Discussion on +x magic items

[Lanefan]

They take damage from someone intentionally causing them harm or such things, but they also have more hitpoints, more hardness, and they don't lose their enchantment until they are completely destroyed.

And I'm not sure where or even if it's listed anymore, but I believe there is a statement saying that part of the enchantment on magic items prevents it from being damaged by time, so only physical damage destroys it.

The all-too-simple answer that nobody seems to want to take me up on is to just make magic items easier to break and-or permanently disenchant than the current rules dictate. That way, even if some ancient empire churned out 10,000 +2 swords for its troops, there's a very real chance there's only a few hundred left; and you get to keep giving nifty new toys to your PCs safe in the knowledge - given the high-risk career paths PCs tend to follow - they'll break most of 'em by the time they find some more.

Lanefan

 

[JohnSnow]

The all-too-simple answer that nobody seems to want to take me up on is to just make magic items easier to break and-or permanently disenchant than the current rules dictate. That way, even if some ancient empire churned out 10,000 +2 swords for its troops, there's a very real chance there's only a few hundred left; and you get to keep giving nifty new toys to your PCs safe in the knowledge - given the high-risk career paths PCs tend to follow - they'll break most of 'em by the time they find some more.

Lanefan

Works for me. Even Narsil broke.

I actually like the notion of magic being, by its very nature, impermanent.

 

[The Little Raven]

Works for me. Even Narsil broke.

Yeah, but it wasn't by the blow of some mangy orc. It was a Maiar who, even though diminished from what he once was, is a greater force to be reckoned with than any other in Middle-Earth. It was also more of plot device than some lucky NPC getting a crit when he sunders.

 

[Nebulous]

It's not that math is hard. It's that it's annoying to track, especially when you have 20-30 effects which each change 1-10 numbers.

Now dispel half of the effects, and recalculate 1-10 things per effect.

It's not the difficulty of the simple arithmetic. It's the quantity of it during a single round of combat.

Cheers, -- N

Agreed. I prefer the approach that some others have mentioned, greatly reduce the numerical effects of magic items and replace them with plain cool stuff they can do. Like snatching arrows, quickdraw, granting an extra attack or swift action, temporary AC boost for 1 round, movement changes, etc. I don't mind some pluses here and there, but the game does bog down so much from addition and subtraction of many tiny modifiers that it just becomes tedious at higher level.

 

[Wednesday Boy]

Delericho, your ideas intrigue me. I'd like to subscribe to your newsletter.

I agree, my biggest problem with +X items is that they're bland but still effective. If there's a good way to keep you effective as if you had those +X items (either through class bonuses or character bonuses or having the +X be in addition to interesting magical properties) while having magical items do more than just +X, it would be an improvement in my eyes.

 

[Wednesday Boy]

I would love nothing more than giving a new level 1 player a family heirloom and not have him replace it by 5th level for a better item.

Exactly! To me it would be so much cooler to have your family blade, Excalibur, throughout your career than having to swap out Excalibur because you found a longsword+3.

 

[Imban]

I say make it so there's no such thing as an arms race. I want it so 'seeking out' magic items in a game is not too different from 'seeking out' the Mona Lisa, or the ashes of the guitar Jimi Hendrix set on fire, or the first flag of the British Empire.

In such a setting, you don't say, "Damn, there are tons of people who have flaming swords. I need to buy some anti-fire armor." You say, "Damn, dark lord bejeezus has a flaming sword! Well, I could go on a quest to find the legendary rumored scale armor of the fire wyrm, but I don't want to waste the time. Let's go kick his butt."

Exalted is a setting like that. Generally, the tendency of the books to present far more magic items of questionable utility than superweapons does far more to eliminate the arms race than the relative rarity of magic items in the setting - if Dark Lord Bejeezus has a flaming sword, you sure as heck will have it after you're done with him, and players who are interested in collecting loot will want to go and collect the Scale Armor of the Fire Wyrm regardless. If you've had the best sword you can reasonably hope to get in the campaign since you created your character on day one, the arms race is gone.

Granted, it frustrates me almost as much, if not more, that the magic item books for Exalted have three writeups for pens that create any-color ink on the fly, pens that create any-color ink on the fly and take dictation, and magical fur coats for six-year-old girls for every magic item presented that's useful in combat, and most of the "high-end" weaponry items are either of very limited usefulness (Black Depths Foretold, a dagger that's solidly worse than most equally-ranked weapons but is fated to be the weapon that will kill a certain relatively important NPC) or high-end along the lines of the Sword of Kas in D&D and thus out of your reach. (Soul Mirror, pretty much the ultimate personal weapon in Exalted right now)

2. Items that boost stats are *far* too common in 3e. That, and the iconic items that do boost stats e.g. Girdle of Giant Strength should boost the stat to a set number e.g. 30 (in 3e terms) rather than just modify the wearer's original stat by a '+'. Needless to say, such items should also be rare and-or extremely costly.

Nifft covered the rules problems with those earlier on (easy availability of gloves that set your Dexterity to 18 mean starting with 6 Dexterity is a common choice, etc.), but I personally have a pet peeve with those simply because I once got a cool sword back in 2nd Edition that "raised" my Strength to 22... when I already had a natural Strength of 23 from the tomes and Wishes and stuff I'd already used. Whoops?

Exactly! To me it would be so much cooler to have your family blade, Excalibur, throughout your career than having to swap out Excalibur because you found a longsword+3.

Well, the thing about heirlooms like that are that they're usually really, really good items in the context of the story - far above the normal value curve, because they have the legendary black blade Stormbringer or the magical sword Excalibur and its magical scabbard or what have you from the start of the story. While Lord of the Rings was never about "flashy" magic with obvious effects, Aragorn's sword Anduril was clearly something special, too.

And at least in 3e D&D, because it assumes everyone will have the "proper" amount of wealth at every level, it doesn't really support starting your game off with one player wielding the +3 keen adamantine longsword "Anduril" (at a 35015 gp cost) at level 4, while the best things anyone else in the party have are a +1 mithral chain shirt (2100 gp), some +1 short swords (2310 gp), and a +2 short sword with a minor unique power (slightly over 8310 gp).

Which, really, is kinda too bad. A lot of fantasy stories are like that.

 

[Wednesday Boy]

Well, the thing about heirlooms like that are that they're usually really, really good items in the context of the story - far above the normal value curve, because they have the legendary black blade Stormbringer or the magical sword Excalibur and its magical scabbard or what have you from the start of the story. While Lord of the Rings was never about "flashy" magic with obvious effects, Aragorn's sword Anduril was clearly something special, too.

And at least in 3e D&D, because it assumes everyone will have the "proper" amount of wealth at every level, it doesn't really support starting your game off with one player wielding the +3 keen adamantine longsword "Anduril" (at a 35015 gp cost) at level 4, while the best things anyone else in the party have are a +1 mithral chain shirt (2100 gp), some +1 short swords (2310 gp), and a +2 short sword with a minor unique power (slightly over 8310 gp).

Which, really, is kinda too bad. A lot of fantasy stories are like that.

That's true. I think that's why for game balance sake you would have to do it similarly to the Legacy weapons, where they gain power over time but don't have it all at once. To me, having a named, signature weapon fits perfectly in the fantasy genre. And it seems like having some mechanic to make sure your starting signature weapon doesn't become obsolete is the way to make it possible.

 

[VirgilCaine]

Which, really, is kinda too bad. A lot of fantasy stories are like that.

If you're playing D&D to try and emulate fantasy stories, I have some bad news for you...

 

[Imban]

If you're playing D&D to try and emulate fantasy stories, I have some bad news for you...

I'm pretty sure a heck of a lot of people do this. It's not an unreasonable expectation for the world's most popular fantasy roleplaying game, and I've never, ever agreed with the criticisms that say otherwise, and doubly so for ones that say D&D shouldn't be able to emulate fantasy stories. Yes, it makes assumptions about the game world that are contrary to many fantasy stories, but I don't buy that D&D does not produce results in the fantasy genre at all, and emulating any fantasy story in any system is going to take some work if you care about being faithful to the source rather than just chucking the basic outlines of it into D&D and seeing what you get.

And really, chucking the basic outlines of it into D&D and seeing what you get is what I've always preferred.