Design & Development: Magic Item Levels

[erf_beto]

Well, it's not the most exciting redevelopment - but...

It's a hell of a lot better than Wealth by Level guidelines and Item Pricing.

Explicitly for NPCs, and statting up new characters.

Instead of "165,000gp of items" it becomes

Take 5 permanent items of your level or lower and (guessing here) 10 one-shot items of your level or lower.

Much, much, much faster.

and probably much easier to assign the Encounter/Challenge Rating of said NPC...

 

[glass]

wizards get .5 per level which talents and feats can improve though not as much as the cleric.(though multiclassing will alter this)

I suspect wizards will be able add to their bab just as much as fighters, it'll just be that their bonuses will generally be for magical attacks rather than weapon attacks.


glass.

 

[Aloïsius]

Like others, I'm realy disapointed about all those +x items.

I realy hoped for magic weapons to be ability based : flaming (+1d6 fire), sharpness (increased criticals), piercing (ignore armor)...
I guess this is one of the fisrt things I will try to houserule when I start my 4.A* campaign

*4.Aloîsius

 

[Knight Otu]

Meh, it's an utility system, but it seems horribly inflexible. 30 prices for magic items?

Anyway, one of the big 'problems' with the 3.X 'christmas tree' wasn't so much that you'd need a magic weapon. It was that you'd need a magic weapon, magic armor/shields, several stat boosters, rings of protection, cloaks of resistance, and amulets of natural armor, the so-called 'big six'. I somewhat suspect that at least two are removed (stat boosters and amulets of natural armor), and the necessity of others reduced. For example, you need a magic weapon to overcome DR. We have seen no indication that you need to overcome DR in 4E as far as I know, so the need for magic weapons may be reduced (but the damage increase is still welcome). That magic weapons and the like would still be +X stuff was already known from the wand example, of course.

 

[delericho]

The only real way to remove the Christmas Tree Effect is to remove the items in question outright. Otherwise, players are going to have their characters seek out the most powerful iterations of these utility items that they can find. It looks like WotC may have gone some way in that direction with the new edition; I must confess to being torn about whether that is a good thing or not. (In general, I favour characters having fewer more powerful items, but there is a lot of precedent of D&D characters, and particularly Salvatore's drow, having a lot of magical items of various sorts.)

Now, for the article itself... assigning each item a level is probably a good thing. Stating that all items of a given level have the same cost is certainly an unnecessary step, and probably a bad idea. Given the choice, virtually no character will take a Rope of Climbing in preference to a +2 Lightning Sword (or whatever the comparison was).

Instead, what is needed is for magic items to be grouped into roles, in exactly the same way that classes and monsters have been. You then ditch the Wealth by Level guidelines, and instead suggest that characters can have any number of items appropriate to their level (or below), but no more than one item for each role. A 9th level Fighter can have a +2 Lightning Sword and a Rope of Climbing without being significantly more powerful than a 9th level Fighter with a +2 lightning sword alone... the problem comes in when he can trade in the rope for some other item more focussed to his role.

 

[Nikosandros]

Okay, does this mean that spell scrolls are gone? Or that they are reusable instead of one-shots? (I wouldn't mind if they were reusable!) What about Potions (which make little sense as reusable items)

I have no clue about what they want to do with potions, but it isn't hard to imagine a magical flask that produces 3 times per day a sip of healing liquid or whatever...

 

[BryonD]

Can anyone tell me what is good in this article for people who didn't think that the 3.5 magic system required too much mental energy?

I am very interested in a system that offers variety. I don't mind that 3E characters have a lot of stuff and a lot of their power is tied to their gear. I also don't mind if a lot of that power moves away from the gear to the character. But I would very much like to see more interesting choices than every fighter gets a +1 weapon around level 3 and every fighter gets +4 STR and +2 CON items..... But I'm not seeing it here.

If you are stuck with 30 "levels" it isn't going to take the power gamers out there a week to figure out which 5th level thing is the "IT" for their 5th level fighter.

And we haven't even seen the full list yet. It will be even worse when people start to complain that item X should be 4 levels lower and 65% of everyone agrees that item Y is way to powerful for its level. And I'm not saying these things are going to happen because the designers don't get it. But like every feat and spell list so far, there are always several that turn out different in hindsight. It is just part of the system.

But really, what is improved here?

 

[BryonD]

The only real way to remove the Christmas Tree Effect is to remove the items in question outright. Otherwise, players are going to have their characters seek out the most powerful iterations of these utility items that they can find.

Yeah, but with a very finite pool of items, won't the players who always chase the "best" item now just move on to whatever is "best" in 4E?. Removing Belts of STR +4 only treats the current symptom. The disease is completed untouched.

 

[JDJblatherings]

Like others, I'm realy disapointed about all those +x items.

I realy hoped for magic weapons to be ability based : flaming (+1d6 fire), sharpness (increased criticals), piercing (ignore armor)...
I guess this is one of the fisrt things I will try to houserule when I start my 4.A* campaign

*4.Aloîsius

Isn't a +2 flaming sword an ability based (well, effect based) sword that is +2 to hit?

It's D&D +x weapons and armor are defining elements of the game and mechanically very easy to keep track of.

 

[Nightchilde-2]

EDIT: Pretty much nothing else here is news, other than that items have been repriced, which I don't want to draw any conclusions from - it'll probably take the actual game being out to be sure.

You mean...actually read the game to see how things fit in before jumping to conclusions?!?!

Blasphemy!

PERISH THE VERY THOUGHT!