Cascade effect of rule changes

[Spatula]

Well, take the Magic Item problem.

If you REALLY want to fix that, you have to go to the underlying problem, namely the magic system itself and fix how that works.

Which magic item problem? If you're talking about the "big six"... get rid of some of those items. Net effect on your game: pre-splat monster CRs are actually useful. If you're talking about "christmas tree characters," well sorry but that's always been a fact of life in standard D&D. You can easily reduce how much money you give your characters, as long as you understand that you'll have to eyeball monster effectiveness vs your party (like we all did before 3e) rather than just relying on CR - and the DMG talks about this (expected wealth per encounter, etc.) so it's not some unknown "under the hood" side effect. If you're talking about the ease of creating & buying magic items, remove those aspects from your game. The mechanical balance isn't going to radically change because of it.

The magic system isn't the problem. And in fact, getting rid of some of the big six items actually makes a bunch of defensive / buff spells useful again (since they currently do not stack with enhancement, deflection, etc. bonuses).

 

[Spatula]

The difference is, IME.. given tinkering with rules since 1e.. the earlier editions could be tinkered with and the overall game wouldn't change because of a lack of cohesion in the major mechanics.

I am not saying that 3e is a 'finely-tuned machine', but rather that the cohesiveness of the main components meant that changing things had second and third order of effects. Take, for instance, armor as DR. Simple enough change, right? Its even an option in UA. Use this rule and the build to play is the 2-handed Power Attacker.... its easier to hit the target and PA gives additional damage.... unless the target is one of those armored beast where the rule makes then almost indestructable.

Armor-as-damage-reduction house rules were floating around in previous editions, as well. And with basically the same problems, which is why armor still (after 30 years - despite the seeming illogic of it) provides damage avoidance. That particular example has nothing to do with 3e.

The "cohesion" of the rules is immaterial; the rules all still interact with one another in defining the limits & possibilities of the game world. If you change one aspect, it will either be superficial (affecting some seldom-visited area of the rules), or the min/max players will take advantage of new cost/benefit ratios. 3e is no different, nor any harder to modify, than any previous edition in this regard.

 

[Spatula]

Maybe stat boosting magic items will work like they did in second edition? Instead of having a bonus to strength you get the actual strength score a giant has. I may be misremembering, but belts of giants strength were Str 25 or close to that. I think it could depend on the time of giant too or that was a common house rule.

Those items were also horrendously overpowered. An 18 Str was +1 hit / +2 dmg. The weakest str-boosting item, gauntlets of ogre power, provided +3 hit / +6 dmg. The giant-strength belts gave you a Str score ranging from 21 to 25 (+7 hit / +14 dmg). These were basically had-to-have items for any warrior character, and massively improved that character's combat ability. Although having one of these items turned nearly anyone into a force to be reckoned with in melee.

Note that that is not strictly how stat-boosting items worked in 1e & 2e. There were also gloves of dexterity, that gave you a simple +1 to your Dex score. And the manuals and tomes, which did the same to a particular ability, only on a permanent basis.

I don't think that having boosters that set your abilities to some arbitrary value are a good idea. For one thing, the effectiveness of it is inverse to your need for it - a warrior will almost certainly already have a high strength score, so he would get less out of it than, say, the cleric. But if the cleric gets it, he goes from wimp to hero and stomps on the warrior's role. For another, what happens if you use if on someone who already has a higher score?

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Armor-as-damage-reduction house rules were floating around in previous editions, as well. And with basically the same problems, which is why armor still (after 30 years - despite the seeming illogic of it) provides damage avoidance. That particular example has nothing to do with 3e.

The "cohesion" of the rules is immaterial; the rules all still interact with one another in defining the limits & possibilities of the game world. If you change one aspect, it will either be superficial (affecting some seldom-visited area of the rules), or the min/max players will take advantage of new cost/benefit ratios. 3e is no different, nor any harder to modify, than any previous edition in this regard.

I've played a few games where armor as Damage Reduction is used. It always leads to people having to rely on heavy armor and weapons that deal maximum damage. THat might be okay from a "realismn" perspective, but it limits the amount of character builds you can play. And from a gaming perspective, I see that as simply bad. D&D might never have been really good at making the lightly armored swashbuckler a "good" build, but it didn'T feel entirely useless either.

I don't think that having boosters that set your abilities to some arbitrary value are a good idea.

I generally agree, but I wonder if a middle ground solution wouldn't be too bad, either.
Maybe you something like this:
Gloves of Ogre Power: You gain a +2 enhancement bonus to your Strength, but the bonus cannot increase your Strength beyond 16.
Belt of Giant Strength: You gain a +4 enhancement bonus to your Strength, but the bonus cannot increase your Strength beyond 18.
Belt of Titan Strength: You gain a +6 enhancement bonus to your Strength, but the bonus cannot increase your Strength beyond 20.

A Fighter will probably have a strength already in the 16 to 20 range, and have no need for such an item. But a Cleric or Monk might not have such a high value and can gain some benefit. But he can never surpass the Fighter, and if the stat is really weak, he can't even get near the FIghter values.

 

[hong]

Talking about magic, have any more details been released about spells and the rate at which they increase in power? We know that fireball no longer does 1d6/level, but what about the rest? Is fly still something that 5th level wizards get? Teleport at 9th? Etc.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Talking about magic, have any more details been released about spells and the rate at which they increase in power? We know that fireball no longer does 1d6/level, but what about the rest? Is fly still something that 5th level wizards get? Teleport at 9th? Etc.

So far, it seems like fly, teleport and plane shift are moving up in levels, probably paragon and epic tier. Heroic characters are (literally!) more down to earth, apparently. I think the Flying Carpet was a 17th level magical item or so, and spells are apparently in a similar range...

 

[hong]

So far, it seems like fly, teleport and plane shift are moving up in levels, probably paragon and epic tier. Heroic characters are (literally!) more down to earth, apparently. I think the Flying Carpet was a 17th level magical item or so, and spells are apparently in a similar range...

Well, this will go a long, long way to getting rid of Christmas trees. The only reason you needed 760,000 gp at 20th was to keep up with the wizard with his 9th level broken stuff.