New article Design and Development Article on Magic Item Slots

[The Little Raven]

You're assuming A and B are true, which makes the conclusion suspect. I want to see these 'clearly stated' links, please

I'm not going to link you pages of text from a book you refuse to buy. Read Worlds & Monsters if you want the details about how monster rules are changing to be separate from PC rules, and NPCs will be using those rules. Using the PC rules for NPCs makes the DM do more work than it's worth, and they've addressed that.

 

[Rechan]

I'm not going to link you pages of text from a book you refuse to buy. Read Worlds & Monsters if you want the details about how monster rules are changing to be separate from PC rules, and NPCs will be using those rules. Using the PC rules for NPCs makes the DM do more work than it's worth, and they've addressed that.

That doesn't address B.

Does W&M say, specifically, "NPCs will have less magic to function than PCs"?

 

[The Little Raven]

Eh?

I don't want to remove magic items. I just want to reduce the number of magical items a character has at one time. As a DM, I'd rather throw the Primary items away and leave only the secondary items. But I can't do that, because the reverse is not only assumed, but Built Into the Math.

I think you're still missing what I'm saying.

You don't want to give your fighter a magic sword. That's cool. Instead, give him a +3 bonus to attack at level 11 (where he would normally have a +3 sword), and you don't need to worry about actual magic items. If you replace the "primary magic items" with level-based bonuses to certain things (or made them rewards from side quests for "training" and whatnot), you keep your balance just fine and can focus more on sprinkling them with the "secondary items" you want to give out.

 

[Zimri]

@Zimri- they don't directly affect the math in a huge way. But if you think gloves that help attacks and belts that temporarily raise strength won't matter, I suspect you are in for a surprise.

I suspect they won't make a HUGE difference. I suspect this because we have been told so

These items don’t have enhancement bonuses. That makes them essentially optional. You could adventure with no items in your secondary item slots and not see a huge decrease in your overall power. Take what looks cool, but don’t worry about having empty slots.

Will it be completely broken by players over on the char-op boards who like to do such things, some to actually see play with and some as mere intellectual enterprises ? Surely the answer is yes. But not all players min/max, not all DMs will allow it, or believe it necessary.

The long and short of it from my point of view is at the end of the day the amount of items DIRECTLY affecting the math has been pared way down. The "flavour" pieces have been restricted by what slot can have what effect. This SEEMS to me like a fine way of limiting the insane boni available in 3.X which should lead to more versatility of options.

 

[Dayen]

It's not the news I wanted (been hoping that +# mechanics had gone the way of the dodo, frankly), but it's not bad news necessarily.

If I end up running 4E I imagine my particular outlook on magic items will be "sparing, and little of the "plus" variety and more of the "of goodness" variety." If it doesn't scale properly down when everyone's limited by lack of pluses then there's an inherent flaw in the mechanical design of the system that needs to be addressed.

I'm not seeing it just yet, but admittedly there's not enough mechanical information available for me to analyze.

 

[Rechan]

I think you're still missing what I'm saying.

You don't want to give your fighter a magic sword. That's cool. Instead, give him a +3 bonus to attack at level 11 (where he would normally have a +3 sword), and you don't need to worry about actual magic items. If you replace the "primary magic items" with level-based bonuses to certain things (or made them rewards from side quests for "training" and whatnot), you keep your balance just fine and can focus more on sprinkling them with the "secondary items" you want to give out.

And you seem to be missing that I think I shouldn't have to do that myself.

I expected to see that in the core rules, not that I had to do it as a House Rule, based on what the designers said, and based on SWSE.

 

[The Little Raven]

Does W&M say, specifically, "NPCs will have less magic to function than PCs"?

It states that monsters will be built to function against PCs of equivalent level, and they do not use PC rules (which include magic items... and we noted in the critical hits article that monsters aren't getting bonuses to crit from magic items). Making monsters (and thus NPCs, since it's been stated that NPCs and monsters will use the same rules) require magic items to balance out wouldn't work with things like gryphons and dragons (who aren't wielding +3 flaming longswords), so all monsters will be balanced to function without the need for PC tools (classes, items, etc), but that doesn't prevent you from adding them yourself.

 

[The Little Raven]

And you seem to be missing that I think I shouldn't have to do that myself.

Sucks that you have to do that, but I think expecting D&D to abandon magic items in any of it's balance equation was a bit naive, especially since we've been getting hints about still having +1 swords and the lot for a while now.

I expected to see that in the core rules, not that I had to do it as a House Rule, based on what the designers said, and based on SWSE.

Can you point me to what quotes made you think you'd be able to run without any magic items (at all) without house rules? To be clear, I'm genuinely curious to see it.

 

[Rechan]

Sucks that you have to do that, but I think expecting D&D to abandon magic items in any of it's balance equation was a bit naive, especially since we've been getting hints about still having +1 swords and the lot for a while now.

SWSE and Iron Heroes managed without magical items being necessary.

Can you point me to what quotes made you think you'd be able to run without any magic items (at all) without house rules? To be clear, I'm genuinely curious to see it.

I addressed this further up the thread, with regards to the Christmas Tree effect.

 

[The Little Raven]

SWSE and Iron Heroes managed without magical items being necessary.

Magic items in Star Wars aren't really setting appropriate (unless you want to delve into Force artifact stuff, which is all pretty much optional), and Iron Heroes is supposed to be designed for low-magic/no-magic games, right? This is a difference of design intention, rather than execution.

I understand you want to be able to open your books, start up a "no magic item" game and not have to do any legwork yourself, but that's a point in which you and I (and the designers) differ.

I addressed this further up the thread, with regards to the Christmas Tree effect.

And as far as I can see, the Christmas Tree effect is basically gone, since I was forced to purchase a plethora of magic items to stay competitive, and trying to make up for their lack by modifying the game was a lot of work without a whole lot of advice (since the wealth-by-level guidelines are pretty abstract and do nothing to tell you what kind of attack, AC, ability score, or saving throw bonuses I should be shooting for). Now, I can more easily remove the need for magic items, since "what bonus at what level" is more easily quantified and reduced to a maximum requirement of 3 slots.