Discussion on +x magic items

[jodyjohnson]

When the fighters abilities and weapon abilities can overlap (not stack) then it's a choice rather than a no-brainer if they do stack.

 

[DM_Blake]

So, with all these posts, I keep seeing that for most people, the +x is irritating, the fact that they are required is much more irritating, and the items being too common and even being purchased is the most irritating.

So, the proper way to fix the problem is to fix it from the biggest problem to smallest problem.

Fixing the biggest problem is the easiest. Don't let players buy items. Don't put them in every hoard ("Oh, goody, another +1 sword. 3rd one this week..."). now they are rare enough that players will hang onto what they find.

From time to time, a player will find an upgrade. The 10th level fighter will eventually find a sword better than the one he got at 6th level. Now he will either pass it on to a buddy in the group, or hang onto it as a backup, or try to sell it. Up to him. But, even if he can convince a rich merchant or nobleman to buy it, and he makes some pocket change, that doesn't mean he can buy any tiems himself. Or to be more realistic, make it so that the occasional magic item is, rarely, sold. At random. No special orders, no picking through inventory.

In my capital city, there is a magic item auction held once a month. The players enjoy it (they're not always in town for it, but when they are, they attend). I roll 3d6 to see how many items are up for sale. I tell them (the auctioneer advertises it for days in advance to draw a crowd) but nobody knows what will be sold. Then I randomly generate an item and start the bidding. No potions, no scrolls - those can be acquired more easily. If nobody in the group wants to bid, I wave it off saying "the action is complete and some guy bought it - next item is" and keep the pace moving. Sometimes, there's only a half dozen items, sometimes over a dozen. It's funny when the fighter passes on a +2 weapon, hoping for a better one, and then there are no more weapons in that action.

I also fudge the prices. It's an auction. Sometimes people overbid. Nothing says bidding on a +2 sword ends at 8,315 gold. I generally follow a pattern: the more useful an item is, the more someone in the auction will pay for it. Strange and situational items tend to go for less.

That's just one way to, occasionally, give the players a chance to buy a magic item. I've even been known to fake my random roll and put something up for action that I know the players have been watning.

Another way is barter. Maybe nobody sells a +2 sword, but some nobleman might be convinced to part with his +2 sword in return for something else of great value to the nobleman. That value might be a different magic item (maybe he really wants a crystal ball to spy on his enemies) or it might be service (a quest for the players).

Another way is to find someone who makes items and have them make what you want. They rarely do this just for cash. If it's cash, it's a whole lot (that guy is giving up his own XP). They might take barter, or send the group on a quest.

So there's lots of ways to get items into the players hands without flooding the world with magic, and without ptuting street-corner magic vendors on, well, every street corner.

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The next biggest problem is the hardest to fix. How do you balance a core system that assumes the existience of +x items so that monsters are still the right challenge when the players don't have them?

A fun battle I ran recently was a level 3 group taking on a shadow. They had one +1 dagger and no other magic weapons. The rogue gave the dagger to the fighter, and everyone else tried to Aid Another to protect the wizard who tried to magic missile the shadow to death before he got strength drained into becoming a shadow himself.

But at higher levels, this kind of thing is deadly to the players. Creating a whole Iron Heroes system to offset it is just replacing magic item dependency on class ability dependency.Sure, that's one good solution, but again, it's really a campaign setting, not a core system.

Probably the easiest fix is to not strip the players of magic items entirely. If a 10th level party has to fight some ghosts, then fine - chances are they all have some knd of magical weapon to make it possible.

If we apply our fix to for the biggest problem to also fix our medium problem, then maybe the medium problem isn't too bad. If there are only a couple +x rings of protection in the whole group, and only a couple magic weapons, and only a couple +x stat items, then not everyone has them. Those that do, will find them useful, and unique enough in that campaign to be interesting. Especially if they had to search long and hard, go on quests, and eventually feel lucky that they found it in a rare hoard, or found the right enchanter who sent them questing while he made the item. They still earned it the hard way, and it's still interesting and unique enough.

And given that, then the whole party isn't walking around with +3rings of protection and +2 to all of their favorite stats, etc.

Heck, 3e doesn't even require that you do anything to implement this. Just assign more coin, gems, and art to the monsters, and less magic.

So what if the 15th level fighter doesn't have a 26 STR and +5 weapon. He will still have a 22 STR and a +3 weapon. He's only -4 to hit compared to what he might have been. He can still hit, and kill, CR15 monsters just fine.

Sure, this makes each fight a little tougher. If you must, just kniock off a few points of AC and a few HP from the monsters and call it good.

The point is, the game still works if you play it this way.

And, finally, the listtlest problem.

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If you implement the previous two suggestions, or something like them, then how big a problem is it, really, that +x items exist.

Given those suggestions, you've made them fairly rare. It's not hard to spin a RP reason for Protection, +x swords, belts of giant strength.

As long as they're rare, and have an interesting flavor spin on them, is this still even a problem?

If it is, then don't use them, but then you do have a bit of work on your hands. The hardest woudl be to remake those items to have fun effects.

Easier would be to just don't let them exist at all, but now you have to fight weaker monsters. Your 15th level group might find CR 13 to be a fair fight.

But if y ou do that, you will need 2x as many fights to get enough XP to l evel. Some DMs feels that 3e levels too fast anyway, so they might see this as a good thing. Others, the simple fix is to fight CR 13 for a fair fight, but give XP like it was CR 15.

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Given all that, it seems to me that 3.5e is easy enough to tune to any style of play. A no-magic style takes a bit of work, but it doable, and a christmas tree style doesn't take any work at all.

If 4e is going to be successful, they might need to choose a base rule set that is similar to 3e, so that minimalists can minimize by stripping out the stuff they don't want, and eveyone else can play the system.

The alternative, catering to the minimalists, means those players are happy and everyone else has no magic system to use.

Sure, 4e could make a non-minimalist system with no +x items in it. But the lack of such items would feel strange. Magic items everywhere, but nobody has figured out how to make them hit more often, cut deeper, defend better, or make us stronger or healthier or smarter or faster, would just seem half-finished.

These items have their place. How big a place is yet to be seen. But, it's easier for us players to ignore them than it would be to replace them.

At least, that's my 2 cents. Or, lots of cents...

 

[Brother MacLaren]

This is a little off-topic (OK, a lot) but why so few high level characters.

When I first picked up 3.0 around the turn of the century, one of the first things I noticed was that level progression was a lot faster than it was in 2e. According to the DMG, an adventuring party should level after 13-14 encounters of the appropriate EL - and this holds true across all levels, so a level 1 group becomes level 2 after 13 encounters with orcs and a level 15 group becomes level 16 after 13 encounters with dragons.

By my calculations, fewer than 50% of NPCs should survive to advance to each higher level. If you assume 1% of the population is PC-classed, that means level-10 characters are 1-in-100,000 even at a 50% survival rate -- and in fact, it's likely to be less than that.
I certainly wouldn't give much XP at all for "encounters" that had no real risk. For combat encounters, that means you need a real risk of death to earn XP; for social encounters, it could mean the risk of a tremendous loss of status, loss of all wealth, etc. You don't earn XP just for being yourself or doing your job. So consider NPC fighters. I envisioned their "encounters" as a series of battles between the human NPCs and, say, a horde of gnolls in nearby caves. Every group of 4 NPCs needs to defeat 13 gnolls of equal CR in order to advance.
Say you have 1,000 soldiers broken into squads fighting a series of battles, each battle against a number of gnolls equal to the squad's size. And say that for each fight the humans have a 50% chance of winning, a 25% chance of losing but living, and a 25% chance of dying. At the end of things, 20% will have advanced to level 2 and 80% will be dead.
Give the humans a 60% chance of winning, 20% chance of losing but surviving, and 20% chance of dying. At the end of things, 32% will have advanced to level 2 and 68% will be dead.
Give the humans chances of 70/15/15, and 46% will survive to level 2. But really, all else being equal, they should have only a 50% chance of winning.

PCs have probably a 95%+ survival rate to each higher level because of the following reasons:
1) They almost always face foes against whom they have the advantage -- the CR system ensures this. FOUR level-1 PCs against ONE level-1 NPC (CR 1) is the norm. NPCs could not reasonably expect this.
2) DMs are very generous with experience
3) DMs are generally at least somewhat merciful (there may be luck points that NPCs don't have, or 1st-level fighter enemies NOT concentrating Rapid Shot attacks on the wizard, etc.)

 

[ZombieRoboNinja]

PCs have probably a 95%+ survival rate to each higher level because of the following reasons:
1) They almost always face foes against whom they have the advantage -- the CR system ensures this. FOUR level-1 PCs against ONE level-1 NPC (CR 1) is the norm. NPCs could not reasonably expect this.
2) DMs are very generous with experience
3) DMs are generally at least somewhat merciful (there may be luck points that NPCs don't have, or 1st-level fighter enemies NOT concentrating Rapid Shot attacks on the wizard, etc.)

1) Not in 4e! Per-encounter abilities mean that a standard "encounter" is closer to equal, because saving up resources across multiple encounters isn't nearly as important. (And if you look at the playtests, they all seem like pretty tough encounters, even at level 1.)
2) Not if they're following the rules.
3) Depends on the DM, of course, but I don't think you can say this is a huge factor. I know many DMs who don't pull punches.

I'd suggest another point:
4) The PCs form an "adventuring party." This grouping is actually a pretty important advantage, particularly at higher levels.

f you pay attention to the economics of adventuring, a PC group probably has the annual income of a small nation, and they reinvest almost all of it into getting better magical equipment - and in the world(s) of D&D, money can buy you a LOT of protection. So those level 1 NPCs are probably not too much worse off than level 1 PCs. But whereas they're stuck on a 1g/month salary, PCs are raking in the magical equipment.

And as many people have mentioned somewhat disparagingly, an ideal adventuring party is basically set up like a Special Ops team, with dedicated professionals filling specific roles to optimize their chances of operational success. Those human soldiers are probably 90% fighters, with some rangers and rogues (scouts), possibly a warlord in command, and maybe a cleric or wizard for support, because even in a "high-magic" setting it's easier to pick up a stick and practice combat than it is to master even the basics of magic, unless you're wealthy enough to afford special training. Whereas a good adventuring party has just enough meat-shields for optimal killing efficiency.

 

[Brother MacLaren]

1) Not in 4e! Per-encounter abilities mean that a standard "encounter" is closer to equal, because saving up resources across multiple encounters isn't nearly as important. (And if you look at the playtests, they all seem like pretty tough encounters, even at level 1.)

Where I *think* you might be wrong on that is that a standard "encounter" is still going to be something against which the PCs have the advantage.
Look at 4 level 1 PCs. An equal-level NPC party should have about a 50% of defeating the PCs, with likely at least one death and quite possibly a TPK. In 3E, they're considered "overpowering" at a CR 4. In 4E, they could be built using "minion" rules -- a "level 1 monster" does not necessarily mean "something equivalent to a level 1 PC." I have a feeling than a party of 4 NPCs built along "heroic" rules (such as triple HP at 1st level) would not be considered a level-1 encounter.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

So, with all these posts, I keep seeing that for most people, the +x is irritating, the fact that they are required is much more irritating, and the items being too common and even being purchased is the most irritating.

So, the proper way to fix the problem is to fix it from the biggest problem to smallest problem.

Fixing the biggest problem is the easiest. Don't let players buy items. Don't put them in every hoard ("Oh, goody, another +1 sword. 3rd one this week..."). now they are rare enough that players will hang onto what they find.

This is why I think the majority of low magic games fail. DMs don't change the rules enough. Seeing how these items are required (not just in gp value but also spread out properly) this would make the PCs far weaker.

 

[RangerWickett]

So, with all these posts, I keep seeing that for most people, the +x is irritating, the fact that they are required is much more irritating, and the items being too common and even being purchased is the most irritating.

So, the proper way to fix the problem is to fix it from the biggest problem to smallest problem.

Honestly, my biggest problem is the assumption that people of X level have Y amount of magic items. Especially bad guys. A 10th level NPC is not a proper threat to a 10th level party unless he has the right gear (and honestly, even then he's not as tough as most CR 10 monsters).

So if I want to have the party fight a big bad evil guy, they're going to get to loot him. And then a few levels later they'll loot the next big bad evil guy, as well as high medium bad evil henchman. And then a few levels later they'll loot the NEXT big bad evil, his medium bad evil henchman, and the little bad evil mooks, all of whom are expected to have magic items.

This leads to too much magic loot. I can easily not give the villains this gear, but then that messes with the math of the game, so there might as well not even be a level system.

I would much rather that magic items were not an assumed part of the game. I have no problem with people buying magic items. Hell, if I could buy a cloak that let me fly, I'd blow my bank account to get it. It's fine that magic items are for sale. I just don't like the idea of this weird sort of 'adventuring gear industry,' where thousands of mages labor in sweatshops churning out +1 swords.

 

[allenw]

Honestly, my biggest problem is the assumption that people of X level have Y amount of magic items. Especially bad guys. A 10th level NPC is not a proper threat to a 10th level party unless he has the right gear (and honestly, even then he's not as tough as most CR 10 monsters).

So if I want to have the party fight a big bad evil guy, they're going to get to loot him. And then a few levels later they'll loot the next big bad evil guy, as well as high medium bad evil henchman. And then a few levels later they'll loot the NEXT big bad evil, his medium bad evil henchman, and the little bad evil mooks, all of whom are expected to have magic items.

This leads to too much magic loot. I can easily not give the villains this gear, but then that messes with the math of the game, so there might as well not even be a level system.

This is an excellent point. Here's an idea (which I haven't tried):
Let the PCs have rreasonable magic items (through dragon hoards, ancient tombs, etc., not purchase); they're the heroes, after all. But almost nobody else does. When designing BBEG (or even medium-bad-evil-guy) NPC's, instead of magic items, give them an extra level or two or three (or a useful template; half-dragon, fiendish, or half-fiend spring to mind), and/or lower-level spellcasting minions to provide buffs and countermeasures (but don't increase the XP for defeating them, since you're just compensating for lack of equipment) Getting the PC's magic items could be one of the BBEG's main motivations.

This would keep the PCs able to deal with appropriate-CR monsters, and keep NPCs a challenge (and give plenty of NPCs an excuse to attack the PCs: phat lewt!). True, the PCs might choose to sell their rare and valuable items, and with effort can find a buyer; but if they can't buy new and improved items with the money, then what's the harm (except to the PCs, who may now be underpowered to face their usual challenges)?

Thoughts?

 

[ptolemy18]

I have a moderate dislike for +X items simply because they are... boring. Undramatic. Uncinematic. The have no style, in and of themselves.

That's not necessarily true. I agree that pure stat boots (the Cloak of Charisma, Headband of Intellect, etc.) are kind of cheap and I wouldn't mind if 4e gets rid of these, but magic weapons and armor have a certain class and usefulness. I'm flying in the face of 3.5 rules changes here, but in all previous editions of D&D, you had the effect wherein you need a +x weapon to defeat a certain type of creature. +1 to hurt a wight, +2 to hurt a specter, +3 to hurt some kind of major demon, etc.... this meant that if you wanted (and if you got rid of the "Magic Weapon" spell, I suppose ) you could build a whole campaign or adventure around the quest to get a powerful enough magic weapon (with enough pluses) to be able to defeat Bad Guy X! That's classic fantasy!! (For anyone who says it's lame to encounter a monster and half the party isn't able to harm it because it isn't harmed by nonmagical weapons, well, I disagree. It's challenging, it's not lame.)

Also, the fact that "+x armor, +x weapon" doesn't have a lot of style is fine by me. I'd rather have the rules descriptions be fairly generic and allow me, the DM, to come up with the flavor surrounding it. I don't like Golden Wyvern Adept either.

 

[ptolemy18]

It's fine that magic items are for sale. I just don't like the idea of this weird sort of 'adventuring gear industry,' where thousands of mages labor in sweatshops churning out +1 swords.

Well, that I agree with. I wouldn't mind a general lowering of magic item availability.

I'm trying to run a low-magic game right now, so we'll see how it works...