Magic Item Daily Powers - Simplification

[Dausuul]

As my PCs gain levels, they're accumulating a fair supply of magical gear. Last night we explored in depth how magic item daily powers work in 4E. The general consensus was that the system was overly complicated and lame. So I'm working out a house-rule to simplify things while (hopefully) retaining a modicum of balance. Here's what I have in mind; what do people think?

Currently we have Action Points. We will add another, very similar mechanic called Item Points. You start the day with one Item Point; at paragon tier, this increases to two, and at epic tier it increases to three. Each time you hit a milestone, you get another Item Point.

To use a magic item's daily power, you must spend an Item Point. Unlike Action Points, you can spend multiple Item Points per encounter if you have them. Other than your supply of Item Points, there are no limitations to how often you can use a given item.

The concept of "recharging items" is now meaningless and does not apply. The artificer power to recharge items instead grants one Item Point to a character who currently has zero, and is usable only once per day (reaching a milestone does not recharge it). Magic items that recharge at the cost of a healing surge are now just regular magic items.

Consequences of this change: PCs are free to re-use the same magic item over and over, within the limitations of their Item Points. This will reduce the diversity of combat slightly, and means that an especially powerful item has a bit more of an impact on the game. However, I think it's worth it for the sake of clarity in the rules. It also means that PCs can have "signature items" which they use regularly.

 

[Alex319]

Magic items that recharge at the cost of a healing surge are now just regular magic items.

What do you mean by this? Do you mean:

(a) Healing surge powers cost an Item Point to use, just like daily powers;

(b) Healing surge powers are usable at-will;

(c) Healing surge powers do not function at all?


(a) is probably too weak, (b) is almost certainly overpowered, and (c) makes the magical item useless.

The way healing surge items work is that you have to use a standard action to burn a healing surge to recharge the item. As it is rarely worth it to burn a standard action in the middle of combat just to recharge an item, usually people wait until the end of combat to do so.

One way you could get close to this idea with less complexity is to state that healing surge powers are encounter powers that require burning a healing surge to activate. (This is very similar to the RAW except that there isn't a separate "recharge" step, which makes it less confusing.) If this is still too complicated, you could remove the once-per-encounter restriction.

 

[tintagel]

I'm just houseruling that you can only use 1 item daily per encounter, subject to available supplies of magic items. No more milestones or limited uses (other than the limits imposed by the item itself). This is more often than the current system, but hey, I like to see daily item powers used. Note that they can still only be used up to their normal frequency (usually once per day).

 

[Dausuul]

What do you mean by this? Do you mean:

(a) Healing surge powers cost an Item Point to use, just like daily powers;

(b) Healing surge powers are usable at-will;

(c) Healing surge powers do not function at all?


(a) is probably too weak, (b) is almost certainly overpowered, and (c) makes the magical item useless.

I'm talking about (a); healing surge powers cost an Item Point to use, like normal daily powers. This does weaken healing surge items relative to normal items, but I don't think it's a significant change.

The core of my problem with the current system is that I don't want people to have to track their item usage in two different ways. Either they should track whether a given item has been used (but not have an overall cap on item usage), or they should have an overall cap on item usage (but not track usage of individual items). The latter has less impact on game balance and is simpler, so I went with that.

 

[TheNinjaD]

This does not seem to simplify things to me. However, I think that it could work and it makes enough sense that I wouldn't argue against implementing it, if doing so were the will of the group.