Legand & Lore: Magic Items

[Riastlin]

I realize of course that everybody's mileage will vary and that every group is different. From my personal experience though, I've found that by and large, magic items in 4ed have been boring. When an item shows up that doesn't fit in one of the "Big Three" slots, the players just don't seem to care. I personally have found that the plethora of items expected by the treasure parcel system has simply made the items much more bland. Its no longer a big deal to find a magic item because its likely the party is going to find one roughly every other encounter.

When, on the other hand, magic items are rare though, the players get excited regardless of what they find. This is why I like the idea of divorcing items from character advancement. Its also why I've started to simply level up items in my home game. Eventually, the players get to the point where they more or less have the properties they want on their items (i.e. I have a Deathcut Armor). When this happens, they don't really want a different armor, even if at a higher bonus (its the properties, not the bonus, that makes the item special).

So I definitely agree that my next game will use the inherent bonus and I also really like the idea of making the items truly be rewards and not just a necessary part of character advancement. I think that 4ed made good strides with magic items in that the PCs are no longer as defined by the items they carry as opposed to their own abilities, but there is also still something just not quite right about them (again in my personal opinion).

 

[KidSnide]

Wow, a fantasy RPG where we can do away with magic gear and instead leave the real magic in dynamic, powerful, and arcane armaments with stories and challenges behind them.

I'm so glad 4e developed Inherent Bonuses and Artifacts for this style of play, and there is no real need for a system overhaul to implement this.

Hence why I love inherent bonuses, boons, and artifacts as an alternative to the eternal +n treadmill. It de-clutters the narrative, giving more space to more interesting topics, and it allows for some truly epic additions once in a while. More or less everything Monte wants. So, once again Monte makes a big deal out of problems where a solution already exists in the system framework.

I think there is a lot of room for improvement over the inherent bonuses system. As written, it's even less of a big deal for characters to find a minor magic item because it is almost immediately obsoleted by the PC's growing inherent bonus. Personally, I'd like "artifact" to not be my only option when handing out loot in a low-loot campaign.

Also, it's been my experience that the large number of daily item powers held by my PCs have a significant impact on their performance in one-time, high-danger encounters. It would be very nice if the rules provided some useful guidelines about how a party's expected power level changes if you give out different numbers of magic items.

Stepping back for a moment, I think 4e made massive advances over the 3e CR system in making it easier for GMs to predict the difficulty of encounters and maintain a balanced game. However, in order to do that, 4e also made a number of prescriptive guidelines about "how much magic is right" and "what types of encounters are appropriate". Monte's article (and the Mearls article before) strongly implies that WotC thinks they can make a significant advance beyond encounter level to predict how different groups of PCs will perform based on how many magic items they have and which optional rules they are using.

I think this would be another, potentially tremendous, advance because it would allow GMs to have the predictability of 4e, but with a greater flexibility to customize campaigns.

-KS

 

[Klaus]

I need to print this column out, so I can cuddle up to it and keep warm at night.

Seriously, I've wanted something like this for years (and I say that as a vocal fan of 3E and 4E both). I want magic items to have absolutely zero built-in connection to character advancement. I wand there to be exactly zero requirement that everyone have precisely the same number/value of items. And I want items to be interesting, by which I mean that no item should ever solely, or even primarily, add a numerical bonus to something. (And yes, that means I think that the idea of the +X items should be greatly curtailed, if not utterly eliminated.)

Dunno how possible it is to rewire either of the current editions to work that way, or if it would require the dreaded 5E, but I would weep grateful tears of holy water and Dos Equis if it happened.

This actually had me imagining 4e with the inherent bonuses option from Dark Sun as the default.

It *is* far easier to start from an assumption of 0 magic and build up from there than to start at average magic and have to decrease if you want 0 magic.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

The system needs to be robust enough to handle both styles without adding inherent bonuses...

actually i believe 4e does handle a difference of +2 to hit well enough... but it could handle it even better... if you lack magic items, your character is still good enough to handle most challenges... maybe you are effectively two levels lower, if you don´t have your +2 sword...
the worst offender however are defenses... PC defenses are usually low. If you lack your magic heavy armor, you don´t have anything left to protect you from nasty status effects.
I hope the next iteration of D&D will have a great Idea to make your stats count in defending... this is the one thing, no edition did right... 4e at least tried...

 

[DragoonLance]

Honestly to me the first third of the article seems more like a ode to sandbox games, take on the opponents you know you can handle and you get meh items, go to the "here be monsters" area and survive and get awesome items. The second part seems like he is pushing "wondrous items" over "+2 sword of whatever" to me. I would be quite happy with the concept of the majority of magic items being zany, wild things with the occasional magic sword of slaying so the fighting man doesn't get left in the dust by the wizard's spells. I could be reading too much of my own wishes into that though.

He does mention players questing for that mechanically awesome item they want, so I'm on board with that. As much as I love 4e, I think it's starting to have some of the Christmas tree effects of 3rd again mostly due to the Charops use of items to boost DPR. I know some people love doing that, but personally I would be fine with only a handful of magic items in the game, and mostly then to justify martial characters getting daily powers to those players who just can't deal with the concept of fighter dailies.

 

[Stalker0]

The other reason I want to remove magic pluses from the game is due to NPCs.

In 3rd edition, one of the big issues was in order for npcs to have a chance to compete against your party they need magical gear just like the pcs do.

Problem is everytime you kill an npc the party gains a big mass of swag. And it forces magic gear to be provided for balance and not as a reward.

4e fixed this by completely separating the rules for pcs and npcs. PCs need magic gear, npcs don't. However, to me that created a terrible flavor disconnect. Aka why does my PC dragonborn need a +5 sword at this tier and that dragonborn can fight while naked and be just fine?

To me the ultimate answer is to remove the pc reliance on magic gear. That way neither pcs nor npcs need it. Then magic can be provided as a true reward and not something to balance the power book.

 

[keterys]

While I'm neutral with respect to having +X items in the game, I don't see how it has constrained magic item creation. Seriously, a magic item's "plus" is completely orthogonal to whatever other properties it might have. Considerations like "this ability is too good for a +1 item" are more a function of the item's level (which I assume magic items will continue to have) than the actual plus.

It's a little more complicated than that, actually... ignoring rarity for a moment, let's say you have a +1 flaming sword. Level 5, lets you monkey with fire damage, has a daily. Okay, cool.

Now someone wants to make a _better_ flaming sword. Give it a couple extra abilities, call it 6th level, move on, right? Well, no... 6th level is for +2s. So... maybe it only shows up at higher levels? Call it... 15th? And have it stand there right next to the +3 Flaming Sword looking dumb? Or do you balance against the increased dice of damage on the flaming sword so that your item _could_ be called comparable?

Rarity helps a bit there, since you can maybe bump up rarity (ex: Flame Tongue), but you would actually gain a lot of leeway by instead taking out the enhancement bonus mechanic entirely.

Similarly, look at how awful your choices are at 1st/6th/11th/etc - Big 3 item design is very much constrained by the enhancement system.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

I'm all about adding more flavourful items to the game and removing the assumption that is bred by the christmas tree effect. 4e still has it - it's lessened, but still there. Inherent Bonuses reduces it further, and if you get creative, allows for flavourful items that don't care about what level they or their wielder are. That said, it would be nice if there were no math required, either inherent bonuses already baked in and invisible to the players, or simply not required at all.

I agree with some of Monte's points, but others have me worried about the direction things may be headed in with him in charge of R&D. I like that he would see the game rebalanced to assume no magic, but I get worried when he says that he then wants to use big plusses as a reward for taking on big challenges. That re-introduces all kinds of pitfalls and balance issues that 4e finally ironed out. Especially for the DM.

Like it or not, a reward for overcoming a challenge is still going to be an expectation in this game, especially if it still makes you "better." And characters becoming better from their items only means that his system has not done what he intended it to do - balance the game for no magic.

And that poll is pure fail. Binary thinking is decisive but not very representative. While I answered that I thought items should be a reward, I don't agree with the way he worded it in the article, but it was the closer of the two choices to my way of thinking. I picked it for that reason, and because the alternative is just worse, but I don't want it to be taken as a full endorsement of his idea, because as he wrote it, it's just as flawed as his poll.

 

[Scribble]

I'm with you so far Nemesis. I like the idea, but not if it moves us away from the idea of balance.

I would be onboard though if they worked out a system that indicated how adding X item to the game changes power level though... That way I could decide how to work the balance for my own games.

 

[the Jester]

If magic items make a character better then they need to be part of the character advancement track. Otherwise, it becomes impossible to balance the game.

I disagree. Earlier (1e and 2e) editions did just fine without making the items part of a pc's advancement and yet still having the items make a pc better.

A big part of the key is giving pcs the choice as to what challenges they wish to fight. If the 10th level party wants to keep fighting kobolds, that is fine; they won't advance quickly or get much treasure, but that's on them.

Balancing the game works just fine as long as the pcs are from the same campaign and face the same challenges as each other.

Also- why should the 10th level pc who never wants to fight a tough monster be as well-rewarded as the guy who goes balls out for the monsters with the big loot?

If magic items are not to be an assumed part of the advancement, then they can make a character more interesting, more adaptable, or more diverse, but they must not make the character simply better. So, no bonuses to hit, or skill checks, or defences. Damage from attacks must remain comparable to what the PCs can get using their own powers (and the magic item cannot increase the damage that the PC does with his powers!).

The goals expressed in the article (to make items more interesting, and to remove them as an assumed part of advancement) are good ones. But the proposed solution is awful - it just won't work.

I disagree with your bald assertion. Yes, it can be a problem is some games, or especially games where pcs from different campaigns jump in together. But it isn't necessarily a problem at all, and I have nearly 30 years of dming experience that proves it. (Even in 3e and 4e, pcs imc don't get to choose all their items or automatically get their slots filled with level-appropriate items.)