I'll grant that the Orb, Book, & Wand are bulky options that stay in the bat cave until he needs to go home and get them.
There's a difference between narratively using all of a character's options and actually having them on-hand. For Odin's case, many of his toys just aren't of use in a particular story. When he's trapped by a fisherman, the fact he has a talking head (in his pants...*cough*) or a multiplying gold ring just doesn't matter. If they were to be of help, I'm fairly certain they'd be referenced.
Also, gadgeteers aren't outliers, and represent an entire genre. While they're near-universally portrayed technologically, there's no reason why they couldn't be magic based. Now, you can use a different argument to this: having more than four items on hand will usually make it a primary facet of your character, your schtick as it were. Narratively, this means you either have less than a handful of magic items, or you have a full on plethora to pick and choose from.
Anatomy of Failed Design: Magic Items
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How do you confuse a barbarian?
Put a greatsword a maul and a greataxe in a room and ask them to take their pick
How do you confuse a barbarian?
Put a greatsword a maul and a greataxe in a room and ask them to take their pick
EXPLOSIVE RUNES!
Hold on to your monocle -- the D&D magic system is not particularly similar to how magic is treated in any story of any kind, ever (with the possible exception of Vance's Dying Earth stories). In most stories, magic is a vaguely defined MacGuffin/deus ex machina that is rarely used, hence there's not a big need to carry around multiple MacGuffins.angelfromanotherpin wrote:The number of magic items that any individual person walks around with in mythology is not that many. Herakles had his lionskin and his poison arrows. Perseus had the sickle-sword, the winged sandals, and the hat of invisibility; and later the gorgon's head. I think Cuchullainn went his whole career with just the Gae Bolga. Arthur had his magic sword, and for a while had a magic scabbard to go with it
[..]
Can anyone come up with a character who routinely carries more than, say four items at once?
Last edited by hogarth on Thu Aug 06, 2009 2:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Huh, in the best (IMHO) books magic isnt a deus ex machina but an internally consitent system (or at least it looks so to the reader).hogarth wrote: Hold on to your monocle -- the D&D magic system is not particularly similar to how magic is treated in any story of any kind, ever (with the possible exception of Vance's Dying Earth stories). In most stories, magic is a vaguely defined MacGuffin/deus ex machina that is rarely used, hence there's not a big need to carry around multiple MacGuffins.
- Mistborn
Wheel of Time
Malazan books of the Fallen (Steven Erikson)
The darkness that comes before (and follow ups)
etc.
It's trivially easy to be internally consistent under a vaguely defined set of rules.Korwin wrote:
Huh, in the best (IMHO) books magic isnt a deus ex machina but an internally consitent system (or at least it looks so to the reader).
For instance (to take the Wheel of Time as an example, bearing in mind I've never read it), can an Aes Sedai lift a 50 kg rock using magic? A 5000 kg rock? Could she do that 10 times in a row? 100 times? Who knows? It depends on whether that would make a good story or not, I presume.
What about some of the ideas presented in Weapons of Legacy? I once had a campaign where the PCs were on the run a lot. (I tried to give them downtime but they forcefully accelerated events) So because they couldn't stop long enough to horde gold, or even steal the items they wanted/needed (they were facing a lot of monsters cause they killed npcs too fast) I delved into the book and made their weapons and gear sort of auto upgrade (all the bonuuses none of the drawbacks) and gain abilities based on what each player used a lot of. IE I had a kender nightstalker who was all goody two shoes. However him controlling regular undead was a bad thing (I run the negative energy = evil force idea because of how I treat alignments) So I had his hoopak channel positive energy so that any undead he raised were deathless instead, then gave him various necromancy benefits (except all positive like) that came through wielding the thing. The lottery part came through smaller items that they found along the way. In total no one PC during the campaign ever had more than 8 items. The damage dealer (who had only 3 magic items total) of the team often went with just his sword and his chest into a fight but luckily this was a particularly creative/crazy/lucky guy so he made it through.
Last edited by MGuy on Thu Aug 06, 2009 5:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Don't assume that. The 'magic' in the WoT series is a very deus ex machina thing. It can do anything up to 'break the world', but people also get exhausted popping locks on magical collars.hogarth wrote:It's trivially easy to be internally consistent under a vaguely defined set of rules.Korwin wrote:
Huh, in the best (IMHO) books magic isnt a deus ex machina but an internally consitent system (or at least it looks so to the reader).
For instance (to take the Wheel of Time as an example, bearing in mind I've never read it), can an Aes Sedai lift a 50 kg rock using magic? A 5000 kg rock? Could she do that 10 times in a row? 100 times? Who knows? It depends on whether that would make a good story or not, I presume.
People also pulled bars of coherent light out of their ass at one point, which retroactively erased people from existence, but when they are told that it is probably bad to throw those around like shotgun blasts, it simply stops happening, despite being the only way to permanently kill the sub-bosses.
Last edited by Voss on Thu Aug 06, 2009 7:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Username17
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Anything that is required has to be mundane.
Anything that is unique has to be expendable.
If your game insists that people need to have starmetal armor to get things done, starmetal armor has to be a thing that you can go get. If your game insists that people need guns, then they have to be able to go get guns. If people need cloaks of resistance they need to be able to go get cloaks of resistance. If people need cars they need to be able to go get cars.
Now, mundane is not the same as non magical, nor is it the same as buildable. If you're in Diablo II, those Town Portal scrolls and healing potions are very mundane, but they are obviously powered by magic. If you're in Fallout, those AK-47s are very mundane even though no one built any of them since before the war. The point in either case is that you need them to have a functional character and you can just go get them, so that mandate is fine. Yes, in Fallout land you get a new AK-47 by wandering around in the desert until you find one, but since there are arbitrarily large numbers of them out there, that's fine.
Anything that characters need has to be referenced with an indefinite article. Not "The Magic Sword" but "A Magic Sword." And conversely, anything that really is a unique standalone item had better be something that the players don't need outside perhaps a specific adventure.
-Username17
Anything that is unique has to be expendable.
If your game insists that people need to have starmetal armor to get things done, starmetal armor has to be a thing that you can go get. If your game insists that people need guns, then they have to be able to go get guns. If people need cloaks of resistance they need to be able to go get cloaks of resistance. If people need cars they need to be able to go get cars.
Now, mundane is not the same as non magical, nor is it the same as buildable. If you're in Diablo II, those Town Portal scrolls and healing potions are very mundane, but they are obviously powered by magic. If you're in Fallout, those AK-47s are very mundane even though no one built any of them since before the war. The point in either case is that you need them to have a functional character and you can just go get them, so that mandate is fine. Yes, in Fallout land you get a new AK-47 by wandering around in the desert until you find one, but since there are arbitrarily large numbers of them out there, that's fine.
Anything that characters need has to be referenced with an indefinite article. Not "The Magic Sword" but "A Magic Sword." And conversely, anything that really is a unique standalone item had better be something that the players don't need outside perhaps a specific adventure.
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OK, 1, this giant text block of unrelated concepts makes my brain hurt.MGuy wrote:What about some of the ideas presented in Weapons of Legacy? I once had a campaign where the PCs were on the run a lot. (I tried to give them downtime but they forcefully accelerated events) So because they couldn't stop long enough to horde gold, or even steal the items they wanted/needed (they were facing a lot of monsters cause they killed npcs too fast) I delved into the book and made their weapons and gear sort of auto upgrade (all the bonuuses none of the drawbacks) and gain abilities based on what each player used a lot of. IE I had a kender nightstalker who was all goody two shoes. However him controlling regular undead was a bad thing (I run the negative energy = evil force idea because of how I treat alignments) So I had his hoopak channel positive energy so that any undead he raised were deathless instead, then gave him various necromancy benefits (except all positive like) that came through wielding the thing. The lottery part came through smaller items that they found along the way. In total no one PC during the campaign ever had more than 8 items. The damage dealer (who had only 3 magic items total) of the team often went with just his sword and his chest into a fight but luckily this was a particularly creative/crazy/lucky guy so he made it through.
2, you really pulled the 'these undead creatures aren't undead or bad (or etc), because they've got a different flag turned on? You're a bad person. Really.
2a, Kender? I second my previous point.
3, A no-downtime-ever campaign? Again. Bad person. I'm confused by the cause and effect there, as well. If they don't have time, I could see how they couldn't spend gold, but it would seem like they'd be hording a lot after a while. 'lots of monsters' also doesn't make sense from 'killing npcs fast'. Neither does 'no time to steal things', especially if they're killing npcs.
4, lottery part?
5, Weapons of Legacy are shit. A system that gives you weapons that aren't as good as weapons you can just pick up, find or make, plus they give extraneous penalties for no apparent reason? Crap.
6, If you're just going to hand out bonuses, just make them part of the character progression, rather then worry about items. Keep the 'special effect' miscellaneous items, and maybe some of the weapon/armor properties, but just make everything else inherent. It keeps the 'cool' factor (I've found a flaming sword!) but leaves out the stupid factor (Oh, its just a +1 flaming sword. Never mind).[/i]
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Lago PARANOIA
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One 'good' thing about magical item pluses, or rather the intended effect of them was to make it so that people don't get locked into a cycle of 'unless it's a shocking longsword, I don't want it'.
A +4 icy longsword gives incentive to players to grab that instead of hanging onto the flaming longsword they have had their whole career.
I don't see how you can have a lottery system without having out swords that are explicitly better than the ones you got on early in your career. Otherwise players will go 'eh, I already got the armor, sword, and magic cloak I want for the rest of my life. Let's just skip it.'
If you still insist on doing this, I strongly recommend having a lottery system of consumable magical items. Everyone gets excited over a potion of longetivity or a tempus fugus watch.
A +4 icy longsword gives incentive to players to grab that instead of hanging onto the flaming longsword they have had their whole career.
I don't see how you can have a lottery system without having out swords that are explicitly better than the ones you got on early in your career. Otherwise players will go 'eh, I already got the armor, sword, and magic cloak I want for the rest of my life. Let's just skip it.'
If you still insist on doing this, I strongly recommend having a lottery system of consumable magical items. Everyone gets excited over a potion of longetivity or a tempus fugus watch.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.
In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
1) Sorry I muddled my thoughts together. Let me try and make this a bit clearer.Voss wrote:OK, 1, this giant text block of unrelated concepts makes my brain hurt.MGuy wrote:What about some of the ideas presented in Weapons of Legacy? I once had a campaign where the PCs were on the run a lot. (I tried to give them downtime but they forcefully accelerated events) So because they couldn't stop long enough to horde gold, or even steal the items they wanted/needed (they were facing a lot of monsters cause they killed npcs too fast) I delved into the book and made their weapons and gear sort of auto upgrade (all the bonuuses none of the drawbacks) and gain abilities based on what each player used a lot of. IE I had a kender nightstalker who was all goody two shoes. However him controlling regular undead was a bad thing (I run the negative energy = evil force idea because of how I treat alignments) So I had his hoopak channel positive energy so that any undead he raised were deathless instead, then gave him various necromancy benefits (except all positive like) that came through wielding the thing. The lottery part came through smaller items that they found along the way. In total no one PC during the campaign ever had more than 8 items. The damage dealer (who had only 3 magic items total) of the team often went with just his sword and his chest into a fight but luckily this was a particularly creative/crazy/lucky guy so he made it through.
2, you really pulled the 'these undead creatures aren't undead or bad (or etc), because they've got a different flag turned on? You're a bad person. Really.
2a, Kender? I second my previous point.
3, A no-downtime-ever campaign? Again. Bad person. I'm confused by the cause and effect there, as well. If they don't have time, I could see how they couldn't spend gold, but it would seem like they'd be hording a lot after a while. 'lots of monsters' also doesn't make sense from 'killing npcs fast'. Neither does 'no time to steal things', especially if they're killing npcs.
4, lottery part?
5, Weapons of Legacy are shit. A system that gives you weapons that aren't as good as weapons you can just pick up, find or make, plus they give extraneous penalties for no apparent reason? Crap.
6, If you're just going to hand out bonuses, just make them part of the character progression, rather then worry about items. Keep the 'special effect' miscellaneous items, and maybe some of the weapon/armor properties, but just make everything else inherent. It keeps the 'cool' factor (I've found a flaming sword!) but leaves out the stupid factor (Oh, its just a +1 flaming sword. Never mind).[/i]
2) I pulled the bad and good are cosmic energies ploy. So channeling negative energy to make your undead is bad. Channeling positive energy is good. Because I don't have good and evil as regular alignments in the game, to align yourself with the forces that might be considered and are known "good" you have to be part of team Celestia (essentailly) and if you're gonna be a part of them you have to use their energy. Theres more to this but this isn't the thread for it.
2.a) Meh the kender is what the player wanted. It didn't mess up/derail the game. Its all a matter of taste...
3) How could you horde a lot of gold if you can't spend it and you're on the run? You don't have any place to put it or any means of carrying any amount that matters with you. You COULD have a place to put it if you BOUGHT the items necessary to do so. But as the campaign went they literally killed every humanoid npc I had until team bad guys consisted of all monsters. Killing Npcs doesn't necessarily net you anything usable/anything you'd care about and in the cases they did find something they kept it but these were rare.
4) The items looted off of the npcs were not crafted to the pcs themselves. That was the lottery (there being a lottery aspect to treasure was mentioned earlier)
5) Actually Legacy weapons can do everything regular magic weapons can do and can be given spells. I let them have that, I had it auto progress with their levels, and didn't give them penalties to use the items.
6) Seeing as though every legacy item auto progressed with their level its essentially the same as having it be a class whatever. Additionally the whole +1 sword is just semantics. I never called any item they got a +1 anything. Legacy Weapons have proper names but since the things evolved with the PCs I let them name their items whatever they wanted.