consequences of removing the character-based limit on daily magic items?

[mattdm]

I'm about to make a house rule, and I wanted to make sure I'm not missing something important in the unmodified rules.

Some of my players find the per-day (plus one more per milestone) use of magic item daily powers too much of an intrusion of game mechanics into game believably. I've given the "See, you need to have a certain amount of internal strength to control / bring forth the magics of the items — it's not like magical electronic iPhone where you just push a button" explanation, but they're not buying it.

But beyond that, the mechanic introduces extra bookkeeping that doesn't match much else in the game, and overall just feels inelegant.

So, I'm thinking of doing away with the one-per-day-plus-more-at-milestones limit. At first, I was thinking of making it into a per-encounter limit, but on reflection I want to cut the bookkeeping and just make "daily" mean, actually, daily.

Before doing that, though, I want to make sure I'm fully understanding the purpose of the rule and its implications.

The main effect of the official rule is I see is to encourage a longer adventuring day. You're rewarded for having a lot of encounters by being able to use more magic items. You only get to use all your cool stuff if you keep pressing on. And you can accumulate multiple uses so that if you hit two milestones first, you can use up to three daily magic items to help take down the big boss. Or to put it another way, you can't use up all of your power in the first fight of the day because you're not allowed to.

I don't think that's been a particular problem in our group (particularly in this game), so I don't think we need the mechanical time-release carrot. Also, I'm keeping a pretty careful watch on the magic items they have.

So, I'm tentatively suggesting the removal of the limit, with the following caveats:

1. The party should continue to plan for an adventuring day which may include four to five (or more!) resource-using encounters, even without this particular mechanical incentive,
2. Going crazy with daily item powers all in one encounter can't become commonplace, and
3. There's not some horrible consequence I hadn't thought of.

And it's regarding that last one I'm posting this. Your thoughts are appreciated. Thanks.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

You mean like "daily means daily" actually means "you can use each daily power of each item one time per day?".

There are two ways to look at this rule. One is like you are looking at it, the 'carrot'. By restricting uses to roughly one per encounter you force the party to stretch out its resources. The other way (and I think what the designers were getting at) is 'nova control'. This is a design goal of 4e, to allow PCs to have a LOT of powers, but not be able to simply 'go nova' with them all in a single encounter. This was rather a problem in older editions.

Sure you could throw a lot of 'lost cause' encounters at the party just to try to bait them into using up their resources before getting to boss monster land, but it often didn't work and it was annoying. With 4e it doesn't matter quite so much. Daily powers for one thing are not so super powerful as powers used to be. And on top of that you have the encounter limits, and the daily magic item power use limits. All told the result is a PC can be pretty darn strong and have some pretty robust powers, but they are not going to be very often able to just blast out their entire arsenal in a single encounter.

So that will be the difference between your rule and RAW. It may not be a problem or you may like to run your game that way. It really shouldn't cause any specific game mechanics problems, but it may mean that the boss encounter is going to be more easily overcome.

 

[Alex319]

Well, there is one consequence you may not have thought of, which may or may not be "horrible."

That consequence is that people could get several daily power items in the same item slot and keep swapping them out in order to use a daily on all of them more than once. For example, IIRC, there's a level 2 magic armor that gives you a daily power that effectively gives you a "free" healing surge. Without the limit, say a mid-paragon tier character could easily afford a dozen of those armors and use a new one every time he wants to heal outside of combat, to avoid spending healing surges, while swapping in a higher level armor for actual fighting.

One simple way to solve this is to say that you can only use one daily in each item slot per day, even if you swap out the item.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Well, there is one consequence you may not have thought of, which may or may not be "horrible."

That consequence is that people could get several daily power items in the same item slot and keep swapping them out in order to use a daily on all of them more than once. For example, IIRC, there's a level 2 magic armor that gives you a daily power that effectively gives you a "free" healing surge. Without the limit, say a mid-paragon tier character could easily afford a dozen of those armors and use a new one every time he wants to heal outside of combat, to avoid spending healing surges, while swapping in a higher level armor for actual fighting.

One simple way to solve this is to say that you can only use one daily in each item slot per day, even if you swap out the item.

Good point. I seem to recall this being discussed in some related context not long ago. The 'slot solution' was suggested there too. I seem to remember it did come with some sort of hitch of its own, but it could have just been "you may end up penalizing people in a way you don't want to".

Of course one might ask 'where does he keep 90 suites of armor' but of course the answer will be 'in his 10 bags of holding', lol.

 

[Alex319]

Also, another example:

Power Jewel, AV p.176. As soon as your players get up around paragon tier or so, they'll never use an at-will again.

 

[OchreJelly]

I've thought about using your approach but my reasonings are mostly of the it-feels-like-more-bookkeeping-than-its worth variety. I would say the most balanced way to approach it would probably be:

- never get to use "multiple copies" of the same non-consumable item. This is to prevent some of the cheese associated with higher level characters buying dozens of an item that gives extra uses of powers etc. I can't think of any good in-game flavor reasons for this approach, but it's really no more meta-gamey than the current solution.
- maintain the sub-rules some items have on hitting milestones. This is especially true for rings. Honestly the benefits there should be enough of a carrot to prevent complete nova-ing.

Right now my min-max type players tend to value magic items in this order:
constant property,
encounter,
encounter / heal surge activated
daily

They just feel the rules on daily items are too prohibitive. We are only in heroic tier so maybe things get better later on.

Not to thread-jack, but I have felt the one immediate action per round rule felt like too much bookkeeping as well, however I suspect removing that has bigger balance consequences than this magic item rule.

 

[Silverblade The Ench]

just have such items useable, each, once per day, and make them have to be worn for a day, for their powers to work, solves that problem

 

[DracoSuave]

just have such items useable, each, once per day, and make them have to be worn for a day, for their powers to work, solves that problem

But then introduces the problem of adventurers who never bathe.

Rancid.

 

[Abisashi]

You could also disallow them from making magic items, or make it harder, in order to avoid problems from people having 20 of one item. For example, you could make it take longer, or be more expensive, or only an NPC can do it and they have to complete a quest for him in exchange.

 

[jorrit]

just have such items useable, each, once per day, and make them have to be worn for a day, for their powers to work, solves that problem

Or alternatively you could say that they can only use the daily powers on a magic item if they were wielding that item when the encounter started.

Greetings,