Naked Adventurers (no, it's not what you think)

[rounser]

the rich rich rich gnoll

I'm imagining a gnoll reclining on a throne whilst puffing on a cigar, with Mr T gold chains and paws encrusted with bejewelled rings, intoning to the adventurers, "It don't mean a thing if you aint got the bling bling," just before he orders his gold golems to attack...

 

[Grommilus]

the whole good magic item'd 9 fighter vs no magic item'd 16 fighter, well, it depends on the fighter. If the fighter is designed with as a one hit kill machine as is my magic time free sultan of smack
http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=10188&pagenumber=6

then he wins cause he's made to kill in one round. But if he's designed differently, then the 9 fighter often has a better chance of winning because he has a higher ac and does more damage a hit, sinificantly so. I'd say for fighter type characters, equipment means alot, the lighter your armor and less you rely on weapons, the less equipment means to you. So a wizard is relativly good with no equip, but a fighter gets ownzored =). btw, other entries in the sultans of smack are good examples of why not to let people pick and choose thier magic items. (and my examples are examples of broken rules, no magic needed =)

Grom

 

[Belen]

Magic Items

Magic items can be a problem for any game whether you give out too many or too few. I recently had a friend who GMed for the first time. At low level, he gave us very few items; howver, we started to monty at higher levels.

In my opinion, no magical items should ever be thrown away for a better item. By their very nature, magic items are special. My solution is simple, once a character gets a masterwork item or +1 item, then they may then "buy" upgrades. Therefore, the money that the earn goes to enhancing items. If you prefer not to do dungeon crawls to get a lot of cash, then a lordship or a business can provide the ticket. A lordship provides an income as easily as a weaponsmithy.

As a GM, you control the PCs wealth, and if they want to particulat trait or ability for a weapon, then they have to save for it. This means that a character can never become instant Uber by scoring a cool item. Over time, the PC adds to her stock and until they have an Uber item, but by that time, they will be high level.

Also, this cuts down on having to roll magic item tables etc, which can stop game play at some points.

Dave

 

[Forrester]

Re: Magic Items

Magic items can be a problem for any game whether you give out too many or too few. I recently had a friend who GMed for the first time. At low level, he gave us very few items; howver, we started to monty at higher levels . . .

No offense, but this strays from the topic, and isn't connected to the central issue.

The question isn't how or whether the GM should control magic item distribution. The question is whether we can get an estimate of how much said control affects character class balance and monster CRs. Given that a fighter's abilities in combat seem to be, at high levels, almost completely dependent on his magical gear, this question is an important one.

 

[Darkness]

Side note: In the party I'm DM'ing, there's a 7th level fighter/ranger/barbarian combo with a 22 strength and a +1 Greatsword. Sent him up against a demon with damage reduction 20/+2. What's scary is that between Bull's Strength, Rage, and Power Attack, he was whupping the guy, even after the first 20 points were taken off. Assuming he power attacks for only 5, it's 2d6+1+15+5 = 28pts per hit. Ah, with Bard's song, 29pts per hit. Even at only 9pts per hit after damage reduction, it was enough to gradually mow demon-boy down. Ouch!

I once saw a 1st-level orc barbarian PC (Str 18 + 4 for orc + 4 for rage) kill an 8-HD barbazu using nothing but a nonmagical greataxe, barbarian rage and Power Attack (that the two other - also very low-level - PCs held the barbazu grappled helped matters, of course ). Without that crit that he rolled (damage 3d12 + 39; he rolled something like 12, 10, 10 on the 3d12... ), things might have worked out a little differently, of course.

 

[Aaron L]

He power attacked for a whopping 1 extra damage!

 

[mmadsen]

To put it another way, would you be shocked that a Call of Cthulhu d20 1st level character with a machine gun could win half of the time against a 5th level character who was only armed with a pistol?

No, but you shouldn't consider a 1st-level Expert with a machine gun CR 1/2 and a 5th-level Expert with a pistol CR 4.

 

[Vaxalon]

Ultimately, I think the extreme variability in the amount of gear that a person has makes guaging this kind of thing impossible.

 

[Kugar]

Ok I'll try to be more helpful this time. I have had some experience with unbalanced treasure/PCs and this is what I came out with:

1) Find the CR based on levels/templates/HD.
2) Find the CR that should have the amount of stuff the PC/NPC has.

Apparent CR = AVG(Hit Die CR + Item CR)
-- Items account for 1/2 the CR of a standard humanoid creature.
-- This works best when the Hit Die CR and Item CR are within 4

At low levels this is not a big deal (one member of the party CR3 compared to CR6 for another because of items, who cares) At high levels the toys mean a LOT. M's Disjunction = a swing of 10 CR.

I would call a nakked Ftr15 a CR8 - good fight with a single Ftr9.

Remember to calculate Item CR based on DMG costs even if you changed the costs of magic Items or you will over-power them with brutes who's CR is derived almost solely from Hit Dice

 

[Ristamar]

Ultimately, I think the extreme variability in the amount of gear that a person has makes guaging this kind of thing impossible.

My thoughts exactly. There are far too many variables (feats, spells, magic items, class(es), attributes, levels, supernatural/spell-like/extraordinary abilities, inherent weaknesses, etc.) to even put forth a sensible guess based on a predetermined formula. It's probably best to simply adjudicate on a case-by-case basis, and in critical, forseeable scenarios, run some test cases before finalizing the encounter.