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Message: <blockquote data-quote="paradox42" data-source="post: 4145686" data-attributes="member: 29746">Without involving myself in the rest of these arguments, many of which look suspiciously familiar to me (as a longtime reader of IH threads), I do have to respond to this comment:This is an example of how playtesting can really, really help test a system's assumptions. Character optimizers (and to a lesser extent, any and all players with an inclination towards powergaming) invariably use as many items as they can to boost ability scores and saves. The rules for pricing magic items encourage this, because the cost for adding a second ability to an item which already does one thing is doubled. Therefore, by splitting your ability boost such that each item only boosts one ability score, and that is its sole ability, you get more bang for your gold piece.My players, who have all recently gained divine PCs, have been going out of their way to figure out how to split their bonuses among the four artifacts so as to maximize the value. Two of them were trying to get different types of bonuses to ability scores (i.e. beyond just an enhancement bonus) so the bonuses would stack. They eventually settled on not bothering so much with item boosting to ability scores, because they determined that the math was better if they used Epic spell buffs instead. They just use artifacts to massively boost Spellcraft, and then build on that. This is not to say they aren't still milking their artifacts for the highest possible ability boosts, they just aren't relying on them exclusively anymore.And on the topic of buffing...This has me curious: which powers? Using my own house rules for minimum HD compared with divine powers, wherein a Demigod needs to have 100 HD to reach the Demigod level, it would be difficult to do unless you use (and more to the point, abuse) Epic magic with the Fortify seed; I can't even imagine how a deity with only 30 hit dice is going to accomplish the same thing.</blockquote>

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