removing the Big 6 - how would 3ed play?

[Brother MacLaren]

The problem is that spells do most of what "The Big Six" do. So are you talking about removing the spells as well?

* Magic weapon
* Magic armor & shield

With GMW and Magic Vestment, PCs have the same power, spellcasters a bit less (if they're using up some spell slots here). Without the spells or items, monsters will be harder to hit and will hit the PCs more often. Classed opponents will be a bit tougher (since PCs usually have better gear, the gear advantage will go away). Casters will be better off, since they don't need magic weapons, but the loss of armor hurts everybody (assuming Bracers of Armor fit in here).

Loss of magic shields makes sword-and-board even less of a good choice than it was.

* Ring of protection
* Cloak of resistance

Without the items, but with Magic Circle Against Evil, you will see that spell cast in every single fight. That gives both bonuses. You have to keep track of "Are the PCs within range of the circle" and "Are the opponents evil"? It lasts quite a while, enough for a couple of fights but not enough for "all day." Without the spell, the loss of resistance bonuses is going to make a BIG difference in the abilities of PCs to make saves (especially on their weak saves). The loss of deflection bonuses, like the loss of natural armor, will hurt most those who have the worst ACs.

* Amulet of natural armor

Barkskin lasts quite a while. Without it (and without Deflection bonuses), it's much harder to make an unhittable PC unless you're willing to sacrifice some offense. I really don't think that the core MM monsters were balanced with this effect in mind.

* Ability-score boosters

Again you have the issue of the spells, but these are more one-combat-only spells and they don't provide the most important benefits to casters (more high-level spells). It makes a HUGE difference if you are using 25-pt-buy or higher or lower, and what splatbooks you are using. Without stat boosters, a "standard array" caster stops getting bonus top-level spells at 7th level. Save DCs are an issue, of course. A high-level caster might go from a 25% of his spell working (with a +6 item) to a 10% chance.

Fighters don't do as badly; their limitations compared to casters are real, but are generally not in the area of "ability to hit and deal damage" (but I don't know how non-core spells change this). Just removing the Str-booster, a 12th-level fighter might go from an expected 1.95 hits per round (+24/+19/+14 vs. AC 25) to 1.5 (+21/+16/+11). Not as much of a loss as the wizard's spell success.

The stat-boosters' defensive effect is considerable (Dex and Con for AC, HP, and saves) for all classes.

PC depend heavily on items for attack, damage, AC, saves, and saves' DC. Classed NPCs depend to a lesser degree. Many monsters don't depend on items at all. So by removing the items, you make NPCs a bit more dangerous and monsters much more dangerous.

 

[Voadam]

I've always found high-level play in 3ed frustrating and the Big 6 are a big reason why. As I mentioned in the 4E magic item thread, I don't have a problem so much with item creation but the ability of players to cherry-pick the exact items they want, which are invariably always the Big 6.

So what if you removed all static plus items from 3ed and left in item creation.

Items that have both special abilities and pluses, like weapons, shields, and armor, would have abilities only.

Assuming you did this on both side - the PC's and NPC's/monsters - how much conversion would still have to be done? What would be some of the potential problem areas? Would one aspect of the game - saves, attack bonuses, armor class, etc - scale differently from levels 1-20 than another? Would one of those mechanics get more or less effective from levels 1-20?

Mostly these are things carried by PCs and not monsters.

Effects:

Lower attack bonuses on weapons so less ability to do power attack against monsters. High AC monsters become tougher, fewer iteratives will hit. A little more request for magic weapon type spells.

Magic Armor/Shields/Ring of Protection/Amulet of natural armor so less AC meaning PCs getting hit more often and more subject to power attack from brute monsters. A little more request for magic vestment/barkskin type spells.

Cloak of Resistance so lower saves, PCs fail more often against special effects.

Stat boosters: Spellcasters must prioritize their spellcasting stats more in creation, they get fewer bonus spells and lower DCs. Warrior types will not be so astounding in their physical niches (usually str or dex boosters) going down a little in offense and defense. Some high end feats harder to qualify for. May lead to more use of dump statting to pump up combat stats.

Spellcasters will have a little less spells, spell DC and more requests for buffing spells which are less likely to be granted. Melee types will be pounded on more and able to pound a little less. High end feats will be rarer. PCs can get pounded on more by the tons of monsters with power attack and can do a little less power attack themselves.

 

[Varianor Abroad]

I think it's a common belief that monster CR assumes a certain level of magic in the hands of the PC's. While this seems logical, I've never seen any quantifiable evidence of this. My gut tells me that the Big 6 make things easier for the PC's but certainly aren't required. If anything, they make it more difficult for the DM to challenge the party (the arms race).

I can't point you to the posts for this, but both Monte Cook and Skip Williams at points in the past have written about how 3E assumed that the players had a certain amount of magical items to balance out the characters. Take for example 3.0's DR system, which was DR 10/+1, DR 20/+2 and so on. You were expected to have +2 weapons by about level 9 or 10 so that you could beat DR 20. (Sure, 3.5 changed this to something even harder to track.)

Personally, I agree that making magic more interesting is great. I love unique, colorful and weird items. I tried giving them out in many games. Strangely, the PCs always wanted to sell them (sometimes at even less than 50%) to buy Big Six items to customize their characters. Many players prefer having the choice themselves of what to do with their character. Now that's not to say that unique stuff hasn't worked for other groups or sometimes just gotten kept. However, I've even found myself as a player wanting stuff that makes me more effective. It always comes down to boosting your core abilities.

You can of course remove the option to buy or sell items and make everything very rare. That's a different sort of paradigm more suited for True20 than D&D. Iron Heroes took out the items for the PCs entirely.

I guess in my opinion, it's tougher to do as a half measure. And no, I don't know where to find the math for 3E to help you out with any surgery you're contemplating. Wish I did.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

I can't point you to the posts for this, but both Monte Cook and Skip Williams at points in the past have written about how 3E assumed that the players had a certain amount of magical items to balance out the characters. Take for example 3.0's DR system, which was DR 10/+1, DR 20/+2 and so on. You were expected to have +2 weapons by about level 9 or 10 so that you could beat DR 20. (Sure, 3.5 changed this to something even harder to track.)

Some magic items, yes.

Big Six and nothing but, no.

 

[Lord Zardoz]

So what if you removed all static plus items from 3ed and left in item creation.

Items that have both special abilities and pluses, like weapons, shields, and armor, would have abilities only.

Assuming you did this on both side - the PC's and NPC's/monsters - how much conversion would still have to be done? What would be some of the potential problem areas? Would one aspect of the game - saves, attack bonuses, armor class, etc - scale differently from levels 1-20 than another? Would one of those mechanics get more or less effective from levels 1-20?

Off the top of my head here...

AC would be much lower on non monsters, since most AC tends to derive from magic items at the higher levels. Saving throws are also thrown out of kilter, but the Iron Will / Lightning Reflexes / Great Fortitude become more useful.

Damage output on warrior types will drop between 1/8th and 1/3 depending on what level you are on. Use of bane / burst type weapons may remedy this, but they will add more dice rolling to attacks.

The CR system becomes useless (well, more useless), and you have to eyeball monsters much more carefully.

Unless you also gut the spells, things like Magic Weapon and Bulls Strength become much more important. Instead of wearing the item, they may just use a bunch of potions or wands.

Creatures with Dr X/Magic would need to be reworked in most cases, especially in 3.0 where it would be Dr of X/Magic +y.

Sunder becomes MUCH more powerful since fewer weapons will get extra hardness / hp for being magical.

Power Attack and Expertise become much less attractive as the loss in attack bonus starts to hurt a great deal more.

Rangers with a favored enemy of a PC race will move up a bit in overall damage output relative to other classes.

END COMMUNICATION

 

[Voadam]

Creatures with Dr X/Magic would need to be reworked in most cases, especially in 3.0 where it would be Dr of X/Magic +y.

Technically no magic weapons except those temporarily buffed by magic weapon spells would work against DR magic due to the loss of minimum +1 enhancement bonuses.

This could easily be house ruled to take out the +1 enhancement bonus requirement of magic weapon DR though.

 

[Psion]

I can't point you to the posts for this, but both Monte Cook and Skip Williams at points in the past have written about how 3E assumed that the players had a certain amount of magical items to balance out the characters. Take for example 3.0's DR system, which was DR 10/+1, DR 20/+2 and so on. You were expected to have +2 weapons by about level 9 or 10 so that you could beat DR 20. (Sure, 3.5 changed this to something even harder to track.)

But it made it less necessary to track. Because the DR ratings themselves really got pared down, meaning that pure damage was an acceptable alternative to having the "right weapon".

This, of course, made the IMO bad 3.5 change to Power Attack even worse, and is the main reason that I find claims that the fighter was somehow weak at high levels laughable (though the only people who seemed to make those claims were Bo9S fans.)

This particular change did put a stronger emphasis on strength boosting, but added/elemental dice damage became much more viable.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

Yeah, yeah, no magic items shops, no item creation. Fine.

I really didn't want this thread to be a campaign thread. I really still don't have a good answer for the big question:

What would removing the Big 6 do to 3ed's "math"?
Would the PC's be at a massive disadvantage?
If there is a big dropoff in PC power, are Action Points alone enough to make up for the Big 6?

I'm in a game now where the Big Six effectively don't exist. The DM doesn't have any rule saying as much, but he just doesn't include such items in loot, doesn't have magic shoppes and encourages us to take other types of items. We're 6th/7th level at the moment and the campaign is...tough to put it mildly. While this is in part due to his penchant for throwing very creative and powerful foes at us, the game would be better IMO with the Big Six or something to replace them. Without those bonuses that characters of a given level are assumed to have, characters do become less powerful--especially in the defense department. Without AC boosters, AC mostly remains static from level 1 onwards which means that offense becomes much more effective and appealing to everyone. Without cloaks of resistance and stat boosters, save bonuses advance much slower than DCs so casters become even more powerful. If this campaign ever gets to the mid-high levels it will quickly become a 'first initiative, first kill' scenario.

Maybe you like this play style, as it is very realistic, but I prefer to keep or replace the Big Six with something in games that I DM. I personally don't like action points because they infer that the PCs are somehow inherently better than NPCs and because they're yet another resource to keep track of and because I just don't like finite resources. I think using APs to replace the Big Six wouldn't work very well--either the PCs wouldn't have enough so they'd be able to perform spectacularly once in a while and suck the rest of the time, or they'd have too many and the game would be bogged down in constant d6s. I also don't like magic shoppes or fine tuning every monster I set my PCs against so they can handle them, so my solution to this problem is Bonus Points. Bonus Points is a simple system that allows each character to improve their characters by two bonuses each level, without the option of pouring all their points into one bonus. Thus, I am left free to drop whatever oddball items into the PCs hands as I want without fear that they'll be crushed by the next monster that comes along. The only complication this causes is that it makes DR/magic obsolete, but frankly it was already 95% obsolete anyway. I have a simple fix to this, which I call "3.25 Damage Reduction."

Hope that helps,
TS

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

Without cloaks of resistance and stat boosters, save bonuses advance much slower than DCs so casters become even more powerful.

I believe 4e fixes this by advancing all saves at "Good" 1/2 rate (the same rate of advancement as spell DCs).

You could use the "Good" column -2 to replicate that fix. (0,0,1,1,2,2,3,3,etc.)

The "Poor" rate in 3e is 1/3, and lacking magic items, it is expected that you will make up the difference with spells (prayer, heroism, protection from evil, etc.)

 

[GlassJaw]

I'm in a game now where the Big Six effectively don't exist. The DM doesn't have any rule saying as much, but he just doesn't include such items in loot, doesn't have magic shoppes and encourages us to take other types of items. We're 6th/7th level at the moment and the campaign is...tough to put it mildly.

Good post TS.

I don't really have a problem with "tougher" but I agree that a DM has to be aware that removing the Big 6 will certainly make "standard" published modules more difficult. If you started a new campaign carte blanche without the Big 6, it would be a bit easier to control.

Without AC boosters, AC mostly remains static from level 1 onwards which means that offense becomes much more effective and appealing to everyone. Without cloaks of resistance and stat boosters, save bonuses advance much slower than DCs so casters become even more powerful. If this campaign ever gets to the mid-high levels it will quickly become a 'first initiative, first kill' scenario.

Saves and AC would definitely be my two biggest concerns. Might be a good case for giving to each class a Defense bonus. Not as sure about saves, although there are far fewer magical ways to boost saves.