+X Items: Sacred Cow or Holy Burger?

[gizmo33]

I think you make valid points that are based entirely on a preferred kind of gaming. Some folks actually like the idea of rooting around through dungeons and dumpsters and finding things that give their character a tiny bonus. Those folks are will to do the math, and trade away "beloved old magic items" (though they probably don't have any of those) and so forth. Ability scores also give you one more fiddly number to keep track of, so you could drop those too. In other words, I think it's mostly a matter of how you want to play, and DnD is geared toward a certain range of styles.

Also specifically:
> IME people mostly just drop their boring +1 sword and replace it with a +2 sword - "beloved old magic items" are very rare and likely to be powerful enough to be hard to replace anyway. I suppose if Excalibur were a +1 sword this would be a problem.
> I think the gear-balance issue is overstated. IME it's not so delicate of a thing. A character with a potion of fire resistance that fights a cold creature suddenly has no magic items - but that sort of reasoning is never considered by advocates of gear-entitlement.
Besides, selling stuff means that you can always just trade in the +2 sword for a +2 triple-headed flail - at least in theory. If the game system is zinging you with some 20% rule, then that's another problem.
> The "importance of gear OVER character abilities" is not the same thing as gear being important. Short of an RPG where your character is just as powerful in his underwear as he is in platemail I don't think on can solve this "problem".
> I agree that the economic system is bizarre, as you point out. I'd be curious to hear a developer explain why Angelsteel Armor +5 is worth the same as 5 suits of Angelsteel Armor +4. But I disagree that anything in concept about +1 weapons *necessitates* this kind of economics. There were +1 swords before anyone ever dreamt of an astral diamond.

 

[Leatherhead]

"+x" weapons are fine.

If they didn't exist we would still have the problem of weapon tiers. Who wouldn't replace a flaming sword or even Sting with a Vorpal Blade, Excalibur, the Spear of Destiny, or Caladbolg?

 

[fba827]

I also find +X weapons/armor uninteresting and bland. The thing is, no matter how much flavor you give it ("this was the sword of King Tambor, used to slay 1,000s of orcs during the great war"), it always ends up as a "long sword +1" on the PC sheet and after a session or two (at most) it isn't remembered as anything but what is on the PC sheet.

But, having said that, some players just prefer the simpler things, so it isn't _terrible_ to have. But, yeah, to me, uninteresting and I try to avoid giving them except once in a while...

 

[tyrlaan]

Turn all magic weapons/armor into covenant weapons/armor. The longer you keep them, they gain more plusses and powers. Magic items are even MORE rare in a campaign like this because no one has an incentive to sell their stuff.
That's what i'm doing in my campaign, giving weapons names and history and the characters feel more attached to it. Destroying a weapon or stealing it in this regard can be a huge blow to them (and THEN they can find a replacement of equivalent level).

<slightly tongue in cheek>4e is so much like Earthdawn, I'm surprised this isn't the way magic items work by default.</slightly tongue in cheek>

Seriously though, that's how magic items work in Earthdawn, and it makes magic items feel, well, like magic. DnD (by no means is this a 4e only thing) treats magic items as relatively mundane things.

I'm not really a fan of the blandness of +x items either, but I'm tempted to argue if you are very against them, DnD is not the game for you. On the other hand, the 4e math is indeed straightfoward enough to HR out +X's on items, but isn't the point of DnD (oversimplified) to go find monsters, kill them, and take their stuff?

 

[kitsune9]

I've disliked the whole concept of +X items (+1 sword, +2 armor, et cetera) for as long as I can remember. With 4E, I'm finding that all of my problems are coming into very sharp relief. To wit:

• They push players to get rid of their beloved old magic items so they can keep up with the new shiny.
• They complicate character math. It's one more fiddly number to keep track of, and change every time you get new gear.
• 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. 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.

Against all that, what's the benefit? I can't think of one except "D&D has always had them."

What does everyone else think?

I agree that I would like more evocative magic stuff. Unfortunately, I think the mechanics of D&D are too tied that if you don't have such "plus-happy" stuff, you won't get too far in encounters at higher levels. I remember playing in a magic-miser campaign where I got my first +1 longsword at 10th level, but were expected to fight normal 3.0 ed encounters. Too brutal..too brutal..

 

[UngeheuerLich]

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.

I would hate to see +x weapons go.

I however would support the level dependant "heroic" bonuses. These would not stack with magical +x.

So you can be lucky and get a +5 sword at first level and benefit from a +5 bonus, but when your own skill has reached its peak, it just gives you a slight edge.

You could also add this "heroic bonus" only for specific attacks (maybe only the weapons armors or implements which the classes are naturally prficient with). This would a) differentiate classes a bit and gives weapon users a reason not to switch to exotic weapons as soon as possible... and magic items will allow everyone to catch up or gain an aditional edge...

 

[Quickleaf]

I voted for axing the +X items, even though it'll never happen.

IMC, i give resist (steel) to powerful monsters, but at the same time certain magic weapons provide +X against them. So instead of a cross the board +X, it's +X vs. a specific foe. This +X is based on the wielder's level (e.g. +1 at 1st-3rd, +2 at 4th-8th, etc), a la a covenant/legacy weapon.

So a magic sword IMC would like this:

Sir Lieverd's Blade of the Angelic Choirs: DC 18 Religion, thundering weapon, +X vs. devils/demons, +Xd6 thunder critical

 

[dbm]

I have no idea why nobody (that I know of) has thought of this before. This is brilliant. I'd love to see the game go this route, where "accuracy" (or whatever) is just another property that magic weapons can have, and otherwise the notion of "+X" goes away to be replaced by more interesting properties.

This is the way magic items work in GURPS Magic (the 'default' magic system for GURPS). You can enchant a weapon to contain a power (e.g. flaming), to be accurate (+ to hit) or puissant (+ to damage) or all of the above if you like.

Cheers,
Dan

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

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.

Which, really, is just a good argument for fixing GMW so that the total enhancement bonus, including all effects, is taken into account.

 

[tomlib]

Item Sets

I'm pretty sure someone else mentioned this idea in the thread but in my last campaign I went with Item Sets.

For example:

Sword of the Red Mercenary +1 when it is the first item in the set.

When the second item in the set is found:

Shield of Flames +2 and the Sword of the Red Mercenary becomes +2.

Etc. I found my players were really looking forward to finding each item in their set and getting the corresponding bumps to all their items. I also threw in a lot of extra things like spells, skills, and feats and the 4th Edition Powers really feeds into this concept nicely.

The main reason I did this was because of the originally stated issue that the group was continually having to be given +2 weapons, then +3, etc and there was no continuity.

Happy Gaming

Tom