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Resonance, Potency, & Potions: A Look At Magic Items in Pathfinder 2
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<blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 7753276" data-attributes="member: 996"><p>Actually, a character based resource for using magic items is /more/ realistic than charges. Charges are a very modernist idea. Traditions that believed in magic /might/ get an idea like having three wishes or some other counting attribute, but it won't be because there's only so much juice in a wand, but because that's a condition of the spell or curse or whatever. Magical thinking tends to be cause-and-effect, but highly conditional to the point of arbitrary. The house of a rival you vocally cursed burns down. Wow, the curse worked. Why didn't it work the other times you cussed him out? Well, maybe the stars were right, or an evil spirit was listening, or ... </p><p>Perform the steps of a ritual at the right time, with the right (hard-to-impossible-to-obtain) materials, in the right sequence, with perfect pronunciation, and if some supernatural being approves, you might get what you want. With a magical item, it might be more about knowing how to use it. A wand could turn people into a frogs, but it would be by touching them & saying a rhyming couplet or stirring their wine with it before they drink it or something - not shooting rays at them until the battery ran out.</p><p></p><p>D&D magic is just goofy, even for magic. Better playable goofy than broken goofy.</p><p></p><p> All the way back, AFAIK. Just not /every spell/, and not make/buy at affordable prices like in 3e. Fireball for instance, but not Cure..Wounds... there was a Staff of Healing back in the day (heck there was a Rod of Resurrection), though, but rare & few charges... </p><p></p><p> Considering they'd be making/using the Wand, and it leaves them plenty of slots to CoDzilla out with? I doubt it. ;P</p><p></p><p> Not as easy to tweak as you might think. 3e make/buy was pretty nifty in a lot of ways, the ballooning costs made low-level items, like low-level slots easily affordable utility, while high level items (& spells) remained limited-availability & high-impact - but when a low-level spell could have a cumulative effect equal to a much higher level one, and the time to apply it repeatedly wasn't an issue, well, it could be 'exploited.' </p><p></p><p>To just solve the CLW problem, for instance, you could make healing non-cumulative. Say, by tracking wounds, and requiring each be healed by its own Cure..Wound spell, with only the highest result to a give wound counting (you take 40, 8, 8, 16, 4, & 4 - sure, that's 80 damage, but it's 7 wounds - you can't just blow 10 CLWs and probably call it a day, CLW will cure the 4-hp wounds, maybe the 8-hp ones if you roll well, but the 16 will take Cure Moderate at least and the 40 some serious mojo... if all you had was CLW, you could keep at each wound until you rolled a 9, but you'd still be down 38 hps, @ one 40-9 wound & one 16-9, each needing 10+ hp of healing magic to make at better...). Of course, that'd be a PitA.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Tony Vargas, post: 7753276, member: 996"] Actually, a character based resource for using magic items is /more/ realistic than charges. Charges are a very modernist idea. Traditions that believed in magic /might/ get an idea like having three wishes or some other counting attribute, but it won't be because there's only so much juice in a wand, but because that's a condition of the spell or curse or whatever. Magical thinking tends to be cause-and-effect, but highly conditional to the point of arbitrary. The house of a rival you vocally cursed burns down. Wow, the curse worked. Why didn't it work the other times you cussed him out? Well, maybe the stars were right, or an evil spirit was listening, or ... Perform the steps of a ritual at the right time, with the right (hard-to-impossible-to-obtain) materials, in the right sequence, with perfect pronunciation, and if some supernatural being approves, you might get what you want. With a magical item, it might be more about knowing how to use it. A wand could turn people into a frogs, but it would be by touching them & saying a rhyming couplet or stirring their wine with it before they drink it or something - not shooting rays at them until the battery ran out. D&D magic is just goofy, even for magic. Better playable goofy than broken goofy. All the way back, AFAIK. Just not /every spell/, and not make/buy at affordable prices like in 3e. Fireball for instance, but not Cure..Wounds... there was a Staff of Healing back in the day (heck there was a Rod of Resurrection), though, but rare & few charges... Considering they'd be making/using the Wand, and it leaves them plenty of slots to CoDzilla out with? I doubt it. ;P Not as easy to tweak as you might think. 3e make/buy was pretty nifty in a lot of ways, the ballooning costs made low-level items, like low-level slots easily affordable utility, while high level items (& spells) remained limited-availability & high-impact - but when a low-level spell could have a cumulative effect equal to a much higher level one, and the time to apply it repeatedly wasn't an issue, well, it could be 'exploited.' To just solve the CLW problem, for instance, you could make healing non-cumulative. Say, by tracking wounds, and requiring each be healed by its own Cure..Wound spell, with only the highest result to a give wound counting (you take 40, 8, 8, 16, 4, & 4 - sure, that's 80 damage, but it's 7 wounds - you can't just blow 10 CLWs and probably call it a day, CLW will cure the 4-hp wounds, maybe the 8-hp ones if you roll well, but the 16 will take Cure Moderate at least and the 40 some serious mojo... if all you had was CLW, you could keep at each wound until you rolled a 9, but you'd still be down 38 hps, @ one 40-9 wound & one 16-9, each needing 10+ hp of healing magic to make at better...). Of course, that'd be a PitA. [/QUOTE]
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Resonance, Potency, & Potions: A Look At Magic Items in Pathfinder 2
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