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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Petrosian" data-source="post: 447463" data-attributes="member: 1149">[/B]</blockquote>While i am not sure how the demographics fit in, since you seem to think it is important, our group has an average age of over 40. Two in the fifties, one siginficatly so, three in early 40's, and two in the later 30's. For one of the 50's, this is her first role playing experience. For one of the 30's he is mostly familiar with computer rpgs, but the rest have been gaming since early 80s.I am the GM, though three, no four, of them have GMed, two fairly often.We use email and a campaign BBS to handle all sorts of downtime stuff as well as non-combat interactions and investigatory stuff. The only thing we wont do via bbs between sessions is action stuff, as that does not translate to non-sequential responses very well.In my game, when a player wnats a custom item, i ask myself, "is this special." A ring of iceballs (like fireball but cold) is not special just because it was not listed in the PHB/DMG. It was not special in my game before or after energy substitution was official. Some "obvious deivatives" i do not give any sort of special consideration. The "unlimited uses of standard PHB spell" category of items fits well into the "not special at all" category for me.My players tend to need more than "i thought up an item not in the DMG" to feel they have done something special.There is little to no difference in my game between custom and already in print items. if they exist, if they make sense, if they are obvious, you are probably not the first to do it. My gang has found more CLW wands in enemy hands than they have made.Unique items are not uniwue, in my games, if every tom bart and mary third level cleric could make one for pocket change.You and i seem to be in agreement on this. CLW is for post combat.This is what all doesn't make sense...if the thing is not useful in combat, thenthe fact that the enemy can "easily" prevent it from being used in combat is trivial, not significant.You mention tipping the scales in a close fight. Well, this makes NO sense.IF the situation is so dire that stopping you from curing an average of 5 hp per round for 1-4 rounds BY THE ITEM is important, why do i not just throw a fireball and eo more damage right now? if 5 hp is important for you to cure right now, won't 15 hp or so from a fireball be more critical? Why should i use a third level spell to get a CHANCE to prevent you from curing 5 hp when i could throw a magic missile and do about 10 hp in damage with a first level spell."Gee, freed is near dead so i will cast cure light wounds to give him 1-8+1."Enemy mage: "Hmmm... i can throw dispel magic and maybe stop the 1d8+1 OR i can throw a mm spell and cause him 6-15. Which one should i do? hmmm...."The big difference for me would be that it is frequently the case that the time frame the party has to work with is driven by outside elements, not their choices. The fact that my NPCs are off doing things to and so the PCs who want to stop them need to not just "take a day" by hitting the rest button means that the time it takes to recover is critical. At the level my PCs are at now, its a rather trivial thing to get out of dodge, non-combat, with teleports. The issue is "how long do we have? How many people are we letting get killed? and so on." Were they are out on "for fun" stuff, like raiding a lost tomb for loot, ala the typical smash and grab thing, then the timetable is in their control and the difference is minimal. That is the exception rather than the norm for my games. My games are mostly event driven. The players have learned that the NPCs are doing things and situations change. After the first time or two they "delayed to wait for our magic items to get ready" and they arrived to find their initial info was now out of date and the situation has changed (usually for the worse but in at least one case someone else came along and dealt with the issue) they learned not to think in stagnant situation "hit the rest button" mode.One of the most interesting series of sessions we had was one where on another plane over a 36 hour period they met, encounter fought or dealt with about seven serious challenges. The situation had them and several other groups exploring and looking for stuff and so it was sort of a race. They could have stopped after the mages were low, but that meant letting others, including unknown potential others, definitely get ahead. By the end of the series, they were well past their normal spells, even the sorcerer was tapped, and this had led them to begin relying on items and spell batteries (wands and scrolls) as well as finding other ways. it showed them some of the advantages of spell batteries (if you never play after running low on spells then wands have little use.) It also highlighted the fighter/barbarian/rogue players as their "endurance" and ability to keep producing results all day long proved highly valuable. The last fight saw the mages using items and remaining spells primarily to keep the fighter supported, indirect action, because they were out of direct action.it was an enjoying series of runs.While i have seen plenty of games where the action is drivien and controlled by the PCs, often simply by greed, and "hit the rest button" was commonplace, i have rarely found them to my liking. We differ. (even given the fact that i feel the idenfitying rules are ludicrous and woefully inconsistent with their world. How can you have a magic commerce world where you cannot identify the commodities wih any relaibility?)Ok this one is easy.Prices are ALWAYS set based on an existing scale. value is purely comparative.You have gobs of official pre priced items in the books. That is your "baseline" and other things should be priced in relation to them.So, if the new item of undetermined price is compared and comes up too favorable, one could ecide the baseline is off, but thats rather silly. You are trying to set the value BY COMPARISON to the published one (or the ones already in use in the campaign.) That means you adjust your GUESSTIMATED price to fit the baseline ones.If you went out today and built a modest six cyclinder sedan and when ready to go to market you estimated its price at $500,000 and then looked around and saw all those other sedans were 20-30k, would you leap to the conclusion that they are all too cheap, or that your estimate was off?Depending on the character cannot be used to determine price when price and power are supposed to be the issue. My sorcerer would have paid a lot more for a magic mouth item than a fireball item, but thats for personal reason, not a measure of potency.Assuming the recommended wealth levels, and remembering that wealth levels are a part of balance, the amounts for 2000 vs 750 at a pop are insignificant after just a few levels. items priced under 3000 are commonly available" and most small to mis sized locales can provide a 2000 gold item. if you use costom rules for these factors, and deviate significantly from these settings, then that will obviously skew things.its relatively trivial. instead of being assed around,the one guy using it walsk around. All this does is force the party to include some classes they may or may not want, in order to gain benefit from the item.flavor only. All it will do is again force character decidions... i will play a cleric of such and such cuz i need to get one of those headbands."A ring of regeneration which only heals at a much slower rate and is significantly restricted (only damage taken while wearing the item) so it cannot be passed around is much more expensive.All that said...if the definitions of your campaign are such that out of combat healing (OOCH) is unimportant, which it seems you have stated is the case, then that element changes drastically the value of already existing OOCH. in such a campaign, CLW wands would be much less powerful, and should be much cheaper than, say a shield wand. the ring of regeneration should be rather trivial as well. It should be perhaps cheaper than the use-act CLW item, although not much since the difference (heal one guy vs everyone AND heals in hours or days as opposed to minutes) are UNIMPORTANT. (if OOCH is irrelevent, then it doesn't matter whether its tomorrow or 5 minutes. Everyone gets healed byfore the next fight. Who cares if it is by ring or by headband or by spells?)In my games, OOCH is vitally important. hence, in my games, such an item would be unbalancing and ridiculously low priced at 2k.[/QUOTE]

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