Dead Christmas Trees!! Woot!!

[Irda Ranger]

It sounds to me like they are trying to eliminate the problem where the main source of a character's power was their items. For example, at higher levels, a fighter is pretty much useless if he does not have a magic weapon. I think the fighter was the class that suffered the most from this.

YES! I want my 20th level Fighter, with just a dagger, to Kick. Your. ASS.

 

[The Lost Muse]

YES! I want my 20th level Fighter, with just a dagger, to Kick. Your. ASS.

Quoted for truth.

 

[Samnell]

But I liked the Christmas trees...

If it's a simple matter of getting an inherent bonus to a stat from your class levels or race which does not stack with a magic item granting a bonus to the same stat, I'm ok with that. If it's more "Uh...you just can't make items that improve stats anymore because..." that would be lame. If it's a matter of not being able to use more than X number of magic items at once, that's just silly and doesn't actually answer any of the complaints in the Christmas tree criticism.

 

[Atlatl Jones]

YES! I want my 20th level Fighter, with just a dagger, to Kick. Your. ASS.

And have an AC higher than 12 so he's not in danger of being taken out by housecats.

I suspect that a lot of this will be done by simply removing many of the buff spell/item categories. Instead of everyone having cloaks of resistance, everyone just has naturally higher saving throw progressions. Instead of having rings of deflection and amulets of natural power, everyone just has a AC bonus that increases as they gain levels, like saving throws. Instead of stat buffs, characters just increase their stats more often.

Magic items would then still exist, but they wouldn't be neccessary for game balance. And since characters wouldn't need to spend their gold or body slots on neccessary-but-boring buffs, we'll have a lot more interesting items that give cool and strange new magical abilities.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

FWIW, the roles of save-boosting (and hence AC-boosting) and damage-boosting magic items would be completely supplanted just by a switch to Saga-like rules. Damage bonus in Saga = 1/2 level, saves (well, the superior Defenses, anyway) are 1/1 progressions like fighter BAB, and AC is rolled into Reflex Defense.

 

[A'koss]

This is definitely one of the first bits of news that has really piqued my interest in 4e. I play a lot of IH and love the concept of the bulk of a character's power being derived (curiously enough) from the character himself. It'll be interesting to see if they have incorporate rules in the new DMG to run a completely magic-itemless game. I hope so....

 

[Maldor]

YES! I want my 20th level Fighter, with just a dagger, to Kick. Your. ASS.

Your 20th level Fighter was killed before he even got close enough to throw the thing by my 20th wizard with just a dagger and well bigby's pimp hand of the ass kicking

 

[Korgoth]

YES! I want my 20th level Fighter, with just a dagger, to Kick. Your. ASS.

Clearly as it should be.

 

[Aloïsius]

I just hope we will get rid of all +x items. Same thing with spells. Superior resistance ? Meeeh.

I did not mind when I started playing D&D, but I'm now tired to death seeing how mandatory they are and how much metagaming they are causing. I think I have been traumatized by a party I played in where the psion buffed everyone with animal afffinity before each combat, asking wich ability we would like to increase.

+x magic items should disappear; just keep the +1 for MW if appropriate, then add various magical property (flaming sword, belt of giant size, elixir of beauty, ring of invisibility...). Magic stuff should DO something you can see and think "this is magic !". Not add an ingame invisible "+3 to all save" on your character sheet.

 

[Kahuna Burger]

FWIW, the roles of save-boosting (and hence AC-boosting) and damage-boosting magic items would be completely supplanted just by a switch to Saga-like rules. Damage bonus in Saga = 1/2 level, saves (well, the superior Defenses, anyway) are 1/1 progressions like fighter BAB, and AC is rolled into Reflex Defense.

The other nice Saga thing was the stat boosts. More stat boosts, but given as "+1 to two stats" at a time instead of a boost more often so they can't all be put in the same stat.

Though as pointed out above, this could be about reducing the overall number of items, rather than reducing reliance on items.

(one house rule I had considered for a lower magic item game was quite simply making every single item more powerful than a potion or wand intelligent. Looting your enemies becomes a lot harder when th most powerful things they own want to kill you.)

I like the idea of item creation not being about XP, to some extent.... now if it required the ability to actually craft the item in question, I would be super interested.