Disenchanting

[VannATLC]

I rarely hand out magic items. Sometimes, I'll have a character wearing it.

Spoiler

Like, WTF is Irontooth not wearing his items?

More often, I'll hand out items that can be used in the construction of magic items. That's also how I'll be doing 4e. A gem imbued with elemental fire, suitable for placing in the head of a hammer/axe or the hilt of a sword, etc.

I'll also be handing out raw resisidium, which, as I've posted elsewhere, is the major economic unit of my campaign. Coinage is weighted against residium, and residium is harvested from several ancient apartatus maintained by (now very wealthy) guilds.

 

[ForbidenMaster]

Considering that the cost of items and rituals balloons to crazy amounts, I fail to see the problem. If the players are going to have to pay an arm and a leg every time they use a ritual, they should have opportunities to make money. In 4e, the only way a player can get money is by murdering things and taking their stuff. Monty haul campaign, indeed.

But they dont have to pay an arm and a leg every time they want to use a ritual. Name one ritual that is out of sync with the wealth of a character of the appropriate level? I could possibly see an argument for Raise Dead at low Paragon, but it does let you come back from the dead...

 

[IceFractal]

I'm also a bit baffled by the 1/5 ratio. Say that, in the course of your adventures, you get a +3 longsword. But your weapon of choice is a shortsword. Now you can only have a +2 shortsword?

How is it "balanced" to get a weapon five levels lower because you wanted a slightly different type of sword?


Not to mention, this completely screws "ancestral weapon" wielders, because you can't upgrade an item, only recreate it from scratch. Someone who tries to break down their newly found gear to maintain their ancestral blade will end up 5-10 levels below someone who just tosses their old weapon whenever a shinier one comes along.

For another thing, it means the DM has to shoehorn unusual items in there, whether it makes sense or not. Someone took proficiency in the spiked chain? Well I guess the PCs will have to periodically fight spiked chain wielding foes, unless you want to put that character behind the curve. Because apparently trading an item for an equally strong item - or even half of one - is broken somehow.

If you give them a flaming sword and they disenchant it because they would rather have an icy sword, well then they should get poor deal from that.

Honestly, if I had a DM with that attitude, I'd tell them to get over themselves. Whose character is it - yours, or the player's? And do you want to pick what color clothes they wear while you're at it?

 

[FadedC]

I'm also a bit baffled by the 1/5 ratio. Say that, in the course of your adventures, you get a +3 longsword. But your weapon of choice is a shortsword. Now you can only have a +2 shortsword?

How is it "balanced" to get a weapon five levels lower because you wanted a slightly different type of sword?


Not to mention, this completely screws "ancestral weapon" wielders, because you can't upgrade an item, only recreate it from scratch. Someone who tries to break down their newly found gear to maintain their ancestral blade will end up 5-10 levels below someone who just tosses their old weapon whenever a shinier one comes along.

For another thing, it means the DM has to shoehorn unusual items in there, whether it makes sense or not. Someone took proficiency in the spiked chain? Well I guess the PCs will have to periodically fight spiked chain wielding foes, unless you want to put that character behind the curve. Because apparently trading an item for an equally strong item - or even half of one - is broken somehow.


Honestly, if I had a DM with that attitude, I'd tell them to get over themselves. Whose character is it - yours, or the player's? And do you want to pick what color clothes they wear while you're at it?

There are other ways to get gold to use for rituals/enchanting/magic items then breaking down your magic items. The treasure tables have you finding quite a bit of gold which can be used to buy things such as magical spiked chains or enchanting components for your ancestral sword.

And yes god forbid the players are encouraged to value the magic items they find rather then just viewing them as gold piece values.

 

[ForbidenMaster]

I'm also a bit baffled by the 1/5 ratio. Say that, in the course of your adventures, you get a +3 longsword. But your weapon of choice is a shortsword. Now you can only have a +2 shortsword?

How is it "balanced" to get a weapon five levels lower because you wanted a slightly different type of sword?


Not to mention, this completely screws "ancestral weapon" wielders, because you can't upgrade an item, only recreate it from scratch. Someone who tries to break down their newly found gear to maintain their ancestral blade will end up 5-10 levels below someone who just tosses their old weapon whenever a shinier one comes along.

Because the monsters that you will be fighting in the dungeon take an additional 20d10 damage when stabbed by short swords.

Magic treasure is placed by your DM, therefor everything is at his/her discretion. If your DM knows that you use a short sword and he gives you a longsword either a) its intentional and the reason isnt immediately obvious, or b) he made a mistake and will gladly just change the longsword for a short sword.

As for ancestral weapons, what do you mean? Like unique weapons for PCs? Just ignore the whole collecting magic treasure thing and have the items upgrade themselves. Or instead of finding magic weapons, find magic gems that will bestow certain properties to weapons, and then treat the gems like you would normal magic items.

 

[Destil]

But that's just it. It actually unbalances it. Let's say you get an item worth 10,000g, which puts you up to the amount of wealth you should have at that level. But you don't want the item, so you disenchant it, but only get 2,000g worth of residuum out of it. You're now 8,000g behind what a character of your level should have, forcing the DM to either leave your character behind or arrange for you to get another item.

Not really if you're finding stuff you want. It ends up at just around a .4% cost over a 30 level PC lifetime if you're strictly at DMG wealth (awesome post by SauroGrenom at wizard's CoCo board):

http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?p=15981846&highlight=wealth#post15981846

 

[IceFractal]

Yes, ancestral weapons work great if you ignore the item rules completely and ad-hoc them. They'd also work great if the rules were better. And then it'd work across games and in the RPGA as well. And while the non-item treasure you find is enough to supply one PC with an unusual weapon type, it doesn't work so well if several need people need it.


But more importantly, what game-balance reason is served by the 1:5 ratio? The main purpose seems to be making sure that the players don't have much control over which items they get, unless they want to be heavily penalized for doing so.

Is that fun? Maybe to a very controlling DM, but it's not my idea of fun.

 

[vagabundo]

I dont see what the bafflement is about, the system is there to encourge player to use the items they get rather than melting them down or selling them off.

Thank Bloody God I say.

Still it is probably one of the easiest things to change, have your NPC shop keepers/Magic Merchants pay more. Let me know how it works out...

But more importantly, what game-balance reason is served by the 1:5 ratio? The main purpose seems to be making sure that the players don't have much control over which items they get, unless they want to be heavily penalized for doing so.

Is that fun? Maybe to a very controlling DM, but it's not my idea of fun.

It wasnt much fun when there was a laundry lists of items to be sold off and people just customising their own magic equipment. Magic items lost all of their wonder. The new system has put the magic back into magic items.

 

[Falling Icicle]

The "wonder" of magic items is best preserved by their rarity, not how strong the incentive is against disposing of them.

Oh gee. Another +2 sword. Anyone want it? Nope? Oh well, some more residuum for my rituals...

Yeah, sorry, that doesn't bring wonder to magic items. To me, it cheapens them.

 

[FadedC]

The "wonder" of magic items is best preserved by their rarity, not how strong the incentive is against disposing of them.

Oh gee. Another +2 sword. Anyone want it? Nope? Oh well, some more residuum for my rituals...

Yeah, sorry, that doesn't bring wonder to magic items. To me, it cheapens them.

The default rules of the game are that the group should find about 4 useful magic items per level as well as enough gold to consider buying the occasional item. You could argue that this isn't really rare, but either way players enjoy finding items and there is some degree of an item curve required to be competive.

And to me what would really cheapen magic items is if you finally complete the quest to recover the ancient sword of the elven kings, and you just disenchant/sell it and buy/make something else.