Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Staffan" data-source="post: 8745198" data-attributes="member: 907">There were a few problems with 3e items:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">They had gold values attached to them.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Magic item shops were the default.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">These two together meant that players pretty much had control themselves over what items they had. One of the designers even described the 3e item system as a point-based system bolted onto a class-based system, where the point is called "gold piece". That's not necessarily bad in itself, but:</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Numerical bonuses were an expected part of progression. You needed a suite of magic armor, magic shield (possibly animated if you're dualwielding or using a two-hander), amulet of natural armor and ring of protection to keep up with monster attack bonuses. You needed a cloak of resistance for your saves.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">You also had a system of item slots that restricted what you could use. No-one is going to use a brooch of shielding over an amulet of natural armor if they can help it.<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">This particular issue was addressed in late 3.5e with the Magic Item Compendium, which allowed you to combine a numbers bonus with a non-numbers item without a surcharge.</li> </ul></li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Non-numbers (primarily spell-based) abilities were greatly overcosted, at least for spells above 1st level. As an example, a cloak of arachnida is a damn cool item. It lets you climb as if you had a spider climb spell on you, you're immune to entrapment by webs and can move at half speed in them, you can cast web 1/day, and you get a +2 luck bonus to Fortitude saves vs poison from spiders. This item costs 14,000 gp. For 16,000, you can get a cloak of resistance +4 that gets you +4 to all saves. I know which one will help me the most.</li> </ul>The end result was that a typical 3e character was decked out in like a dozen items that all provided passive bonuses, and those bonuses were expected and accounted for in monster math (as much as there was any actual design behind 3e monster math). At best you might have a flaming sword (not a flame tongue, mind you) or a returning weapon. Oh, and a bunch of wands of cure light wounds, can't forget about them. So you have items that give you Big Numbers, but they don't actually let you do Cool Things.</blockquote>

Verification