Wealth By Level

[Tequila Sunrise]

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.

I stand corrected: nothing explicitly says "PCs need enhancement bonuses." But you and I both know that only the most blithely complacent group won't figure it out sooner of later. The PHB repeatedly mentions enhancements (the chart on page 225 for example); players will start to wonder why fights are getting harder and harder by paragon levels; and players will start seeking out enhancements, in- and/or out-of-game. ("Hey DM, how about some o' those sweet enhancements!")

[*] 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 trickiest part of awarding treasure is determining what magic items to give out. Tailor these items to your party of characters.

The text goes on to say that DMs shouldn't give out items which the party has no use for, and then it goes on to suggest asking players for wish lists.

So assuming your DM isn't completely inexperienced or a douche:

1. The parcel system tells him to give you a certain number of level-appropriate magical items.
2. The DMG tells him that those items should be useful and tailored to you. Again disregarding extreme inexperience or douchery, that means regular deliveries of enhanced items.
3. The PHB enhancement chart, and the item entries themselves, tell him the exact enhancement bonus of your items.

In short, 4e wants to guarantee you the toys you need to adventure.

...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.

That's neither here nor there, so I don't care. If you want to forego a basic bonus in favor of your favorite item power, that's your business. Encounter design does assume that you have roughly level-appropriate enhanced toys though.

[*] 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.[/list]

I don't know why you're fixated on particular items, but here's why 4e doesn't tell you if or when you should get them: it doesn't matter. This isn't design neglect, or a mistake -- because other than enhancement bonuses, items are of minor importance. It's why they're so lame compared to previous editions -- so that you don't need them and so the DM doesn't feel obligated to give you specific toys. I sometimes go for levels and levels without giving my players any toys at all, and then suddenly drop them a huge loot haul. And I like that the difference between before/after is only a minor one.

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.

In fact I constructively contributed to your thread in my very first post. It's just that you unsurprisingly decided to completely ignore that part and instead focus on my final comment, after I had ignored the unsupported generalization you made in the first paragraph of your OP.

So congratulations, you're not a complete moron -- just an elitist twit who can't pass up the opportunity to criticize that which you don't like or let a passing comment go unchallenged if it conflicts with your views.

I couldn't care less if you or anyone else in TGD thinks I'm a troll, so if you don't want me occasionally popping in here to call you out on your BS you'd better have me banned.

[Doom]

Magic items are like tools (and you can view your limbs as tools); they don't necessarily help you if you've already got better tools.

I pick up a .22 caliber pistol, and hey, I"m suddenly capable to hunting small animals fairly well. If Alex Quartermain puts down his elephant gun, and picks up the pistol? He'll probably still be able to one-shot an elephant (great white hunter, after all), but no, he's not going to be better off., and even if he somehow uses both tools simultaneously. it probably won't be an improvement.

A better example? Putting brass knuckles on an Iron Golem probably won't make it hit noticeably harder, even a huge set of brass knuckles would help ME alot in physical combat.

[kjdavies]

There are two competing ways to do items. These are more extremes of a spectrum than distinct types, though:
1) Catch-up items. A catch-up item lets you do something that you can't ordinarily do, but someone else can. These items usually don't stack, or don't stack very well, with having that as your main schtick, although there can be exceptions.

2) Mandatory items. A mandatory item lets you do what you already do, better. It's mandatory because stacking your bonuses as high as they can is the minimum standard for a competent specialist.

This is something I am trying specifically to avoid, for a couple of reasons.

First, the differences between 'competent specialist' and 'nonspecialist' and 'untrained' very quickly slide off the RNG, rather faster than the designers perhaps realized.

Second, if your specialization becomes irrelevant (for an encounter, an adventure, or the rest of the campaign) you're left standing there holding your dick. Specialization gets *expensive* for noncasters in terms of both gear and training (feats and class levels), so when this happens to them it really, really sucks. Spell casters can often switch specialties by swapping their spell loads or using alternate gear -- fighters need the good weapons and whatnot, sorcerers can beef up on wands and/or staffs of spells they don't know.

Consider, now, the Cloak and Boots of Elvenkind. They're a set of items that make you good at stealth. D&D does the Mandatory Items system, so you give them to the person who already sneaks to make them better at it. Under a catch-up items system, they would instead give you max ranks in Hide and Move Silently or whatever, so you give them to someone else and they can also sneak.

In Echelon, they're probably closer to catch-up (or even get-ahead, if you get one of a higher tier) in that they basically give you talent with the 'Hide' skill. A 'rogue' will presumably still do better with them because he will likely have the 'Improved Dexterity' talent (+2 to Dex per tier, +tier/day he gets 4*tier to Dex-based checks, possibly for multiple successive checks)... but if he's got Hiding talent anyway, it may not matter because he's Just That Good.

A Cloak of Awesome Camouflage is largely useless to a guy who's already concealed entirely by hiding under a leaf or something.

A catch-up items system means your items shore up your weaknesses. By definition, you can't have items that boost your strengths under this system unless you have higher-level items, where the item that boosts you in what you're good at is higher level than you and makes you good at it like that level. So, basically, Thor's belt and gloves get to be higher level than he is, they don't work under a catch-up items system, and anyone who puts them on gains Thor's strength.

To be honest, if a dirt farmer found Thor's gloves and belt and put them on, he likely still wouldn't be as strong as Thor, but he'd be fairly close.

Let's assume that the gloves and belt are considered Greater God tier (tenth tier, level 37-40). They would net the wielder +20 to his Strength (and a slew of other goodstuff, like +40 to 10 Str-based checks/day).

Now, the dirt farmer is probably 0-level. Let's pretend he's the strongest in his village (Str 14). Give him Thor's stuff and he'll have effectively Str 34 (+12 to Str checks), +20 10/day.

Let's assume that Thor is an intermediate god (Odin's a greater god, let's pretend Thor is the next step down). He's almost certainly got Intermediate God Strength (+18 to Str, +36 to 9 Str-based checks/day). He gets *some* direct benefit from the gloves, but not nearly as much as Farmer Joe.

On the other hand, as an Intermediate God he's basically a character 33-36th level. This gets him at least +8 to all ability scores, and let's assume he would have been 'really strong as a mortal' (Str 18). Without magic at all he's at Str 26; IGStr for +18 more gives him Str 44. With the gear he's Str 46 -- a solid ten points higher than Farmer Joe... and he has a slew of other mojo to back him up after that.

This all assumes, of course, that handling items that powerful is actually safe. There may well be hazards to using items with greater power than you have yourself.

Older editions Belt of * Giant Strength did something like this, too, where they set your strength to some number that was bigger than it was normally allowed to be. The item set your capability, rather than enhanced it, but it made it bigger than it could otherwise possibly be.

A hybrid system would allow them to have a maximum strength increase, but eventually you get diminishing returns or don't care. Prerequisites can also prevent a kid from running amok with Thor's Gloves under a catch-up system.

See above, about safety.

Now, an interesting idea occurs to me. D&D's wands technically fit in with the way I described the catch-up paradigm, especially if a rogue is using them, but also for a sorcerer who doesn't know the spell or a wizard who didn't prepare it. So, although this takes complete game design for this, a system could be made where everything is a special ability that gets written up like a spell or a feat, instead of having stats you care about. Thor's strength items then, become like D&D staves containing strength spells, which would be things like Lift Mountain, Hurl Weapon Really Hard, etc. He might even know some of the "spells" and only rely on the items for extra ability to use it.

Interesting idea. I was thinking of items providing talents directly (such as strength or martial skill), increasing your options. I hadn't considered the idea of having items augment the number of uses. If Thor's gloves and belt work together as an IGStr item he would still get benefit from them because they would basically double the number of times he can apply his big strength check bonus (+36 18 times a day instead of 9). If instead both items are IGStr items he doesn't get any bigger (still +18 to Str, +36 to Str checks), but he gets the Str check bonus 27 times a day.

Str 44 (+17 to checks), +36 to checks from IGStr. He hits DC53 if he takes 0, 9/18/27 times per day depending how the items work.

Although Thor has been described as 'needing' these items to wield Mjollnir, perhaps this is not exactly accurate. What if it's a DC50 check (0-time action; if you fail you drop it) to do so, and he uses the gloves and belt to let him do so for longer periods of time -- though I expect I would treat a single period of use, a battle, as a series of related checks and thus he could do so for 33-36 rounds per use of this bonus. Even without the items he could get 297-324 rounds, call it half an hour, of solid use out of Mjollnir.

Farmer Joe could also try to use Mjollnir, but even with this version of the gear he's got a total bonus to Str checks of +47 (Str 32 for +11, +36 for the gear). Okay, he only fails 10% of the time.

Someone without Thor's strength who puts them on gets the benefit as long as they meet the prerequisites (have the "spells" on their "spell list," or whatever) and can play at being Thor for a bit, but it only supplements his own powers.

True, I suppose the gloves could have a wield mjollnir specific ability attached to them, completely avoiding the question of bonuses.

The Cloak and Boots of Elvenkind let you cast Sneak on yourself. Being a Rogue does the same thing, and being a Rogue with the Cloak and Boots lets you cast it more often, just like being a wizard (who knows Invisibility) with a Wand of Invisibility does for the Invisibility spell. There should also be more than one Sneak spell, so a rogue might even get some new abilities out of the Cloak.

The Cutting Wind Sword uses the same mechanic. A cutting wind master can summon the Razor Gale on some power schedule, and the wielder of the Cutting Wind Sword can do the same (possibly with a different schedule), and the master with the sword can summon the Razor Gale more often.

As I said above, I hadn't considered this option. I think I like it, since it does in fact give you a reason to keep something around that would otherwise be useless to you because you're that good. It no longer increases your capability (what you can do), but does increase your capacity (which is damn nice to have).

Keith

[kjdavies]

Fix your post so it isn't a goddamn mess of quotes that screws up the board, please.

Distasteful as it may be, putting TS on ignore will result in the message text not being shown, and therefore the successive messages will be displayed correctly.

K.

[A Man In Black]

In a game where Thor is seriously a character, and wears such items, then the players should be able to realize those sort of benefits.

So giants are stronger than Thor, or Mjolnir needs weightlifting equipment just to use it, or weightlifting equipment increases your encumbrance but not your damage and Mjolnir is super heavy. This is not an insurmountable problem if you still want to have Thor.

[IGTN]

Interesting idea. I was thinking of items providing talents directly (such as strength or martial skill), increasing your options. I hadn't considered the idea of having items augment the number of uses. If Thor's gloves and belt work together as an IGStr item he would still get benefit from them because they would basically double the number of times he can apply his big strength check bonus (+36 18 times a day instead of 9). If instead both items are IGStr items he doesn't get any bigger (still +18 to Str, +36 to Str checks), but he gets the Str check bonus 27 times a day.

It doesn't even need to be as simple as a numerical bonus, or as doubling your uses per day.

I'll work under the assumptions of a system like yours, where all abilities are divided into tiers. I'll also divide them into "schools," which are related thematically, maybe with some synergy bonuses. Schools are perpendicular to tiers. So Tiers are things like Ordinary, Heroic, Legendary, and so on, while Schools are things like Fire Magic, Swordfighting, and Swiftness. Each combination of School and Tier has an ability list.

The way I'm doing things, though, ability scores are replaced by synergy bonuses for the schools. Everything you can do is a special ability. So Thor's Strength Set don't give him a strength bonus at all, because there isn't a strength ability score to give a bonus to. Instead, there are a list of feats of strength that an Intermediate God might want to do. They might include lifting heavy things like small mountains, the gates of other dimensions, or Mjolnir, pushing large terrain features around, throwing heavy things, tearing things apart, crushing people through their armor, super-wrestling, and so on.

Basically, instead of having things you add your strength bonus to and increasing that, you have strength abilities. If you have a lot of them you are also Really Strong, which is represented by giving you a bonus to your strength abilities. It's important that this bonus is not, though, something like a to-hit bonus where you have to stack it as high as you can. A damage bonus or equivalent is a little more acceptable, as are making your abilities in the same school a little bit interchangeable, so you can spend a use of Lift Mountain to use your Super-Wrestling when you're out of uses of the latter. Also, being Really Strong and a Intermediate God might give you the entire Demigod Strength ability list for free at at will. The synergy bonus effects can even vary from school to school. Being Really Strong might make you better at carrying things around and do more damage, but being an Accomplished Firemage increases your resistances or something.

Basically, thinking Legend of Zelda for strength, the Silver Gloves don't increase your strength score. The Silver Gloves give you the special ability "push heavy blocks." The Golden Gloves don't increase your strength score either; they give you the ability "throw monoliths." You don't even have a strength score to increase or compare against those. But that's a whole-system redesign.

So, anyway, Thor has a few strength abilities, and he has his gloves and belt. His gloves have some strength abilities they give to their wearer, as does his belt. So he has a total set of abilities with them that is greater than what he has on his own.

Even if there is duplication where Thor's set gives him the same abilities as he already has, or as each other, though, they don't have to be on the same power schedule. Maybe his gloves have five charges per day, and he can call upon their extraordinary might a limited number of times per day, while his belt is usable once or twice per scene, and his personal abilities are on a cooldown, or something, so if he has, say, Lift Mountain from all three, then he can lift something as heavy as a mountain once for free, and then has a cooldown during which he can use it twice per scene. If he goes beyond that, he starts dipping into daily resources.

Using another example, consider the Shadow Heart master, a swordsman who uses a hybrid of Nine Papercuts and AWoD rules to determine when he can use his abilities. He has his own considerable level of skill (a whole bunch of Shadow Heart maneuvers), but he also wields the Demonblood Sword and wears the Shadow Heart Pendant, which also give Shadow Heart maneuvers. His own skills require a certain mental state, which he can get into by performing some katas and meditating, so he's on the Ritual power schedule. The Demonblood Sword has its own pool of power points for the abilities it gives him, and needs to be regularly quenched in blood. It's on the Feeding power schedule. The Pendant draws its power from darkness, and is strongest when the moon rises. It's on the Lunar power schedule. Maybe he has some armor, too, that has some minor abilities and is on the Continuous power schedule, just to round things out.

The already-implemented example in D&D is the wand. A wand lets you use a certain set of spells that you may or may not be able to cast normally. But the spells you cast normally are refreshed and reconfigured daily, while the staff never reconfigures what it allows you to cast, and you can only use it a certain number of times per ever before it runs out of charges. There's an Eberron item called an eternal wand that's like a wand, but with a few uses per day instead of 50 uses/existence. Pearls of Power/Rings of Wizardry also work under this system, although they're nothing like either of the examples I needed. The grandmaster's sword, though, might behave like a Pearl of Power for his sword techniques, which gives you a reason why someone would use a school-specific item for a school they're good at.

You can do a lot with items under this model. The downside is that it can't be implemented without completely redesigning the game system.

[Judging__Eagle]

In a game where Thor is seriously a character, and wears such items, then the players should be able to realize those sort of benefits.

So giants are stronger than Thor, or Mjolnir needs weightlifting equipment just to use it, or weightlifting equipment increases your encumbrance but not your damage and Mjolnir is super heavy. This is not an insurmountable problem if you still want to have Thor.

Actually... yes. The Jotunbrud were stronger than the Asgaardians.

Thor is an adventurer, who puts on a bunch of gear, in order to have a chance of killing Giants one on one.

He has a magical method to fly (his goat-chariot); a magical method of always being fed (his goats will respawn if he buries their bones); a pair of items to up his Str (gloves, belt); and a powerful returning hammer that is spec'ced for giant killing.

Thor's stats are actually lower than a Giant's, going soley by the original stories, but instead the Asgaardians have class levels, and can do weird stuff that creatures with High stats can't do. Eat as fast as fire, drink the seas, wrestle with old age, race against time.

Honestly, I'm fine with Thor just being a 20th level character with magic items, and some odd class dipping into things like Asgaardian Paragon, or something.

[Spike]

Just as a note: My understanding of Thor's fancy gloves was not that they made him stronger, but that they allowed him to actually weild Mjolnir without blowing his own hands off. Maybe that was when he caught it after throwing it at some fool's head.

Of course, this contradicts the wiki and its some random fact that has been bouncing around my skull since before the days of the internet so I'm not exactly in a position to post a counter source.

Its only relevance to the topic at hand is that it potentially removes the idea of stacking bonuses from mythology.

[Judging__Eagle]

Hmm... having Artifacts have item requirements, seems like an interesting idea.

[CatharzGodfoot]

Hmm... having Artifacts have item requirements, seems like an interesting idea.

That's classic D&D right there. Thor's hammer (the artifact) required that the user wear a belt of giant strength and gauntlets of ogre power.

[kjdavies]

Hmm... having Artifacts have item requirements, seems like an interesting idea.

That's classic D&D right there. Thor's hammer (the artifact) required that the user wear a belt of giant strength and gauntlets of ogre power.

Yep, though the item you're thinking of isn't quite Mjollnir. Clearly modeled after it, though.

Hammer of Thunderbolts, non-artifact. Couldn't be used at all unless you had Strength of 18/01 or better, were over 6' tall; then functions as a +3 hammer doing double damage on any hit. If the wielder also wears any girdle of giant strength and gauntlets of ogre power *and* knows the hammer's true name, he can use it properly. +5 hammer, double damage dice, all girdle and gauntlet bonuses (stacks them, presumably), and strikes dead any giant it hits. When thrown and successfully hitting, a clap of thunder stuns all creatures within 3" (30 feet or 30 yards) for one round. Can only be thrown every other round, and after five uses in two turns (20 minutes) the wielder must rest for one round.

Clearly modeled after Mjollnir, but not strictly speaking the same thing. As I recall, from the 1e gods book it did a certain amount of lightning damage on a succesful hit, but I forget if there was a daily total of hit point damage or of lightning dice. I don't seem to see it on my shelf and I can't be arsed to look it up, though.

Keith

[Judging__Eagle]

Well, yes. The Hammer of Thunderbolts specifically is what I've been referring to. It's an item that players can seriously own, but it's also basically Thor's Mjolnir, or a weapon very similar to it..

[Sunwitch]

My two cents: it's really possible to have both those systems. Take Frank's old example about two different characters picking up Excalibur: Susie the farmer's daughter picks the thing up, gets her [stuff] set to 20, fast healing, and is the Queen of England. Wanda the super-powered Queen of England picks it up, and gets a +4 to her [stuff] and fast healing. Mechanically it reads something like "Your [stuff] becomes 20, or increases by 4, whichever yields the higher result. You also have a magic scabbard that makes you heal fast and become an English monarch, if you're not one already". That way both specialists and catch-ups (even the ones who aren't good at anything) can pick up Excalibur and get better as a result.

[kjdavies]

Interesting idea. I was thinking of items providing talents directly (such as strength or martial skill), increasing your options. I hadn't considered the idea of having items augment the number of uses. If Thor's gloves and belt work together as an IGStr item he would still get benefit from them because they would basically double the number of times he can apply his big strength check bonus (+36 18 times a day instead of 9). If instead both items are IGStr items he doesn't get any bigger (still +18 to Str, +36 to Str checks), but he gets the Str check bonus 27 times a day.

It doesn't even need to be as simple as a numerical bonus, or as doubling your uses per day.

Doesn't need to be, but I like simple where I can get it.

I'll work under the assumptions of a system like yours, where all abilities are divided into tiers. I'll also divide them into "schools," which are related thematically, maybe with some synergy bonuses. Schools are perpendicular to tiers. So Tiers are things like Ordinary, Heroic, Legendary, and so on, while Schools are things like Fire Magic, Swordfighting, and Swiftness. Each combination of School and Tier has an ability list.

Pretty close. Tiers are something along these lines:

Basic (level 0): your normal dirtfarmer or townsman. Probably nothing all that interesting about him, might have a daughter that's fairly hot. Whatever. These are the common folk.

Expert (level 1-4): someone fairly skilled at what he does. Where a 'Basic smith' can more or less make a living (can be a master of the guild, even), an 'Expert smith' is the best in his ward, or even town.

Heroic (5-8): very skilled at what he does, pushing the limits of what might be possible in our world, and perhaps crossing them occasionally. Best in the province or county, say.

Master (9-12): beyond what is possible IRL. Clerics can bring the dead back to life, wizards can travel great distances in the blink of an eye. Known throughout the land.

Champion (13-16): like Master, but even more. Known across the continent.

Legendary (17-20): almost epic in their awesomeness (epic is next tier, in fact). Clerics can bring back the dead with an "it would be nice if he was here now" and a handful of pretty shinies. Wizards can bend reality to their whim. Known of around the world, even if spoken of only in whispers.

As for the talents, they are mostly fairly narrow. You get eight or ten talent slots per tier (I haven't decided), and I'm aiming for needing about 40-50% to be really competent in a certain major area (combat, spellcasting, etc.), with the option of spending more to be more broadly capable in that area.

A 'swordsman' probably wants Martial Training and Improved Martial Training (max out attack bonus), Combat Style (for a particular set of weapons, used in a certain way), and maybe a Combat Discipline (which brings out the mojo). He might also want to expand a bit more (Armor Focus, which makes armor even better for the wearer; more combat styles, shields are considered weapons here; skill focus, mounted warriors can be expected to keep their Ride mojo up -- you're goddamn good enough, you can ride on water, wind, or between worlds). There are a lot of things he can spend his slots on.

A 'wizard' can be expected to focus on Spell Training (keep his caster level and maximum spell level castable up), School Focus (get him the complex spells of a particular school), and other caster-happy things.

You can probably expect a 'dedicated fighter' to spend most of his talent slots on combat stuff (which doesn't mean it's 'mundane combat stuff', fighters can have nice stuff, even stuff that "isn't real" -- remember, they're That Goddamn Good). A 'dedicated wizard' would probably spend most of his talent slots on stuff to do with spell casting and other uses of magic. A 'gish' (meh term) probably has a mix -- he might do it within a tier, maximizing power along a narrow path with the tier, "really good at swords and fire magic", or between tiers, "better fighter than wizard, but it's close".

The way I'm doing things, though, ability scores are replaced by synergy bonuses for the schools. Everything you can do is a special ability. So Thor's Strength Set don't give him a strength bonus at all, because there isn't a strength ability score to give a bonus to. Instead, there are a list of feats of strength that an Intermediate God might want to do. They might include lifting heavy things like small mountains, the gates of other dimensions, or Mjolnir, pushing large terrain features around, throwing heavy things, tearing things apart, crushing people through their armor, super-wrestling, and so on.

Basically, instead of having things you add your strength bonus to and increasing that, you have strength abilities. If you have a lot of them you are also Really Strong, which is represented by giving you a bonus to your strength abilities. It's important that this bonus is not, though, something like a to-hit bonus where you have to stack it as high as you can. A damage bonus or equivalent is a little more acceptable, as are making your abilities in the same school a little bit interchangeable, so you can spend a use of Lift Mountain to use your Super-Wrestling when you're out of uses of the latter. Also, being Really Strong and a Intermediate God might give you the entire Demigod Strength ability list for free at at will. The synergy bonus effects can even vary from school to school. Being Really Strong might make you better at carrying things around and do more damage, but being an Accomplished Firemage increases your resistances or something.

I see what you're doing here, and it strikes me as a valid approach. To draw from your comments later about having to rebuild everything to do this, I'm trying to stick to the existing framework as much as possible. The big bonuses available a limited number of times per day appears to do much the same as "uses of Bbig Strength", and might even be used interchangeably should I move that way ('use of Big Strength' go do *this*, *this*, or *give +4n bonus to Str checks*).

As for resistance to fire and whatnot, those can be other talents. As the 'fire wizard' (max caster level, knowledge of fire spells) becomes more powerful, he'll have slots available that he can use to fill with other things such as fire resistance.

Interesting point: I'm trying to keep prereqs as simple as possible, so you don't have to worry about building up the feat trees legally, etc. as you write up a character. I'm inclined to ignore 'lower tier' prereqs (taking Heroic Fire Magic depends on Heroic Spell Training, not Expert Fire Magic -- Heroic replaces Expert, after all), but may have 'higher tier' prereqs. Fire resistance 10 might be appropriate for a Master-tier character but not an Heroic-tier character, *but* not worth a Master-tier slot, especially not a later one. Make it an Heroic talent with a Master prereq, and you can go "master fire wizard has spell training at max, fire magic at max, and we can give him Fire Res 10 on the cheap".

Yeah, I'm wandering here. I blame early-morning-Sunday (okay, it's just after noon, that's how bad it is today). I really need to get my web site set up so I can just point at it, where the writing is more coherent.

Basically, thinking Legend of Zelda for strength, the Silver Gloves don't increase your strength score. The Silver Gloves give you the special ability "push heavy blocks." The Golden Gloves don't increase your strength score either; they give you the ability "throw monoliths." You don't even have a strength score to increase or compare against those. But that's a whole-system redesign.

Yeah, and I'm not sure I want to get that precise with it.

So, anyway, Thor has a few strength abilities, and he has his gloves and belt. His gloves have some strength abilities they give to their wearer, as does his belt. So he has a total set of abilities with them that is greater than what he has on his own.

Even if there is duplication where Thor's set gives him the same abilities as he already has, or as each other, though, they don't have to be on the same power schedule. Maybe his gloves have five charges per day, and he can call upon their extraordinary might a limited number of times per day, while his belt is usable once or twice per scene, and his personal abilities are on a cooldown, or something, so if he has, say, Lift Mountain from all three, then he can lift something as heavy as a mountain once for free, and then has a cooldown during which he can use it twice per scene. If he goes beyond that, he starts dipping into daily resources.

In principle, I like the idea. I'm not sure I'd want to go there in practice, it sounds like a lot more little fiddly things to keep track of. Unless they can be used only a very small number of times or within a small period (one scene); that might be workable.

Using another example, consider the Shadow Heart master, a swordsman who uses a hybrid of Nine Papercuts and AWoD rules to determine when he can use his abilities. He has his own considerable level of skill (a whole bunch of Shadow Heart maneuvers), but he also wields the Demonblood Sword and wears the Shadow Heart Pendant, which also give Shadow Heart maneuvers. His own skills require a certain mental state, which he can get into by performing some katas and meditating, so he's on the Ritual power schedule. The Demonblood Sword has its own pool of power points for the abilities it gives him, and needs to be regularly quenched in blood. It's on the Feeding power schedule. The Pendant draws its power from darkness, and is strongest when the moon rises. It's on the Lunar power schedule. Maybe he has some armor, too, that has some minor abilities and is on the Continuous power schedule, just to round things out.

This sounds like an interesting and flavorful approach, but I think I would prefer to keep it simple for now. 'Daily' works, but I'd be open to experimentation as things move along.

Another happy thing about Echelon is that by keeping things separate and minimizing direct interaction between talents, it should be relatively easy to replace entire subsystems. I expect combat to be largely as I've described, but I could replace spell casting whole cloth fairly easily, or add or replace martial disciplines (fighter mojo) without harming the framework as a whole. I should even be able to have things more or less in parallel, with vancian magic and mana-driven magic (such as XPH) concurrently.

The already-implemented example in D&D is the wand. A wand lets you use a certain set of spells that you may or may not be able to cast normally. But the spells you cast normally are refreshed and reconfigured daily, while the staff never reconfigures what it allows you to cast, and you can only use it a certain number of times per ever before it runs out of charges. There's an Eberron item called an eternal wand that's like a wand, but with a few uses per day instead of 50 uses/existence. Pearls of Power/Rings of Wizardry also work under this system, although they're nothing like either of the examples I needed. The grandmaster's sword, though, might behave like a Pearl of Power for his sword techniques, which gives you a reason why someone would use a school-specific item for a school they're good at.

You can do a lot with items under this model. The downside is that it can't be implemented without completely redesigning the game system.

Right. Now, I'm already doing this to a certain extent. I'm losing classes, for one thing, and it's not unbelievable that monsters will end up being reconstructed on this model. I'm not afraid of work. For now, though, I want to work on limited areas at a time... though I'll admit that 'character design and construction' isn't much of a limited area.

On that note, we're really wandering off 'wealth by level' here. Want to move to a new thread, probably under Invention?

Keith

[kjdavies]

In a game where Thor is seriously a character, and wears such items, then the players should be able to realize those sort of benefits.

So giants are stronger than Thor, or Mjolnir needs weightlifting equipment just to use it, or weightlifting equipment increases your encumbrance but not your damage and Mjolnir is super heavy. This is not an insurmountable problem if you still want to have Thor.

Actually... yes. The Jotunbrud were stronger than the Asgaardians.

Thor is an adventurer, who puts on a bunch of gear, in order to have a chance of killing Giants one on one.

He has a magical method to fly (his goat-chariot); a magical method of always being fed (his goats will respawn if he buries their bones); a pair of items to up his Str (gloves, belt); and a powerful returning hammer that is spec'ced for giant killing.

Thor's stats are actually lower than a Giant's, going soley by the original stories, but instead the Asgaardians have class levels, and can do weird stuff that creatures with High stats can't do. Eat as fast as fire, drink the seas, wrestle with old age, race against time.

Honestly, I'm fine with Thor just being a 20th level character with magic items, and some odd class dipping into things like Asgaardian Paragon, or something.

Indeed, and it comes to me that things could even be scaled a little lower than that.

If Heroic IMC (5-8) is top end of human ability, aka 'did you *see* that shit?', you could have most of your Great Norse Heroes there. Demigods might be level 9-12 (they can do things not humanly possible, like bring back the dead under limited circumstances -- not that they'd likely do that in a Norse campaign setting), the more major gods 13-16 (possibly including Thor and Odin), and the greatest of them (Odin might be here instead), and the greater giants 17-20. Or something like that.

The Norse gods were perhaps 'more believable' than in many mythologies. They were BIG HUMANS WITH POWER, larger than life but still on largely human scale. The Greek gods as well, though I think a little less so. Implementing them on 'mortal levels' isn't entirely insane.

It does mean that you have to be ready for PCs to become gods, though. It might no longer be such a big step from 'biggest badass in the country' to 'making Sif my sweet, sweet bit of love'.

I'd be willing to give it a shot for a more limited campaign setting (either short time or small area; I don't know that it would work on a global scale very well).


Keith

[Username17]

I stand corrected: nothing explicitly says "PCs need enhancement bonuses." But you and I both know that only the most blithely complacent group won't figure it out sooner of later. The PHB repeatedly mentions enhancements (the chart on page 225 for example); players will start to wonder why fights are getting harder and harder by paragon levels; and players will start seeking out enhancements, in- and/or out-of-game. ("Hey DM, how about some o' those sweet enhancements!")

Fuck you.

You said that the rules tell you "exactly" when to get increased enhancement bonuses. They don't. Now you are saying that everyone knows that you're eventually supposed to get new Enhancement bonuses. Possibly to within a couple of levels one way or the other.

Well guess what? That means that you were fucking wrong. And not in a little way where you can say "Oh, I guess it was a 3 instead of a 4" or some shit. The entire premise of your argument was that the rule was white when it was black, that it was up when it was down. That it was an explicit and exacting guideline when it was... merely a vague feeling that eventually the DM should decide to hand out some fucking treasure.

Well no shit the DM should hand out some treasure. The question on a wealth-by-level system for a game with required equipment was never if treasure should be dispensed. It was how much treasure to be dispensed, when the treasure should be dispensed, and what that treasure should be. And guess what? The 4E Books Don't Say A Goddamn Thing About Any Of That You Lying Fuckwit!

-Username17

[Orion]

IGTN

It's not necessary or desirable to have "schools" carry across tiers.

It's perfectly alright, for instance, to have "time magic" as a fully-supported primary character theme in the Demigod Tier, without writing up Adventurer-Tier Time Magic *at all*. Similarly, "Weapon Mastery" might be an Adventurer-Only school, with demigod level having "Celestial Martial Arts" and "Super Strength" and "Kingship" as its physical schools.

In fact, while things like Fire Magic could conceivably scale across all tiers
I'm going to put my foot down and say they SHOULDN'T. The point of different tiers is to be *different* and we can reinforce both the difference, and the obsolescence of the "action hero," by insisting that *no two schools of different tiers shall have the same name*.

[CatharzGodfoot]

I stand corrected: nothing explicitly says "PCs need enhancement bonuses." But you and I both know that only the most blithely complacent group won't figure it out sooner of later. The PHB repeatedly mentions enhancements (the chart on page 225 for example); players will start to wonder why fights are getting harder and harder by paragon levels; and players will start seeking out enhancements, in- and/or out-of-game. ("Hey DM, how about some o' those sweet enhancements!")

Fuck you.

You said that the rules tell you "exactly" when to get increased enhancement bonuses. They don't. Now you are saying that everyone knows that you're eventually supposed to get new Enhancement bonuses. Possibly to within a couple of levels one way or the other.

Well guess what? That means that you were fucking wrong. And not in a little way where you can say "Oh, I guess it was a 3 instead of a 4" or some shit. The entire premise of your argument was that the rule was white when it was black, that it was up when it was down. That it was an explicit and exacting guideline when it was... merely a vague feeling that eventually the DM should decide to hand out some fucking treasure.

Well no shit the DM should hand out some treasure. The question on a wealth-by-level system for a game with required equipment was never if treasure should be dispensed. It was how much treasure to be dispensed, when the treasure should be dispensed, and what that treasure should be. And guess what? The 4E Books Don't Say A Goddamn Thing About Any Of That You Lying Fuckwit!

-Username17

Frank, you're right. Never the less, you should seriously consider toning it down a bit. Venting can be cathartic (and make a point), but it can also make it nearly impossible to communicate.

[Mask_De_H]

Agree with Catharz. The rant was funny, but it derailed the conversation on the item ability system discussed after the others ignored TS.

[Kaelik]

Well since we are all talking about how we feel about it.

I disagree with Carthaz.

TS was wrong and dumb and a liar, and Frank called him out pretty much exactly how much he should be called out.

The fact that everyone else ignores someone doesn't mean that Frank is in the wrong for calling him out.

Just like people who called out Elennsar weren't wrong.

[Mask_De_H]

Frank's not wrong, it was just unnecessary. The folks moved on.

[CatharzGodfoot]

TS was wrong and dumb and a liar, and Frank called him out pretty much exactly how much he should be called out.

The fact that everyone else ignores someone doesn't mean that Frank is in the wrong for calling him out.

Just like people who called out Elennsar weren't wrong.

There's nothing wrong with calling someone out. I'm just saying that there's no need to be needlessly cruel when you do it.

[Kaelik]

Frank's not wrong, it was just unnecessary. The folks moved on.

I've moved on from the Holocaust.

But if we had some sort of thread about the holocaust, I would not say "it's unnecessary" to say Hitler was an asshole.

It's no more unnecessary for Frank to talk about WBL in a WBL thread than it is for other people to talk about a different aspect of WBL in a WBL thread.

[Kaelik]

There's nothing wrong with calling someone out. I'm just saying that there's no need to be needlessly cruel when you do it.

Which is why you might note my post says "exactly as much" as deserved.

IE, I don't think Frank was "needlessly cruel."

[CatharzGodfoot]

There's nothing wrong with calling someone out. I'm just saying that there's no need to be needlessly cruel when you do it.

Which is why you might note my post says "exactly as much" as deserved.

IE, I don't think Frank was "needlessly cruel."

Fair enough. I'm more interested in knowing what Frank thinks. I know that sometimes I step back after flaming someone and feel like a jerk. Other times I don't. In this case I'm not the one getting sprayed with vitriol, but as you may know I've ranted about things like this in the past.

At any rate, this is mucking up the thread way more than I though it would. Obviously I should have used a PM.