also gets improvements. Similar to the attuning concept, but I think it works out a little easier within the D20 mechanics.
-Suzi

random user said:

Worlds of Warcraft (the MMORPG) uses a concept called "bind on equip." What that means is that a magic item can be traded around freely as long as it's not used. Once it's used by a person, however, that item only works for that person and can't be traded around anymore.

This poses interesting economic ripples, which, because this is a D&D forum, I won't go into.

However, I think that is an interesting concept, and while I didn't intentionally theft the idea, a couple sessions ago I did something very similar for one of my characters...

About 700 years ago, a singularly gifted elf was able to craft several special magic items. Each of these items were standard low level items (+1 shield, +1 morningstar etc) with the exception that he was able to attune them via a special magical ritual to a person. Once attuned, the person would bring out other properties in the item (could be anything from an additional +1 to flaming burst etc etc), but in the hands of anyone not attuned it would simply be a +1 item.

In something that is much too complicated to need to explain here, one of my characters became attuned to a set of weapons. In his hands they are pretty cool, much cooler than they would be in for any other party member or any other person in general.

But this got me to thinking... One of the most common complaints I hear about magic items (from DM's) is that they are too common and ruin the economy and are unrealistic. So what about a system where all (or almost all) magic items are bound to a person.

An example would be:

Character A finds a magical star ruby in a dungeon. (The particulars of how these magically imbued gems exist can be explained in any number of ways.) He knows that this star ruby can be used in a ritual to attune his essence and the gems essence into a sword to make it a +1 sword.

So he acquires a masterwork longsword, and finds someone who can perform the ritual on him. During this ritual, the magical star ruby is consumed, as is a bit of his own essence (but not enough to cause harm to the character). The sword has been imbued with magic to make it a +1 sword for him. In anyone else's hands, it's still just a masterwork longsword.

Click to expand...

Positive aspects: NPCs won't suck anymore (assuming they still have the same value of gear).

Does the character have to pay to get this ritual done, and if so, how much? The value of the gear? Is the player expected to still have the same amount of gear (and be covered in magic items) as in DnD, or is this low magic?

Now this changes the economy a lot since you can't get half price of the magic item when you sell it -- it's just a normal item.

This also causes each item to be more special, especially if you tailor the magic to the player (for example, you can say that the resultant magic is not always predictable, so in addition to a +1 bonus, the paranoid rogue who enchants his sword also gets a +4 bonus to spot and listen checks, etc etc).

It can also make for interesting plot devices. Let's say a character wants a carpet of flying. The only way to get one would be to get "the feather of a giant eagle" and "an essence of a vampire" and then perform a ritual with someone who knows the ritual. It would require a "fine, hand-crafted rug made with lambswool." Each of these items (and finding the person who can perform the ritual) may be an adventure in itself. It would also explain why there aren't 10000 carpet of flyings in the world. And once created, only the person who was in the ritual can make it fly -- to everyone else it's just an expensive rug -- and when the person dies, so does the magic item essentially.

Click to expand...

That's going to be a pain for any item-crafter. By the time they complete the quest, they may have gained several levels and thus need more gear.

PS be careful with sundering.

Having thought a lot about this topic during this year, I'll toss in some opinions of mine...

First of all, IMO the mechanics of D20 are quite sensible to general changes. Seriously changing the amount of magic stuff in the world for example has consequences on the balance between character and monsters. Definitely it makes it more complicate to use CRs. This relative rigidity more or less requires the DM to make the setting a certain way: you cannot simply take away all magic items from the world and pretend to use the published books with no extra care IMO.

Neverthless, more many little reasons I am as well looking forward to try a low-magic setting, in the sense that I want to try and run a campaign where magic items are much less in number, but not necessarily in power; actually, it will help to make them more powerful to balance the game back.

The WOWC idea you mention has something to do with what I currently think I am going to use, and something very similar is used by the Midnight setting.

The most important thing I want to say is that once you make this sort of quite big changes, you have to be prepared for strong DM's control over the issue. You can't just make this change and go on playing as before, as a DM you absolutely need to keep an eye on the setting, control the amount of magic stuff coming and going from the party, and adjudicate if it's too much or too few. Don't want to say it's terrible, but it's not as easy as some may think either If a DM is not willing to do this, and perhaps more importantly if the players are not willing to let the DM do this, better just play by the books.

By the way, if you are interested I can post a brief description of what I am going to do in that campaign. So far it seems to solve several problems of mine (magic-as-technology and lack of wonder, magic items market, repetitiveness of treasure, PC gadgetization, money->power paranoia...) without actually affecting balance. But it leads to one new problem which I haven't solved yet, regarding scrolls, potions and wands (in other words, expendible magic items).

Attunement

I use an Attunement system for my campaign (which is really two different campaigns on the same world...too many players it would seem).

Anyway, I am fundamentally opposed to how 3.x trivialized magic items and how easy a specific item was to acquire for the players. One of the driving goals for a group of adventurers used to be hunting for rare magic items. With the advent of item-creation feats, this simply just became accumulation of wealth to convert into the perfectly min/maxed item of choice.

I have done the following to address this within my own world:
1) Days are weeks for creating magic items (excluding Potions & Scrolls).
2) A character must 'Attune' a magic item before he can use it (at least to its full potential). The nature of attunement is often specific to the item. For example, a giant bane sword may only attune once the character uses it to slay a giant of at least X-HD or a cloak of shadows may only be attuned during a new moon (of a particular moon) or the hand of sunbeam can only be attuned at sunrise on Summer Solstice (that kind of thing).
3) A character cannot attune anything past the wealth guideline value (presented in the DMG) at his current level +1. I particularly like this part because it polices itself (forces the players to share the wealth, so to speak) without me having to lobby for a particular player who seems to have been overlooked time and time again. Furthermore, it really crushes the secondary market for magic items as many NPCs cannot even attune higher level items and thus have little or no interest in them. But see #4.
4) I have certain materials that are inherently enchanted (i.e. rare metals) that do not require attunement. This is the market for your basic "plus" items (i.e. +2 resistance cloak, +3 sword). They are extremely expensive as far as the general economy is concerned and often recognizable on sight (due to particular qualities of the material...thieves love this).
5) There is no attunement for Potions & Scrolls.
6) The creation of magic items will almost always require rare components (that will have their own value subtracted from the creation cost). This allows the DM a level of flow-control on how quickly items come into the game. General guidelines for this can be taken from the Metamagic Component rules within Unearthed Arcana (which I also use, btw).
7) Because these rules weaken item-creation feats, I have combined certain feats as follows. Craft Wand and Craft Staff. Craft Rod and Craft Ring. Craft Wondrous Items and Craft Arms & Armor (Craft Arms & Armor has many limitations on what can be made based on the material of the item, see #4).

Anyway, that is a basic overview of my system and I've really loved how it has changed my game.

I personally liked the way that magic items are handled in EarthDawn. Unlocking the items potential through fiding out more knowledges about it, and its story ( or creator....etc....etc)

I like this idea. Maybe when the user of one of these items dies, the only way another person can use the item's powers is if the new user is a descendant of the original user, and thus possessing some of the essence of the original user. Then you have the old fantasy standby of the magical heirloom that has been passed down for generations.

Only problem is that with each generation, the mystical link to the item grows weaker, giving each successive descendant less and less ability to use the item's powers.

There are a couple of things already similar to this in d20. The first is a feat from Book of Exhalted Deeds, and its the Ancestral Relic. Bound to a family line rather than an indiviudal.

And from the MythDrannor came the elven blades (forget the name) but basically the same thing as an ancestral Relic. Its a long sword that is usally INT and adopts an heir, which then gets to awaken a power in it.

Also in the complete warrior there is the Kensai PrC which allows a player to add powers via EXP, similar to the Ninja class.