Healing Belt in MIC = broken?

[EroGaki]

The point of the Healing Belt, as well as tons of the other cheap items in the MIC was to add depth, variety and choice to the game...Normally pretty much every D&D game ends up the same way...players all get the big 6 and they suck if they dont...It's better to sell everything they find for half price if it gets them that extra +1 on their ring of protection or their cloak of resistance etc... because everything else sux for the price.


The designers and most players agree that the 15-minute adventuring day is very tired. Party wakes up, explores till they have a fight, then they RUSH to the next encounter as fast as they can because their precious buffs are gonna wear our in 5 minutes. As soon as the buffs are gone, they stop and rest till they get their spells back.

The healing belt is a interesting fix for this problem...For an affordable price, and a magic item slot, a low PC can actually have more than 1 fight in a day before needing to rest, or using all of the daily spell resources of another PC to get healed....Oh wait! This fix already exists. Wands of lesser vigor...

If you've experimented with 4th edition, or allowed the Tome of Battle classes or Warlocks or any of the reserve feats in your games then you will have already experienced how much more fun games can be when characters get to participate for bigger portions of gaming sessions. I personally don't have a lot of fun when we do the 1 fight followed by 8 hours of rest thing over and over again.

If you think healing belts are broken, then simply require a 1 hour attunement period before they function. Problem solved.

This. The 15 minute adventure day is a pain. Anything that helps fix it is appreciated in my book. I can't tell you how much it bugs me when I am DMing, and the PC's try feel the need to retreat after every big encounter because they are out of spells/healing, etc. And the same goes when I am a player. I recently created a Mystic Theurge just so I could have a 30 minute adventure instead of 15 minutes...

 

[Runestar]

Umm. Is THAT the reason people are screaming "OMG, it's teh broken!"?

In my game all items require a 24 hour period of attunement, maybe that's why I never worried about any MIC items.

I have never bothered with attunement time, and I still don't find them game-breaking.

In case you are thinking of complaining of how a player can easily lug around 20-30 of them at higher levels, my reply is - let them. It is still less efficient than wands of vigor.

All I can say is, give it a try before thinking of banning/nerfing it. You may be pleasantly surprised.

 

[Kask]

You are really going to have to explain your definition of monty haul to us. I think my take on what passes for it is a lot looser than yours...

I think the best definition was written in the 1st Ed DMG.

 

[Starbuck_II]

I think the best definition was written in the 1st Ed DMG.

Could you quote it?

 

[Kask]

Could you quote it?

Not off the top of my head. Look in the 1st DMG, if you don't own one I highly suggest getting one if not just for the invaluable data on DMing.

 

[Eldritch_Lord]

"Thoughtless placement of magical items has been the ruination of many a campaign. Not only does this cheapen what should be rare and precious, it gives player characters undeserved advancement and empowers them to become virtual rulers of all they survey...many campaigns are little more than a joke, something that better DMs jape and ridicule at--rightly so on the surface--because of the foolishness of player characters with astronomically high levels of experience and no real playing skill. These god-like characters boast and strut about with retinues of ultra-powerful servants and scores of mighty magic items, artifacts, relics adorning them as if they were Christmas trees decked out with tinsel and ornaments. Not only are such 'Monty Haul' games a crashing bore for most participants, they are a headache for their DMs as well, for the rules of the game do not provide anything for such play--no reasonable opponents, no rewards, nothing! The creative DM can, of course, develop a game which extrapolates from the original to allow such play, but this is a monumental task to accomplish with even passable results, and those attempts I have seen have been uniformly dismal."

---------------------------------

However, this talk of Monty Hauls is mostly irrelevant when talking about 3e. The reason high levels of magic items and cash was discouraged then because you gained experience from your loot as well, so getting too many items would level you up, giving you access to more powerful items which would level you more, and so on.

 

[Kask]

The reason high levels of magic items and cash was discouraged then because you gained experience from your loot as well, so getting too many items would level you up, giving you access to more powerful items which would level you more, and so on.

Actually, XP wasn't the reason. The reason is given in the DMG.

 

[Michael Silverbane]

In the games that I run, I haven't found the healing belt to be a problem. In the short-term, they are slightly less useful than a wand of cure light wounds. In the long-term, they are slightly more useful than a wand of cure light wounds.

 

[Eldritch_Lord]

Actually, XP wasn't the reason. The reason is given in the DMG.

You said to look at the 1e DMG, and I posted the exact quote of why Monte Haul campaigns are discouraged by Gygax. Having too many magic items "gives player characters undeserved advancement and empowers them to become virtual rulers of all they survey"...which is only the case because you got XP when you found treasure. Using a healing belt is not remotely related to having a Monty Haul campaign in that context (or, I would argue, in any context).

 

[Thurbane]

And if those basic game rules have been found to be wanting?

You release errata, or a new edition of the game!

...like others in this thread, that's my beef with things like the Healing Belt, and a lot of what's in the ToB. If things in your core rulebooks are found to be wanting (and let's face of it, some of the stuff in 3.5 probably is) then ammend or update the core rulebooks. Don't release things in splatbooks with the thought "Oh yeah, we messed a few things up in the core, but hey, we added other, different things here that are how things should have been all along. YMMV - sorry if this makes some core and non-core things totally out of whack with each other!"

Each to their own, but this type of approach really irks me. If something in the core rules is busted, go ahead and fix the core, don't have us shell out for splatbook band-aids...as much as many people at the time weren't happy with the jump from 3.0 to 3.5, it DID address a lot of issues, and free update documents were released so that (theoretically, anyway) you still could use your 3.0 books in a 3.5 game.