Reduced Magic Item Prevalence

[Dragonblade]

Yes, this is exactly how I hope to have items in 4E. I do get so sick of magic items improving the invisible parts of a character like saves, ability scores, and giving stat bonuses.

Me too! Instead stat, save, BAB, or ability boosting items, just boost the modifiers granted by the classes. That way we can get rid of all the boring utility items that turn magic into something mundane and ubiquitous. Get rid of the Christmas tree effect.

Keep items for something cool and unique.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

And you can still have a cloak of resistance. It simply needs to do something else besides grant a +5 to saves. Given what we are hearing about class abilities, perhaps it grants a reroll on saving throws (or whatever the 4E equivalent is) N/day.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Hmmm, I completely agree with all that's been said. I loaaaaaaathe the "stat bonus" items - In 1E/2E they were much cuter, because they were rare and pretty awesome, and often assigned a stat, instead of boosting it by X (like Gauntlets of Ogre Power), which is horribly munchkin, but much more interesting, all the same.

I loved the 1E/2E items with very complex and interesting histories, appearances, and abilities, and I really didn't like the "standardization" of abilities in 3E. In 2E I had a wonderful book full of FR magic items (I think it was a 1E book), which in particularly had many great magical swords in it, all with peculiar characteristics, and they were absolutely bloody fascinating. In 3E all "powerful" magic swords pre-Weapons of Legacy/Bo9S seemed to be "+X, keen, flaming burst" or similar dullness (no doubt some wildly more uber combo can be mentioned).

Gizmo33 - Well, even that can be worked without bonuses - like allowing the user to take 10 on his attack rolls or something similar, or re-roll damage dice. Both of which I think are more interesting than +5!!!! (if less uber).

Excalibur's scabbard also stopped all bleeding, which would give maybe DR4 vs slashing/piercing weapons, and prevent all bleed/bloodloss-based effects.

 

[Banshee16]

I agree with you about magic items being ratcheted back. That's a really cool thing IMO.

I think it would be really difficult to come up with a scale for measuring the significance of magic items, though I can understand the usefulness of wanting to do so. In a system like 3E, how would you measure what the equivalent "level" was for adding a +2 Armor Class to one of the characters in the party? (In this case level would probably have to be a decimal value, like 4.2 or something) Granted 4E could be a streamlined system but I can't imagine it being so mechanical that such an approximation would be possible. I've never seen these other systems you're talking about though.

The reason I make the suggestion about having a "dial" is that it would make the game so much more flexible.

I found that in 3E, the game was tied *really* strongly to magic items. I ran a relatively low magic Planescape campaign in 2nd Ed., and when we converted to 3E, the characters didn't have nearly as many items as they were recommended to have, based on their level, and things didn't work smoothly. Encounters were typically far too difficult for their CR etc., and in the end, I had to throw items back into the mix, to balance things out....at which point it started working a lot better.

If there was a way to easily adjust the item levels for different settings....like if you wanted to do a campaign with few items, like 4E Black Company, vs. another with more items than the default (maybe 4E Eberron), that would be great. It would make 4E flexible enough to meet both types of game.

Another game was Swashbuckling Adventures in 3rd Ed. Really, it was written assuming that there were almost no items. So a lot of feats etc. were more powerful than regular feats. When used for a 7th Sea campaign, the rules weren't bad. I ran a game for a year. Keep magic items out, and it worked fine. But try to use the rules in a regular campaign with elves and dwarves and vorpal swords and rings of protection, and things started breaking.

A game that could be dialed up or down, to meet either type of game play would be a major coup for the designers of 4E.

Banshee

 

[Kraydak]

I loved the 1E/2E items with very complex and interesting histories, appearances, and abilities, and I really didn't like the "standardization" of abilities in 3E. In 2E I had a wonderful book full of FR magic items (I think it was a 1E book), which in particularly had many great magical swords in it, all with peculiar characteristics, and they were absolutely bloody fascinating. In 3E all "powerful" magic swords pre-Weapons of Legacy/Bo9S seemed to be "+X, keen, flaming burst" or similar dullness (no doubt some wildly more uber combo can be mentioned).

First rule of magic items: Like possesions in RL, magic items are "cool" for all of about 1 minute, after which they become a bundle of stats (backstory is only remembered if it has an ingame effect). This means that "cool" items with significant drawbacks get ditched for boring items that actually affect the stats/actions that the players care about without penalizing them. Bizarre, corner case rules that makes a custom item more "interesting" than a standardized one will get forgotten unless they are useful to the player (the DM, under a higher cognitive load, will forget, and sooner rather than later).

In short, you can *try* to make cool, unique magic items with backstory and flavor, but what matters is the practical, in game effect, modulo the complexity of the item.

 

[Banshee16]

Agreed. Its not the number of items per se, but certain items commonality

It would be far, far more interesting to see a greater variety of items, rather than have 6 characters all decked out with essentially identical items.

Same thing with spells....

But yeah...I really like the idea of having fewer items....but the items you do have are each unique, or at least have more of a "special" feel to them. Kind of like weapons of legacy or "Covenant" items (from Midnight). Hopefully this is what they're planning or doing.....or at least something somewhat along those lines.

As to spells and character abilities, I hope that they are more unique.....some of the issues I had with 3E were exemplified by one of the PrC's in the Complete Arcane....it was a bard class, where they got new songs at different levels...and the songs were clones of each other....at one level you could do X fire damage using a perform check, at the next level you could do X cold damage using a perform check, at the next level you could do X electricity damage......they repeated that kind of a progression through the whole character class. The first time, it was a cool ability...then you read the second, and by the third, it just seems like somebody kept copying and pasting the description of the ability for each level, then simply changing which element the damage was done with.

Give us unique items and abilities!

Banshee

 

[Brother MacLaren]

In my game, I ended up giving out items or inherent bonuses that were identical to magic items in order to avoid the delays caused by recalculating statistics.

The barbarian would ALWAYS demand that PCs or cohorts cast Bull's Strength on him before every fight... so eventually I gave him a Belt of Giant Strength +4.
The cleric would ALWAYS cast Magic Circle Against Evil... so eventually I gave the PCs inherent +2 resistance bonus and +2 deflection bonus.

In order for magic items to be less "essential," buff spells need to be seriously pared down. Because as it is, some magic items serve a useful purpose in reducing the time spent recalculating things.

 

[apoptosis]

Me too! Instead stat, save, BAB, or ability boosting items, just boost the modifiers granted by the classes. That way we can get rid of all the boring utility items that turn magic into something mundane and ubiquitous. Get rid of the Christmas tree effect.

Keep items for something cool and unique.

If the modifiers already go up (as they presently do) as the characters level up, is there a need to boost the modifiers even further. Instead just remove the necessity for having to have the item based modifiers (lower DC/AC etc. of challenges).

I could be missing something though.

 

[Kraydak]

If the modifiers already go up (as they presently do) as the characters level up, is there a need to boost the modifiers even further. Instead just remove the necessity for having to have the item based modifiers (lower DC/AC etc. of challenges).

I could be missing something though.

An impressive percentage of DnD games revolve around killing bad guys and taking their stuff. Now, a PC could use that stuff to buy a castle, BUT, the *player* gets no enjoyment out of the castle (beyond a few minutes worth of conversation when he makes the purchase). After that, the castle becomes background. A magic sword, at least, affects the *player*, not just the PC. Why play a game to get loot if it doesn't affect the *player*?

Kill monsters, take their stuff, get magic items, power up may be a very simple game concept, but it *works*, and works for a very general (as opposed to niche) audience (witness the fact that DnD is the dominate RPG). The "take their stuff" component of the design breaks if there isn't any useful stuff. Therefore, you need magic items that have actual, useful, in game effects.

Mind, 3e does have the problem of throwaway items. At some point around lvl 10, PCs note that it is cheaper to fill their unused item slots with cheap junk instead of boosting their iconic, powerful items. This can be fixed by drastically paring down on the number of item slots. It is somewhere between hard and impossible to make items "cool". It is easy to make items valuable.

 

[Hejdun]

Just get rid of number inflation.

What's number inflation? Well, ACs of 50 would be a good example. DC 35 saving throws would be another. Any stat that's so ludicrously high that you need the a +5 weapon and +11 to Str just to compete.

Just completely cut the Big Six (6?) out of the game. Erase them forever, they don't exist. Then adjust the AC, to hit, save and spell DC to compensate adequately. Suddenly, the only magic items that exist just let you do something cool, instead of a boring +x bonus to something you already do.