Question About Magic Items

[Will Doyle]

Does that mean I am free to ignore the rarity system or is there something more to it?

Item rarity affects crafting too, in that you cannot buy or craft uncommon or rare items. I'm not sure if you allow item selling in your games, but the rules there have changed too: common items sell for 1/5th of their price, uncommons for half their price, and rares for their full price.

 

[S'mon]

I'm sticking to the old rule, along with my old magic item source books, & I'm using inherent bonuses so fewer items anyway.

 

[Ktulu]

Well, for the random treasure, they do have a rolling mechanic that explains how common/uncommon/rares are dished out:

Even # - Common
Odd # - Uncommon
Nat 20 - Rare

Might have common uncommon flipped, but that's the gist of it.

Otherwise, yeah, it's pretty much just up to the DM on how he wants to dish out items.

 

[Infiniti2000]

[MENTION=13465]Ktulu[/MENTION], so uncommon is more common than common?

Let's say it's flipped, that's still only 50% vs. 45%. Not much of a difference to warrant the "un."

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

@Ktulu , so uncommon is more common than common?

Let's say it's flipped, that's still only 50% vs. 45%. Not much of a difference to warrant the "un."

Yeah, if you use the random treasure rules in Essentials. Nothing stops DMs from continuing to give out items like in DMG1 according to parcels. The difference is really fairly minor anyway, since the DM still has to pick the specific item in the 'random' setup. Personally I don't pay that much attention to parcels to start with anymore, so that whole aspect of things is kind of no big deal.

As for the whole rarity system. It was introduced a year ago August, just before the release of Essentials, and can be found in the consolidated errata, and the Rules Compendium. The DDI compendium doesn't have general rules in it at all, though some reference to it might be in the glossary section. DDI Compendium really is NOT a substitute for books. It is great for looking up individual stuff, but it doesn't give you any text.

Rarity has a couple parts:
1) Your character can use any number of daily powers - Makes the less potent or niche daily powers relevant to the game. Otherwise players simply didn't use daily powers except for the best 1 or 2 they had.

2) Each item has a rarity, common, uncommon, or rare - this is the concomitant of the above rule because PCs can only acquire/craft common items. This prevents higher level PCs from stocking up on tons of lower level items and spamming their powers. There are only a limited number of common items, usually ones without daily powers.

3) You can sell rare and uncommon items for more than 20% of purchase price - This is really just a way to let the PCs put a bit more money in their pockets.

4) Enchant Magic Item only works for common items - This is actually not even spelled out in the text of the ritual, just in the general magic item rules. The DM is encouraged to allow uncommon item crafting as desired, possibly with rare materials being needed, etc. Rare items COULD be crafted as well, but doing so would probably require major quests, etc.

The result is that item design space is opened up a LOT because the designers of items can make niche daily powers and they can also assume that an item with a good spammable power can't be stocked up by the players unless the DM goes along. Thus items are MOSTLY under DM control and their design can be a lot more flexible. That was the main motivation for the rules change I think. It does get rid of some bookkeeping as well, but that's really sort of gravy. Lots of people also just found the whole item use restriction rule to be very gamist. Mearls said something on RPG.net along the lines of "we took it out back and shot it".

 

[MrBeens]

So help me understand how this new "system" works. I have all the books in question. My understanding is that treasure parcels have been replaced by random treasure. I personally like the parcels and am using them. (Funny - since parcels were meant to replace the random treasure of 3ed).

But I was unaware that there was actually a system involved with rarity. Or is it that informally you are allowed to buy common, buy uncommon with DM permission, and never buy rare? What more to it is there?

In my campaign, magic items can simply not be bought. Does that mean I am free to ignore the rarity system or is there something more to it?

AFAIK the random system is an alternative to the parcel system, not a replacement.

 

[Tony Vargas]

If I understand correctly, the restriction on magic item daily uses described in PHB1 is no longer the rules.

1) Is this true?

yes.

2) When did this change and where was it announced? Was it solely a bit of errata?

With Essentials. HotFL/FK, RC, and DMK use the new rules in which items have 'rarity,' only common items can be made/bought, and only uncommon or rare items have dailies.

3) Why wasn't it changed? I haven't used it, and it was a bit confusing to understand, but it seemed like an interesting exercise in resource management.

It was a nice mechanic to give a resource-management encintive to pressing on after a milestone. But, mainly, it prevented players from hording cheap lower-level items with Daily powers and using those dailies frequently. Since the new system put the acquisition of items with dailies in the hands of the DM, that was no longer a factor. Basically, a mechanical balance feature was dropped in favor of arbitrary DM fiat - not the only time Essentials did that sort of thing.

4) Does anyone still use the old rule? Why?

Yes, quite a lot of DMs, actually. Some because they liked the resource-management aspect of the original rule. Some because they rejected rarity, or Essentials in general. Most, though, just because there weren't enough rare or common items to go around, initially.
With the recent publication of the Mordenkainen's Magnificent Emporium providing a lot more rare items, I expect it'll be more broadly adopted.

So help me understand how this new "system" works. I have all the books in question. My understanding is that treasure parcels have been replaced by random treasure. I personally like the parcels and am using them. (Funny - since parcels were meant to replace the random treasure of 3ed).

Yes, Essentials went back to a random treasure system. On average, it gives out the same treasure as the parcel system. It does not replace the parcel system, which is still 'legal,' not that anything could stop anyone from using it. The random system /does/ reference rarity, so it's easier to use with rarity than the parcel system would be, but, really, the guidelines for rares are pretty strightforward: 1/tier/PC.

But I was unaware that there was actually a system involved with rarity. Or is it that informally you are allowed to buy common, buy uncommon with DM permission, and never buy rare? What more to it is there?

Nothing informal about it. You can only make/buy common items. Uncommon and Rare items are placed by DM fiat.

In my campaign, magic items can simply not be bought. Does that mean I am free to ignore the rarity system or is there something more to it?

The rarity system isn't entirely arbitrary. Uncommon items are more likely to have dailies or potent properties, and rare items are likely to have multiple dailies and properties, one or more of which may be intentionally overpowered in some sense. You need to keep rares /rare/, if, indeed, you feel the need to use them at all. If you don't want to use rarity to limit what items can be made/bought, you'll want to keep using the Item Daily limitation from the PH1.

 

[klofft]

Very interesting. I still don't see this as being an issue in my group, so I'll just ask them which rule they like better (and yes, they may prefer the old rule - they're odd that way).

But in 5 years of playing 3.5, none of my players once expressed any interest at all in making a magic item. I allowed them free access to buy items, gave them enough loot, and that was that.

In my new 4e game, I have said that there will be no purchases of magic items at all. They still have no interest in crafting them. And since I'm NOT using inherent bonuses, the majority of the magic items in the parcels will be level-appropriate weapons, armor, and neck items. The occasional "other" will seem all the more strange for that.

I also have other houserules that I won't bother elucidating here unless anyone is interested to reduce the gp treasures in the parcels to make room for magic items as treasure, I've already told the players that there will be NO duplication of magic items at all, and I have plans to have existing magic items either morph into different items or just naturally grow in power. The money they would have gained selling their old item for the new one will just be put "into account" to add other magic items as treasure elsewhere.

Anything I missed that could matter?