4e balance points

[Surgo]

Before we get too off-topic, could we nail down the other couple of balance points? Top tier I get consists of Righteous Brand and Orbizards as prime examples, what other rough tiers are there?

Also, does anyone else pronounce Orbizard like Charizard?

[Quantumboost]

Also, does anyone else pronounce Orbizard like Charizard?

I do, definitely. It's most of the appeal of the name to me.

Heck, does anyone here NOT pronounce it that way?

[RandomCasualty2]

As far as tiers go, I'd probably do it by:

God tier: These are the guys who basically totally win by preventing the enemy from doing anything, or being basically invulnerable to attack, doing ridiculous amounts of damage or otherwise "unfairly" dominating everything. Demigod regeneration, unerrated battlerager, Orbizard, master healing cleric, etc.

Optimized Tier: These guys have huge damage outputs, or grant very effective bonuses. Basically any kind of mass multiattacking ranger build belongs in here, as do powers that give you tons of attacks on the same creature, like the barbarian's 6 attack thing. I'd throw righteous brand here as well (though at paragon/epic, RB may well go into the god tier). Must take feats like weapon expertise go here as well, as does twin strike.

Base Tier: This is for shit that you'll probably see in your average game. Take a reasonably well built (non martial power) fighter type with the errata to rain of blows, and you've got a good candidate for what a base tier character can do. The majority of powers belong in the base tier.

Low Tier: This is for options which are underpowered. This is for powers like sure strike, which you'd pretty much never want to use. Basically any choice that's flat out mathematically inferior to your average power goes in the low tier.

[Lago PARANOIA]

RandomCasuality2, having the DM picking your magic items like a harried parent is a complete non-starter.

I don't care how hard it is to make a balanced game when PCs get to pick their magic items out of a selection of hundreds. Having DMs actually dictate PC advancement to this extent will put a black spot on any work done in D&D. It'd be like implementing racial level limits or rolling for random hit points in a future edition.

Try something else. Try anything else. Even rolling for magic items is slightly less stupid.



Regardless, the problem with everyone picking Iron Armbands of Power + Bloodclaw/Reckless/Frost/Cunning weapons is that these items add a flat-out bonus to attack/damage rolls. I strongly support getting rid of enhancement bonuses that are independent of character power, if not getting rid of them altogether, for the same reason everyone with a brain picks these.

Magic items should provide new options or horizontal advancement, not manipulations to pre-existing option. A magic sword that lets a fighter shoot fireballs is fine. Magic boots that let rogues climb on walls and ceilings are fine, too. A magic ring that lets you transform into a mouse is also good. A magic sword that does extra poison damage is not fine. A magic staff that lowered enemies' saves is a bad idea. A cloak that gives a bonus to stealth is a bad idea.

Now eliminating magical item synergy is pretty much impossible. Even a magic item that lets someone turn into a cockroach is going to be more use to a rogue than it is to a barbarian. That's fine; magic item synergy isn't the problem. The problem is vertical advancement and just not printing out enough good magical items--a problem that feeds in on itself.

While we're on the subject, magical item dailies are the worst idea ever. I have no idea why 4E wanks off to them so much, but part of the reason why there's so little diversity in magic items is because about 50%-60% of all magical items are competing for your 'daily use' slot. This is why every min-maxxed character loads up on magic item powers of Property/Special/At-Will/Encounter duration. Get rid of that shit. If you don't want people spamming magical item abilities, just implement a cooldown time. Getting rid of vertical advancement will also go a long way towards helping with the 'five moves of doom' combo as well.

[RandomCasualty2]

RandomCasuality2, having the DM picking your magic items like a harried parent is a complete non-starter.

I don't care how hard it is to make a balanced game when PCs get to pick their magic items out of a selection of hundreds. Having DMs actually dictate PC advancement to this extent will put a black spot on any work done in D&D.

I can understand people not wanting the DM to pick all their items.

What you want is a balance, and I think 4E does that okay. You can use your own gold, or if you really want you can melt down the items you get to make whatever item you happen to really want.

On the other hand, having all cherry picked items is very boring. Sometimes it's nice to have a few random items to carry around with interesting uses. Because it feels good the one random time you remember that you're carrying a Quall's anchor token and use it to stop a ship at a crucial moment. That's cool, but lets face it, you'd never actually buy something like that.

I realize some people have this adversarial view of "the DM is your enemy" and you need all these crazy rules to prevent him from fucking you. But that's just a waste of time. If you get one of those adversarial DMs, you are fucked. I don't give a shit what the rules are. I don't care how much protection they're giving you. If your DM wants you dead, you are fucked.

Might as well just find a new group and a DM you can actually trust.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Other problems with magical items:

A) 3E had a thing where anyone who was anyone had a magic sword. Even if you took care of wealth-by-level issues, a lot of people complained that it took a lot of the 'magic' of magical items when the landscape was literally littered with them. And of course it took extra time to equip NPCs with bling and recalculate their stats.

4E's solution--to put magical items just in the hands of PCs--isn't much better. The problem is that it makes NPCs look bland and boring when even the Dark King Howard doesn't have any special items that aren't solely implemented by the plot. The worse problem is that it makes PCs look like a bunch of bunnypants; the Skull Queen only needs a club to whup up on your ass, why does your legion of so-called heroes need two +5 Wounding Handaxes to compete?

Getting rid of vertical advancement of magical items will pretty much eliminate these problems. You can actually give the Elite Fire Nation legions magical armor that will remove their need to eat and drink and keep them comfortably cool. And weapons that are constantly on fire. It's easier, makes magic items look cool and unique, and you don't have the problem of PCs throwing away their ancestral swords to pick up trash off of the ground.

[Lago PARANOIA]

On the other hand, having all cherry picked items is very boring. Sometimes it's nice to have a few random items to carry around with interesting uses. Because it feels good the one random time you remember that you're carrying a Quall's anchor token and use it to stop a ship at a crucial moment. That's cool, but lets face it, you'd never actually buy something like that.

I think a half-and-half approach would be best, personally. The PC picks a few items they really really want and the rest gets rolled. But I don't think it goes far enough.

In one of my 4E games, my DM uses a half-and-half approach... he lets us randomly roll for items a few levels above what we're supposed to get. Then when we catch up we get to actually pick the item. The point is pretty much to spend half of the time with a Staff of Ruin and the other time with a random staff of a better plus.

But then again, I support getting rid of vertical advancement of magical items so this approach won't work unless you have the game firmly divided up into tiers.

[RandomCasualty2]

Getting rid of vertical advancement of magical items will pretty much eliminate these problems. You can actually give the Elite Fire Nation legions magical armor that will remove their need to eat and drink and keep them comfortably cool. And weapons that are constantly on fire. It's easier, makes magic items look cool and unique, and you don't have the problem of PCs throwing away their ancestral swords to pick up trash off of the ground.

Well no, not exactly. I mean there are always going to be more powerful items, even if that power isn't measured in bonuses. Armor of flight will always be more useful than armor of endure elements. That's just the way it is.

So long as NPCs have troves of items that have real value, PCs will pretty much run around and take them to sell and trade in. Because even if they're trading up their armor of arrow deflection for armor of flight. Maybe later you trade the armor of flight for an armor of ghostform, there's always going to be something better.

There are really only a few choices to make the world economy kinda work.

-You can't buy/craft magic items. This means that selling magic items isn't a high priority either. The problem with not being able to buy/craft items is that you basically rely on the DM entirely to give you everything you want.
-NPCs don't have many magic items. For whatever reason, you only find a few magic items off NPCs, so there's just not a ton of shit to loot to take back to your batcave.
-Magic items aren't directly lootable. Like the cyberware in corporate goons, the expensive shit isn't something you can easily reclaim. Maybe Voldemort's wand only works for Voldemort and to everyone else it's a normal piece of wood.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Well no, not exactly. I mean there are always going to be more powerful items, even if that power isn't measured in bonuses. Armor of flight will always be more useful than armor of endure elements. That's just the way it is.

That's why I said horizontal advancement. The 'flight armor always is better than endure elements' is grognard thinking right there.

Armor of Flight can just be a loser power where you fly for three rounds; people wouldn't even wipe their asses with that. Similarly, armor of endure elements might make you immune to an entire swatch of energy.

If you want to have both types of armor in the game then you should do what people have been pushing for years and have the magic items get more powerful as you get more powerful. Like in the Tome series or Shadowrun.

[Lago PARANOIA]

-You can't buy/craft magic items. This means that selling magic items isn't a high priority either. The problem with not being able to buy/craft items is that you basically rely on the DM entirely to give you everything you want.
-NPCs don't have many magic items. For whatever reason, you only find a few magic items off NPCs, so there's just not a ton of shit to loot to take back to your batcave.
-Magic items aren't directly lootable. Like the cyberware in corporate goons, the expensive shit isn't something you can easily reclaim. Maybe Voldemort's wand only works for Voldemort and to everyone else it's a normal piece of wood.

This is also grognard thinking right there; why would you give magical items an objective value and then forbid PCs from interacting with it?

RC2, the deal where legendary Medusa archers never have magical bows and magic items never get picked up and they're only lying around in piles is exactly why we mock 4E.

This is a fantasy game and the currency is asskicking. If you have objects out there that allow people to kick ass on demand, it's completely absurd to put up all of these arbitrary rules why they don't work.

You pretty much have two choices here; you can either keep the 'magic items have an objective value' paradigm and just accept magical item shops in your game or you can make them subjectively near-worthless for most people. Excalibur is just another sword in the hands of someone who's not awesome enough; Voldemort's wand isn't useless because he's dead, it's useless because there are few people around who can tap into the ass-kicking.

[RandomCasualty2]

You pretty much have two choices here; you can either keep the 'magic items have an objective value' paradigm and just accept magical item shops in your game or you can make them subjectively near-worthless for most people. Excalibur is just another sword in the hands of someone who's not awesome enough; Voldemort's wand isn't useless because he's dead, it's useless because there are few people around who can tap into the ass-kicking.

Well, the problem with magic shops isnt' that you can buy items. Its more that you sell items. I mean you can go and adopt the 4E paradigm where nothing has magic items to counter that, otherwise it turns into a big problem of people collecting every scrap of equipment they can, and that's bad. Because a lot of DMs just don't want to deal with PCs collecting huge lists of treasure and selling it off. It's a colossal waste of time and just ends up burning half a session on treasure sales.

The problem with objects that require a certain high level to use is that pretty much it's likely the PCs already have that level. So it doesn't do a heck of a lot of good at controlling magic items. If Voldemort needs magic items like the PCs do, then pretty much any of the PCs will be able to use his items (maybe in a level or two or maybe immediately) but in any case, they'll hang onto them. So now you get in the magic item paradox, where NPCs have to get fewer magic items, which makes them either weaker than PCs, or they have to have special abilities that make them less magic item dependent.

Really, I'm okay with the 4E paradigm that just says that most NPCs don't need magic items, and the few that have them get them as a major feature.

I'm with you in getting rid of bonus granting items, but trying to make all magic items equal is probably not even a great idea. Part of D&D is finding newer and better treasure. I mean if your'e doing a superhero game where the heroes don't use their foes weapons, then it's fine to say that higher level gear isn't better.

If you want to have both types of armor in the game then you should do what people have been pushing for years and have the magic items get more powerful as you get more powerful. Like in the Tome series or Shadowrun.

I'm not really in favor of base gear scaling, unless it's supposed to be signature gear. If you have an ancestral sword that's part of your character, that should get better, but I think a lot of people also want to pick up new shit as they gain levels. Id' really like to accomodate both playstyles, and preferably the magic dagger you jacked from the goblin cleric shouldn't be the only magic dagger you ever need.

[Lago PARANOIA]

You can not have a system where NPCs don't have magic items by and large, characters not being able to affect the magic item economy meaningfully, and also expect players to regularly replace their magic bullshit.

You can have two of these things. All three are logically impossible to have. A party of five people who do not horde will have about 30 magical items between them, probably even more if you want players to accumulate bullshit like wands of fireballs and feather tokens. If you're also expecting players to regularly replace their equipment then where the hell is all of this shit coming from?

So which of the above do you want? Do you (not) want PCs to regularly participate in the magical item lottery and have a reason to replace items? Do you (not) want NPCs with any gumption to have a lot of magical items by and large? Do you (not) want a magical item economy that works much like the real one? What?

[StormBringer]

Magic items should provide new options or horizontal advancement, not manipulations to pre-existing option. A magic sword that lets a fighter shoot fireballs is fine. Magic boots that let rogues climb on walls and ceilings are fine, too. A magic ring that lets you transform into a mouse is also good. A magic sword that does extra poison damage is not fine. A magic staff that lowered enemies' saves is a bad idea. A cloak that gives a bonus to stealth is a bad idea.

How are slippers of spider climbing not a manipulation of an extant Thief option? In a similar light, doesn't a ring of polymorph self simply open another spell slot for the Magic User, as they don't need to memorize polymorph self? I also don't see the difference between a sword that shoots fireballs and a sword that does poison damage within your guidelines. Both provide a new option for the Fighter.

I assume the cloak and the staff are static ability bonuses that tend to get people up in arms.

[Lago PARANOIA]

How are slippers of spider climbing not a manipulation of an extant Thief option? In a similar light, doesn't a ring of polymorph self simply open another spell slot for the Magic User, as they don't need to memorize polymorph self? I also don't see the difference between a sword that shoots fireballs and a sword that does poison damage within your guidelines. Both provide a new option for the Fighter.

The sword that does poison damage stacks on top of all of the fighter's swording and becomes vertical advancement. Unless they find a better sword, it doesn't matter what kind of sword manuevers they're doing the fighter always wants to use the sword poison. The sword that shoots fireballs instead of swording gives the fighter an option that's agnostic of whatever skill they have in swording.

The slippers of spider-climbing works in a different way. It sets their climbing skill or modifier needed to climb ceilings and walls. It does not add to a thief's climbing ability; once the thief gets their climbing good enough that they don't need the slippers they'll get something else. The drawback of this item is that it can invalidate a thief who invested ranks in climb earlier, so we'll have to reimburse them for the investment.

A ring that let you polymorph into whatever may or may not be a bad idea depending on the particulars of the game. A ring that swapped out your character sheet for that of a troll is not game mechanically a bad idea (though it's probably a bit too clunky). A ring that let you have troll's strength that stacked with your previously-human swording is a bad idea. I suggested a ring that let you turn into a mouse because there's obvious utility for such an item that doesn't give much vertical advancement.

Now while some people might object to the mouse example since small creatures have a hide bonus, that's just a feature of D&D. Mice in Shadowrun for instance do not get a stealth bonus just for being mice--if you transform into one you're still just as clunky and whatever.