What's wrong with the magic item Christmas tree?

[S'mon]

Because 4e is rules transparent, and because the offense and defensive value of magic items are balanced with each other, you could toss magic items completely out of the campaign, modify monster levels slightly, and play with minimal disruption.

You can tick the 'inherent bonuses' box in the Character Builder and use monsters exactly as written; I'm not sure you even need to reduce energy attacks. Maybe reduce monster status-condition attacks a bit in Paragon & Epic to compensate for PCs not having item powers.

 

[Chrono22]

Hmm. My problems with the magic item christmas tree:
1. Magic items are supposed to be (or at least I think they should be) special or unique. Having a dozen magic items on your person makes all of them less interesting.
2. Keeping track of so many magic items makes character creation and upkeep very tedious.
3. Magic item costs: in an attempt to fix broken magic items, 3.5 costs increased exponentially. This exasperbated the whole christmas tree problem. Having a huge number of minor magical items was numerically, strategically and tactically superior to having a few unique and powerful magic items. This also made tracking costs several times harder.

I think some of the other problems with magic items are due to how fixed character progressions are, and because of number inflation.
Since magic items allow a player to freely tack new special powers or abilities to his character outside of a rigid class build, the character's power and influence end up depending very heavily on those magic items. Of course, a wizard will only be impeded by the loss of his magic items... since he has extra-class powers (spells). So, this part is mostly a pitfall of D&D being a class-based system.
The second part has to do with number inflation. Over time the expectation is that players will acquire certain magic items for their PCs- items that will improve their bonuses to primary attributes, skills, and attacks. Allowance for +# boosts has made unique magic items even harder to come by. The reasons we have these boosts are rooted in what I perceive to be a problem with how the developers/players of D&D perceived magic.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

You can tick the 'inherent bonuses' box in the Character Builder

I don't have it, and it doesn't sound flexible enough. (The defensive needs of a greatsword wielder vs a sword-and-board wielder can't be the same, whether it's based on magic items or natural progressions.)

I'd like to stick to just core rules in this discussion.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I think it's important to note that the +stat items fell in line with statistics rising as you leveled, which in turn can be held as happening due to point buy slowly emerging over stat rolling.

In other words, once stats became no longer static, it became a case where rising them incrementally instead of making an item that sets your stats somewhere became more important. After all, if there's an item that gives you +2 strength and one that sets your strength to 18, and you already started with 18 and have been raising it every 4 levels, which one will get use?

That's why you saw the +stat items - statistics were no longer static. A belt of giant strength that gave you the strength of giants wasn't that useful if you already had that level of strength, in other words.

I used to hate the idea of items that would give you a fixed strength. Now I tend to think a "mix" might be a better choice.

Gloves of Ogre Power:
- You gain a +2 bonus to Strength. Your strength score cannot increase beyond 18.
Belt of Giant Strength:
- You gain a +4 bonus to Strength. Your strength score cannot increase beyond 20.
Gloves of Elven Dexterity:
- You gain a +2 bonus to Dexterity. Your dexterity score cannot increase beyond 18.
Gloves of Elemental Dexterity:
- You gain +6 bonus to Dexterity. Your dexterity score cannot increase beyond 22.

The limited bonus avoids stupid tricks like "Cool, Starting Level 5. With the expected wealth at that level, I can afford a Glove of Ogre Power and can dump stat my Fighter's Strength!", and at the same time - when you already have a great strength, you don't need this item.

 

[Dausuul]

I don't have it, and it doesn't sound flexible enough. (The defensive needs of a greatsword wielder vs a sword-and-board wielder can't be the same, whether it's based on magic items or natural progressions.)

In 4E, the system expects you to have +X armor at level Y. X is the same whether you fight with a greatsword or go sword-and-board; the sword-and-boarder's AC is two points higher because of the shield (which doesn't get a magical bonus), but damage is lower because of the smaller damage die on 1-handed weapons.

If you remove all magic bonuses from items, then you just give the character a +X inherent bonus to AC (and Fort, Ref, Will, and attacks), and the result is exactly the same. I believe the breakpoints are:

Level 2: +1 inherent
Level 7: +2 inherent
Level 12: +3 inherent
Level 17: +4 inherent
Level 22: +5 inherent
Level 27: +6 inherent

Remember that one of the designers of 4E was Mike Mearls, creator of "Iron Heroes." Building the system so that "wealth by level" was transparent and easy to strip out of the game was a design goal.

I'd like to stick to just core rules in this discussion.

Well, if you consider the DMG2 to be core, then inherent bonuses are core rules. (Admittedly, I don't really hold with the "everything is core" philosophy...)

 

[S'mon]

I don't have it, and it doesn't sound flexible enough. (The defensive needs of a greatsword wielder vs a sword-and-board wielder can't be the same, whether it's based on magic items or natural progressions.)

I'd like to stick to just core rules in this discussion.

It's in DMG2, which according to WoTC is 'core rules'.

It's just:
+1 to attacks at 2nd/7th/12th/17th/22nd/27th
+1 to defenses at 4th/9th/14th/19th/24th/29th

The different defensive needs of a greatsword wielder vs a sword-and-board wielder are immaterial; the numbers are the same whether you use magical enhancements or inherent bonuses.

 

[Raven Crowking]

That's why you saw the +stat items - statistics were no longer static. A belt of giant strength that gave you the strength of giants wasn't that useful if you already had that level of strength, in other words.

From a DMing point of view, I disagree to a point -- "Belt of 18 Strength" can set a power level cap, and is likely to help someone else get on par with the guy who already has 18 Strength. It can also function as a "cursed item" of sorts to the guy with 21 Strength.

"Belt of +2 Strength" opens the power cap (increasing the power curve), is only going to the guy who already has the highest Strength, and has no other interesting features.


RC

 

[billd91]

I used to hate the idea of items that would give you a fixed strength. Now I tend to think a "mix" might be a better choice.

Gloves of Ogre Power:
- You gain a +2 bonus to Strength. Your strength score cannot increase beyond 18.
(etc.)

With the stat increasing items being limited to giving out a net +3 bonus, I really don't think a limit is necessary for each item. It's a nice bonus to have, but hardly a game breaker. I'd rather cap the ultimate height or reduce the amount of stacking bonuses possible by renaming most of them all the same type (like, say, a magic bonus).

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

With the stat increasing items being limited to giving out a net +3 bonus, I really don't think a limit is necessary for each item. It's a nice bonus to have, but hardly a game breaker. I'd rather cap the ultimate height or reduce the amount of stacking bonuses possible by renaming most of them all the same type (like, say, a magic bonus).

I am not sure I get what you mean? Isn't it this way in 3E already? Aside from the Tomes, there is only one type of bonus to enhance each ability score. What we "want" is that not everyone is running around with the same magic items. Well, if you don't need Strength, you don't need Gloves of Ogre Power. If you need it, you might find it useful if it's not as high as it could be, but if it's high enough, you don't get even more out of it. The most important difference to before is probably that not every Fighter will have Gloves of Ogre Power (or similar items) if given the option. Some just do not need it. If it is just a straight +2 bonus, it is still desired. if it sets your Strength to a fixed value, regardless of the original value, it becomes desirable to lots of people with typically a lower strength which can still benefit from it (Rogues for basic attacks or with the Brutal Scoundrel build in 4E or, Rogues in general when using melee weapons in 3E)

 

[Azgulor]

Is there something inherently wrong or problematic about D&D PCs having a lot of magic items? Or is it purely a style issue -- some people want magic items to be "rare and wondrous", some people like a lot of magic gadgets and gimmicks in the game.

<snip>

So, is there a real problem with the magic item Christams tree concept, or is it purely a clash of styles?

Bullgrit

The Christmas Tree Effect problem creates or exacerbates the following:

1. Shifts the focus from the heroes to their stuff.
2. Creates the spiral of ever-improving magic item acquisition.
3. Exacerbates the magic-item-shop syndrome & fosters the ridiculous gp quantities.

Can you run a campaign where these are features rather than problems? Yes, but they'd almost universally need to be High Fantasy and ultimately end up being D&D's brand of high fantasy only.

Hell, even most of the D&D fiction doesn't feature magic item proliferation in the quantities displayed in the game.