Design & Development: Magic Item Levels

[helium3]

What more do you need? The range in power in core feats is absurd.
Quicken spell allows for extra actions. Dodge gives a statistically insignificant bump in AC (against a single target, to add insult to injury). These things are nowhere near equal.
Thus, broken.

I still don't consider your assertion that the wide difference in "power" between feats is proof of brokenness to be actual proof of said brokenness. Nor would I get so seemingly angry about it. I doubt we're going to see eye to eye on this one so we should probably just drop it. It doesn't have anything to do with the OP anyhow.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

Regarding the idea of price versus cost: It bothered me at first reading - it just doesn't make sense. As I thought about it more, I came to like the idea. The rules are designed for the players and PCs. They are not a set of natural laws that apply to the entirety of the world. By making price and cost the same, the designers have basically removed the idea of price and cost and replaced it with Value.

If the writers do not include some fluff explaination about this, I will just do it myself:

The PCs are Heroes, not professionals who create magic items. Those that create these items for a living understand ways to reduce the costs. Some are closely guarded secrets passed on by Master Craftsmen to those under their tutelage, others are techniques that require years of practice to master. The reduction in cost is relatively small, but enough for an honest craftsman to pay his upkeep and live a modestly comfortable life. The PCs can create their own magic items, but without this specialized training and knowledge, the items created will cost them the same as the value of the item.​

 

[WhatGravitas]

But again, I read, "It's more an Art than a Science," as indicative of an incompletely-understood game design. No mechanical aspect of game design should properly be considered Art.

But then, you also have to deliver a game, where you don't need a PhD for. E.g. look at chemistry - if you had enough computational power, you could calculate all chemical effects from quantum mechanical principles. Yet we don't, because we lack that power.

Heck, if you're using Newtonian approach to double pendulums, you're becoming unhappy very quickly, and it took years, until a more useful and easier description, like Lagrangian dynamics, was found. Still we can "guess" the behaviour by looking at it without any calculations, or as my lecturer says: "Use common sense. It's most powerful method." (sic)

And now look into a item of cure light wounds, with constant use - not a good idea, right? How to do that without using art? Or, as I'd call it, intuition or "common sense"?

Sure, we could take a page from AE, and add creation modifiers to spells... but this still only addresses items with spells as base.

What if you'd invent non-existent effects, like a potion of animalistic limbs, which grants you the ability to gain the limbs of an animal of your choice? You have to find a close approximation as a comparison - hard to codify that as a "science", it's more "guesstimation" - "common sense" or "intuitive understanding".

Or intuitive approximation of power - and that's what they call "art".

And we need that, because of the very open-ended nature of the game in general and the sheer variety magic items can have.

Rather have a set of good "artistic" guidelines to give an intuitive understanding, than a truckload of formulas, exceptions (like healing in 3E), and caveats - while they may be balanced, it's a lot harder to do without spending too much time on it:

Rather develop a "feel" for it and try to convey that "balance feel" to DMs - because "common sense", our ability to develop an "intuitive understanding" "is most powerful method".

Cheers, LT.

 

[Banshee16]

I'd prefer they have a not-so-bad chance to hit... but their actual effect in melee is lesser than the fighter. So a 30th level fighter might be doing 2d8+30 damage, whilst the Wizard does 1d8+5.

Cheers!

I'll assume that's facetious Even a real-world scholar/scientist doesn't just suck in a fistfight because he's a scholar. I'd hate to see this implemented.

I don't expect a wizard to be tossing brawlers through windows.....but he should be able to stand up to a 5 year old!

Banshee

 

[Lackhand]

I'll assume that's facetious Even a real-world scholar/scientist doesn't just suck in a fistfight because he's a scholar. I'd hate to see this implemented.

I don't expect a wizard to be tossing brawlers through windows.....but he should be able to stand up to a 5 year old!

Banshee

Really? It seems pretty reasonable to me.
It's what D&D already does -- I've not had too many wizards that could deal any damage without a spell, for instance. Fighters, meanwhile, swing two handed swords with big bonusses on them, take weapon specialization, use power attack, and so on.

1d8+5 is a fair sight more than the 1d6-1 most wizards in my games start out doing -- and, ultimately, also *end up* doing -- in terms of damage.


'course, that's what Fireball is for.

 

[Nightchilde-2]

I'll assume that's facetious Even a real-world scholar/scientist doesn't just suck in a fistfight because he's a scholar. I'd hate to see this implemented.

I don't expect a wizard to be tossing brawlers through windows.....but he should be able to stand up to a 5 year old!

Banshee

Only if it's a 5-year old not on a sugar rush.....(shudder)

 

[Ahglock]

I'll assume that's facetious Even a real-world scholar/scientist doesn't just suck in a fistfight because he's a scholar. I'd hate to see this implemented.

I don't expect a wizard to be tossing brawlers through windows.....but he should be able to stand up to a 5 year old!

Banshee

Well my previous 5' year old comment that mericB responded to was obviously a bit exaggerated. But still I have no problem if a wizards BAB is just 15 at level 30 while the fighters is 30. And then the fighter gets bonuses past that, making the spread even more.

When it comes to a fist fight, stabbing people etc, I want the wizard to suck so bad its hard to comprehend. Heck +15 he still will be whooping peasant booty, more than I like. i want the wizard to solve basically all of his dilemmas with magic. Get in a brawl, magic punching spell, fight with orcs... fire ball, need to tie his shoes...Bigbies tieing hand. And when it comes to hitting with the spells he hits roughly as accurately overall as the fighter, due to a combination of only need touch attack ACs and bonuses to hit with spells.

 

[Ahglock]

What more do you need? The range in power in core feats is absurd.
Quicken spell allows for extra actions. Dodge gives a statistically insignificant bump in AC (against a single target, to add insult to injury). These things are nowhere near equal.
Thus, broken.

While I consider dodge a weak feat and worse than quicken, I really don't see quicken as a strong feat. Extra action sounds good, +4 spell levels, ah so an extra sucky action. Sure at really high levels you can pull off some powerful attacks, or a defense/attack option etc. Still I'm not that impressed by it. I rarely have enough high level spells to prepare zany maneuver in the Y formation altogether often enough to make this feat great. Decent sure, better than dodge no doubt, great not so much.

But I'm just nitpicking, overall I agree that the feats in the 3e weren't balanced with each other very well. I don't think any of them were too powerful though, just a lot of feats fell in the I probably will never take this category, or I'm only taking this because its a pre-req.

 

[Imp]

What more do you need? The range in power in core feats is absurd.
Quicken spell allows for extra actions. Dodge gives a statistically insignificant bump in AC (against a single target, to add insult to injury). These things are nowhere near equal.
Thus, broken.

"Extra actions" isn't a very good metric. Improved Feint vs. Melee Weapon Mastery (or Iron Will even).

It's also totally ignoring prerequisites, which for Quicken Spell are quite significant. Dodge is still a pretty lousy feat though.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Quicken spell is powerful during a single combat. But if you have 12 combats that day, you run out of spells quickly. What does that tell you about the inherent balance of the feat?

If you have no assumptions about combats per day, estimating the power of quicken spells is very hard. 3rd edition did have some assumptions (4 encounters per day with encounter level equal to party level should exhaust all resources), and I assume that quicken spell was designed (eyeballed?) to be balanced around that.