Hey guys!
Fieari said:
Might want to consider some loss in the process of having intrinsic abilities. If you can get the exact same thing inherently, why use artifacts? Artifacts should grant a bit of extra boost to your power. Only a little bit, but still, something to make up for the fact that artifacts can be stolen.
This is sort of my opinion also. However, it does seem to penalise monstrous deities who may not seem capable of wielding artifacts.
On the one hand I have done away with one side of the arms race (in terms of the number of items/artifacts a deity can wield). But on the other hand, because I have retained the inherant power (simply within fewer artifacts) I have created another - that of artifacts themselves.
This problem wasn't present in 1st Edition, because the power of artifacts, while not 'capping out' where on a slower ascent.
One simple solution may be to not give immortals bonus powers for not wielding artifacts, instead giving them an ability score boost instead.
This ties into to an optional set of divinity rules I have been thinking about whereby an immortal only gains an ability score boost (and perhaps some standard spell-like abilities). The immortal then has to "buy" divine abilities using its ability score boost as a sort of 'divine collateral'.
e.g. Lets say a demipower gained a +12 boost to all scores but no divine abilities. You would expend 18 points of that to gain 3 divine abilities and retain only a +9 boost to each score.
This idea could also be useful for circumnavigating the 4 artifact rule. Imagine that each artifact also draws upon the immortals inherant power (in this case ability scores), reducing ability scores by an amount equal to the power of the artifact (a +6 sword would be -6, etc.).
This is only a crude example, but I think the theory is exciting. This could also be used to overcome the portfolio limitations.
Any comments? Questions?