Does anyone do non-overpowered anymore?

[Imp]

I wonder how much of this whole low-magic business can be finessed by simple flavor changes. For example, item slots. Remove a few: say, cloak, vest, and a ring slot. Replace with: training slot, spirit slot, and blood slot. Or just two, because "blood" might be hard to explain, and maybe we do want less powerful characters: training and spirit. These slots become inherent to the character, and can't be sundered or stolen, and the training slot may not even be "magical," and the spirit one could be debatable. Instead of just accumulating loot, the characters train with legendary teachers or are blessed by guardian spirits to gain the effects of these "items." Thus, you have a somewhat lower-magic feel, fewer Christmas trees walking around, and less adjusting to do.

 

[Hussar]

Y'know, I think I'll start a new thread when I have a moment. THe whole Christmas Tree thing really is overblown. It isn't until double digit character levels that the magic a PC is toting around makes much of a difference anyway. Heck, there's more difference between a 25 point buy and 35 point buy character in terms of power than there is between a 7th level character with no magic items and one with full wealth.

There are numerous ways to tweak the system. The nice thing about magic items are they have so little impact until fairly high level.

 

[Numion]

I don't recall writing any of those posts three years back, but damn .. I do agree with myself 100%

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Does anybody do non-overpowered gaming anymore? I'm working on a campaign where the Fighter is a Prestige class. The core classes are all comparable to the Warrior or the Noble in the DMG. There is power to be had in this world, but the PCs don't automatically get a fast-track to the biggest and baddest character classes. Is this so unusual that I might as well pack up and move to the center star of Orion's belt?

Well, it is also a question of game balance. If you don't care about that (and still know how to throw challenging, but not always deadly encounters), you could have all players play Commoners, Adepts, Experts and Warriors before (if ever) they get access to the "core" classes.

But I think that isn't such a clever idea. The core classes aren't only about power, they are also about advancement, about new tricks. It is fun to see a character grow in abilities, to explore new options and abilities. It doesn't require that these abilities are powerful. But they must still provide fun.
(In this case, I think the Adept works fine in thisarea, since he gains new spells every few levels. But Commoner, Expert and Warrior only advance what they can do and offer little flexibility or extendibility)

Before fiddling around with the classes, you should probably play around with your point-buy values (or dice roll method) - this can easily make high or lower power characters without taking away the fun of exploring new character options. Our group nearly always uses 25-point buy...

 

[Drowbane]

So whats up with all the Thread Necromancy lately?

 

[Numion]

So whats up with all the Thread Necromancy lately?

I dunno. It's damn strange to start read a "new" thread and then be surprised by my OWN post. Then it usually dawns .. 3 years :\

 

[Psion]

So whats up with all the Thread Necromancy lately?

I certainly wasn't doing it because I wanted to see more "too much magic in 3e" arguments.