Magic Item Compendium: The Diablo II gems have made their way to D&D!

[Nightfall]

Paper, scissors, rock.

One potato, two potato, three potato four?

Three French hens, two turtle doves, a partridge in a pear tree?

Beckett,

Sell some unused parts. I hear kidneys are good this year.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Like the Rod of Seven Parts, perhaps? (from what I've heard of it only; I have not played the module).

IIRC, all of the 1E artifact sets had additional bonuses granted when you got both the eye AND hand of Vecna, or more parts of the Regalia of Good (although I think that name was a 3Eism), etc.

Personally, I'm more curious about their reasoning for one of the more odd rules involved with these new crystals: Creating a +3 rapier and a +1 flaming keen rapier cost the same, but for some odd reason one cannot be enhanced to a Greater degree while the other can?

Probably because they want even the plain Jane magic weapons to be cooler, while the +1 flaming keen rapier is already pretty darn cool. There's little mechanical benefit into sinking lots of points into plusses at this point, which the gems will help combat.

 

[Nightfall]

*thought the reason for greater magic weapon was so those money poor wizards can actually HIT something when they start to run out of offensive spells...*

 

[Li Shenron]

I think the flavor of these gems (and set items) idea is great.

The rules for it, as usual, are unnecessary... Do you really need a new mechanic to tell you that adding a skull-shaped amethyst gives your weapon the ghost touch property? Why not just making the flavor part of the core rule for adding this property to a weapon?

New mechanics always introduce possible problems, loopholes etc. These gems have a fixed cost, so it's obvious that they don't follow the normal cost progression of D&D magic items, which is normally geometrical. The limit of 1 per item at least doesn't make it too powerful, but with the added (unprecedented) feature that you can remove a gem later when you're bored, there is no reason* not to get a certain property via a gem rather than in the core way. What else is this if not a little power creep?

*other than limited availability of gems, except that many gamers as usual will demand to find them on sale "in any city big enough"

 

[Kvantum]

If your players start critting/sneak attacking undead, then just start giving undead their Cha mod in extra hp per hit die. It'd essentially even out, AFAIK. Sure, it makes unintelligent undead easily (re)killable, but for your typical lich or vampire, that'll help keep them in the fight.

 

[Nightfall]

Kv,

That or just give them abilities that make sneak attacking impossible.

 

[Master of the Game]

Optional. It's all optional. If you don't like it, don't use it. Greater Magic Weapon isn't a problem. It doesn't work. How do I know? Because it talks about the fact that they have to actually have that bonus. If they don't put in some sort of little disclaimer that specifically says that xyz doesn't work, I don't care. Why do people always need every tiny thing spelled out to such a ridiculous degree? Seriously. Only one gem can go into something. Sure, Truedeath is great for some characters. BUT, as long as you have it in, you don't have another one in. Who knows what else will be in that book? If you don't want things switched out so easy, change it. If you can't change the rules, that's your own fault. Stop complaining about every little thing.

Um, right.

Because no one has the right to discuss things they don't like.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Bell, Book, Candle.

 

[Klaus]

I think the flavor of these gems (and set items) idea is great.

The rules for it, as usual, are unnecessary... Do you really need a new mechanic to tell you that adding a skull-shaped amethyst gives your weapon the ghost touch property? Why not just making the flavor part of the core rule for adding this property to a weapon?

New mechanics always introduce possible problems, loopholes etc. These gems have a fixed cost, so it's obvious that they don't follow the normal cost progression of D&D magic items, which is normally geometrical. The limit of 1 per item at least doesn't make it too powerful, but with the added (unprecedented) feature that you can remove a gem later when you're bored, there is no reason* not to get a certain property via a gem rather than in the core way. What else is this if not a little power creep?

*other than limited availability of gems, except that many gamers as usual will demand to find them on sale "in any city big enough"

A week ago I was talking about this with a friend. Since we like when characters have a cherished heirloom weapon that they stick to, we decided that some weapons aren't enchanted. A gem or somesuch embedded in it is. So with the correct ammount of cash and XP, you can remove the gem from a +1 ghost touch longsword and embed it in your nonmagical battleaxe, and turn it into a +1 ghost touch battleaxe.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

A week ago I was talking about this with a friend. Since we like when characters have a cherished heirloom weapon that they stick to, we decided that some weapons aren't enchanted. A gem or somesuch embedded in it is. So with the correct ammount of cash and XP, you can remove the gem from a +1 ghost touch longsword and embed it in your nonmagical battleaxe, and turn it into a +1 ghost touch battleaxe.

It sounds good.

In fact, wouldn't it be nice to have all weapon enchantments as special gems? Of course, you'd have to do something about the pricing (since a gem of flame weapon can't know whether it will be put onto a +2 weapon and cost 10.000 or a +3 weapon and cost 14.000) Maybe you need other (costly) stones to balance it all out:

Say, you have your basic flame weapon gem costing 2000 gp. If you put it on a non-magical sword, you don't need anything else, but if you want to put it on a sword with a +1 gem on it, you'll need 6000 gp worth of other magic gems to balance it out.

That would mean you can get the sword you want without waiting weeks for it (or, not getting it at all because you don't have the weeks to wait for the weapon to be finished).