Down with magic items!

[hong]

But as the others here have said, the equipment is a part of the baseline.

Just like in D&D. Or have you forgotten the tables of wealth by level?

If you ramped a fantasy DnD's magic item level up to match the amount of gear and equipment available in most modern campaigns, you'd have magic EVERYWHERE.

Everywhere that high-level characters exist, anyway. The rarity or otherwise of such characters is strictly under the control of the DM.

Higher than the highest-magic of games. It integrates smoothly into the story. If I had lost my armor and weapons this weekend, I could have dealt with it much more easily than if I was playing DnD and lost my armor and weapons.

So don't lose your armour and weapons; or if you're the DM, stop sundering things left, right and center. The fastest way to make people focus their attention on their gear is to make it hard for them to keep it.

Only if your DnD world has crystal balls *everywhere*, mass-produced, and present in some form or another in 70% of a civilized area. Being so common is one of the things that makes the characters *less* dependent on equipment.

Are you suggesting that crystal balls should therefore be present in some form or other in 70% of a civilised area?

 

[hong]

A character whose computer does the hacking for them.

His computer will not hack by itself.

And by that same token, a +5 keen, flaming burst greatsword will also not hack by itself.

 

[I'm A Banana]

In D&D 3e, the items are definately key to the power of a party. They're calculated right into the CR's and difficulties of the monsters the party encounters, assuming that they use what treasure they can, and into the wealth of characters by level.

So magic items and wondrous toys are part and parcel of a character's power in D&D.

d20 Modern, on the other hand, is designed with a small to nonexistant amount of 'magic toys,' and even the most high-powered rifle can be obtained at first level. d20 Modern has more of a non-magical feel, being designed from the ground up to not contain magic and stand without it.

D&D can be less magically oriented. As a DM, I could institute a "get rid of double the cost of a magic item, and you can have it as a natural ability." You could design it as a sacrifice of gold or items, or simply calculate it into their 'treasure'. "In addition to the gold, you find yourselves suddenly gifted with the following powers..."

You could design the entire campaign to be low-magic, or just help people to divorce themselves from items as above. Either way...meh.

 

[Steverooo]

The REAL Problem

IMHO, the REAL Problem with D&D Magic Items is that they are TOO powerful, and negate skills! SO WHAT if your first-level Elven Rogue has a 20 (+5) DEX and has maxed out his Jump skill at four ranks, for a total of +9? My Fighter has Boots of Striding and Springing for +10 (besides his four Ranks and +2 STR Bonus for a total of +16), and Lenny's Wizard has the Jump spell for +30 (plus STR for a total of +32)!

What needs to be done is to limit skill Ranks from magic to 3+Caster Level! Thus, Jump adds +4 at first level, +5 at second, etc.

That way, magic items couldn't so completely invalidate characters' skills. That coupled with care about WHEN characters received items (level appropriate, in other words) would put magic in its place, and elevate skill into its.

 

[A'koss]

Originally posted by Stererooo:

IMHO, the REAL Problem with D&D Magic Items is that they are TOO powerful, and negate skills

No kidding... I've even gone as far as limiting skill bonuses from magic to being the equivalent of magical weapon. +10 being the best non-epic bonus you can get.


A'koss!

 

[hong]

No kidding... I've even gone as far as limiting skill bonuses from magic to being the equivalent of magical weapon. +10 being the best non-epic bonus you can get.

Generally +10 is the best bonus you can get anyway from the default DMG items (anything else should be approved on a case-by-case basis by the DM). The exception is the ring of jumping, which is +30 to Jump. But I don't see a real problem with that, because mobility enhancers tend to become superfluous as soon as people get access to fly spells or items.

 

[A'koss]

Originally posted by Hong:

Generally +10 is the best bonus you can get anyway from the default DMG items (anything else should be approved on a case-by-case basis by the DM). The exception is the ring of jumping, which is +30 to Jump. But I don't see a real problem with that, because mobility enhancers tend to become superfluous as soon as people get access to fly spells or items.

However that +10 IMC will cost you the same as a magic weapon of equal value. And technically, anything up to +30 in the DMG is non-epic as far as skill boosts go. I will agree that +30 to Jump isn't that big a deal, but for me, internal consistancy is better than picking out a few exceptions...


Cheers,

A'koss!

 

[Mulkhoran]

Just like in D&D. Or have you forgotten the tables of wealth by level?

Not at all. As a matter of fact, the very existence of those tables as a necessary balancing factor to the entire game is what irks me. Sometimes.

Everywhere that high-level characters exist, anyway. The rarity or otherwise of such characters is strictly under the control of the DM.

Most of the equipment in d20 modern is readily available, be you 1st or 10th level. It doesn't scale across the range that DnD magic does. It isn't directly tied to the level of the people posessing it.

So don't lose your armour and weapons; or if you're the DM, stop sundering things left, right and center. The fastest way to make people focus their attention on their gear is to make it hard for them to keep it.

Hmm. We may not *actually* be arguing here. You seem to be pointing out that these elements simply *are* an integral part of the system, whereas some others are wishing it were flexible enough to live without them. Apples and Oranges?

Are you suggesting that crystal balls should therefore be present in some form or other in 70% of a civilised area?

I'm saying that using that comparison model, they *are*, in a modern setting, that is.

 

[hong]

Hmm. We may not *actually* be arguing here. You seem to be pointing out that these elements simply *are* an integral part of the system, whereas some others are wishing it were flexible enough to live without them. Apples and Oranges?

If you mean apples and oranges are both fruits, then yeah, probably. I've never really had a problem with the whole "magic items are external to a character" issue, because I consider the items to be just as much a part of a character as any other abilities they may have. The problem is that going strictly by the core books, there's little in the way of crunchy bits to support this paradigm: if you have a +1 sword, there's nothing stopping you from throwing it away as soon as a +2 sword comes around.

However, if you look around, there's actually several places to find rules that make items more closely tied to a character than just being expendable tools. There's the samurai's ancestral daisho in OA, the "imbued items" article from Dragon 289, and the concept of "nemuranai", or awakened items, in Magic of Rokugan.

I've munged all these things together to come up with some rules for imbuing magic items that I'm using in my game. Consider the basic feature of item creation, where a spellcaster spends XP (and gp) to create a magic item. A common in-game explanation for this is the creator putting a part of her soul, spirit or essence into the item. The imbued magic rules just extend this idea of imparting one's spirit to one's possessions to everybody, not just spellcasters.

Imbued items have a few other quirks:
- You don't need gp to awaken their magic (although the XP cost is bumped up to compensate).
- They only work for the character who created them. If you kill Bob the orc and pick up his imbued +2 greataxe, it's only a normal greataxe in your hands.

The end-effect is to create a real, tangible link between a character and their items, and has a number of other benefits:
- Since gold isn't required to imbue items, it removes (or weakens) the looting mentality common in D&D. You can play an altruistic, noble-hearted type who refuses to hoard gold or loot dead bodies, and not feel screwed for it.
- It makes planning encounters much less complicated, since I don't have to worry about the golden rule: never give an NPC an item I don't want the PCs to get their hands on.
- All that XP spending means characters take longer to level up, which is good for me, because I like lots of fights in my campaigns. If the PCs never spent all that XP, they'd be levelling up like rabbits.

 

[Mulkhoran]

If you mean apples and oranges are both fruits, then yeah, probably.

Are you calling me a fruit? The very *nerve*!