Dead Christmas Trees!! Woot!!

[Irda Ranger]

I'll switch tomorrow if the Christmas Trees are dead!!!

Per Morrus' post-event notes on the front page, the "Christmas Tree Effect" was one of the things the 4e designers sought to remove.

GOOD RIDDANCE!!!

Every Arthur needs his Excalibur, but being dependent on your "stuff" was 3e's greatest fault in my mind. You couldn't ever feel heroic when your character could be nerfed by taking his equipment.

This makes me so happy.

 

[Keldryn]

That is awesome and pumps up my excitement to new levels.

 

[Lanefan]

Killing some xmas trees is a fine idea, but I wonder how they're going to accomplish it.

Getting rid of buffs is easy: just take 90% of those spells out of the game.

Getting rid of items is tougher. Are they going to knock down the suggested wealth-by-level to the point where a "stock" character just can't afford to buy good equipment at mid-level? Are they going to get rid of some of the actual items and if so which ones? Is there going to be an arbitrary (and highly unrealistic) rule saying nobody can own or carry more than x-number of magic items?

How can this get done and still leave the Good Fun Part which is finding new toys in the field?

Lane-"if I'm counting properly I level-bump with this post"-fan

 

[green slime]

My guess is that they are going to go down the path of legacy items, + the Bo9S (adding bonuses from manuevers and the like, and with auras, as Dragon shaman.

 

[Delta]

I'm sure they won't follow it, but here's what I do in my campaign, pretty straightforward:

Limited Magic Items: A character can only carry 5 magic items at once. If this limit is exceeded, the items cease to work, and may become spoiled or cursed. A batch of ammunition counts as just one item; so does a large potion or long scroll (up to 6 charges).

I suppose for different-powered campaigns, you could make that limit 3, 5, 7, or whatever you like.

 

[Horacio]

The Cristmas Tree effect was one of the things I disliked the more in D&D3.

That and the fact that most characters switched weapons as they climbed levels, finding more powerful items and selling/dumping the old ones. Using the Arthur/Excalibur analogy, if he was a D&D3 standard character, he would have dumped Excalibur as he would have found a new Vorpal Sword. It doesn't sound right.

Oriental Adventures began to trackle the problem with the upgradable items. Legacy items were a good compromise. But I really want to see what they have thought for 4th...

 

[Geoff Watson]

I don't get it. Why all the hate for magic items in 3e?

They're a lot less important than in 1e, where the only difference (mechanically) between two characters of the same class was their magic items.

In 2e they weren't as important as 1e, but still more important than 3e.

Geoff.

 

[Horacio]

I don't get it. Why all the hate for magic items in 3e?

They're a lot less important than in 1e, where the only difference (mechanically) between two characters of the same class was their magic items.

In 2e they weren't as important as 1e, but still more important than 3e.

Geoff.

And I hope they will be more important in 3e than in 4e

 

[Arashi Ravenblade]

I liked the idea that you could stock up on tons of items and magical gear and go into battle and totally stomp something you shouldnt be able to beat. I never was one to follow wealth by level unless the pc's where making a new character. What are they going to do exactly? The only thing i can think of is that you have enough abilities that make up for your lack of items and basically items will be sued to gain abilites you didnt have acess to to begin with, or increase the number of uses per day or per encounter.

 

[FireLance]

One possibility is to have magic items and other equipment overlap with some inherent quality of the character. If characters gain an inherent enhancement bonus to attack and damage rolls as they gain levels, for example, a high-level character (with say, a +4 inherent enhancement bonus) would only be slightly more effective with a +5 weapon than he would be with an ordinary one.