NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6016757" data-attributes="member: 42582">Well, the original power combo is a Girdle of Giant Strength, Gauntlets of Ogre Power and Hammer of Thunderbolts.Odin has a Spear of Slaying, a Hat of Disguise and probably other stuff that I'm forgetting.Gauntlets, Ring and Cloak doesn't seem too far-fetched to me.There are two things here.First, not everything that is outside the PC's control need be outside the player's control. So it's not clear to me, at least, that it is the GM rather than the player who gets to decide that Excalibur or Sting is found. (An analogue from AD&D might be the paladin's mount. It is the GM who gets to decide exactly how the "calling of the mount" scene is framed, but the player is absolutely entited to the mount, as a consequence of the build resources invested in being a paladin.)Second, it is fairly easy to have a system in which PC build resources are spent to "cement" an item, so that the GM is not at liberty to deprive the player of it on any permanent basis. This is one common way for points-buy type games to handle the keeping of found items.Well, in a well-designed game with such things the GM is obliged to make use of those resources, and has the scenario-design tools to do so.And this doesn't apply to items as part of the PC build, which don't particularly require the GM to do anything!I'll cheerfully admit that my knowledge of the fantasy genre is limited, but in Arthurian romance and in traditional fairy tales looted or scavenged gear plays a pretty minimal role. In Tolkein, the only instance of looted or scavenged gear I can think of is the use of orc disguises in Mordor, which would not be discouraged by a "pay for items" approach - once moving through Mordor is resolved, they are simply discarded.Found or gifted gear is important to the fantasy genre, but that's easily handled via a "pay to keep" rule - which is pretty standard in RPGs that treat items as part of PC build. In fact, such an approach can encourage the GM to place items to be found, and have items gifted, precisely because they won't have long term consequences for the campaign unless character build points are spent to cement them into the PC. (Interestingly, the only version of D&D to smoothly handle gifted gear is 4e - because treasure parcels are not linked to looting in any mechanical fashion. Although 3E Oriental Adventures also suggests a way of handling it, in effect by treating wealth-by-level as a parcel system rather than a rough guideline for moderating loot placement.)I was actually thinking of 4e, which I believe fits the description of "characters being balanced independently of their equipment" - as in, it is not the case in 4e that "equipment is far more important for noncasters than casters". And if you want to eliminate item dependency in the maths, but don't want to just level-down encounters, you can use inherent bonuses. It could hardly be easier!</blockquote>

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