D&D 4E Points of Light, Dawn War, and Magic Item Economy (4e)

[AbdulAlhazred]

Well... I think this is an area where we may not totally agree. I think, on the face of it, the simplest way to color the way things work in AD&D is a bit more like what you often see in legends. You really DO NOT see some sort of progression commonly spelled out. Not a steady one for sure.
What I think works with 4e is that you are very free to interpret a LOT of the mechanics in various ways, narratively, so if you are clever and focused on creating a specific sort of story, you can probably do it very well. Some sort of something will fall out of a sufficiently well-run AD&D campaign, but its definitely less easy to just naturally make it happen in a reliable way.
So, maybe 4e demands a good bit of understanding of how to use it to get exactly what you want (think how @pemerton narrative comes out of the games he has described). AD&D will sometimes generate some fairly cool narrative, kind of just by dint of how it works, but it also produces a lot of crap.

 

[Garthanos]

Well... I think this is an area where we may not totally agree. I think, on the face of it, the simplest way to color the way things work in AD&D is a bit more like what you often see in legends. You really DO NOT see some sort of progression commonly spelled out. Not a steady one for sure.

Trick is legends and myths arent normally a team game *(having a singular hero jump into the next tier is ok) and face it playing the incompetent thief hobbit alongside the paragon Aragorn works really crappy in every version of D&D if it were Fate and you can give the hobbit real luck bonuses and can make Meek and overlooked and sought after by Ring Lord even more powerful than the awesome of the Returning King it is different.

 

[pemerton]

For what it's worth, I don't agree that level in AD&D is meaningless. But it's clear that it's not a measure of total power. A PC's power comes from three main "pools" in AD&D: the ability scores pool; the class/level pool; and the items/gear pool. They are largely though not completely independent of one another. This is why methods for generating ability scores, and advice and admonitions around how to place treasure, are such big components of the AD&D play experience and GM advice. Whereas in 4e neither is really a big deal at all (the rules make them bigger deals than they need to be simply for legacy reasons, I think - those familiar with D&D expect the game to make a big deal of these matters).

3E can be seen as a point of transition, because it gestures towards 4e-style control over ability scores, and uses wealth-by-level as a (in my view) very cumbersome and (for well-known reasons) at best partly successful device for linking item load-out to level. 4e goes all the way. 5e seems to have back-pedalled on the gear side of things.

In my 4e game I never had trouble having "cool" or "mysterious" items if I wanted to and had correctly anticipated the players' moods - the Rod of 7 Parts, the Sword of Kas, Whelm reforged as Overwhelm, and more prosaically but still memorably a Safewing Amulet, a Flying Carpet (both signature items for the cleric/ranger unitl the carpet got stolen by a fleeing lich), even a Floating Shield (or whatever the low-level surfboard shield is called).

I haven't fully digested @AbdulAlhazred's HoML but I can see, in abstract terms, how you could drop or at least downplay the items-linked-to-level-as-output aspect of 4e while keeping the items-as-quantifiable-elements-of-PC-build aspect, and then building on that to use them as an input-to-level. Obviously there's a lot of technical (and hack) work required to make this happen, but at the level of principle it's a problem relative to AD&D only if you want the total AD&D disconnect which means that the GM, or the luck of the treasure dice, can make one PC somewhat arbitrarily better than all the rest.

 

[Garthanos]

I haven't fully digested @AbdulAlhazred's HoML but I can see, in abstract terms, how you could drop or at least downplay the items-linked-to-level-as-output aspect of 4e while keeping the items-as-quantifiable-elements-of-PC-build aspect, and then building on that to use them as an input-to-level.

Homl just made the connection in reverse gain a magic item gain a level... gain a feat causes gain a level. It is very 4e like. If in Homl you make a magic item an uber powerful thing but only gain 1 level and your companions are trudging along pretty sure you get bad juju of Arthur suddenly being massively more powerful than lancelot because Excaliber needed to be a varian +5 holy avenger Sword which blinded enemies every fight and you pretty much had to give it to him at level 1 since he didnt do D&D like adventures before he had it.

 

[pemerton]

If in Homl you make a magic item an uber powerful thing but only gain 1 level and your companions are trudging along pretty sure you get bad juju of Arthur suddenly being massively more powerful than lancelot because Excaliber needed to be a varian +5 holy avenger Sword which blinded enemies every fight and you pretty much had to give it to him at level 1 since he didnt do D&D like adventures before he had it.

@AbudlAlhazrd obviously knows how his system works in detail. In principle I assume there can be tier-gated items just as there are tier-gated feats and tier-gated powers. But if Excalibur is super-powered then the issue of how to balance Arthur against the rest of the party is no different from standard issues of balance in 4e. (That is, pretty easily dealt with provided that those other players are also having their PCs go out and do stuff to earn boons etc.)

I don't quite see what the problem is that you're seeing.

(Whether Arthur is best done in 4e, or Cortex+ Heroic, or Fate, or Prince Valiant - my bid! - or Pendragon is a different quesetion I put to one side.)

 

[Garthanos]

(That is, pretty easily dealt with provided that those other players are also having their PCs go out and do stuff to earn boons etc.)

Assuming Homl could theoretically have super powerful magic items worth X boons and as you say the other heros ... gain boons similarly. Question really is at this point if you did give him that holy avenger and call him level 8 with a party of level 1s which is not really great in D&D.

OR did you start the group also at level 8. Or do you give him Excaliburs toned down powers where he unlocks the boons as he goes... either is 4e styled.

 

[Garthanos]

There is a direct connection between HoML level and the boons you have gathered its not probemative wrt level not meaning over all power or there not being a good way to estimate power because of nebulosity.

The issue of items being "sudden" uber power is really the discussion since Abdul Identified it as the part of the magic item economy that makes items impressive. And I do not think its about HoML

I am still on team story making items more interesting and in general unlocking their power and in HomL gaining the boons gradually makes the super items much cooler than huge "sudden" number burst. Or going a mass of time while others are leveling up gaining boons and your arthur waits his big boost.

 

[Garthanos]

A PC's power comes from three main "pools" in AD&D: the ability scores pool; the class/level pool; and the items/gear pool.

And you cannot simply figure out the interaction of those pools.
A single item in the gear pool could almost completely override the entirety of the actual impact for your ability score pool... shudders. And not getting the gear could massively undermine or conversely multiply the class benefits. Frack ... this is the chaos people are bemoaning the loss of.

 

[Garthanos]

(Whether Arthur is best done in 4e, or Cortex+ Heroic, or Fate, or Prince Valiant - my bid! - or Pendragon is a different quesetion I put to one side.)

I bring up Arthur more as an example of a magic item empowered character(or one assumed to be such ) directly from myth and legend who is alongside hero class companions who are very much neither over shadowed nor empowered by magic items. Gawaine had bloodline magics which empowered him. Lancelot had extremity of Discipline and binding/conflicting oaths/passions (which unlike many of the same archetype did not end in his death) - magic/heirloom items of Lancelot and Gawaine are almost unknown and presented as unimportant to the story usually.

Oh and because I like Arthurian Legend.

I pick Fate for doing Lord of the Rings tbh an adventure with characters of highly divergent "obvious potency" but with massively coordinated story potency under the hood. Where is level in those???

And I am less certain about the game for Arthurian Legend (Pendragon really gives it an interesting shot) and I am unfamiliar with Prince Valiant. Could it be done in 4e or even 5e maybe but the worlds magic isnt really served by D&D magic

 

[Garthanos]

Oh and I thought it was obvious that I was being hyperbolic. I mean the most common direct uses of level was determining what adventures and what adversaries you could match up against your players characters (it was very poor at this and a significant part of that was because of how erratically it interacted with the magic items but nevertheless it was still presented like hey look "this adventure appropriate for level N to X characters"