Items with Opposed Alignments

[candidus_cogitens]

What I want to avoid is a PC that has a half dozen magic items. It seems to me that your magic items should be few and precious.

My solution: give every magic item an alignment, as though it were a full-fledged intelligent item. If a PC starts collecting a whole bunch of magic items, eventually he is going to come across one that has an alignment that is opposed to one of his other items and he'll have to make a choice. This makes me feel less stingy about giving more powerful items, because it forces the players to make decisions about which they will keep, and which they will have to sell or give away.

If they get items with alignments that are opposed, then you can have some fun. Have them drop the item frequently, without knowing it. Or worse: have the item fail at a crucial moment, or do something dangerous. Whatever it takes to give the player a hint!

What do you think?

 

[Romotre]

Sounds cool. You could make the magic items fight with each other (i.e. Your Lawful Good +2 holy sword won't work unless you get rid of your chaotic evil rind of soul stealing)

You could also reward players for playing challenging alignments. If someone is playing True Neutral very well, hand out a nice TN item. If someone is playing another misinterpreted CN character, hand out conflicting items.

I hope it doesn't encourage players to around "testing" their weapons..."I guess the CDG on the sleeping homeless man worked, so this baby can't be LG. Check it off the list" (prob others too).

 

[Happiest_Sadist]

A paladin, by definiation couldn't use evil or chaotic items, so they would't have the same problems. Most charachter would have problems using items opposed to their own alignment. So a CE item won't replace the LG one, instead it won't get used by a good charachter.
Instead I suggest you use other affinities. EX. Your ring of fire resistance won't work for a traitor who wields a flaming sword.

Or you could make items take up multiple slots. EX. A ring of shocking grasp is actually 2 rings that spark from one to the other when they touch a foe. EX. Slippers of spider climbing have matching gloves which must be worn too.

 

[Chaylyn]

What I want to avoid is a PC that has a half dozen magic items. It seems to me that your magic items should be few and precious.

Then don't. Tell your players that you prefer to run a low magic campaign and stick to it. With some success I did that with my players and they never complained. Well, at least about that part, but that is a different story.

In addition limit the casters to one, maybe two, Creation feats and make it nearly impossible to get the required materials. Say if they want to make a cloak of charisma, they need a lock of hair from a nymph. etc.

 

[Valmur_Dwur]

Ok I know your talking about individual items but why not have it be that the pcs can't just walk around with a bunch of items hanging off them. You could make it so that after all the slots are filled they must divest themselves of all magic items before picking up another or they all explode, disappear, join together as a magic golem type fighter thingie, etc.... I don't know how you are with the identifing of magic items up front but IMC you'll spend alot of gold just to find out that the sword is a +1. Because I agree with you that pcs shouldn't have 3 rings, 2 rods, 5 weapons and a suit of armor. But I also beleive that is the DM's job to make sure that doesn't happen. Use thieves, mentors, friends, churches whatever it takes to keep the magic count down. The biggest failing I've seen amongst DM's is that we know that the item is just too cool for the (insert pc here) not to have and so we fudge its use. I've learned that it's better to use all the trick that the villian has to destroy the party than to wimp him out and have it be (Christmas at my house ). The parties I ran have always talked about the cool battles not the phat loot they got off what's his name

 

[da chicken]

You will need to be careful running a low-magic game. There are a large number of problems associated with it.

My basic low-magic rules are:

1. No Monks. Monks are designed to get abilities as fast as normal PCs get magic items. This will ruin your game at around 8th level.
2. Keep in mind CRs over about 4 or 5 take magic items into account, and continue to do so more and more as levels progress. This means 8th level PCs will often be challenged by CR 6 creatures. You may wish to consider increasing XP rewards if your players get annoyed with slow level progression (most won't care much, IMO).
3. Increase the caster level requirements for all item creation feats, and increase the creation costs. Alternately, remove item creation entirely.

For very low magic campaigns, as above plus:

1. Paladins and Rangers only get 1st level spell progression (no higher level slots or spells).
2. Paladins lose detect evil ability. Instead, they gain a supernatural ability which duplicates the effects of a phylactery of faith, except the ability only functions when the character spends an action contemplating his actions.
3. No clerics, wizards, sorcerers, or monks.
4. Modify the druid as follows. Remove wild shape and thousand faces. Change spell progression to adept, and change spell list to adept. Remove druidic spiritual oaths; they get simple weapons, light armor, and shields. Change hit die to d6. Remove Animal Companion, as they no longer have animal friendship. Remove alignment restriction. Rename class to "mage" or somesuch.
5. No prestige classes. None.
6. No metamagic feats.
7. No item creation feats except Scribe Scroll (caster level 6th+) and Brew Potion (caster level 6th+). Item costs double.
8. Rogues lose the Use Magic Device skill.
9. Bards lose Bardic Music, cure xxx wounds, and switch to the Druid's skill list. Then drop Knowledge(nature) for Knowledge(arcana). Rename the class if you want, but I couldn't think of anything.

Note that in the low-magic world no class is truely "bad" at combat. Even the "mage" has medium BAB and weapon and armor use. The main problem is NPC spellcasters, even dragons, all have to use mage spells. There are some other random changes that need to be made, like feeblemind works well on any spellcaster, not just arcane ones.

For one low-magic campaign, I allowed evil NPCs (only) to be Necromancers (Conjuration always barred). The class also got the option to become a Lich at 15th level, essentially for free (they just had to provide a phylactery). They were, by far and away, the most powerful and feared creatures. Especially since only paladins have turn undead. Too bad the campaign ended before it really got going.