Gold or Silver Standard?

[Wulf Ratbane]

What would be preferrable is something that lets you leach the power out of an existing magic item to fuel the creation of something else.

I loathe this idea. (Nothing personal.)

Just as I don't like players looking at +1 swords and seeing gold pieces, I don't want them looking at +1 swords and seeing, "Magic item battery."

What I'm really getting at is there needs to be a way to transform unwanted items into wanted items.

I agree with you. It definitely needs to be addressed.

Yet I think the 4e approach is more likely to be, "Let's have fewer unwanted items." I think this translates into fewer items overall.

However, I also think that's doomed to failure. I have no solution. :\

 

[A'koss]

The sale of magic items makes SENSE however. The PC's are likely to end up with something they cant use, particularly since fighters are even more tied to what type of weapons they use now. What happens when they try and sell that +2 pick no one wants? Does the universe suddenly grind to a halt as demi-powers convene on the auction in an effort to snatch away such an unbelievable item (despite magic items not being THAT rare)? You need guidelines for trading magic items, and commissioning their creation.

Like myself and a few others have already suggested - create a special economy for mid-level on up magic items. Powerful magic can only be bought with other magic. You don't like that +2 pick? Trade it in. Want to buy or comission something new? Gold can buy low level items, but higher level magic is worth more than gold to the owner.

You have to purchase it with ingots of magical metals like adamantine, mithril or abyssal steel. You sell exotic body parts of powerful monsters - the primary eye of a beholder, a demon's heart, dragon scales. You trade in imprisioned souls (if evil), bottled hope and other esoteric commodities.

That frees up large sums of gold for other uses in the game.

Yeah, the 8 guys who really want to just play Warhammer might care. Most modern players dont give 2 farts about counting their flour mill's units per season. That playstyle has greatly diminishes since the old days.

What no D&D players out there want to build a castle, raise armies and wage wars? No players out there who want to start their own guild? No players out there who want their own mansion and to live in luxury when not butchering the BBEG du jour?

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

From what we know however, thats not the direction they are going. They indicated that a spear fighter, a sword and board and a 2 handed axe fighter will all have a very different feel, and draw upon different powers. Unless the fighter can easily swap their specialties, weapons outside their focus wont do them much good.

But we don't know if the spear fighter will be different from the longspear fighter, or the (long)sword and board fighter is different from the (bastard)sword and board fighter, or even if the greataxe fighter is different fromt he greatsword fighter.

From what I have seen, I believe 4e will be balanced around styles, and the styles around broader weapon properties (including but not necessarily limited to Type).

I really think the idea of a 1st level fighter locking himself into a specific weapon (ie, Weapon Focus: Longsword) is just bad design.

 

[GlassJaw]

I loathe this idea. (Nothing personal.)

Just as I don't like players looking at +1 swords and seeing gold pieces, I don't want them looking at +1 swords and seeing, "Magic item battery."

You know my feelings on this. It's not ideal but I definitely think it's the lesser of two evils. I'd much prefer this if it eliminates the need to devote an entire game session to accounting every once in a while.

Yet I think the 4e approach is more likely to be, "Let's have fewer unwanted items." I think this translates into fewer items overall.

However, I also think that's doomed to failure. I have no solution. :\

This hints at one of my biggest problems with 3ed. At higher levels, the "bad guys", even the mooks, have magic items. So at the end of any given adventure, the PC's are hauling around tons of +1 weapons, armor, rings of protection, etc. They are needed to give the enemies a boost to provide a challenge for the PC's but the PC's have no need for these items, other than to pool the funds they get for selling them and convert them into items they do want.

Why not just eliminate the middle man?

"Leeching" the magic energy from items is kind of wonky I'll admit but I think it's feasible with some restrictions. Maybe a system where you can convert magic items into craft points that can be used to create new items later on.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

At the risk of getting off topic a bit, for what I consider a pretty good example of a medieval economy, watch Rob Roy (1995). (It's also a kickass movie in its own right, of course.)

You get to see an economy in action from peasant to noble. The peasants deal in live animals. The nobles deal on the strength of their signature (signed notes) and their wealth is contained primarily in land.

Another great example of this is in The Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson, set in the same time frame as Rob Roy. One of the overarching themes is the way that new systems of handling money are coming into being at the end of the 17th century. Nobles have to live on the power of their credit because they simply can't get a hold of any coins! Spain had a monopoly on them, essentially.

Now I have this image of PC's signing promissory notes using their magic items as collateral.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

This hints at one of my biggest problems with 3ed. At higher levels, the "bad guys", even the mooks, have magic items. So at the end of any given adventure, the PC's are hauling around tons of +1 weapons, armor, rings of protection, etc. They are needed to give the enemies a boost to provide a challenge for the PC's but the PC's have no need for these items, other than to pool the funds they get for selling them and convert them into items they do want.

The implication is that 4E will do away with this particular problem, which will go a long way towards solving the overall problem. I've spent way too much of various game sessions selling off low-level magic, almost all of it +1 weapons or armor or rings of protection. Get rid of that one problem, and the rest doesn't seem as egregious. My run-of-the-mill NPC's rarely had magic items in 1st or 2nd edition, and I didn't feel like my game suffered for it, and I never had to go through the same treadmill of selling/buying of magic.

 

[Dausuul]

Do you do that at 1st level, or do you accumulate the power you need first?

More power = bigger good deeds.

I think you had sort of a knee-jerk reaction there to the phrase "accumulate power."

I don't know about Mustrum, but my knee-jerk reaction is to the statement that one adventures TO accumulate power.

If my character is adventuring to accumulate power, I'm usually playing an evil character. Most of my characters adventure to do good deeds or for personal reasons. Accumulating power is a by-product of adventuring, not the explicit goal. (Unless you count "get the pieces of the ancient artifact together so you can use it to save the world" as accumulating power, but even then the accumulation is incidental to the larger quest.)

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

You know my feelings on this. It's not ideal but I definitely think it's the lesser of two evils. I'd much prefer this if it eliminates the need to devote an entire game session to accounting every once in a while.

Yes, but a choice of two evils assumes that all other choices have been ruled out. That's simply not the case here.

This hints at one of my biggest problems with 3ed. At higher levels, the "bad guys", even the mooks, have magic items. So at the end of any given adventure, the PC's are hauling around tons of +1 weapons, armor, rings of protection, etc. They are needed to give the enemies a boost to provide a challenge for the PC's but the PC's have no need for these items, other than to pool the funds they get for selling them and convert them into items they do want.

If the PCs have fewer magic items, the bad guys will have fewer magic items. Again, we already know that 4e is reducing the number of magic items.

What universal law says that all magic items found by the party must either be useful or easily converted to some useful currency? I missed that part.

Why not just eliminate the middle man? "Leeching" the magic energy from items is kind of wonky I'll admit but I think it's feasible with some restrictions.

Why not allow all PCs the ability to physically leach the magic out of items on the fly? For hit points or experience points or Action Points? There are all sorts of really wonky, really Gamist options out there. The sky's the limit.

That extraordinarily Gamist approach, that reduces magic items to just another resource or currency, is quite a surprise coming from you. You're basically just booting the problem, throwing up your hands, and accepting the path of least resistance-- which is almost always going to be the most Gamist.

Why does the solution have to be the one that most debases the "magic" in magic items?

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

I don't know about Mustrum, but my knee-jerk reaction is to the statement that one adventures TO accumulate power.

If my character is adventuring to accumulate power, I'm usually playing an evil character. Most of my characters adventure to do good deeds or for personal reasons. Accumulating power is a by-product of adventuring, not the explicit goal. (Unless you count "get the pieces of the ancient artifact together so you can use it to save the world" as accumulating power, but even then the accumulation is incidental to the larger quest.)

So given the choice between defeating a lich, or defeating a handful of goblin bandits, what does your 1st level character do first?

Does he choose the path of greater good or greater power?

 

[GlassJaw]

That extraordinarily Gamist approach, that reduces magic items to just another resource or currency, is quite a surprise coming from you. You're basically just booting the problem, throwing up your hands, and accepting the path of least resistance-- which is almost always going to be the most Gamist.

Why does the solution have to be the one that most debases the "magic" in magic items?

Because with the current state of 3ed, it's the path of least resistance.

Now 4E may drastically limit the dependence of magic items or suddenly cure players or their desire to "upconvert" but until we see it in play, we don't know.

So using 3ed as we know it, changing magic items into a variant currency that's easier to manipulate is the easiest to implement, and it's pretty much how the game is played already.

The concept that players will leave magic items behind, even if they are are little or no use to them, is a losing battle in my opinion. It won't happen.

So if players are going to lug around everything they find, either strictly enforce encumbrance rules or real-world economy (good luck with that), or reduce the need for accounting. I vote the latter.

I guess you could suddenly say that no towns in the "world" have enough cash to purchase magic items that the players are trying to sell but that's nor really fun for the players.