Excerpt: You and Your Magic Items

[Dragonblade]

I was one of them and couldn't find players because I had a specific campaign/story I wanted to run, but all the limitations I had to place on 3rd edition rules to get a low magic game turned people away. The rules are quite capable of running a low magic setting, but the default presumption was magic rich and that's what most players expected just out of the PHB.

That's right. Because that's the most FUN for the majority of players. If you can't recruit players because they don't like your restrictions, maybe its because your restrictions aren't fun. And that seems like your problem. Not the game's problem.

 

[Lacyon]

What I don't understand is, why they just didn't get rid of the bonuses at all? What is the point of them if they come automatically every 4 level.

For one, they don't come automatically. For another, they're a mechanism that allows characters to get a little more powerful between level-ups.

And if I undestand correctly, does the low magic system mean than in a low-magic world adventurers are better than in a high-magic world?

Possibly. Much like PCs in Iron Heroes are more powerful than naked PHB PCs. Alternatively, you can do without the bonuses if you really want - just be aware that the intended balance isn't going to work properly without them.

That's fine if it's the way you prefer to run the game; the intended balance isn't the only one or the one that's necessarily the most fun for you. The tools the game provides will degrade in utility, though, especially at higher levels (e.g., a creature labeled as 21st-level might not actually be well-suited for 21st-level magic-less PCs).

Really just remove these bonuse from the system and let magic tiems being defined by their special abilities. This would remove a lot of other problems, like the wheelbarrow of +1 rapiers, better than that stupid thresold.

Better for some, sure.

 

[Stormtalon]

The insta-identify thing also helps out another group -- the League of Absent-Minded DMs (LAMDMs for short) of which I'm a long-standing (I think; not entirely sure when I joined) member. Inevitably my players will go thru their list of "glowy items of unknown goodness" during downtime and ask me, "Ok, we have a ring here. And, ummm, a glowing chaffing dish? So, what do we do? Wiz is identifying everything." And I wind up going, "Durrr, ummm. Damn, gimme a second here. Now where the hell did I write those things down. Do you remember what you killed when you got those?"

Now I can just let 'em know up front and all will be well.

 

[Tervin]

To start my first real post here with something obvious:

I think many of us here are in the same situation. We are planning our first 4th Edition campaign, reading every tidbit of info and analyzing how it will work with how we like to DM and the game we have planned out.

My gut reaction was negative to things like buying and selling magic items and automatic identifying what the items are for. My gut reaction to disenchanting/reenchanting was more of "Hmm that sounds like something I can work with..." And then it was time for my process. Why do they want things changed? Why did I react the way I did? Does this work with my campaign as it is? Can I make small changes in either the campaign or the rules to make it work? How would my players want it to work?

The way I feel right now I think it is the right route to have generally permissive standard rules in the books, and I have no reason to doubt the game balance in the 20% resale rule. I suspect that my gut reaction has to do with being an oldtimer gamer, used to playing in environments where we avoided all sorts of houserules (as much of our game was playtesting for conventions), and skeptic to change until have tried it. I do like the idea of making the game easy to manage for DMs and fun for the players, avoiding unnecessary restrictions and busywork for both parties. And these changes are clearly in that spirit.

On the other hand, with this complete information, I don't think I will play exactly the way rules are written in my campaign. My campaign world is simply not civilized and affluent enough to support magic item trading in general, that would be restricted to very few occasions during the story. Also, both with my story and my players' preferences in mind, magic items they find should be a little bit more mysterious.

So, my preliminary houserulings are these:
Merchants very seldom have magic items for sale, and it is even less known for them to want to risk buying them from adventurers. (Not much chance of them finding a buyer in my little world.)
On the other hand disenchant/reenchant might be given a slight boost, in that I might let it be a bit more powerful, but limit it so that the residue of the magic from the old item will spill over into the new one. In other words, if you take the power from a fire oriented item it can only give fire oriented power to another item. (This fits in real well with how my world works, and should make the game more fantasy and less numbers - I think.)
As for identifying items I will let them automatically identify everything that is up to their own level of power. The more straightforward powerful items they will also id after a few minutes of testing, others will take arcana checks. But. In no case will I promise them that the information that they have is the whole truth. (And in some cases it really will not be.)

And how does this post fit in with the general debate in the thread? I think we should remember that they make the way they think will be the most fun for the most people. And that as a DM it is sometimes a bit scary to give up control, but players can be trusted to want to have fun too, and not want to ruin the game. On the other hand, a strong story or world concept sometimes has to come first. So I might have to change a few things around, still trying to not be more restrictive than I absolutely need to in order to make the stories work.

(Sorry about the long post. Will try to hold back in the future. )

 

[D.Shaffer]

What I don't understand is, why they just didn't get rid of the bonuses at all? What is the point of them if they come automatically every 4 level.

Because when people play DnD, they expect to have +1 swords. It's one of those sacred cows that they felt they couldnt get rid of.

Now, if you have +1 Swords, you have to compensate for it in the math of the game. On the plus side, they actually SHOW us the math, so it's easy to house rule. If you want to automatically incorporate the bonus to the players? You know what the expected bonus is so you can compensate as needed.

 

[Amakar]

I must say, I like the changes

Things seem simpler and more elegent. The effects shown are decent enough to be used, yet not overwhelming.

I liek the fact that there's no more finagling with different pluses, so that the "+" value of a weapon is still relevant at higher levels. (Seriously, the +1 of a +1 vorpal sword was insignificant)

Also they make critical hits splashy again, with a little variety and bonus dice (which are fun). While people may criticize this as undoing the whole 'double crit' rule from 3.x, the fact that the dice are somewhat set and it is not multiplying your strength bonus makes a huge difference (The doubling of the strength bonus skewed the value of having a damage bonus and made having a damage penalty even worse)

I know people will say there is 6th level item: the +2 vicious dagger that does 1d4+2 on a regular hit and 6+2d12 on a critical. But really, that does seem like fun to me.

In Character, I'd probably name that dagger and describe some cool hits with it when I crit.

 

[Khaim]

Special: A holy avenger can be used as a holy symbol. It adds its enhancement bonus to attack rolls and damage rolls and the extra damage granted by its property (if applicable) when used in this manner. You do not gain your weapon proficiency bonus to an attack roll when using a holy avenger as an implement.

I'm pretty sure someone just lost a best with me, but I can't remember who.

Well, whoever lost your best was stupid. I even put a weapon like this in my test game- although said cleric only used it for a melee attack twice, so it was rather pointless. I think a paladin will get a lot more use out of such a weapon/implement.

 

[Mercule]

To diverge a bit, I really like the +lvl/5 scheme. It makes it pretty easy to eliminate magic items and just give a flat +1/5 lvls.

Even better, you can leave magic items in, but not worry about the plus, just the special abilities. I'll have to look at the full set of rules, but I'm very tempted to say that, all magic swords (for example) scale their bonus with the PC's level. That way, the ancestral weapon the dwarven warlord is always useful. Meanwhile, the tiefling fighter can continue to loot tombs for "better" weapons. A magic weapon ceases to be "+1" or "+4". It's just "+20%" and some toys.

That's really, really attractive as every PC IMC who uses a weapon has a signature weapon and most have custom crafted armor. I'm already trying to fiddle with scaling weapons and such.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I don´t know if it was already mentioned, but now 1/5 market cost makes also sense from a mechanical point of view, and not only common sense:

if find a fire dagger +X, you can live with it, or you can use a combination of disenchant and enchant to transfair the fire property to your great axe, which is then exactly a fire greataxe +X-1



edit: although of course a +2 weapon beeing worth 5 times as much as a +1 weapon is quite a steep price increase...

 

[keterys]

If you ditch all the +s, here's the suggestion I gave someone else for one possible interesting way to stagger things:

At 1/6/11/16/21/26, you deal +Xd6 on crits
2/7/12/17/22/27 +X attack
3/8/13/18/23/28 +X damage
4/9/14/19/24/29 +X AC
5/10/15/20/25/30 +X defenses

I'd also consider making a small # of additional powers available. For example, an extra level 1 encounter power at 2, level 2 utility power at 3, level 1 daily power at 4... and upgrade those every 5 levels to a power 4 levels higher, I'm guessing. I'd also consider maybe getting multiple utilities to make up for the fact that you get a lot more utility items than attack ones.