Pathfinder 1E Pathfinder RPG: No XPs for magic items!

[HalWhitewyrm]

What are the Big 6? (I feel like we're talking Magic's Power 9 here)

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

What are the Big 6? (I feel like we're talking Magic's Power 9 here)

Magic Armor
Magic Weapon
Stat Booster
Resistance
Deflection
Natural Armor

A fighter is no more underclassed without a +1 sword than he is underclassed if he's not a half-orc, or if he is a halfling, or if he went with a 16 STR during point buy instead of an 18 STR.

DR is a bigger (different) issue. It's not, strictly speaking, a math issue. It's more of an absolutes issue. Same goes for "Can the party Fly?"

 

[HalWhitewyrm]

You know, I have to say that at least the first 3 are indeed essential and factored into the game design as part and parcel of what a PC of a particular level should have to be at peak performance. The monsters for each CR are designed to provide certain challenges that PCs of that level should have a way to overcome, either from class abilities, or from equipment.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I am no longer certain how much the magical items and especially the Big Six where figured into the "balance equations". I think 3.5 might have taken then somewhat more into account with the rebalancing of monsters.

Ultimiately, I really believe, whatever the original intentions where, the design failed*. The CR/EL guidelines that are based on the original assumptions fail way too often and are way to imprecise.
Nothing by RAW forces you to spend a certain amount of wealth by level for the Big Six, but everything in practice does. But even if you do it, with the "right" combination of race & classes, you are still inadequately equipped (item and character-power based) to face the challenges you are to face, and with another combination, you are way stronger.


*) at least from a playability point of view. As Monte Cook explained, Rules Mastery was intended, so you could attribute any glaring power differences to Rules Mastery, but in the end, this doesn't benefit the game's playability.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

You know, I have to say that at least the first 3 are indeed essential and factored into the game design as part and parcel of what a PC of a particular level should have to be at peak performance.

--> Half-Orc Fighter, 18 STR by point buy, 20 STR after racial bonus, no STR booster.

--> Halfling Fighter, 16 STR by point buy, 14 STR after racial penalty, +6 STR item.

Both of those guys are on the same footing, mathematically. (+1 to hit for the halfling for size.)

Is the half-orc behind the expected curve? If he gets a +6 STR booster, he must be ahead of the curve.

At any given time, even under fairly normal "stress testing" of typical play, you're going to have 1-5 points on the d20 to "play with."

The design is just not so finely tuned that the Big Six are required at every level of play at the expected rate of enhancement (typically +1 per 4 levels for most enhancement bonuses).


If you assume that every character has "level appropriate gear for his class" at all levels of play, you've still got room for the numbers to wiggle around on the d20.


Now, here's the cost of "expected" gear for a PC at the major break points (that's +1 at 4th, +2 at 8th, +3 at 12th, etc.):

4th level (+1)-- Weapon, Natural Armor, Deflection (2000 each), Armor, Resisance (1000 each), Stat Booster +2 (4000), Total = 12,000 (5400 recommended by DMG)

8th level (+2)-- Weapon, Natural Armor, Deflection (8000 each), Armor, Resistance, Stat Booster +2 (4000 each), Total = 36,000 (27000 recommended by DMG)

12th level (+3)-- Weapon, Natural Armor, Deflection (18000 each), Armor, Resistance (9000 each), Stat Booster +4 (16,000), Total = 88,000 (88000 recommended by DMG)

16th level (+4)-- Weapon, Natural Armor, Deflection (32000 each), Armor, Resistance (16000 each), Stat Booster +4 (16,000), Total = 144,000 (260,000 recommended by DMG)

20th level (+5)-- Weapon, Natural Armor, Deflection (50000 each), Armor, Resistance (25000 each), Stat Booster +6 (32,000), Total = 236,000 (760,000 recommended by DMG)

It's not even possible to have all that "expected" gear until 12th level, and then only if you spend every penny on it.

There's also the issue of whether you think the spells like Greater Magic Weapon, Barkskin, Shield of Faith, etc. exist for any purpose other than crafting magic items. If everyone always has the gear they need to replicate these effects, the spells are redundant.

It also depends on what you think the ideal rate of success on a given roll should be. I personally feel like optimal builds should approach 50/50, with optimal play (flanking, aid another, the right buffs at the right time) pushing the PCs over the 50/50 mark.

 

[el-remmen]

I have used the power component variant rules to insure that item creation beyond scrolls and potions takes specific effort, and the gathering of those components can become adventures in and of themselves.

I think setting up options of tiers of such required components (in expense and/or difficulty to get) would allow DMs to decide how prevalent magical item creation is in their games.

 

[Plane Sailing]

"The game is designed around the big six" is a canard that deserves to die.

Absolutely.

After all, if "the game is designed around the big six" then the game design was pretty lousy IMO as it doesn't even reflect that.

The so called "big six" are more like emergent properties - the realisation by players over time that it is really in their interests to invest in those because they give the biggest bang for the buck.

If the game had been designed around them, I would expect to see the prices for those items considerably higher. Or I would have expected to see them given as the default magic items for NPCs. I would at least have expected to see Amulet of Health not fighting for position with Amulet of Natural Armour (and what about magic shields while we are at it - are they not much better for many classes than natural armour would be? Oh, I forgot, 2H weapons were upped so much in 3.5e that shields became contra-indicated )

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Absolutely.

After all, if "the game is designed around the big six" then the game design was pretty lousy IMO as it doesn't even reflect that.

The so called "big six" are more like emergent properties - the realisation by players over time that it is really in their interests to invest in those because they give the biggest bang for the buck.

If the game had been designed around them, I would expect to see the prices for those items considerably higher. Or I would have expected to see them given as the default magic items for NPCs. I would at least have expected to see Amulet of Health not fighting for position with Amulet of Natural Armour (and what about magic shields while we are at it - are they not much better for many classes than natural armour would be? Oh, I forgot, 2H weapons were upped so much in 3.5e that shields became contra-indicated )

It might indeed be an emergent property. But considering the effects on actual play, it seems to have become very important, and to a large extent disruptive. It is bad design in the sense that they weren't able to predict that. I am not sure how easily they could have done that - now we're aware of it, it's easy to complain.

I wonder what 4E or Pathfinders disruptive emergent properties will become? (I suppose Pathfinder might not add new ones. But can it remove existing ones?)

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

It might indeed be an emergent property. But considering the effects on actual play, it seems to have become very important, and to a large extent disruptive.

Thanks for tying the discussion back neatly to my original point: It is Item Creation that is broken, not the items.

It is bad design in the sense that they weren't able to predict that.

I learned early on as a budding designer to "Extrapolate to Absurdity." It's similar to Extrapolating to Infinity, except of course that Absurdity need not be infinite-- it's just large enough to be absurd.

I learned this doing trading card game design. A failure to extrapolate creates design fallacies like this:

"Yes, this card is very powerful. But it's also very rare. It's unlikely that a player would own enough of these to break it."

Extrapolating Item Creation would have revealed the Big Six much earlier. The designers did not extrapolate, and so the "absurdly large" playerbase did the emergent design for them.

Iterate, iterate, iterate. A playtest is ideally large enough to create enough iterations to extrapolate to absurdity, without being so large as to be impossible to manage. My strong suspicion is that 4e will not prove to be sufficiently iterated, and there will be a lot of broken design emerging within the first month of release.

EDIT: One last point. I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing. I also have the suspicion tickling the back of my mind that any system that can survive an absurdly large number of iterations without breaking is probably also a pretty bland system. It's going to feel like you never get anywhere. This sort of ties into "mastery."

 

[AllisterH]

A large enough playtest wouldn't have caught it.

Mainly because the Big Six themselves didn't become codified until a couple of years AFTER 3E's release when everybody had played enough games at mid to high level.

You can see this in the CRs of creatures in 3.x. Many of the lower CR creatures are perfectly fine but the high end CR creatures had to be reduced in the switch from 3.0 to 3.5 as the designers realized that high level adventurers were walking around with the "optimum gear".