Kinda annoyed!

[irdeggman]

Most recently, we hit 19th level and had our next rest period where we could sell out crap and go shopping around. We were again limited to 9th caster level, so we had to commission and wait weeks just to get our +3 armor and whatnot upgraded.

Not unexected.

Magic armor is not supposed to be an off the shelf kind of thing, especially higher level enchantments.

Except this time, I had acquired a Ring of Spell Storing. Pretty much my entire wish list was for buff scrolls that our party does not have access to since we don't have a bard or cleric. Righteous Might, Divine Power, Greater Heroism. So I'm seriously annoyed when the DM tells me that I can't find any of those scrolls, and our party 'face' was off doing his own thing, so I couldn't have use of his gather info rolls, nor could I use my +20something knowledge local.

So if no one can cast those spells I assume you are relying on Use Magic Device to use the scrolls then.

Hell, it took us a week to find the only 2 Hero's Feast scrolls in all of Sharn. And that is a spell specifically available as a spell casting service.

No it does not say it is specifically available it says how much it costs if it is available - there is another entire section in the DMG on how to "tailor" a setting to taste and what level of items are available in the different population (economic sizes) of different cities.

Being a primary melee character with a +13 BaB may have been my own doing, obviously, but its seriously annoying to be in a game world with flying ships and CR 20+ monsters running around all over the place where nobody higher than level 9 seem to be found. Grrrrr!

Well per the adventure path by the time the adventurers get to the levels yours are at they are highest leveled PCs/NPCs around. That is "the heroes who can save the world".

With only arcane casters in the party (or druids) why didn't they take any craft item feats in the first place? Or pick better spells as their "free ones" when they advanced or better yet make better use of the spells books and such that are listed in the adventure path itself as "treasure"?

Eberron has some very good setting specific items you should have looked at more carefully (like everlasting wands - items that allow any arcane caster to cast certain (lower level spells) 1 or 2 times per day (including normally divine only ones - like cure light wounds - well excluding the bard's version)

There are also a lot of psionic based items too.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

"Buy everything they want" is a far cry from expecting better than CL 9 items at level 19. And if there is no party crafter, and the DM isn't nice enough to eventually give them the items they need from fallen enemies, AND you're opposed to letting them buy nice things...what IS a noncaster supposed to do at high levels, irdeggman? Commit sepukku and make a CoDzilla that can self-enhance?

 

[Jeff Wilder]

No spoilers, but I'll say this:

(1) Without level-appropriate magical gear, AoW is unbeatable. With level appropriate magical gear, it's an extremely tough win. (My group did not win. We got TPKed in the penultimate encounter.)

(2) While it's true that powerful magic items (and NPCs to make them) are sparse in Eberron, that's a reason not to set AoW there. It's just not a very good fit. If the DM decides to set AoW -- or any AP that goes to level 20, really -- in Eberron, the DM needs to make allowances.

(It is possible, BTW, that this DM is making allowances, but behind the screen. E.g., scaling down the BBEGs to something Eberron-appropriate groups can handle. If so, it would be good to be up front about it.)

 

[akbearfoot]

Don't get me wrong, I've been enjoying the game for the most part.

It's just the framework of the world has become cumbersome at this point. I don't think our characters are undergeared or not powerful enough. We've got a warforged monk/FotF. Shifter Druid/Moonspeaker, Pathfinder based Destinied Sorcerer, pathfinder based Rogue/Shadowdancer, and my character which is a Warblade/swordsage/Master of 9. 3 of us(myself included) are pretty much your average power gamers/rules lawyers, the rogue is the role-player and does little in combat, and the Sorc is a blaster who happens to be dating the DM...its amazing how many times we can hit the monsters for 100+ damage and they still dont die till the Sorc magic missiles them, lol.

But at the same time our characters are hardly min/maxed. Basically our characters are only allowed access to '1-book' outside core + ebberon stuff. I'm playing a martial adept, which means Bo9S is my book, so I can't take feats from PHB2, or the complete books. The druid has whatever the book with moonspeaker is, so he doesn't get to take spells from the SpC etc...Took me forever for the DM to allow me the exception of taking Improved Buckler Defense.

It just feels anti-climactic to me that we know we're about to basically go and try to take out something that sounds like a demi-god. Yet, we basically can't find more than basic stuff. For instance, Pearls of power have a caster level of 20, we can't find those at all. I don't know how much of the story is baseline and how much is edited to fit into Ebberron and our story, but we know about Kyuss, and we think we have to fight him/her/it after we defeat a vewy specific dragon.

 

[kitsune9]

I know in Eberron, it's supposed to be kind of low on magic because of the war, but that shouldn't stop you from creating characters with the appropriate crafting feats to go at it.

I ran Age of Worms and I can tell you it's a brutal game. I'm surprised that you guys made it as far as you did being as magic-depleted as you are. When I ran the campaign, we had three near TPKs.

 

[Alzrius]

Eberron doesn't even really have Gods so I wonder how the DM explained Kyuss.

It's easy to reskin Kyuss as a member of the Lords of Dust. In Dragon #337, Keith Baker's article "Eternal Evil: The Lords of Dust" gives stats for one of the lords (Sul Khatesh) and approximates her as being the equivalent of a lesser deity (divine rank 7), so having Kyuss be there isn't a problem.

There's also the information in the Age of Worms Overload to help with other parts of the conversion process regarding religion in Eberron.

 

[frankthedm]

the rogue is the role-player and does little in combat,

Rogues have that issue in AoW normally.

and the Sorc is a blaster who happens to be dating the DM...its amazing how many times we can hit the monsters for 100+ damage and they still dont die till the Sorc magic missiles them, lol.

If the DM is cheating to ego-stroke a favored player, there are bigger issues than magic item purchasing. Indeed, I'll recommend looking back and trying to remember how many times the sorcerer saved the party. A group in AoW without a cleric should be losing PCs regularly until someone winds up playing a cleric barring freakish luck.

 

[HRSegovia]

The availability of magical items for PCs could (and perhaps should) dictate the availability of magical items to the general populace of any given city. If PCs can buy whatever they want and have access to those items on the day of purchase, does that also mean that the average shop owner has a level in wizard and has an array of blasting wands under his counter in case a robber shows up? Does the average housewife have access to magical rings and garments that allow her to clean her house, prepare meals magically, illuminate the house at night, create warmth in winter, and keep out burglars with arcane locks and glyphs? Are her children playing with magical toys? Does the family dog eat out of a doggie dish that magically replenishes his food three times a day? If PCs have full and total access to magical items, that might (and perhaps should) be an indication of the overall availability of magical items in the campaign world.

This is why I RARELY allow shopping for magic items. Players' only get what I give them in game as loot or exciting finds. If they have a wishlist, well then that's a perfect opportunity to extend your campaign by having them quest for it.

 

[Crust]

This is why I RARELY allow shopping for magic items. Players' only get what I give them in game as loot or exciting finds. If they have a wishlist, well then that's a perfect opportunity to extend your campaign by having them quest for it.

I agree. I wouldn't even call it shopping in our case. My players are looking through the books, but it's assumed that their characters are making requests for items through NPCs who mentor or sponsor them. In some cases, those mentors are archwizards in charge of an academy of wizards, which makes purchasing items a bit more sensible. At such high levels, the PCs have several connections that allow them to sell their gear and spend their gold. Time is really only a factor when a player wants an item that must be made from scratch such as a specialized item, weapon, or piece of armor.

For example, after the Champions Belt module, the party half-orc ranger commissioned a +2 impacting ghost strike maul to be fashioned. He paid the gold as if he'd bought it in a store, and he waited for his hammer (about two or three weeks in-game if I remember). The party's NPC mentor swashbuckler/aristocrat took the ranger's gold (winnings from the games) and passed the payment on to one of his friends, a former adventuring wizard who is now a senior instructor at an arcane academy, where the maul was forged and enchanted. It wasn't until much later that the half-orc ranger met the wizard who crafted his signature maul "Dourstone," named after Ragnolin Dourstone of Diamond Lake.

In fact, most magical items my PCs carry have some major or minor story to tell about their acquisition, whether it's about the corpse the item was claimed from or the process in conceiving the item and awaiting its completion.

 

[Vegepygmy]

FWIW, I played Age of Worms from 1st to 20th (in Eberron, no less), and pretty much agree with everything StreamOfTheSky and Jeff Wilder have said.