Recosting Magic Items in MIC = Blatant Power Creep...er..Power Charge?

[green slime]

"The game" doesn't mind being cheapened. "The game" doesn't have an ego. Now if your PLAYER feels cheapened that's different. Do you have a player who's taken ranks in Use Rope?

Yep. And got minor use of those skill points as well. Which is well beside the point. But you are correct. Similarly, a tv-series doesn't mind being shafted. There are plenty of people willing to watch any trash that throbs out of the goggle box. So why have any concern about some other player's ego? Personally, I'm not worried about ego, as much as fun.

 

[hong]

Yep. And got minor use of those skill points as well.

Note use of qualifier "minor". The presence of a rope of climbing isn't going to stop you getting continued minor use of this skill either.

Which is well beside the point. But you are correct. Similarly, a tv-series doesn't mind being shafted.

Correct. And indeed, fanboi angsting about TV series never really seemed to me to be a very constructive pursuit.

There are plenty of people willing to watch any trash that throbs out of the goggle box.

I fail to see what point you're making.

So why have any concern about some other player's ego? Personally, I'm not worried about ego, as much as fun.

Well, that's what you should have said in the first place!

 

[Someone]

Well, the article actually goes on to say that blaming cost alone is just a kneejerk diagnosis, and that just re-pricing isn't the real fix. I suspect that even if the cloak of displacement was cheapened, the cloak of resistance is still likely to be prefered by many PC's. As was suggested by an earlier poster, what they'd pretty much have to do is find a way to take the item with the flat buffs and combine them with the wondrous powers, to make a cloak of resistanct displacement or somesuch.

I agree to a point. There's another added angle to that, though; the double premise that wealth is limited and fixed (that is, that by level N you'll have X gold coins, no more, no less) and that there's a market where you can sell and buy everything, without restriction. If magic items can be freely traded, players will inevitably sell them in favor of items that help them maximize their characters' abilities.

That's not so bad until stat bossting and passive protection items are so ingrained into the game (challenges being designed for characters that have those items) that they almost stop being magic items and become part of the character; if you took them away and instead gave the characters level based bonuses to stats, AC and saving throws, there would be little difference for 95% of the characters I've seen in any group I've played or seen in the boards. (I even did it once in a campaing I DMed, allowing only unusual, non-boosting items: horns of fog and such, but no gauntlets of ogre power or plus whatever weapons - those bonuses came by other means. It worked pretty well, and even helped to create a "spiderman effect": the characters were very powerful, but poor as rats)

 

[green slime]

Well, that's what you should have said in the first place!

Its basically the only thing I ever really say, but you just haven't been listening.

 

[Li Shenron]

Yes, Blatant Power Creep is an oxymoron. Power Charge?

I know the book's not out yet, but it sounds like readjusting the cost of magic items could open a floodgate of more powerful players.

Yes. Cheap power is the best way to make a book for players sell.

 

[green slime]

...could open a floodgate of more powerful players..

Yes, its very dangerous. A flood of powerful (smelly) players is something I definitely do not want littering my living room. No matter how interesting and varied their characters are.

 

[hong]

Its basically the only thing I ever really say, but you just haven't been listening.

No, no. You said, and I quote:

it cheapens the game

which makes no particular mention of "fun". Bad green slime!