"Scalable " Items

[The Proconsul]

I've always thought it was rather sad how PCs constantly change their equipment, rarely actually developing a bond to a particular item.

I would suggest a new type of intelligent weapon or armor: it reveals it's powers according to the user's worthiness, i. e. level. It would have an enhancement bonus to, say, the level divided by two (for a really useful specimen, of course) anz number of which may be used for special abilities, to the user's dicretion.

Of course, treasure values would have to be decreased, because no new sword or armor must be bought.

Comments, Flames etc.?

 

[Mean DM]

Proconsul, I share the same frustration. Have you looked at Swords of our Fathers or Staves of Ascendance from The Game Mechanics? Their weapons are tied to PC and scale with level.

Regards,

Mark

 

[Angcuru]

You know, you can always just have them attatch additional magic properties to their weapons. It's not that difficult.

Actually, I once thought to counter this issue by creating a PRC or Template wherein you could sacrifice magical items at the cost of EXP, to be able to apply that item's properties to any non-magical weapon you hold. I.E. You can apply bonuses up to +1 per 2 levels, and if you would sacrifice say...a +2 flaming burst greatsword: you would be able to make anything +2 (taking up +2 of your inherant bonus points) an/or flaming burst (taking up +3 of you inherant bonus points). So basically, you sacrifice an item, and you add that item's properties to your list of stuff you can apply to whatever weapon you currently hold. This goes for armor too, of course, but that is a different list from weapon enhancements. I would say that an appropriate amount of EXP cost would be 500 per +1 of the bonuses you want to 'learn' from whatever item you are sacrificing, because losing the item is costly in itself.

So here's how it would work.
I've sacrificed a few items and gained Enhancement bonuses +1 to +4, Speed(+4), Disruption(+2), and Holy(+2) through sacrificing various weapons. I am currently LVL 16, so I can apply a maximum effective bonus total of 8. I'm fighting a Vampire with my Masterwork Heavy Mace(only masterwork items can have the bonuses applied to them), so I apply a +4 Enhancement Bonus, Disruption, and Holy, so I am effectively wielding a +4 Holy Heavy Mace of Disruption.

Getting this so far? To attach these bonuses to an item is only a partial action, so you could have +2 Icy Burst attached to your Scimitar, and when the Ice Creature starts to wail on you, you change the enchantment to +4 Flaming. Very useful, but very costly, since you have to spend 500 XP for each +1 of the Enchantments you have 'learned'.

 

[Spatzimaus]

There have been quite a few threads here on scalable magic items. You can probably look back a couple months to find a bunch. Here's a few I found:

http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=48275

http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=45559

 

[Suldulin]

My friend and I came up with a system for this as well:

http://www.chaoscitadel.net/cgi-bin/ikonboard.pl?s=3e6cd73513b5ffff;act=ST;f=70;t=2693

basically it boils down to that you have a limited set of items that you decide upon at creation that can be improved by you expending gold, xp, or a combo.

The gold is the normal market price, the xp is doubled from what it would cost a mage with the feat, and the items you can affect cannot be added too unless the DM decides to based upon your roleplay and the like

This allows you for the "This was my father's ring" or "This was my grandfather's sword" type of thing rather than the pick and toss that is normal

 

[maransreth]

BOEM3 option

Recently reading Monte's Book of Eldritch Might 3: The Nexus and in one of the chapters there he gives rules on how to create intelligent items with levels. And a person can get the item to increase in level by using experience. An increase in level sees more spell-like abilities for the item and possible feats as well.

So this might be a solution.

 

[haiiro]

There's also a decent simple system for scalable items in FFG's Spells & Spellcraft (which is an excellent book overall).