Recosting Magic Items in MIC = Blatant Power Creep...er..Power Charge?

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

How many ranks does someone have to invest in Climb before it's rendered a bad investment by a rope of climbing? It's probably far less than "Jack the Super-Climber" has.

Any challenge that can be ruined by the dreaded rope of climbing will presumably require more than three or four ranks in Climb.

It certainly does not require a "hostile" DM for this situation to occur. It just requires a group that isn't a hivemind. A DM may not have considered the ramifications that dropping such an item may have on one player's skill investments (I suspect there might even be some less-than-perfect DM's who don't every character's skill investments commited to memory).

If you've got a rogue (or some other class) climbing the walls on a regular basis, don't stick a rope of climbing in the game.

If no one's climbing walls on a regular basis, they haven't made much of an investment in it, so go ahead and stick a rope of climbing in the game.

No perfection required, just being conscious during the campaign.

And if a player simply buys the item, it's a non-concern to him that some other player invested heavily in that skill.

The DM controls what items are actually available.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I'd say it becomes obsolete once the caster(s) can throw away slots or scrolls on giving other characters flight or climbing abilities with wild abandon. Similar skill-kill spells exist for Open Lock (knock spells), Hide (invisibility), and so forth, but 3rd-level wizards don't want to burn their spells on doing the rogue's job. But a 13th-level wizard? Heck, if his staff can't do it with a charge, he probably has a wand for it stashed away somewhere...

At this point, it becomes about time.

The rogue is always a rogue, and rogue-like activities, like climbing, hiding and complicated stock market fraud are always at their fingertips.

Meanwhile, while the wizard has the ability to cast rogue-like spells, if there's any sort of time pressure, the wizard's probably better off casting some other sort of spell.

In a non-time crunch situation, a group will have several mechanisms for solving a problem as mundane as "we need to get up there." That no one class is required to solve such problem is a good thing, unless we want to change the name of the game Dungeons, Dragons & Obligatory Rogues.

I don't see overlap between characters as a bad thing. Despite the love powergamers have for them, it's often hard to get anyone to be a cleric. We don't need to up the number of semi-obligatory classes further.

 

[Slife]

I just hope they make the Candle of Invocation much much more expensive.

 

[Felon]

Any challenge that can be ruined by the dreaded rope of climbing will presumably require more than three or four ranks in Climb.

OK, how about 8 or 10 ranks? Combined with Str mods, this actually makes for a pretty decent climber, and it's a reasonable investment of skill points.

If you've got a rogue (or some other class) climbing the walls on a regular basis, don't stick a rope of climbing in the game. If no one's climbing walls on a regular basis, they haven't made much of an investment in it, so go ahead and stick a rope of climbing in the game. No perfection required, just being conscious during the campaign. The DM controls what items are actually available.

I think this is reaching a dead end. It seems to me you're oversimplifying the issue, and you're likely equally convinced that I'm overcomplicating it. For me, this discussion is not just about this one item, but all the myriad skill-killers out there, and when the players are in Waterdeep or some other magically-affluent metropolis, I expect plenty of DM's making skill-killers available--be they ropes of climbing and wands of knock. They are, after all, simply following the guidelines set forth for them in the DMG.

 

[Felon]

I don't see overlap between characters as a bad thing. Despite the love powergamers have for them, it's often hard to get anyone to be a cleric. We don't need to up the number of semi-obligatory classes further.

I agree with class overlap being desirable sometimes. I do, however, find a gadget eclipsing character's innate abilities (those things he's decided to be good at) to be a harder pill to swallow.

 

[Cthulhudrew]

If you mount a light source by glueing it to a shield, what do you do when you want to hide in the dark? Stow your shield away?

Fling it across the room at the enemy.

 

[hong]

I'd say it becomes obsolete once the caster(s) can throw away slots or scrolls on giving other characters flight or climbing abilities with wild abandon. Similar skill-kill spells exist for Open Lock (knock spells), Hide (invisibility), and so forth, but 3rd-level wizards don't want to burn their spells on doing the rogue's job. But a 13th-level wizard? Heck, if his staff can't do it with a charge, he probably has a wand for it stashed away somewhere...

Just another reason to love warmages. They leave the utilities to the utility characters and do what everybody else want to see casters do.

While I certainly acknowledge your point, I also see that cheapening skill-kill items does compound the issue. As we are basically talking about a case of "buyer's remorse", it's less of a matter of practical obsolesence than a player's perception that his investment is a dud. He generally has to have his face rubbed in it on a few occasions where he expected to shine but instead was eclipsed by the spell or item.

In 4 years of 3.0/3.5E D&D (I was away some of the time) I can count the number of times I've seen a Climb check on the fingers of two hands. Honestly, it's a pretty superfluous skill right now anyway. Most of the time dungeons are conveniently laid out as a 2D map, and when you're not dungeoneering, you're in a flat plain/forest/gentle hills.

Ironically, it's Mike Mearls' adventures that usually call for the most movement-related skill checks. There's no Mearls dungeon that contains just a normal 20' square room. Instead it must have a floor covered in quicksand, or the walls are shifting, or the ceiling is caving in....

 

[Kaodi]

I think that article lays it out just like it is. If buffing magic items are the only game in town, than obviously other magic items cost too much, or the buffing magic items cost too little. Every single item on that list is a buffer, as well as the bag of holding and the boots of stringing and spriding mentioned, and even the wand of cure light wounds (buffing carrying capacity, speed and hit points respectively).

The question is, who is up to the task of recosting the entire DMG worth of magic items? Or is that waiting for us in the next few articles? It sounds more like they took that into consideration when creating the new items, but that they haven't actually fixed the costs of the old ones.

 

[MerricB]

The question is, who is up to the task of recosting the entire DMG worth of magic items? Or is that waiting for us in the next few articles? It sounds more like they took that into consideration when creating the new items, but that they haven't actually fixed the costs of the old ones.

It should be noted that there aren't actually that many items in the DMG. There really aren't. Wondrous Items make up the bulk of them, and there are under 250 of them. I get the impression that, unlike the SC, this will reprint all the (worthwhile) items from the DMG, recost them, and also give the revised treasure tables (see contents).

Cool, huh?

Cheers!

 

[Kaodi]

If they recost items in the MIC though, will they update the SRD to reflect the new pricing?