Return of the DonkeyHorse!

[Dannyalcatraz]

Which spins it all right back around to, what do you consider to be a perfectly valid in game decision for a PC to make?

Pretty much anything that makes sense for the character, in character.

Amen, brother!

 

[pemerton]

The DMG2 already has rules for mundane gear and bonuses - spending one-tenth the value of an item of the PCs's level is the equivalent, in a skill challenge, to successfully using a secondary skill (a +2 bonus to a primary skill check, allowing a reroll, cancelling a failure, or something similar).

Whether that spend is bribe money to a guard, buying jewellery for the royal banquet, etc, would depend on the way the skill challenge in question is playing out.

 

[Garthanos]

But in 3e with a 1-20 spread and open-ended monsters, and 4e with a 1-30 spread, the game's math is forcing the characters to function within a narrower and narrower "window" of power level relative to what they're facing;

I think you are making assumptions that dont follow... The power curve in 4e starts higher and progresses slower than even 1e in most ways.

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

No, I didn't, nor did I shift any goalposts. If you quote me anywhere saying that proposed items should grant bonuses that stack, please do so. Perhaps my memory is faulty.

OK, you never explicitly stated whether the bonus should stack or not.

Someone thought it reasonable that some equipment grant a minor bonus.

Someone else ridiculously claimed that soft leather boots (+1 Stealth) would break the game system.

No one said a single +1 bonus would break the game. It was stated that a bevy of +1 bonus mundane items could break the game. And my point wasn't a level of broken-ness in a singular item. It's the thought that a single mundane pair of boots can make your character perform 2 levels higher than he currently can. I alos still hold to the idea that a character who is good at Stealth is already wearing the proper footwear and not walking around in clunky footgear.

You and others started talking about PCs getting +5 bonuses from a variety of equipment items in an effort to refute the notion that PCs getting +5 bonuses would be a gamebreaker.

You missed the point entirely then. The +5 bonus for being trained is an abstract bonus. It follows to some of us that said training helps the character choose the right tools for the job and use them properly. The entire point is not to get bogged down in the minutae of the tools, but to instead let the abstract nature of the rules work as they are intended.

 

[Garthanos]

No one said a single +1 bonus would break the game. It was stated that a bevy of +1 bonus mundane items could break the game. And my point wasn't a level of broken-ness in a singular item. It's the thought that a single mundane pair of boots can make your character perform 2 levels higher than he currently can. I alos still hold to the idea that a character who is good at Stealth is already wearing the proper footwear and not walking around in clunky footgear.



You missed the point entirely then. The +5 bonus for being trained is an abstract bonus. It follows to some of us that said training helps the character choose the right tools for the job and use them properly. The entire point is not to get bogged down in the minutae of the tools, but to instead let the abstract nature of the rules work as they are intended.

QFT ...

exactly true. There I go making a "what he said post" guess you get an xp for that.

 

[Garthanos]

The idea to me is to let the abstraction be a tool which works for you... after realising I was fighting against hit points so many years ago they have now become my favorite abstraction of the game. Why? because their representation is something I can control. Am I a lucky hero or a skilled one who almost never gets more than a scratch am I the tough guy with loads of minor bumps scratches and bruises... Is my wizard one who deflects the attacks with arcana at the last second or phases out so they really arent a solid hit...

Heavy money tracking too much like work.... assuming the rogue with high stealth knows and chooses the right footware to get the most out of them ... and the endurance trained guy packs his pack extra well and chooses the foods best to sustain him.... yup that is for me.

 

[Hussar]

Obviously, your history in gaming has varied greatly from mine. Most of the guys and gals I game with simply don't bother with that level of powergaming.

After the magical aides start popping up on a regular basis, the mundane tends to fade away. Heck, most players don't even manage to keep an accurate total of their magical bonuses.

Most of your players maybe. Actually, I've never really had too much of a problem with mine either. But, I don't believe the game should only be made for my group.

What I'm getting at is that it shouldn't make that much of a difference, but it does in newer editions because the math has become so fine-tuned. And that's a bug.

If I've got 10K g.p. to burn and I spend it on a manor house, where my fellow party member spends her 10K on a fancy sword, then OK maybe she's going to hit a bit more often than I do and hurt things a bit more when she does, but so what? The system ought to be able to handle that. But I've a germ of a theory why it doesn't so well any more.

There are too many levels.

In something like 0-1-2e, where you realistically only had about a 10-level range in the game both for PCs and monsters, the math was non-granular enough to be quite forgiving around the edges. A fully-twinked party could go into the same module as an under-optimized bunch of clods, and both could have fun and have a chance at survival.

/snip
Lan-"I hope this makes more sense to you than it does to me"-efan

You've hit it nicely actually but for the wrong reasons. 0-2e decoupled character wealth from character power in exactly the way we're talking about. You couldn't buy magic items so, the only thing you could spend money on was "cool"

Which is precisely what people are proposing here.

 

[Garthanos]

You couldn't buy magic items so, the only thing you could spend money on was "cool"

My players wanted to design and build there own magic items.... the most significant components they had to quest for ... those weren't available for ready purchase.... but the base line elements may have been. Though I was pushing the fact that above a certain value we are looking at all trade based economy... My English teachers in high school had us studying history along side reading the once and future king.