+X Items: Sacred Cow or Holy Burger?

[Bullgrit]

I'm surprised anyone has a problem with +X magic items.

They push players to get rid of their beloved old magic items so they can keep up with the new shiny.

That was true in earlier editions of D&D, but since D&D3, the PCs can upgrade their current items without trading them in. Heck, my [D&D3] cleric early on bought a masterworked warhammer as a replica of the holy relic of his religion. He had it upgraded to +1. Then he took the Craft Arms and Armor feat and upgraded the hammer to be shocking, and later upgraded it again to be +2. So the weapon he carries now on his grand heroic quests is the same weapon he had in his early adventures, but better.

They complicate character math. It's one more fiddly number to keep track of, and change every time you get new gear.

Well, in my experience, you add in the +X to the relevant figures on your character sheet when you acquire the item, and then you don't have to fiddle with the numbers anymore. And how often do you get new gear that you need to fiddle with the numbers again?

How often is your AC or attack bonus changing due to new magic items? Every couple or three levels at most? If you have a problem adding another +1 to your AC because of a new magic item, then you must go into convulsions when you level up and have much more fiddly work to do to the character.

They force the DM to hew to the book's treasure guidelines or throw the game math out of whack. If a 5th-level party has +4 gear, or a 25th-level party has +2 gear, the numbers go all screwy.

If the game removed them, then new guidelines would be made, and if you feel constrained by the current guidelines, surely you'd still feel constrained to the new guidelines.

Furthermore, the DM has to make sure the party gets a steady stream of the weapons they use - if there's a guy who wields a triple-headed flail in the party, then every few levels the party needs to encounter a monster with a triple-headed flail.

Why can't the PC upgrade his own triple-headed flail? Has D&D4 gotten rid of upgrading magic items?

They inflate the importance of a character's gear over the character's abilities. This is less of a problem in 4E than it was in 3E, but it's still there to some extent.

You lament making a character's innate abilities better with a +X, but you have no problem with giving a character whole new abilities with a cape of the montebank of a staff of the magi? You're saying a fighter getting +4 to his Strength is more of a problem than a fighter getting the ability to teleport?

They necessitate a ludicrous economic system. In order to keep the +4 gear out of the 5th-level party's hands, it gets priced in the millions of gold pieces, and treasure guidelines for the 25th-level party are equally inflated.

This problem has nothing to do with +X magic items. Your cape and staff have the same deal.

They're fundamentally boring. Give me a frost blade, a flame tongue sword, a cape of the mountebank, a staff of the magi. Those are interesting and evocative magic items. A +5 sword? Meh. One more number in a game full of them.

Meh. I can't help you think something is interesting if you are already deadset against it.

Bullgrit

 

[FireLance]

I think the real issues are:

1. How often do you want the characters in your campaign to get better equipment?

2. Does the way in which the characters in your campaign improve their equipment matter to you?

If you do want the characters in your campaign to get better magic items fairly often (possibly because the players like it when they find or are rewarded with magic items), then the +X system becomes an advantage, not a disadvantage, because it becomes a very simple way to make the player feel that he is getting a new item.

If you are not too concerned about how the magic item improves, you can even flavor it as the character retaining the same item throughout his career, and it gets more powerful because it is magically bonded to the character, because it absorbs the magical energies of the creatures it kills (or are killed around it), or because a friendly spellcaster binds increasingly powerful enchantments to it.

However, if you want the characters in your campaign to get better equipment only rarely, it is still fairly easy to add the bonuses that they would have got from magic equipment directly into the characters' stats. One simple way to do this is to give the PCs a +1 to attack rolls and damage rolls at 3rd level, a +2 at 7th, a +3 at 13th, a +4 at 17th, a +5 at 23rd and a +6 at 27th and a +1 to all defences at 5th, a +2 at 9th, a +3 at 15th, a +4 at 19th, a +5 at 25th and a +6 at 29th.

(Let's not get into the issue of whether the baseline game should assume a PC gets new magic items regularly or not. Either way, groups that are not playing according to the baseline will need to do some extra work: either adding to the PCs' base stats or subtracting from them.)

Under this approach, magic items should grant numerical bonuses only rarely (if ever) and would be distinguished mainly by the additional abilities that they grant.

 

[Silvercat Moonpaw]

I like the idea of the bonus becoming part of the character (or being factored out of the game). Then you can run the thing not needing magic items but including them if you want for their cool abilities. I think even in that system you could have occasional items that give +X bonuses to model sharp blades or strong clubs, but the bonus would be minor enough not to unbalance things.......and would have a cooler name.

 

[billd91]

[*]They push players to get rid of their beloved old magic items so they can keep up with the new shiny.

I have to disagree. 3.5 largely made this substantially less important by getting rid of the gradations of damage reduction by + of the weapon. Extra bonuses to hit and damage, in 3.5, are nice but not critical. They're more important in 4e and by quite a bit, I'd say.

Different levels of magic power of any equipment, including energy damage and other special abilities, are still a deciding factor, particularly when the owning character can't make his own upgrades via magic item creation. Coming up with flavorful abilities for found gear, therefore, won't help you in the turnover of magical equipment.

 

[nightwyrm]

Wasn't the big, must-get magic item in 3.5 the +stats items? The +X weapons/armor were usually just +1 with a bunch of item properties tacked on behind it. If you needed to get a +X larger than +1, you get your wizard/cleric to cast greater magic weapon.

 

[Baron Opal]

I can appreciate the point of view, but having +X is just too convienient a means to convey exceptional sharpness or balance of a weapon. One of the weapons with the most backstory in a past 3.X campaign was a sword that was simply an +5 adamantine bastard sword. It could cut anything. It was practically the Platonic ideal of "sharpness".

You could come up with a weapon property of sharpness, but just having it be +5 is simple and elegant.

 

[DaveMage]

I am fine with the idea of a +x weapon, but I dislike the way dnd has implemented it.

To me, +x is simply a very elegant way of expressing a weapon that is magically sharper or more keen than the rest. Does it slice through a foe's armour more easily and deal more damage? Simply have it give an attack and damage bonus. No need for complicated formula such as taking the better of 2 attack rolls or something. I only need to improve my stats once and can forget that the weapon was ever there.

What I don't like is that dnd has already factored the effects of a +X weapon into the game. Now, you are expected to have a +X weapon by a certain point in the game, because the game assumes you will have one and has increased the monster's stats accordingly to accomodate this. Kinda defeats the point of having the weapon, IMO. Makes acquiring them more of a chore than an accomplishment to be celebrated.

I'm DaveMage, and I approve this message.

However, I would also be fine with weapons having properties that describe the "plus" rather than use "+1". For example, a weapon now called "+1" could have the "sharp" quality instead. Even better, make the "plus" part of another quality. So, for example, a "keen" weapon, would not only double the threat range, but would provide a +2 on attacks and damage.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I want my cake and eat it too. I want the standard game to have +X swords and armor. And then I want a convenient way to ignore it, when that suits me. Fortunately, as FireLance already said, 4E gives me both.

I believe there was a post from Mr. Mearls before 4E even launched, that if you wanted to take those items out, it would take you maybe 5 minutes of house ruling. Give every character +1 to all attacks, damage, and defenses at 3, 8, 13, 18, 23, and 28. Remove all plusses from weapons, armor, and neck items. Done. The only legitimate complaint left after that is messing with the prices--which is trivially easy in 4E.

I have a hard time seeing it being quite as easy to default to no plusses and work them back in, though it wouldn't be that much more difficult. The math being so clear and in your face is what makes that possible.

 

[CapnZapp]

I believe there was a post from Mr. Mearls before 4E even launched, that if you wanted to take those items out, it would take you maybe 5 minutes of house ruling. Give every character +1 to all attacks, damage, and defenses at 3, 8, 13, 18, 23, and 28. Remove all plusses from weapons, armor, and neck items. Done. The only legitimate complaint left after that is messing with the prices--which is trivially easy in 4E.

No, this isn't trivial.

But nevertheless, you're right, it can be done.

Then again; why wasn't this in the DMG so everybody could use the info? Or at least a Des&Dev article in Dragon?

Besides, you forgot to add in the Expertise feats; masterwork armor and the like. (The numbers should be more like +9 to attacks, +6 to damage, +8 to light AC, +12 to heavy AC, and +10 to non-AC defenses. And I've probably forgotten something).

Again, not contesting your basic claim it can be done. But claiming the process to be trivial is doing us all a disservice.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

No, this isn't trivial.

But nevertheless, you're right, it can be done.

Then again; why wasn't this in the DMG so everybody could use the info? Or at least a Des&Dev article in Dragon?

Besides, you forgot to add in the Expertise feats; masterwork armor and the like. (The numbers should be more like +9 to attacks, +6 to damage, +8 to light AC, +12 to heavy AC, and +10 to non-AC defenses. And I've probably forgotten something).

Again, not contesting your basic claim it can be done. But claiming the process to be trivial is doing us all a disservice.

The expertise feats didn't exist when the game was launched, and Mearls made the claim. Moreover, feats have absolutely nothing to do with the question. Whether you keep magic item plusses or roll them into the characters, you still need to either deal with the feats or an alternative to them. That may not be trivial, but it not a magic item issue. I'll grant you masterwork, but that's not that hard to add in, either.

Mearls made the claim, but didn't tell anyone how. Before the game even launched, multiple people figured it out. After the game was launched, many, many people figured it out--or close enough that it made no difference. A five minute house rule developed independently by multiple people sounds fairly trivial to me. Tweaking it with masterwork and the like is balanced by, you know, that now it is discussed, it is even easier to do.