Power Scale of Magic Items

[Prak]

so then what about my suggestion that really just mildly penalizes the stupid shit?

[Catharz]

I'm just failing to see why a weak bard with a wig of brilliance is so much better than a bard not allowed no make magic wigs. The effect of penalizing people is 'You can make a mockery of my campaign with Bras of Enlargement and kill suspension of disbelief with Flexi Straws of Doom, but I'm going to make your character suck as a form of ineffectual retaliation.'

[Voss]

Oh, I see. You need Wizards to provide you with a reason to say 'You can't make something utterly stupid that doesn't fit my campaign.'

Just say no. It rather simplifies the process.

[CalibronXXX]

I'd probably do that, but I didn't write the rule, I'm just defending it as a perfectly functional alternative to taking every single item on a case for case basis.

[Draco_Argentum]

"You can make items that do X. They can look like whatever your group thinks is cool."

Thats a fine rule. Theres no need for the base rules to force people to make rings of invisibility.

[CalibronXXX]

I've made my case and explained that I don't even actually disagree with you guys. I'm done with this thread until it changes topics.

[Judging__Eagle]

Actually, the real difference is that you get access 2 levels earlier if you make an item Iconic.

This is strictly staying within BoG of course.

Also, you could seriously just have eight rings and have them nearly all be iconic.

"Iconic" pretty much means: "A cloak of invisilbility is as good as a ring or hat; but not as good as gloves, goggles, pants or boots. Unless you're wearing a cloak, ring, and hat already."

Prak, I was making a pun.

Any item that was that bad, would have to have something really good to go with it.

So.... you have a 30% miss chance due to blurry vision, but you have str = cloud giant?

....amgawd, I know how I could explain its origins too.

They're used by Cloud Giant scholars who go to towns and say: "Okaie guyz, I'm in chaerge now. Gib meh munneh so I can buy bookz."

[tzor]

1196394134[/unixtime]]actually, iconic locations don't kill those ideas, they merely reward people with a slight benefit for making Goggles of True Sight rather than a Codpiece of True Sight.

I pride myselkf with the ability to think out of the box in terms of flavor text. I think I can easily find a way to explain the Codpiece of True Sight, but not in a PG13 manner and not before a good night of drinking. :tonguesmile:

I think it is time for the old fart to activate the way back machine. The evolution of the "slot" in magic items was, as far as I can tell, an idea taken from the various ASCII graphic multiplayer games developed on systems like Compuserve (Island of Kesmai) as well as on single player games developed on the PC. Well these games didn't really exist in the days of 1E so let's go into the waybackmachine.

One of the problems of magic items are that unless you are dealing with cursed items (which is more of a case of buyer beware, non cursed items never became cursed while in your posession), magic items were always a "good" thing. And you can never have enough of a good thing right? As you go through dragon hordes you start collecting a lot of good things. Rings were the common example. People expected to be ableto wear one ring on each of their 10 fingers. (I don't think I knew anyone who realized that some people wear more than one ring on a finger.) And if you think that was bad enough there was a DM (honestly I don't know who, our group was very open in terms of PC movement across campaigns and as a result house rules spread like a viral infection in our campaigns) who came up with "teeth of spell storing" for maximum magic item fun.

The solution to limit magic item abuse was to limit magic items. Really the notion of 2 magic rings per person is completely arbitrary. Yes having 10 magic rings might seem over the top, but having to wear a dead man's hand on your neck just to use a third ring is also over the top in the other direction. Magic item afinity was another way to limit magic item abuse by keeping a person from getting too many similiar special effects by the ability to distribute them around his or her body.

I really think this was treating the symptoms and not the cause. The root cause is that magic items are "good" and the more "good" the better! Magic items must be Ying/Yang, with a "bad" side. The bad effects should start off lower but should scale faster than the good effects until eventually there comes a point where it is not a good thing to add another good magic item.

If you think of how the other genre handled this problem, you see the potential for a more elegant solution. In most future tech systems, technology somehow deprives you of your humanity and all that power comes with a price. We could use the similiar approach to magic. In the tech model, you loose your humanity to the machine. In the magic model, you loose your humanity to something else, perhaps the fae, perhaps something more elemental or diabolic.

[Catharz]

1196691265[/unixtime]][
Magic items must be Ying/Yang, with a "bad" side. The bad effects should start off lower but should scale faster than the good effects until eventually there comes a point where it is not a good thing to add another good magic item.

If you think of how the other genre handled this problem, you see the potential for a more elegant solution. In most future tech systems, technology somehow deprives you of your humanity and all that power comes with a price. We could use the similiar approach to magic. In the tech model, you loose your humanity to the machine. In the magic model, you loose your humanity to something else, perhaps the fae, perhaps something more elemental or diabolic.

That would work great in games where you want to emphasize magic or technology as dangerous, corrupting forces. If, on the other hand, you don't want players worrying about whether having nike shoes, a fancy parka, a wrist watch and an ipod is eroding their humanity...
Well, sometimes other limiting factors should be used.

[tzor]

1196703300[/unixtime]]That would work great in games where you want to emphasize magic or technology as dangerous, corrupting forces.

The idea is that you would design the system based on two criteria, an offset where some level of magic is acceptable without any effect, and an accumulation path which could be either linear or quadratic. The same is true in the future tech systems; a cell phone is trivial, a data jack into the brain is a slight drain. Turning yourself into a 50% machine is a real humanity buster.

It's not that magic is evil or dangerous but when magic overshadows personal limitations then you loose the person in the magic. Frodo the 8 str Hobbit wearing the girdle of storm giant strength and the gauntlets of ogre power and throwing the hammer of thunderbolts like it was a yo yo probably has lost whatever hobbit humanity he had to the overwhemling power of those stat boosters.

(Yea I know I just gave a 1E item combination. It's just my favorite example and it never goes out of style.)

[Judging__Eagle]

Actually, it's a a combo that is still in 3.5. Now it's a Hammer of Thunder Bolts, Guantlets of Strength and Belt of Strength.

The str boosts also stack. This being the only example of a boost stacking with an other of the same type.

[Fwib]

1196809222[/unixtime]]Actually, it's a a combo that is still in 3.5. Now it's a Hammer of Thunder Bolts, Guantlets of Strength and Belt of Strength.

The str boosts also stack. This being the only example of a boost stacking with an other of the same type.

I never noticed that before. Pity it needs an artifact to do it.

[Prak]

how do the gauntlets and belt stack? they're both enhancement bonuses...

[Catharz]

1196819933[/unixtime]]how do the gauntlets and belt stack? they're both enhancement bonuses...

Because that's the special ability of an artifact.

[Prak]

*looking up hammer of thunderbolts*

It's a fucking inside joke... that's why. The "Hammer of Thunderbolts" is Mjolner, Thor's hammer, that's why the str item was split into a belt and gauntlets in 3.5, and why you get to use both when weilding the hammer, because Thor wore special gauntlets and a special belt that allowed him to even lift Mjolner(the gauntlets) and doubling his strength(the belt). It's like material components.

[Fwib]

1196837815[/unixtime]]*looking up hammer of thunderbolts*

It's a fucking inside joke... that's why. The "Hammer of Thunderbolts" is Mjolner, Thor's hammer, that's why the str item was split into a belt and gauntlets in 3.5, and why you get to use both when weilding the hammer, because Thor wore special gauntlets and a special belt that allowed him to even lift Mjolner(the gauntlets) and doubling his strength(the belt). It's like material components.

Yeah, but the inside joke is just a direct copy from 2e (and probably before, but I started at AD&D2e so those are the earliest books I have) including the 'you only get to stack the gauntlets and the belt if you use a magical hammer' bit. Except that the hammer was not an artifact back then.

[Voss]

1e too. Someone just thought it was cool to have thor's whole set. He needed he gloves to protect his hands from the heat after he threw the hammer (or something). And the belt did something that I forget. But, yeah. In 1e, getting thor's shit was essentially the best thing you could do. Until Blackrazor, possibly.

[tzor]

Trust me, as the DM where the second D of "D&D" (D&D means "Death & Destruction" right?) ran around my campaign world with his "holy hammer healing machine" (aka an NPC becuase unlike Death he didn't have a ring of regeneration on his finger) I can tell you that the hammer was "THE WIN" in more ways than one. Even Darleks would start stating "OMFG RUN AWAY."h