Reduced Magic Item Prevalence

[Brother MacLaren]

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.

The problem is the arms race aspect of the game.

If a fighter has a better Will save progression, such that he has a 60% chance of making his Will save against an effect he's likely to face at his level, players will seek to boost that to 90%. If there is any magical way to increase it, they'll want to buy, craft, or steal such an item, or badger their party casters to pick up that spell and use it.

Then the game designers will realize that the Will save DCs in the core MM are too easy for many games, and they'll seek to increase them in future Monster Manuals to account for these magical effects. That leaves the fighters without the magical effects stuck. The magical effects now become essential to survive.

Basic/Expert fixed this by simply having a very limited spell list, a very limited magic item list, few stacking modifiers, no magic stores, and difficult magic item creation. You got what you found and that was it. There were hard limits. You couldn't get Str past 18, and you couldn't get AC below -10 (above 30 in d20 terms).

But once you give the PCs expanded options and freedom, the problem escalates. Some designer, somewhere, is GOING to say "Hey, wouldn't fighters like a magic item that lets them make Will saves more often?" Only by HEAVILY increasing the cost/benefit ratio of this item could you slow down the arms race.

 

[apoptosis]

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.

Probably a misunderstanding in the way I posted but I think you can have magic items that do not involve stat boosting. You only need stat boosting items if the DC (AC etc.) of what you are trying to accomplish is escalating faster than the bonuses from your levels do.

My post was responding to another post that said instead of having items that give you additional stat bonuses they should just incorporate the additional bonuses on top of the current bonuses that you get for gaining levels (and now your character is not tied to the magic item prevalence of stat boosting items)

My response to that was to just simplify the process and not require the additional bonuses.

I was not talking about not having items.

 

[apoptosis]

The problem is the arms race aspect of the game.

If a fighter has a better Will save progression, such that he has a 60% chance of making his Will save against an effect he's likely to face at his level, players will seek to boost that to 90%. If there is any magical way to increase it, they'll want to buy, craft, or steal such an item, or badger their party casters to pick up that spell and use it.

Then the game designers will realize that the Will save DCs in the core MM are too easy for many games, and they'll seek to increase them in future Monster Manuals to account for these magical effects. That leaves the fighters without the magical effects stuck. The magical effects now become essential to survive.

Basic/Expert fixed this by simply having a very limited spell list, a very limited magic item list, few stacking modifiers, no magic stores, and difficult magic item creation. You got what you found and that was it. There were hard limits. You couldn't get Str past 18, and you couldn't get AC below -10 (above 30 in d20 terms).

But once you give the PCs expanded options and freedom, the problem escalates. Some designer, somewhere, is GOING to say "Hey, wouldn't fighters like a magic item that lets them make Will saves more often?" Only by HEAVILY increasing the cost/benefit ratio of this item could you slow down the arms race.

Seems like stopping the arms race in the beginning is the most viable solution.

Actually I think a possible solution (that you possibly alluded to) is that all magic items have drawbacks (increase your will save but your dex save decreases by a like amount...just an wild example off of the top of my head) but this probably wouldnt go over well.

 

[Gargoyle]

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.

I think the issue of buff spells and buffing magic items are one and the same, and I'd like to see them both go away. They simply aren't fun when they are commodities.

OTOH, it's hard to imagine D&D without spells or magic items that make someone stronger, smarter or quicker. The trick is to include such spells and magic items without making it so that they are required for success, and to make them interesting choices, rather than just recalculations of stats.

 

[Brother MacLaren]

Seems like stopping the arms race in the beginning is the most viable solution.

I'm skeptical. It will take a MAJOR overhaul in the fundamental game design principles of what magic items are and how they work to prevent an arms race.

Occurring to some extent in 1E, but really picking up steam in mid-2E, you had TSR selling products to the players. Not just to the DMs (modules, campaign settings) but books with options to increase your PC's power in some way. As long as there is this demand, some "official" book is GOING to have magic items that throw the game balance just a bit out of whack... then new monster books that try to put it back into line... then new splatbooks, and so on.

I really don't know how they can combat this.

Can they end the practice of selling books to players? Not likely, since that market is several times as large as the DMs market.

Can they just refrain from offering "power creep" options in the splatbooks? Maybe for a while, but the fact is that books that increase PCs' power will sell more.

Can they just refuse to respond in kind, not increasing monster abilities to compensate? Perhaps. DMs with players who have the splatbooks will have to just use more or tougher monsters. Although that would increase leveling rates for a while, it's not a game-breaking problem. Published adventures would have to say things like "Suitable for 5 PCs of level 7 with core rules only, or 5 PCs of level 5 if you are using the full suite of options from Digital Initiative and Accessory Books X, Y, and Z."

 

[Brother MacLaren]

OTOH, it's hard to imagine D&D without spells or magic items that make someone stronger, smarter or quicker.

Try Basic/Expert. Gauntlets of Ogre Power give you a flat 18 Str (+3 to hit/damage) no matter what you had before. Girdle of Giant Strength gives you the to-hit rolls of a hill giant (THACO 12, better than Ftr12 but not as good as Ftr13) and lets you do a flat 2d8 damage per hit. No spells or items to boost anything else. No rage. No magic books. No Enlarge Person. No way at all to get any ability score above 18. And yet it is, to me, more "D&D" than any other version, because it's the system on which I learned the game.

Or try 2E. A few magic items to let you break the normal human boundaries, but no spell for Dex, Int, Con, Wis, or Cha, and the spell for Str was rarely used IME.

 

[howandwhy99]

What would be cool is if 4E was developed with a "dial" that a GM could use, to control balance in the game, with a sliding variable equal to magic item quantity.....

Sort of like "if you want a high magic item content game, make X,Y,Z adjustments to encounters, XP awarded, if you want a medium magic item content game, make A,B,C adjustments, etc.".

I'm guessing (hoping) this is exactly what 4th edition will do. They've already said CRs are gone. It looks like they're going back to flat XP awards for monsters. Magic Items may go back to flat XP awards you can add to them too.

Actually, I think everything might be judged in XP. IIRC traps and environmental challenges all get added into one big Encounter Rating for XP. ...or some such.

 

[Moon-Lancer]

one could also tone back the "super 6"... or is it 8?

anyway items that normally go up to +5 (like cloak of protection, +armor and swords) could now be +3 or +2, and they would be alot more expensive, and given out alot less.

that way we dont have kill sacred cows, but we still have +1 swords and armor, and nifty things like rings of protection and stuff.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Likewise, I be happy if they just factored the "must-have" items into the rules. Stat-boosting items? Just make the stat gain from levelling higher. Cloak of Resistance? Bump of base saves a bit.

Or the other way around: The usual DC you have to save against at level x is not Y (and you assume that res +3 is common), but Y-3.

 

[JohnSnow]

one good example that I can think of is magic armor and weapons. If the numbers game wasn't so critical, you could have, for example, magic (overcomes DR/magic), flaming (makes weapon do fire damage), and the like.

Those who like multiple levels of "magic" weapons could even be made happy by having three kinds of magic roughly corresponding to the tiers of play (i.e. Magic, paragon, and epic).

Just thinking aloud...