On magical items

[Tehnai]

There's been a lot of noise on this board about magical items, the christmas tree effect and so on. I see a lot of people saying that they would love to bring back the uniqueness of magical items to D&D, how they miss the sense of wonder that would bring finding a magical sword back in the 80's, where every +1 seemingly made the biggest difference in the world.

Then third edition came in with it's tight maths and concern for encounter balance, and treasure per level and so forth, making it nigh impossible for a GM to run a campaign with low magic without house-ruling the game in some way. 4e followed the same path, but was even more transparent about it.

Thus, the way to remove reliability on magical items (especially the few "Necessary" ones, such as 4e's weapon/armor/amulet trio) is to remove them from the combat maths as much as possible. In my mind, this would best achieved by removing non-situational to-hit modifiers from magical weapons, non-situational AC modifiers from armor and any non-situational modifiers from amulets

So a +1 sword would deal extra damage, which is always fun, but still rely on the wielder's skill at swinging it. It should also have something cool about it, such as providing light or what-have-you, but let us stay on the subject of numbers. Such a magical weapon could still give special modifiers to attack rolls, but only situationally, and thus not need to be part of the design math (let's say a +1 Assassin's blade would have a bonus to hit when attacking a target in the back, or a +2 Orc Slayer's Sword would get a bonus to hit against, obviously, orcs)

Armor would have to take a similar path in the name of balance, maybe making the bonuses damage resistance instead.

In short, the key to interesting magical items would be, in my humble opinion, to find a way to remove them from the designers calculations when building the game's system, and add them after the rest is built.

Also, I want a Horn of Bubbles in the core books.

 

[ferratus]

I think for a magic item to feel like a magic item, it has to change the way your character plays. In other words, give access to a power that he isn't supposed to have. By doing this, you give the player a chance to break out of the restrictions of his race/class and have a new way to overcome challenges.

In 3e (and especially) 4e, you generally only got boosts to existing abilities. Therefore magical items became equipment to boost your build, rather than a special treat that allowed your character to be strange or wierd.

Even if you take skill and ability score boosting items in 2e, the best ones gave you powers you could never get on your own. If you wore gauntlets of ogre power, you knew you were the strongest man in the world. A cloak of elven kind made you nearly invisible (certainly as invisible as any thief or ranger) rather than just giving you an incremental 10-20% bonus to a particular skill.

Of course, my argument falls apart when you think about +1 to +5 weapons, which are nothing but an incremental bonus. But then, I can't say I've ever seen someone excited about a +X anything that didn't have flames or lightning shooting out of it.

 

[Tehnai]

That does make a lot of sense, but I still feel like an important aspect is to remove it from the maths as much as possible, eliminating the bonuses to attack rolls.

The reason why I would keep the +X bit is only for iconicness' sake. There's something very very D&D to using a +3 Holy Avenger.

That being said, I agree with you, a +2 Longsword of Fiery Incineration shouldn't just give some bonus fire damage, but should allow the wielder to turn it into a flamethrower every now and then.

Along the same line, it's why the classic Horn of Blasting is an awesome magical item, it allows anyone (with lungs) to make a cool area attack.

Seriously, WotC, I want horns everywhere in this edition. EVERYWHERE!

 

[Hassassin]

1. Remove magic items from combat math.
2. Design them not to increase combat math.
3. Move them to the DMG, and don't list any prices!

 

[Tehnai]

1. Remove magic items from combat math.
2. Design them not to increase combat math.
3. Move them to the DMG, and don't list any prices!

Not listing any price is brilliant, I would add to that "random tables", out of love of random tables.

 

[Glade Riven]

1. Remove magic items from combat math.
2. Design them not to increase combat math.

As someone who came on during 3.5, that does make a game seem a little bit less D&D to me. +x to damage instead of BAB mentioned earlier does seem a reasonable compromise, though.

3. Move them to the DMG, and don't list any prices!

I disagree with this. Prices have been used as part of the crafting mechanics, and are handy in specific circumstances. DMs that allow a Magic Item Shop that stocks everything is a greater issue in play than prices over-all. I've mixed feelings on 4e's ability to "artifact" everything by letting a magical weapon "level." It's not bad, but I'm not sure that I would want it to be the norm.