Emirikol
Adventurer
We have all agreed by purchasing and playing this game however that a minimum threshhold of "realism" must exist. It's that threshhold I'm talking about, but I certainly know what you mean in your post.
jh
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Mearls said magic items could easily be dumped?
- Thread starter Emirikol
- Start date
We have all agreed by purchasing and playing this game however that a minimum threshhold of "realism" must exist. It's that threshhold I'm talking about, but I certainly know what you mean in your post.
jh
If you have the players add it in on their sheets, they do the math once, when they level. If you take it off monsters, you have to do it at least once every fight. If that's worth it to you, though, there's no problem there, but I would get burned out a little quicker each night due to the extra math.
armor
1/6/11/16/21/26 +1 AC
Weapons/Implements
1/6/11/16/21/26 +1 Att/Dmg
Neck
1/6/11/16/21/26 +1 Fort/Ref/Will
According to the basic "Magic Armor" etc from the DMG. If you want the players to have the extra bonuses of a Frost Weapon, throw it out to them, but you don't have to have much magic out there if you dont' want to.
1/6/11/16/21/26 +1 AC
Weapons/Implements
1/6/11/16/21/26 +1 Att/Dmg
Neck
1/6/11/16/21/26 +1 Fort/Ref/Will
According to the basic "Magic Armor" etc from the DMG. If you want the players to have the extra bonuses of a Frost Weapon, throw it out to them, but you don't have to have much magic out there if you dont' want to.
Amphimir Míriel
Explorer
The recipe for playing a "gritty" campaign (which is what I understand from your "realistic" comment) is:
1- The only race open to PCs is human... the other races are either monsters, or strange fey folk with alien motivations and intentions.
2- The only power source open to PCs is martial. Divine magic either doesn't exist or is very limited in scope, and Arcane magic is always evil.
The advantage of 4th edition here is that you can play a well-balanced party using only the martial power source.
3- Use Keterys' system of staggered additional bonuses to avoid awarding magic items to PCs.
4- Optionally, you could stick to playing on the Heroic and Paragon tiers. The reason why the tiers are explicitly named and separated is because WotC recognizes the fact that the game changes in focus a low, mid and high levels, and recognizes that some people like playing in some stages better than others. Me? I'd enjoy playing heroic tier games for years on end, but that's just me...
And... that's it basically. The beauty of this is that, with these simple steps you have turned D&D into a Sword&Sorcery, GreyMouser/Conan style game.
In previous editions doing this was much more complicated (and the best approach was to use a different set of rules, like Mongoose's Conan RPG or Iron Heroes). In 4th edition this style of playing is available [almost] out of the box.
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Obryn
Hero
Were I to go with this, I'd still have magic items and the like. However, I'd only use the special effects with them - not the bonuses.
So, a Magic Sword would still deal extra damage on a crit, but wouldn't add to-hit or damage. A flaming sword would still be on fire. And so on...
-O
So, a Magic Sword would still deal extra damage on a crit, but wouldn't add to-hit or damage. A flaming sword would still be on fire. And so on...
-O
Actually if you do that you end up giving more bonus crit damage than the standard Magic Weapon does. Level 1 and every 5 levels after for a max of +6d6 on crit is the standard.
This will end up with your PCs being woefully short of hitting appropriate level challenges. Which might be your plan, I dunno.
keterys
First Post
My suggestion did include this (and all the rest).
It's still decently less powerful than having magic items, since the extras really do add up. Like Cloak of Survival, Rings, Titan's Belt, etc.
But it's close enough.
