Should rings be able to function for low level characters?

Should 4e have that stupid restriction on rings?

  • Yes, I like anything arbritrary like that

    Votes: 89 33.3%
  • No, rings should be free to do as they please

    Votes: 147 55.1%
  • I don't care, I just want to kill stuff not think

    Votes: 30 11.2%
  • Piratecat closed the poll because it was horribly biased and designed to start arguments

    Votes: 1 0.4%

Admin note:

We don't mind polls in threads that require them, or where they're likely to gather useful data. In a poll that slants the answers in a way that is likely to cause arguments and/or bias the results, we very well may close a poll peremptorily. Like I've just done.

In the future, folks, please only use polls when they're really needed.

The thread's still open, so continue with the discussion if you're finding it fun.
 
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Piratecat said:
Admin note:

We don't mind polls in threads that require them, or where they're likely to gather useful data. In a poll that slants the answers in a way that is likely to cause arguments and/or bias the results, we very well may close a poll peremptorily. Like I've just done.

[tangent]
::has visions of P-Cat clicking away until he'd voted 9483 times...::

And are you aware that in 4e you'll need to be Epic level to do that? ;)
[/tangent]

Lanefan
 

king_ghidorah said:
Actually, you may be assuming things work the way magic items currently do. For all we know, rings are tied to paragon path powers and abilities, for instance, and thus the issue is not that they don't work for level 10 characters, but that the can't.

Not that that's what's happening with rings, but that was an early thought about why they would be limited....

Again, this ties back into the question asked way back when about what makes rings so special. It's not that they're circular; you can make an amulet composed of hundreds of interlocking rings. Most people don't consider their fingers core chakra points; having a magical item on your finger versus having it in your hand or on your head does not seem to connotate extra power.

So, why are rings special? There exists plenty of other low-level magic-item jewelry and clothing; why shouldn't you be able to produce a magical ring of warmth, if you can generate an amulet of warmth? And if there are a special set of rules for paragon-path items, why not just give you a generic paragon-path item slot?
 

ThirdWizard said:
Well, just to be clear, I am a firm believer that there's a huge difference between what ruins one's suspension of disbelief in theory on a message board and what does so in an actual game. I have no doubt that most people wouldn't really think twice about such a rule in an actual game.
That will be somewhat self-fulfilling as I expect quite a significant number of people will find this case of the rules assuming they can use them to be very disruptive. But they will probably tend to not play 4E. I know this type of arbitrary assumption on the way my game world works would suck for me. And it isn't a theory. And I explained it to my (gamer) wife last night to which she promptly replied "Well that's stupid." I'd dispute the term "theory" here.


Having said that, we run pretty much by whatever the majority wants. If the majority hate the ring rules, out they go, and if the majority like the ring rules, in they stay. I predict that our games will run as such: heroic and paragon with 1 ring and epic with 2. This is less about suspension of disbelief, however, and more about us just really liking magic items. (The 2 at epic probably staying due to power issues with mixing and matching rings.)
And I'm all on board with majority control. But the post I first replied to didn't run that way. It assumed that one persons rationalization would end the debate.

I'd be very interested to see how you do this. I'm sure it will be easy enough to invent low power rings. But I don't see WotC making this rule without building some assumptions about the rest of the system around it.

EDIT: I think everyone at the table has accepted, at least once, something into the game that they would not have gone with themselves. Different RAW interpretation has been the biggest one in 3e. However, we decide what to go with, and we go with it. You're going to get that in any game, though. Heaven knows 2e was full of them. But, it doesn't make the game less enjoyable, even though you'd think it would from reading some threads around here. I've found that people have quite an ability to have fun.
No arguement from me there. But I've never disputed that. You're kinda reframing my point with a completely different spin. The presumption that everyone else will either automatically accept one person's rationalizations or else they are not being a good friendly player if far and away different than expecting everyone to reach a mutual agreement.

Yeah,. 2E was full of dumb rules like this. Of course, thats when I dumped D&D.....
 

BryonD said:
And I'm all on board with majority control. But the post I first replied to didn't run that way. It assumed that one persons rationalization would end the debate.

What I was trying to say was that, though everyone might not agree on how things should be, we are willing to accept what others want in order to play the game. The choice will inevitably come up in any RPG whether to accept something you don't agree with and keep playing or leave, and playing almost always wins.

But, it looks like we agree. :) It was just a semantical misunderstanding, I think.
 


On the surface the rule is incredibly lame. They better have one whopper of an explanation for any gamer I run with to accept this without a large eye roll.
 

I'm not usually one for thread necro- for that I apologize- but it took me this long to fully understand why this rule bothers me as much as it does.

Despite several examples of rings in fiction, legend & lore that are NOT artifacts or relics in D&D terms, many people point out that many rings in legend and lore ARE just that.

Setting aside (at least for the moment) the question of which power level of rings predominate, the question must be asked, "What about other magic items?"

That is, if you look at the various source materials that inform FRPGs, what magical items are out there that are or are not predominantly artifacts or relics?

Many examples are also posted in this thread and related ones about how there are many magic items that don't rise to the level of artifact or relic.

However, I cannot readily recall one example on this website, nor in my own readings, of weapons or armor that would be relatively minor magic items. Instead, nearly each example of a magic weapon or armor is in some way epic...Durindal, Excalibur, Stormbringer, spears forged to slay dragons, Perseus' divinely gifted arsenal...if we've heard of a magic weapon, odds are its incredibly powerful.

Even Sting must be incredibly powerful if it allowed a relatively powerless hobbit (as some have asserted him to be) to stand up to Shelob.

And the same goes for shields & armor.

Yet its rings that get singled out for this singular treatment in the 4Ed rules.
 

I'm very happy with this decision. First, it indicates that the designers are taking the tiers seriously, so the game will move through different types of play as the campaign progresses, rather than sliding smoothly--almost imperceptibly--to greater power levels. I like mechanical elements that reinforce the changing types of play, whether it's getting followers, building a castle, or having enough inner power to use the high-end magic items.

Second, this rule will serve as bad-player flypaper, allowing me to spot players who...shall we say, possess a failure of proper focus...before they clutter up my table. Seriously, the ring thing is better than hit points ("how come a high-level fighter can be repeated beheaded and not die?!?!?!?!?") and memorizing spells ("zomg my wizard is smart but he forgets things all the time that's crazy!!!!") combined.
 

So tell me.. if it's only due to the idea of "slot limits," based on tier why can't the guidelines just say "In general, once your players reach a new tier, you should let them pick up items in another slot that previously they have not used." It makes a highly specific rule more generalized and also makes suspension of disbelief far less strained for many. Oh, and makes it sound like GMs aren't total screwups for giving players a "Ring of Minor invisibility" at level 9 instead of level 11.

If it's a "balance" issue due to item power, then why is there no apparent expectation that rings will become the de facto first "slot" item players pick up in Paragon tier because they offer a strict increase in power, as opposed to a conditional increase in power like the other slots, and are therefore likely to make the "core 3" the core "core 4" or "core 5"? Worse, this problem is simply exacerbated if rings are generally more powerful than other non-core slot items per gp. I've seen such cases in other games, so there's no reason why it wouldn't be the case here. In WoW, at certain levels, players basically gain general access to new armor slots. Occasionally, there are items which can be found/purchased below that level, but the general case is that certain item slots are expected to be filled because those items are common at that level and nearly non-existent below. In almost all cases, the auction price on those items just above that "baseline" level is somewhere close to 5x-10x the normal going rate for items about similar or one or two levels higher with better stats that fill other slots, simply because of the reality that the higher level items are assumed to be replacements for things you already have and are likely to replace in 5-10, while the lower level ones allow you to go up a significantly larger number for the same "cost."

THAT is why i think this rule is rediculous. It's bad design because it reduces meaningful choice from "one of many slots I could upgrade" to "one of the ring slots" in almost all cases around the limit point, save for the extreme low item game. In an average game where players are assumed to be able to purchase specific items (I don't know about everyone else, but in the majority of games I've seen, that assumption was true) as opposed to finding random loot that may be trash, there is likely either a focus into the "biggie" items and going for fewer, higher leveled items in a quadratic-cost system, in which case players are probably focusing on a few items that are way above the supposed baseline and abusing them to the hilt, or they're filling all slots and the item is basically worth the cost of the theoretical upgrade based on your worst slot currently filled + the item in the slot that would have been replaced, and not just the upgrade it would be in another slot. In other words, 20k gp does not always equal 20k gp.
 

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