Discussion on +x magic items

[Victim]

This is one of my beefs with 3.x and now 4.x edition.

Under 1st and 2nd edition...forcing the extra special neato powers that the characters acquire into having to be from magic items serves as a pressure valve for rebalancing a campaign if it's needed.

PCs getting too powerful for your world? Have those items get confiscated, stolen, outlawed, or flat out destroyed in some way that takes them from the character. Viola... character has had those powers trimmed away, taken away , or whatever without maiming the character.

Yeah, one of the things I love as a player is getting arbitrarily crippled because the DM clumsily uses in-game tools to handle metagame problems. Wait...

 

[Lanefan]

Just wanted to address this one quickly. Look at the Druid's Wildshape over the past few years, if you want to see how "replaces stats" interacts with optimization. I think you'll see worse cheese if you allow stat replacement than augmentation.

I'm not familiar with 3e's version of Druid shapeshifting. I am familiar with 1e's version and it's never caused a problem for me either as player or DM. But if you're worried about a Strength 30 horse or skunk running around, just rule the item does not polymorph (it falls off instead) and you're set.

I'm of the opinion that stats shouldn't be augmentable by items in a permanent way. I'd rather see low-duration spells & charged items -- or hell, even drugs with terrible side effects and withdrawal symptoms -- but my favorite would be if stats were fairly stable, and magic gave you more options rather than just bigger bonuses*.

A quasi-permanently jumped-up stat is way more stable than a stat jumped up by a short-lived spell. Strength is the only one I'd want to see boost-able like this; though I could also live with Charisma in terms of persuasion only rather than a Sorcerer spell boost. The rest should only change in the rarest of circumstances e.g. reading something like one of those 1e books that jumped your stat by 1 forever.

Lanefan

 

[HP Dreadnought]

Just wanted to address this one quickly. Look at the Druid's Wildshape over the past few years, if you want to see how "replaces stats" interacts with optimization. I think you'll see worse cheese if you allow stat replacement than augmentation.

I agree that in general, stat replacement rather than stat augmentation is bad game design. Allows for all kinds of things to break.

But I have to be honest. . . back in the days where Gauntlets of Ogre Power gave you a flat 18/00 strength, or a Girdle of Storm Giant strength gave you a 24. . . the items had a lot more flavor to them.

Nowadays, most people in my group don't even call them by their names. They just say, "yeah, I'm going to pick up a +6 strength item."

I really hope that they find a way to introduce the flavor back into these items. For one thing, I don't necessarily believe you need a stat booster for all six stats.

Also, I like the idea of a Hammer of Thunderbolts requiring both gauntlets and belt to function effectively. It gets back to the Thor mythology. However, even under normal circumstances, the effects of Gauntlets and Belt ought to stack somehow (or provide similar but different benefits) so that having both is something people would normally aspire to, not just those wishing to use the HoTB.

 

[DM_Blake]

People used to think Vancian magic was too iconic to D&D to get rid of.

Consider:

"I'm a tough-as-nails 10th level fighter. I have a magic sword that I drew from the clutches of a petrified saint, and I used it to slay the necromancer that destroyed my village and set me on the path of a hero.

"Oh, you're selling plus-two swords? Well sure, I'll take one. Can I trade in this piece of junk?"

This is a valid point, but is the problem the existence of +x swords, or the existence of people selling them?

Yeah, buying your + (x+1) sword upgrade at the corner magic sword vendor is pretty boring.

But, consider:

"I'm a tough-as-nails 10th level fighter. I have a magic sword that I drew two years ago from the clutches of a petrified saint, and a year ago I used it to slay the necromancer that destroyed my village and set me on the path of a hero.

And now that I've vanquished the village of giants and slain their warrior-king and his shaman, I've plundered the Sword of the Giant King which, legend has it, is a powerful sword indeed, and I look forward to wielding this powreful new sword instead of my older sword."

 

[DM_Blake]

+1 weapons imply +1 armor. As soon as +1 armor exist, then people will need +2 weapons.
In the end of the day, the arms race lead every NPC or PC and his mother to stockpiles +x weapons and armors. The result ? You have no choice but to HAVE those weapons, else, you are unable to fight your enemy.
Now, MM monsters are created assuming the PC have those +x weapons and +x armors, which worsen the problem.

On the other hand, flaming sword don't force you to have +1 armor, not even "fire resistance" armor, because not all weapons will be flaming weapons.

Your own logic refutes itself.

If I need +1 armor to protect me from +1 swords, then I need it even more to protect me from flaming (etc.) swords. I don't want to be on fire. I don't want to take all that extra damage from acid, cold, etc. Making my foe miss me is even more important if he's likely to be wielding that kind of stuff.

Nothing protects you from a flaming sword quite as much as not being hit by it.

 

[DM_Blake]

This item is terribly problematic. I had players expecting that such rings would be common -- and indeed the DMG seems to suggest they are.
But it requires a 12th-level cleric to create such a ring! I had only six clerics of that level or higher in my entire campaign setting!

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.

Doing the math, and allowing for non-combat encounters (like a cleric converting someone from a different faith, or the party talking their way past a guardian, etc.), it dawned on me that EVERYONE in 3e should be higher level quickly.

Consider a fresh-faced farm kid runs off to the city and joins the city watch patrols. 13 tavern brawls and arrested burglars later, he's 2nd level - that should be doable in a week with 2 incidents per shift. Another couple weeks he's 3rd level, and a few weeks later he's 4th level. Been on the job just over a month and he's 4th level.

Allright, so all the 1-year city watch veterans are 7th level or higher, and their 10-year commanders are well into double digits.

As for PCs, killing 13 pairs of orcs sounds much, much better than the hundreds that were needed to level a 2e adventuring group from 1st to 2nd level.

So, if everyone in a rough-and-tumble lifestyle is leveling so quickly, then it stands to reason that people not so rough-and-tumble also level much more quickly, unless we assume that the only way for the village blacksmith (expert) or prince(noble) or farmer (commoner) to gain any levels is to go out and kill orcs or break up tavern brawls. Or worse, we assume that their daily activities leave their leveling progress in the dust compared to the town watchmen.

Which means that EVERYBODY is leveling much more quickly than old 2nd edition or previous.

Which led me to my next conclusion, that while it was OK for high-level NPCs to be very rare in precious editions, they must be much more common in 3e. This theory is backed up by the preponderance of high CL monsters in the Monster Manual. Compare with previous editions, and 3e is comparatively bursting at the seams with stuff that would absolutely destroy a typical 2nd edition village community.

Given all that, 3e just seems a place where NPCs aren't even noteworthy until they break into the upper single-digit levels, and nobody is really heroic until they get to double-digit levels.

None of that was on-topic for this thread, but at the risk of hijacking my own thread, I just wanted to share that with you.

 

[DM_Blake]

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."

Such a setting is really fun to play. I enjoy them myself (althought I've only DMed them, never played in one).

But, doesn't that sound more like a supplemental setting than a core magic system?

From a game design perspective, I would much rather 4e have complete rules for magic items, and then we can all use them as liberally or as sparsely as we wish, as opposed to having little or no magic item system and then anyone who wants one has to build it from scratch, or import barely compatible 3e stuff.

Shouldn't we all be hoping for a middle-of-the-road and easily flexible and adaptable system that we can tune to our own settings with the benefit of reaching a huge audience and thus generating interest and tons of new supplements in the foreseeable future?

The alternatives, one of which you presented in your post that I quoted, would mean that many, maye even most, D&D groups would need to seriously modify or create a magic item system, resulting in tons of work, and lost customers, which eventually leads 4e into a less-selling and less-profitable game which then drives the 3rd party puplishers away, too.

Nobody wants that, right?

Keep it middle-of-the-road and very flexible, then everyone can use it with little or no tuning.

 

[DM_Blake]

Why do you want to make D&D into Conan if you've already got Conan? So the people who want what they know from D&D don't have that option anymore? So they can pick Conan or Dungeons & Cimmerians?

Better to have D&D for x-type adventures, Conan for y-type adventures, RIFTS for z-type adventures, etc, et al, blah blah blah.

If there is a problem with D&D right now, to me, it's that it doesn't know what it wants to be. Is it designed for a certain type of adventuring (requiring x magic items at certain levels, dungeon crawling) or is it supposed to be a tool box game as some like to think? Even though I have no plans to switch, I appreciate that what I've read about 4E indicates they are trying to deal with this - by tightening the focus and moving further away from being a tool box (which isn't the direction I would go, but at least it's a direction).

Well said.

As for me, I want 4e to be right down the middle of the road, and very flexible. Not GURPS. that's too generic (hence the name). I want D&D to be a D&D spin on GURPS. Focused enough on the D&D stuff to still be D&D, and unique, and fun within that genre. But still flexible enough that people who want to play Conan can do it (strip out the magic items, rule wizards are NPC only, and off they go) and people who want to play forgotten Realms or Eberron can do that too. And everyone in between (Greyhawk), or off to the side (Dark Sun, Ravenloft) will be able to fit in too.

 

[DM_Blake]

One other thing that can be done both to limit the Christmas Tree Effect and the transferrence of weak items from one character to another is to tie the magic items to the character though some sort of character-based resource, similar to the Attuned Essence costs used by Exalted.

So, perhaps a 12th level character can attune 24 points worth of magic items. He can carry as many others as he wants... but they won't provide him with any benefit.

I've already house-ruled that in for many items. No more will the group pass around the Ring of Regeneration after every fight.

Now, for me, many items take hours, or days, to "attune" to a new character while the magic slowly pervades their body before the item can be used. That guy finds something better, and gives the right to a buddy, then the buddy has to "attune" now.

 

[DM_Blake]

I wouldn't mind seeing weapons that grant Weapon Focus as a +1 replacement (+1/0).

Then Focus and Spec as a +2 (+1/+2), Gtr Focus and Spec as a +3ish (+2/+2), Gtr Focus and Greater Spec as a +4ish equivalent (+2/+4) and then Gtr Focus, Gtr Spec and Weapon Mastery as the ultimate at +5 (+4/+6).

But if you get the same featish abilities naturally you would branch into variety in weapon choice opposed to just investing in the pluses. Instead of '5' level of plus you use a weapon with 5 levels of special abilities.

Similar to now where you get Improved Crit as a feat or with Keen/Impact as a weapon ability. But once you have IMproved Crit then a Keen weapon is redundant.

You made an interesting piont and then shot it down at the same time.

Yeah, if I'm a fighter in your suggested system, i would never use a precious feat on any of those feats - I would just find the weapon I want. Or buy it. Unless magic items are pretty rare and hard to find, in which case I would assume that I would never find that kind of weapon and just take the feats anyway.

Unless magic items were soooo common that I could take those feats, then find a flaming holy vorpal weapon and still be +4 +6 with it.

On a side note, I allow Improved Crit and Keen to stack. They stacked in 3.0, then de-stacked in 3.5. In my interpretation, the feat represents skill at knowing where to hit to make it count, and the magic item property just means the weapon is extra sharp so it can do critical damage more often. Combine the two, and you hit your enemy with a super sharp weapon in just the right place and get lots of critical hits.

Of course, I like really deadly combat.