Design & Development: Magic Item Levels

[zoroaster100]

You are right Mad Mac. I should try not to overreact too much. It's just that I was really hoping for the end to +X items. Hopefully magic weapons will be defined more in combat and in other aspects of play by their other abilities than by their plus.

 

[Gloombunny]

It's hard for me to reconcile "there are +X items with a scaling-by-item-level X" (what they're saying now) with "the math does not require a high-level character to have magic items" (what they've said before).

I guess as long as there aren't too many +X's it can still be sort of true, but it's definitely not the way they seemed to be going.

 

[WyzardWhately]

I rather wonder if 'level' of magic item might mean fairly specifically what level of enemy is likely to drop it. You get ninth level magic items from ninth level encounters. It's a thought.

 

[Bishmon]

I disagree. He's not being harsh enough. The complaints about 4e have gotten so redundant that it's trashing the forum lately. Enough already. We've heard all those old complaints, and your issue is noted for the record. Unless you have some NEW complaint, and not just a repeat complaint about a new aspect, why continue to post it?

I think you're seriously misrepresenting a lot of negative opinions just so you can try to make your point, but that's as far as I'm going to push this.

 

[Wolfspider]

I think you're seriously misrepresenting a lot of negative opinions just so you can try to make your point, but that's as far as I'm going to push this.

Yeah. There's too much griping about 4e going on, so I'm going to gripe about the griping about 4e before anyone else gets to gripe about 4e.

That's productive.

 

[Gundark]

Other than that, I am just hoping that the magic items are more interesting then their names would imply... I dislike the +2 or +3 on everything. I guess it can't be helped, though.

Me too. however I suspect that due to the less reliance on maic items means that there isn't going to be the arms race we saw in 3e. Thus a +2 flaming sword will be useful for a lot longer in 4e. What this mean is that you could name the +2 flaming sword "Sunrazor" or something like that and not worry too much about the player wanting to dump it a few levels later.

 

[Ahglock]

from the article, "For example, all 9th-level magic items now cost the same number of gp to craft or to purchase"

Um, huh!?!

Why would you ever make a magic item for someone then. "It cost me 50GP to make this so I'll sell it for 50GP, I am a genius."

Ah well I guess I just have to chalk this up to one of my major disagreements with some of the design comments like removing crafting cause you were penalized for picking up a useful skill, since it wasn't combat or social important.

Other than that the article seemed fine. I don't mind people having a bunch of magic items, and hey if you make it easier for me to judge the balance of an item great.

 

[Gundark]

I remain highly skeptical... I suspect the reports of the death of the Christmas Tree have been greatly exaggerated.

Ugh...I hope your wrong wulf

 

[Merlin the Tuna]

Why would you ever make a magic item for someone then. "It cost me 50GP to make this so I'll sell it for 50GP, I am a genius."

Well, it would put those magic item shops out of business, and a lot of people have been complaining about those. But from the thread on the 4E News board...

Not a typo, but rather a distributed "or". The full sentence, spelled out explicitly, would be "For example, all 9th-level magic items now cost the same number of gp to craft and all 9th-level magics items now cost the same number of gp to purchase" is how I read it. 4E's economy will REALLY be broken if cost to make == sale price.

 

[WhatGravitas]

from the article, "For example, all 9th-level magic items now cost the same number of gp to craft or to purchase"

Um, huh!?!

Why would you ever make a magic item for someone then. "It cost me 50GP to make this so I'll sell it for 50GP, I am a genius."

You could also read it as "For example, all 9th-level magic items now cost the same number gp to craft AND all 9th-level magic items now cost the same number gp to purchase", meaning purchase and craft are still different, but the price of all 9th-level items is the same.

Or not.

Another thing: While I have seen +X items in the article, I haven't seen 'pure' +X items, as a +1 longsword. Perhaps the non-"plus-X"-abilities are now an intrinsic property of the enhancement bonuses, i.e. a weapon with +3 would automatically have special effects (flaming, electricity, whatever) with a total value of +3 as well. That would go a long way to fix magic weapons, as +X and special abilities are of wildly varying value right now, especially after the death of DR X/+X.

Cheers, LT.