How I Stopped Worrying and Learned To Love Standard Plusses

Voss · Jan 25, 2008

mearls said:
The key is that, in most cases, magic items give more options, rather than improvements to existing options.

Strictly speaking, the fighter with no items is less powerful than the fighter with a ton of items, yet if the campaign tends toward few or no items, the game still functions fine. For instance, the math behind monsters looks to magic items only for the static bonuses that they grant.

Primarily, the benefits conferred by magic items are useful in specific situations or they cater to specific tactics. Many also are limited in scope, such as providing a benefit for the length of one encounter per day.

Thanks for the reply. However... this all still sounds like a problem to me. Options are powerful. Option are often amazingly powerful, particularly tactical options. Fly, for example negates all sorts of monsters, from giant scorpions, to melee specialists and even ranged attackers with short ranged effects. Fly, used properly, means you can kill entire types of enemies without being at risk at all.

Second, the system's math needs to look at temporary bonuses as well as static bonuses, because thats where the system explodes. A giant pile of temporary bonuses allows a character to completely obliterate an encounter.

Once per day items are simply flat-out bad design, unless something prevents you from taking the item off and slipping another once per day item on in its place. Again, with this approach, the system is discounting the ability to just stockpile bonuses and go Gojira at people. It isn't safe (or good for the system) just to ignore bonuses because they aren't static.

The important thing to remember is that, in monster and math design, only the static benefits had an effect on the math. If you change how items work, everything works out fine as long as you are consistent wtih that change. We've shifted away from making some classes, like the fighter, heavily gear dependent, while others, like the wizard, don't need it as much.

Shifting away from unequal dependency is a good thing. But you do seem to be missing the explosive mathematical potential that remains in the magic item system.

Khaim · Jan 25, 2008

Voss said:
Once per day items are simply flat-out bad design, unless something prevents you from taking the item off and slipping another once per day item on in its place. Again, with this approach, the system is discounting the ability to just stockpile bonuses and go Gojira at people. It isn't safe (or good for the system) just to ignore bonuses because they aren't static.

It wasn't exactly spelled out, but my guess is that a lot of the temporary-boost items will either last for one attack or for one round. There are a number of such in the MIC, and if you read the 4e DDM stuff there is an awfully large amount of "until the end of your next turn" going around. While DDM isn't an exact port by any means, it is related.

JohnSnow · Jan 25, 2008

Voss said:
Shifting away from unequal dependency is a good thing. But you do seem to be missing the explosive mathematical potential that remains in the magic item system.

Or it could be that Mike's actually seen the system, which, as far as I know, you have not. You've just seen a couple of items and made some gigantic inferences about which direction the designers took with the rest of the system (many of which assume the designers don't know their jobs).

What on earth makes you believe that you're a better game designer than the guys who work at Wizards of the Coast? Asking for clarification is fine. But when Mike Mearls says "the math only involves three of the items," there's no reason not to believe him.

Although, yes, in any given campaign, every PC should have as many items as every other PC. But aren't there a lot of other reasons this should be the case?

Brother MacLaren · Jan 25, 2008

Dannyalcatraz said:
That's off the top of my head- if I scour my encyclopedias of mythology and look at African, Asian, or Native American legend, I'll find more.

Try the Artifact section of the Master's Set from BECMI. Every artifact is based on something from legend.

Agamon said:
Nothing wrong with getting a bonus to strength for a round every encounter or for an encounter once a day. Different than a permanent bonus that is considered part of the PCs abililties. As someone that dislikes the 3.x abilitiy enhancement items, this looks fine.

I found in the game I ran that permanent bonuses were better than temporary bonuses. I ended up giving the barbarian a Belt of Giant Strength to alleviate two problems:
1) He'd badger the other PCs or their cohorts into casting Bull's Strength on him before every fight. It was always "Cast Bull's Strength on me! Cast Enlarge Person on me!" It was just the attitude that the other PCs' job was to make him better.
2) Since his Strength wasn't permanently boosted, he always had to stop and recalculate his math. Every single attack.

Likewise, I gave all of the PCs an inherent +2 deflection bonus to AC and an inherent +2 resistance bonus to saves as a quest reward, because they ALWAYS used Magic Circle Against Evil. So they were always rolling saves, telling me the total, me telling them if they made it, and then they'd remember the Circle, check their position and the cleric's position, and announce the correct total. Gah. For that group, at least, temporary modifiers were a nightmare.

A'koss · Jan 25, 2008

mearls said:
Yup, that's pretty much the intent. We went out of our way to embrace transparency in the rules, to better help DMs understand how magic items interact with PCs, how they interact with the system math, and what happens when you start to change things.

While I'm big on the plussed items either, I'm glad this information will be in the DMG.

It's also why items have a level as a guide for their power, rather than a gp cost. It's a lot easier to look at an item's level and determine how powerful it is compared to a character, rather than look at its price, compare that price to expected wealth, and then try to figure out the impact of an item that's worth 10% of a PC's total treasure compared to one worth 20% of a PC's treasure.

Indeed.

But while having a level associated with them is certainly handy to have, as I understand it (from the previous Des. & Dev. article), 4e items still have a gp cost associated with them (for buying or creating). And because of this I assume there must still be an Expected Weath chart for PCs and at the end of the day the players will still be crunching numbers and pouring over the magic items section like a Sears catalogue in order to figure out what they should pawn off in order to get the lastest & greatest toy. In the end, it's still largely the DM dealing with the impact of what the PCs can buy more than what the DM actually puts in.

And because magic items can still be bought and commissioned for gold, like 3e, that is all large sums of gold is good for in the game. No building castles, towns, raising armies, no mansions, no servants, no exotic mounts, no creating your own guilds, no knighthoods, you name it. Gold=Magic.

It's one of those things that in 3e I didn't even realize right way, but really hit home when the PCs were finally getting into high levels and there was no incentive to spend money on anything other than magic (and you would be a fool to in 3e).

JohnSnow · Jan 25, 2008

A'koss said:
Indeed.

But while having a level associated with them is certainly handy to have, as I understand it (from the previous Des. & Dev. article), 4e items still have a gp cost associated with them (for buying or creating). And because of this I assume there must still be an Expected Weath chart for PCs and at the end of the day the players will still be crunching numbers and pouring over the magic items section like a Sears catalogue in order to figure out what they should pawn off in order to get the lastest & greatest toy. In the end, it's still largely the DM dealing with the impact of what the PCs can buy more than what the DM actually puts in.

Well, without being overly optimistic, there's a drastic difference between giving items a "price to make or buy" and providing an expected wealth chart. The 1st Edition PHB had the first (basically), but the second didn't exist until 3E. But you can still make the items appropriate without making it like a Sears catalog.

First, you give each item a level, which we know they're doing. Then, the DMG says something like "characters are assumed to have items from column A, B and C" (the so called "big three") "in order for the math of the game to work. DMs who wish to remove these items should bear that in mind and give the PCs the bonuses the items provide at the appropriate level."

Any items given out beyond that is just determined by the DM's judgement and the needs of his campaign.

By setting the price of all 5th-level items at X, all 8th-level items at Y, and so on, you take out the worry over total wealth and set it to "general wealth." Want all PCs to have 4 items beyond the big 3? Then give them enough gold to buy 4 level appropriate items and either the rituals to build the items or a friendly merchant selling them.

Don't want them to have more than that? Then don't make the rituals or the merchant available.

Ahglock · Jan 25, 2008

Khaim said:
It wasn't exactly spelled out, but my guess is that a lot of the temporary-boost items will either last for one attack or for one round. There are a number of such in the MIC, and if you read the 4e DDM stuff there is an awfully large amount of "until the end of your next turn" going around. While DDM isn't an exact port by any means, it is related.

That's cool but if they are once a day then he 5 minute work day issue that seems to plague many people is still alive and well. I never saw it so once a day will probably work fine in my games but if one of your design goals is to get rid of the 5 minute work day, once a day effects should have no of virtually no effect on combat.

A'koss · Jan 25, 2008

JohnSnow said:
Well, without being overly optimistic, there's a drastic difference between giving item a "price to make or buy" and providing the expected wealth chart.

First, you give each item a level, which we know they're doing. Then, the DMG says something like "characters are assumed to have items from column A, B and C" (the so called "big three") "in order for the math of the game to work. DMs who wish to remove these items should bear that in mind and give the PCs the bonuses the items provide at the appropriate level."

Any items given out beyond that is just determined by the DM's judgement and the needs of his campaign.

Well you pretty much have to have an "Expected Wealth Chart" to make sure at the very least you're not giving out too much gold. Gold=Magic and it's about making sure your PCs aren't able to afford more than what they should for their level (including cash from selling off "useless" items).

hbarsquared · Jan 25, 2008

mearls said:
Yup, that's pretty much the intent. We went out of our way to embrace transparency in the rules, to better help DMs understand how magic items interact with PCs, how they interact with the system math, and what happens when you start to change things.

Thank you, Mike, so Much for chiming in. This has been exactly what I've been looking for in a magic item system. I truly hope that this transparency, perhaps in the form of a sidebar, explicitly spells out how the bonuses work as a character levels up.

Thank you!

Nahat Anoj · Jan 25, 2008

Warbringer said:
Socrates ... posits a man who finds a magical ring that makes him invisible in one of his discussions on morality (the true source for gollum)

Solomon also had a ring that enabled him to speak with animals, granted immense wisdom, and bound genies into bottles.

How I Stopped Worrying and Learned To Love Standard Plusses

Voss

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Khaim

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JohnSnow

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Brother MacLaren

Explorer

A'koss

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JohnSnow

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Ahglock

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A'koss

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hbarsquared

Quantum Chronomancer

Nahat Anoj

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