Wealth By Level

[hogarth]

The other main problem with magic item shops is that they don't really make sense in the economy. The value of the inventory being stocked is just way too expensive and tempting a target for anyone more powerful than you.

RC -- think about the real-life analog with expensive art. Can you buy expensive art? Is it be possible for powerful criminals to steal expensive art? Does it make sense to buy and sell expensive art?

(The answers are "yes", "yes", and "maybe".)

[PhaedrusXY]

However, instead of having to go through every damned magic item in existence and assign it to "least, lesser, and greater" status, and then decide how many of each of those a character should have at every level

Unfortunately... that seriously is the only way.

I hear what you're saying, but I don't have time for that shit. I'm not looking to make a complete system. I just want something that is close enough to be playable. I am willing to take a look at individual magic items as my game progresses and someone says "Hey, can I have this?", and tweak them if necessary. I'm not willing to sit down and go through every item in every WotC book ever published. That's just crazy.

So the method above, using the modified MiC charts to determine appropriate item levels, and tweaking individual items as needed, is good enough for me. And if others are looking for a decent system that can work with the Tome rules, Wish economy, and all the rest of it, I think it might be worth checking out for them, also.

I think 3.5 is a decent system, but it needs some patching up. Your Tome stuff goes a long way towards addressing a lot of the problems with it, but the Tomes are incomplete. So in order to have something I can actually use right now, this is the route I'm going.

[RandomCasualty2]

RC -- think about the real-life analog with expensive art. Can you buy expensive art? Is it be possible for powerful criminals to steal expensive art? Does it make sense to buy and sell expensive art?

(The answers are "yes", "yes", and "maybe".)

Well, you have to think in terms of medieval times, and actually find a specific piece of art you want. So lets say I'm looking for a statue of the pharoah Ramses. The chances of you finding one for sale at any given time is very low. In fact, probably your best chance of getting one is to commission an artist to make one, instead of going from city to city actually looking for one that happened to be up for sale.

[hogarth]

Well, you have to think in terms of medieval times, and actually find a specific piece of art you want.

What does Dungeons & Dragons have to do with medieval times?

And yes, sometimes commissioning an item is quicker and easier.

[souran]

RC -- think about the real-life analog with expensive art. Can you buy expensive art? Is it be possible for powerful criminals to steal expensive art? Does it make sense to buy and sell expensive art?

(The answers are "yes", "yes", and "maybe".)

Well, you have to think in terms of medieval times, and actually find a specific piece of art you want. So lets say I'm looking for a statue of the pharoah Ramses. The chances of you finding one for sale at any given time is very low. In fact, probably your best chance of getting one is to commission an artist to make one, instead of going from city to city actually looking for one that happened to be up for sale.

The D&D and Fantasy worlds are such a mishmash of concepts and ideas to call them "medieval" is not particularly accurate. Medieval also means different things when you apply it to say economics, politics, farming, technological sophsitcation in general, warfare, medicine, literature, art, or philsophy.

D&D's treatment of each of these areas for its generic game varies wildly. Some of them are basically helenistic, others are diffentively roman, either republican period or empirial period. Still others have less to do with history and more to do with pure pseudohistory or sort of the vision of history prestented by people like Robert Howard.

Honestly, at this point when I imagine my players speaking I don't assume european accents (unless a player is faking some manner of speaking in particular) I also don't assume my players use anything like medieval phrasing or langague. I assume that they speak and sound like my players, and that my fantasy world has developed the speaking patterns and mannerisms of people from kansas, the deep south, new york, etc.

[Tequila Sunrise]

What I mean is, Diablo generates treasure randomly and then leaves you to whatever devices you can think of to twink out your toon. There are zero guidelines (obviously) or guarantees other than 'the more time you spend grinding, the more [mostly useless] items you get.'

How is this not a description of 4e?

4e explicitly tells you that PCs need enhancement bonuses, how many of them, and exactly which items grant them. So even if the DM doesn't ask for wishlists, PCs are guaranteed the basic toys they need to adventure.

It is totally design intent that players get hosed for selling items because the game doesn't want players to pick their own items. Seriously, this is the one thing that 4E makes perfectly fucking clear.

Aw, how predictable, Lago is yet again blatantly ignoring (or ignorant) of basic guidelines. Read page 125, dude, and be enlightened. 4e wants one of two things -- for the DM to handpick items to be useful to his PCs or for the players to tell the DM exactly what they want so that s/he can give it to them. And on top of that it wants players to get cash on top of that so that they can buy their precious Iron Armbands or whatever every few levels.

Everyone, please ignore the blatant troll.

Notice how nobody replied to the meat of my first post, where I actually answer FrankTrollman's question? Even Frank himself didn't reply to anything relevant, even to tell me "Your WBL ideas suck." It's almost as if Frank and all his lackeys are trying to send me a subtle between-the-lines message about their zealous need to insulate TGD from any pro-4e opinions...

In other words, don't hold your breath for rational thought on this forum, friend.

What he is arguing is the point in 4e where no one fucking knows what the design intent is, or what kind of spread of equipment people are supposed to have, or even how much of it each individual character is supposed to get - that's an advantage. Because um... if you don't have consistent inputs then players with more system mastery won't reliably get better outcomes.

Like I said, I can't expect rational thought from people who put words in my mouth.

Tell me, Frank, have you just not read the 4e PHB and DMG? Like the part that explains enhancement bonuses? Or how other items are just gravy? And the part that advises DMs to handpick items and/or use wish lists? The part that explains exactly how many items and cash to hand out per level? The part that gives [albeit rough] starting-above-1st-level guidelines? The part where items have levels so that everyone knows what is level-appropriate?

How are you seeing WBL, random treasure charts and minor/medium/major items as somehow more impartial than 4e's halfway decent item standardization?

The thing is, PR, this guy is no troll. He has an established history of posting stuff which makes no sense except in his own weird world where 1 != 1 and other amusing things like this.

See PR, you TGDers just can't resist taking a shot at anyone with a contradictory opinion. It's funny because TGD is just about the smallest weird little world of a weird world of role players of a weird world of gaming, whose members tend to disagree with the larger population of their peers and yet insist that everyone else is wrong. If that's not indicative of elitism, antisocial personalities, repressed emotions, a total lack of common sense and other psycho mumbo-jumbo, I don't know what is.

[NineInchNall]

Or the minority could be right. Stranger things have happened.

And, RC2, thinking of D&D-land in terms of medieval societies is not really helpful. Even the DMG goes into how doing so is an unproductive exercise.

[Username17]

4e explicitly tells you that PCs need enhancement bonuses, how many of them, and exactly which items grant them. So even if the DM doesn't ask for wishlists, PCs are guaranteed the basic toys they need to adventure.

[Citation Needed]

That's horseshit on several levels.

1. The 4e books do not in fact tell you when you're supposed to get bigger enhancements, let alone "exactly" when things are supposed to get enhancements.
2. Even if they did tell you exactly when you were supposed to get a sword with a bigger enhancement bonus, which they don't, the fact remains that the difference between getting a frost sword and something shitty like a flaming burst sword is so stark that players would be willing and eager to forgo having the larger enhancement bonus to have a more relevant secondary effect instead.
3. Even if the rules told you when - or even if - you were supposed to get the frost sword of your dreams, which they don't, that doesn't even come close to addressing the much larger question of when or if you get the boots of eagerness.

See, you make these claims. They are testable. They are false. It makes a lot of people think that you're a troll. While personally I think that you're just a deluded 4rrie who should get the fuck off my thread since he obviously has nothing constructive to add to this or any other topic. I don't doubt your sincerity, I just think that everything you type is provably wrong and you should shut up.

-Username17

[Lokathor]

While we're on the subject, Tome doesn't quite solve the subject of potions/wands/scrolls/etc.

If WBL was being used, should consumables like that just cost 10 times as much so that they take up a significant portion of character/party resources for at least as long as they're sitting available for the character/party to use?

[virgil]

See PR, you TGDers just can't resist taking a shot at anyone with a contradictory opinion. It's funny because TGD is just about the smallest weird little world of a weird world of role players of a weird world of gaming, whose members tend to disagree with the larger population of their peers and yet insist that everyone else is wrong. If that's not indicative of elitism, antisocial personalities, repressed emotions, a total lack of common sense and other psycho mumbo-jumbo, I don't know what is.

I notice that this is a very common response to any newcomer who disagrees with the Den, that it's obviously the Den's elitism.

And if the DM gives the players their wish list from the parcels, how is at all that any different from 3e's approach of purchasing what they need or desire? It's not like 3e's WBL system doesn't have major flaws, and that we're blissfully ignoring them out of a sense of superiority. Instead, people are shooting you down for defending 4E on a platform that doesn't hold water with us.

[Username17]

While we're on the subject, Tome doesn't quite solve the subject of potions/wands/scrolls/etc.

I don't think that's fair. A fair description would be:

"Tome didn't get around to writing a rule to even begin to address the giant clusterfuck that is consumable magic items, and it's a huge problem."

The thing is that the way most people play is to hoard their consumables like they were pensions and then only use them in dire emergencies or to heal injured dudes in the case of healing potions or "god sticks." And when it's used like that, which is to say basically not used, these things aren't a problem. Which is tantamount to saying "If you don't use these things, they won't break the game" - but since that's how most people play with them, that's pretty much OK in most circumstances.

The self aware usage of limited use magic items breaks the game coming and going and in many directions simultaneously. But because most people don't use Wands of Solid Fog at all, it ends up being pushed way down the list on things to prioritize making Tome rewrites of.

-Username17

[Lokathor]

I do seem to recall a rule to the effect of "A consumable magic item uses up one of your 8 item slots as long as it's active", but that may have been by someone else. It's mostly good though, because the instant duration spells tend to be damage and cures, both of which aren't particularly strong in combat.

And yeah, I personally grab up items like the Healing Belt, and Eternal Wand of Cure Light Wounds and so on so that I don't ever run out of healing between one day and the next. It might be reasonable to make Eternal Wands the only style of wands, and then you can carefully look at the price once you've made that decision. Again though, it would be assuming WBL, which is kinda borked, but it's easier to just convince people that some things need different prices than to convince them to adopt a whole new wealth system.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Ironically, consumables aren't that big of a deal in a WBL system that has unlimited item slots. They are a very big deal in systems with strict item slot limits, though, but we're getting ahead of ourselves.

In a WBL system, while you may in fact get reimbursed for those 10 potions you drank next level the fact remains that right now you can't get a pair of cool boots if you do so.

Of course, you might have noticed three problems with this system.

1) There is some frankly unbalanced interaction between the magic system and the magic item system. Loading up on, say, potions of mage armor and rationing them for adventures (and since they last an hour it's not particularly hard) is more efficient than actually buying Bracers of Armor +4. This isn't strictly a problem with the WBL system, it's either a problem with the magic item system or the magic system depending on how you look at things, but it is by a country mile the biggest problem with 3E consumables. You cannot even come close to making consumable items balanced until you solve this problem, but as Frank correctly noted the task would make Sisyphus break down and cry baby tears.

To show what an enormous problem this is, 4E completely unhooked the magical item system from the power system and did hardcore nerfing of everything and the system isn't even close to balanced. Titanium Dragon said that consumables were so awful in the Adventurer's Vault that min-maxxers just ignore them and I'm inclined to agree. The latest errata just gave up and opted to make them completely unusable by disallowing things like reagents to work on At-Will powers.

2) It demands that people predict the circumstances and outcomes of several encounters until they get reimbursed. For example, if you load up on ten potions instead of getting a shiny magic sword but you have 'filler' encounters or a stingy DM you get screwed. Some people find this a feature instead of a bug, since it rewards prediction, planning, and conflict avoidance. Your mileage may vary.

3) Most damnably it screws over organic characters. An organic character has to purchase enough consumables to get them from point A to point C. A premade character only needs to get enough to get from point B to point C which gives them more money to purchase stupid shit. Without consumables both characters would still need to buy that shiny sword, which doesn't make one character more powerful than the other. The 'best' solution I've seen for this is to make consumables unpurchasable and just to regularly hand them out to players at specific intervals with the stipulation that if you don't use them soon, they'll go obsolete. This is in fact the system that 4E uses and it could have worked if they didn't only print four fucking potions in the PHB and make them all suck anus anyway.

[Archmage]

It is totally design intent that players get hosed for selling items because the game doesn't want players to pick their own items.

Actually, I think it's a little more convoluted than that, seeing as how the treasure parcel system explicitly tells DMs that they should ask players for "wishlists" so that they can get the items they want at least some of the time.

4e wants one of two things -- for the DM to handpick items to be useful to his PCs or for the players to tell the DM exactly what they want so that s/he can give it to them. And on top of that it wants players to get cash on top of that so that they can buy their precious Iron Armbands or whatever every few levels.

The thing is that this gets really weird. If you use 4e's treasure parcels and XP as written for a vie person party, characters gain a level every 8-10 encounters and should therefore receive 8-10 treasure parcels. By the end of 1st level, assuming you hand out 10 parcels and roll every one of the ten results once, the PCs have 720 gp (which will almost inevitably get split 5 ways). Nobody has enough gold to buy an item they really wanted but didn't get. The party gains another 1040 gp as they progress through level 2, so now everyone has an average of 352 gp assuming an even split. Again, you can't actually buy anything, since the cheapest magic items are 360 gp, and this assumes you spent exactly zero gold the whole time on other expenses, including "roleplaying fees."

It is explicitly stated on page 125 of the 4e DMG that players are supposed to find the majority of the really cool items they use and that anything they buy or create themselves is supposed to be less awesome.

So Lago's statement that the system doesn't want you to pick your items is only partially wrong. What's really going on is that the system wants you to ask your DM really nicely if you can coincidentally find the items you want while adventuring and hope they say yes--and because the DMG encourages them to do so, any DM that doesn't give you the items you ask for is, by 4e design principles, being a douche and ruining the game. And I don't know about you, but I think that's just weird, both from an immersion/RP standpoint and from a mechanics standpoint.

Essentially, what the system does is punish players who have adequate system mastery to know what they want. You can still get the good items (if your DM says yes), but you have to punch verisimilitude in the nuts and suspend disbelief when the dragon's horde miraculously contains the frost bastard sword you wanted. The system is designed in such a way that it penalizes your enjoyment for understanding it. It works a lot better with newbies who have no idea what they want. The DM can pick cool items for them and hopefully they'll get excited when they find them.

I don't know about you, but I love finding a sweet magic item in a treasure cache, even if I know the DM picked that item specifically because it would be useful for my character, but I hate the idea that he put it there because I wrote it down on my Christmas list because it ruins the surprise and breaks immersion. If I'm going to be allowed to pick my own items I should be able to make or buy them so at least no one is pretending it's a surprise. You can't take me shopping and let me pick my own Christmas presents with the more or less explicit guarantee that I'll get everything I ask for and then expect me to get excited when I'm unwrapping them just because you covered them in pretty paper.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Actually, I think it's a little more convoluted than that, seeing as how the treasure parcel system explicitly tells DMs that they should ask players for "wishlists" so that they can get the items they want at least some of the time.

and because the DMG encourages them to do so, any DM that doesn't give you the items you ask for is, by 4e design principles, being a douche and ruining the game.

No, it doesn't say that, it says that a great way to get players excited about magical items is to ask for letters to Santa. Which doesn't mean donkey dick since the DMG doesn't say anything about actually making DMs hand out the items players want. And I don't think that it should, either, because that's just slowing the g-damn game down and it forces players to compete with others for attention since the rewards aren't split fairly. That statement is just there as ass-covering, since it says absolutely nothing about how much the players should dictate their own items.

And in case you didn't know, that's really fucking imbalanced, because one campaign might end up a Monty Haul and another one might have players getting bullshit like Flaming Burst longswords and Screaming armor while occasionally getting Cloaks of the Healer and Diamond Cinctures. That statement might as well not even exist.

[Red_Rob]

Unfortunately... that seriously is the only way. The primary failings of 3e WBL are:

[*] Items have costs that are totally fucked up. (unfixed).
[*] The projections of how many items people are supposed to have are bad. (unfixed).[/list]

Those last two are still serious problems, and the only way to solve them is to set new price points and new item collection standards. And those need to be tested.

-Username17

So basically you are proposing that a number of same game tests are performed to create a new tier system and pricing structure for magic items. From this we can determine when characters require certain bonuses to be level appropriate and from there generate new Wealth-by-Level tables.

Whilst a sound plan, and I agree it is really the only way to overhaul WBL and ensure the resulting system is balanced, it sounds like an awful lot of work. As in, there are around 30 pages of lists of magic items in small type in the Magic Item compendium. Whilst a certain number will be redundant in various ways, this sounds like a staggering amount of testing. Indeed, you wonder if this amount of testing went into the original item prices. Maybe this explains a few things...

There is also still the spectre of item-dependent classes hanging over the WBL system. Test a Melee warrior and you'll find they need items much earlier and more frequently than a caster, which will skew the results.

Possibly finding the items that warriors need to compete and lowering the cost on these to a level where the warrior can just afford a +2 sword and armor for the cost of a Headband of +2 intellect will be the answer.

[thatguy]

Possibly finding the items that warriors need to compete and lowering the cost on these to a level where the warrior can just afford a +2 sword and armor for the cost of a Headband of +2 intellect will be the answer.

To harp on this, I never understood why increasing the ability to attack and damage is almost double of increasing AC. Toss in items that are worth way more than their gold price value (Blessed Book paying for itself after 120 pages worth of spells IE your average 9th level caster) and you get another example of "Fighters can't have nice things."

This is a pretty huge undertaking. I wish I could offer advice but I'm horrible at design aspects.

[RandomCasualty2]

And, RC2, thinking of D&D-land in terms of medieval societies is not really helpful. Even the DMG goes into how doing so is an unproductive exercise.

Well yes, in some cases, this is true. For instance, medieval warfare doesn't apply in D&D. But in the case of market economies, you're just not looking at a modern economy with ebay and shit. Finding stuff still requires a shitload of work and the D&D world lacks databases or easy global communications. At most you can use a sending spell, and that's to contact one guy with a 25 word message. So asking around for buyers and sellers will be notoriously slow.

The D&D world is ironically very good with dealing with volume goods. Unlike medieval worlds, they can totally have one dude with a portable hole lugging around an entire caravan. Unfortunately, they lack any kind of modern system of telecommunications, so actually finding out that someone has the widgit you're looking for 500 miles east of you is really difficult.

[Lokathor]

Once you get up to level 9 or so (Wish Economy), groups can travel to a planar or demi-planar hub world that actually does specialize in trade of magical goods. Security can focus on a single location to keep stockpiles of equipment and magic well protected, and there's enough people around that you can find what you need. It's like Sigil, but specialized for markets instead of being an entire city.

Said system doesn't solve the location troubles of the Gold Economy though.

[PhaedrusXY]

While we're on the subject, Tome doesn't quite solve the subject of potions/wands/scrolls/etc.

That was/is being discussed in this thread: http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=35813&start=150

[Psychic Robot]

TS (spoilered so as not to derail the thread further):

In other words, don't hold your breath for rational thought on this forum, friend.

I am aware of the severe limitations that the population of TGD holds in terms of argumentation. I simply have accepted it, adjusted my posting style, and moved on.

However, your post was a very obviously a troll. With that single statement, you managed to imply that:

1. The 4e magic item system fixed the 3e problems with the magic item system. (Not true--it alleviated some of the issues, but introduced more.)
2. The 3e magic item system made 3e a videogame. (Not true--it's the game's focus on combat and loot collection that makes it akin to a videogame.)
3. The 4e magic item system is altogether better than 3e's. (Subjective--I find the 4e magic item system to be incredibly boring compared to the cool magical items that 3e had.)
4. 4e, unlike 3e, is not reminiscent of a videogame. (Not true--see #2, and 4e has pushed the game farther into videogame territory.)

Now, you can claim that you says what you mean and you mean what you says, but we all know that's bullshit. You made that statement deliberately to rile people up--that is to say, you were trolling with that statement.

See PR, you TGDers just can't resist taking a shot at anyone with a contradictory opinion.

You're criticizing TGD for this? It's the Internet. Disagreeing with what someone says is how it is everywhere.

It's funny because TGD is just about the smallest weird little world of a weird world of role players of a weird world of gaming, whose members tend to disagree with the larger population of their peers and yet insist that everyone else is wrong. If that's not indicative of elitism, antisocial personalities, repressed emotions, a total lack of common sense and other psycho mumbo-jumbo, I don't know what is.

The extreme opinions presented on TGD are what's weird, not the insistence that the rest of the gaming world doesn't understand things. You're telling me that the majority of people don't think that their opinions are Right and everyone else's are Wrong?

While there is a lot of elitism--not to mention some degree of circle jerking--here, the ability of TGD's residents to clearly explain fundamental game concepts that the rest of the world does not "get" puts us above them. Is that elitist? It sure is. Is it true? Yes. The rest of the gaming world is like the people on the Paizo forums:

"Your math is an opinion."
"Fighters aren't a bad class."
"Wizards aren't overpowered."
"The DM can just house rule the game to fix it."
"Well, you're just rollplaying."

Being able to explain why the fighter is a bad class isn't a sign of antisocial personalities. The people on here who can't differentiate between playing the game and ruining the game; the people on here who advocate running optimized monsters against unoptimized characters to "teach them a lesson"; the people on here who deliberately lie, mischaracterize, and misconstrue others' arguments, frothing at the mouth--those are the people who have mental disorders. (There are at least a few posters here who I wager are a danger to society because of their sociopathic behavior.)

In some respect, you are correct. I've said it before and I'll say it again: TGD is the Stormfront of RPG websites. However, you were trolling--desiring to incite a negative response to your post--so what did you expect?

[Crissa]

I don't see anything wrong with wishlists. This is cooperative fiction, after all.

-Crissa

[Kaelik]

I don't see anything wrong with wishlists. This is cooperative fiction, after all.

-Crissa

A wishlist that works and means something is different from what 4e does though.

1) No guarantee you get anything on your wish list.
2) No mechanics for implementing at all, not even any guidelines.
3) No concrete method of even knowing how much of a wish list to grant to someone even if you were granting everything.

Making a wishlist isn't inherently bad, no. But just like talking about your characters future level 20 retirement when you are at level 1, it's pretty fucking pointless.

[Sock Puppet]

...you TGDers just can't resist taking a shot at anyone with a contradictory opinion. It's funny because TGD is just about the smallest weird little world of a weird world of role players of a weird world of gaming, whose members tend to disagree with the larger population of their peers and yet insist that everyone else is wrong. If that's not indicative of elitism, antisocial personalities, repressed emotions, a total lack of common sense and other psycho mumbo-jumbo, I don't know what is.

Jeez, dude. And I thought I was a whiny little bitch.

[Username17]

Possibly finding the items that warriors need to compete and lowering the cost on these to a level where the warrior can just afford a +2 sword and armor for the cost of a Headband of +2 intellect will be the answer.

This at least, is handled by the scaling items concept. Once we throw down with the idea that items scale automagically to character level and don't get bigger or smaller than that, we have given a rather large boost to the MAD classes and a noticeable penalty to the SAD classed. Wizards don't really give a fuck about anything but their Headband of Intellect and some defensive items, leading most Wizards to jump on the +6 Headband around level 10. With scaling items, they get their Headband of Intellect +2 at level 4, and at level 10 it grows to a +4. That's substantially behind the curve for what Wizards get out of the DMG, even as getting your +4 Sword coming online at level 10 is a substantial benefit for Paladins.

Now one of the problems that D&D has is that the encounter guidelines need to get rewritten. So in a sense, Same Game Tests get a bit flooby as things go up in level. The harsh reality is that large numbers of basic gnolls are not going to use up 20% of the resources of characters who know cloudkill. Nor are they going to be a threat to them. And while we can effectively handwave that away with the genuine fact that the CR system breaks down at levels 1-3, the fact remains that 32 minotaurs (EL 14) is not a scary encounter for 12th level characters even though two Fire Giants together with four Mindflayers (also EL 14) totally is.

To a first approximation, monsters that are within 4 levels of the PCs voltron together much more effectively than monsters that are lower than that. This is largely because of how the RNG works, where monsters 5+ levels down have a tendency to be pushed into "nat 20" territory or something similar. And in most cases, that sort of random spike damage can actually be addressed with combat healing and simply waded through. Secondly, caster monsters voltron more effectively than brute monsters and puzzle monsters scale more viciously still. Heterogeneous groups voltron more effectively than homogeneous groups do.

But also remember, scaling items cut both ways. NPCs in many ways benefit more from items scaling than PCs do, because they were normally expected to be equipped with items that had smaller bonuses. Standard Drow #4 on page 56 of the MM4 gets a +1 Bow, a Mithril Shirt, a +2 Gloves of Dexterity, and a Cloak of Elvenkind. In scaling items land, all of that shit is +3 (except the skill bonus item, which is +7). And that means two things:

• "NPC" monsters will fight at substantially higher effectiveness than they do in Core. Which is usually a good thing, because with the exceptions of Giants and Spellcasters, NPCs have been consistently the weakest enemies in the lists.
• It is completely ridiculous to assume that PCs won't over-max their list of Minor Magic items once Drow and similarly powerful NPC enemies start becoming a regular thing.

The second point is totally key for the direction of the items by level assumptions. By 7th level, every character will have more than 8 Minor Magic items, and will thus be able to decide for themselves what they want to wear, give some as secondary equipment to familiars and cohorts, or just put piles of the things into storage in the Bat Cave. The only way the base DMG loot system kept that from happening is by requiring the PCs to sell off 8 pairs of those Gloves of Dexterity to get one stat boost item that was level appropriate. Once greyhawking Drow Sniper #4's corpse gives you four usable Minor Magic items instead of "enough wealth to buy half of a usable Minor Magic item" the players are going to become fully equipped even if they aren't already.

So here are derivable points:

• Level 2:[/b] Any item that is not a minor magic item can be upgraded to a masterwork version.
• Level 7: Any magic item slot that does not have a medium or major magic item in it can be filled with a semi-customizable minor magic item. This could easily be achieved by level 5, if the PCs fight a lot of Kaorti or Drow.
• Level 12: Any magic item slot not filled with a major or epic magic item can be filled with a semi-customizable medium magic item. This could easily be achieved by level 9, if the PCs do something like Chain Binding.

And that suggests:

• Level 17: Any magic item slot not filled with an epic magic item can be filled with a semi-customizable major magic item.

And that last one is pretty reasonable when you realize that beating up a Marilith causes like a half dozen Major Magic items to fall out, piñata style. That seems to create a pretty good set of constraints. In D&D land, once you accept scaling magic items, you pretty much have to expect that for a 7th or 8th level character, a Cloak of Resistance "+3" is just basic equipment and something worth mentioning as a found item is a Cloak of Resistance +3 that also functions as a Cape of the Mountebank.

-Username17