Dark Sun with different and less magic items

[TheClone]

After a discussion with one of my players, I decided to change the magic items and treasure of my Dark Sun campaign quite a bit. We agreed that DS shouldn't have that much magic items as it needs to have with the usual 4e magic item economy. Even with the inherited bonuses you get your pluses earlier with items and the item powers usually don't scale by themselves, so new items have better powers. So it's the old rat race for the best items.

So we now don't have any enhancement bonuses on items any more. Neither to att/dam, nor to defenses. All just inherited. The items retain just their powers. In fact, I'll design most or all of them now myself. It's worth the effort since they're being used over a long time. And I can add some more fluff to them, especially by fitting the powers to who owned the item before. Just now they found "Defiler's Nightmare", a hand crossbow (for being of the sneaky kind) that protects from defilers and does more damage to them. They found it after beating some Veiled Alliance guys to death. The most fluffy part about is, that they know it has been used by the Alliance for a long time. So they may use it as some kind of key card to get into the Alliance if needed.

The items power is not as universal as the usual powers of items, which help in almost any combat, but I'm planning on adding items for different purposes and since they don't "get old" by having a fixed enhancement bonus, it becomes part of tactics to choose the right weapon, although there won't be that many. I guess I'll drop a magic item for every "non-red shirt" enemy group. So the occasional random encounter or some waylayers won't have much magic items, as I will generally reduce the amounts of treasure. This also will bring up the survival day. Those cost 5 gp and for the standard group of adventurers this is nothing to be concerned about from level 2 or 3 on. But with less treasure not only the dangers of the desert will be something unique for Athas but also having enough to eat and drink to travel the desert might come up every now and them.

One thing I was unable to solve yet are armors from superior materials. These additional bonuses to defenses are yet missed.

So, what do you think? Good idea? Terrible one? Tweaks for my rules or additional for superior materials?

 

[Neubert]

I think it is a good idea, but I am biased since I am giving 4e the same treatment. My changes are still a work in progress as I haven't explored all the effects of these changes, or how to correct them (I am split on how to deal with the critical bonus dice).
One thing I haven't thought of yet is superior materials, but I think I would give the armor a property based on the material. If the armor was made from the scales of a red dragon, it might infer some fire resist. I could also see a superior material giving a +1 to a defense, but I would limit it to this. In my houserules, a weapon that has a permanent property of giving +1 to attack rolls is very powerful.

 

[the Jester]

I'd keep the extra bonus to AC from masterwork armor materials, but reflavor the materials to be more DarkSuny.

 

[TheClone]

The critical dice is ruled by the book. Inherited bonuses give 1d6 critical damage bonus per +1 to att/dam. It's not in the table, but in the text next to it (at least in the RC).

I was expecting to influence the tactical decision by using the masterwork materials as is, because some armors simply are better by their AC/Def bonuses and stuff. But while reading your posts it came to my mind that you don't change armors like weapons and thus most likely will use only one armor anyway. So I can treat them like any other item. Lose the enhancement bonus and that's it. I just have to remember giving out armors on a regular basis so the defenses and AC don't stay behind to much.

 

[Kannon]

I'm doing the same thing in my dark sun game. Everyone has a character specific key magic item, that fits with their character type, and they rarely get new stuff when it's plot appropriate. Say, they kill a very large, angry insect that is nigh immovable. The trading town had an armorsmith that could make something out of the insect's carapace... thus, the defender gets a Wall Armor.

That said, the Wall Armor is +1, since they're only level 2, and the defender was having some AC issues. But, the general theory going forward is that items will be treated as having a bonus equal to the inherent ones they have, so the powers will scale.

 

[Mattachine]

To solve the "missing AC bonuses" and missing critical damage dice, just do this:
give paragon monsters a -2 attack penalty, and epic monsters a -3 attack penalty. Then, shave off some hit points, like--once a creature is at half its bloodied value, it dies.