Balance vs. Fun

[kjdavies]

As I understand it, Iron Armbands of Wang have bonuses of +2n (2, 4, 6) because that will always result in a change in ability score modifier.

Wrong game. Iron Armbands are a 4e item that adds +2/+4/+6 damage.

I withdraw the comment, then, didn't realize. I've managed to avoid getting much 4e on me.

K.

[Mask_De_H]

When you guys talk about hopping vampires, are you referring to those really weird Chinese films?

The Jiang Shi to be exact.

Okay, so I have to agree with K here. Having the GM give out DM penis NPC slayers randomly isn't a good thing, because if it ends up not fitting or not coming to the player's character then he or she gets to be the big bitch for the rest of the game. Now, giving out something that gives neat abilities that affect the story but don't affect how well you kill things being handed out like Christmas presents I'm perfectly fine with. Crissa's bite the coin scenario sounds interesting and if it weren't under the auspices of "reroll or get your Hsien-Ko on," it would be totally tits.

That being said, why not just have the player influence what they get? The GM can offer something cool and if the PC doesn't like it, he can make something up. Consider the following:

Aerith, Bob, Carrie, and Derp have just won a hard fought battle against the Lich King of Nevermore and his fell beast of a thousand tentacles, and have hit their level capstone. At this point, the players can use their chakra system to cash in a bit of narrative control for a level appropriate item. Aerith is playing a Pokemon Trainer, so she takes a tentacle to fashion into a Charming whip that can power pole extend. Derp ganks the Lich King's phylactery so he can tap into the utter darkness for fun shit. Bob and Carrie aren't feeling it, so they hold their chakra chips until downtime, wherein they describe some cool thing they did to get a level appropriate item. Bob goes to the Mountain of Uttercold and punches out some yetis to gain some bitchin' rad greaves, while Carrie returns to her homeland and becomes Queen of the Fairies, which gets her a royal guard of pixies to swarm on fools.

And then with the "cool shit that doesn't affect your Cthulu-punching abilities," Aerith becomes a Pokemon Master and gets widespread accolades, free S.S. Anne tickets and a Pokedex. Derp becomes the new Scion of Nevermore and gets a nice chateau on the Plane of Shadow. Carrie, as the Queen of the Fairies, can make plants sing, animals dance, and have a network of people steal any baby she wants. Bob becomes the Yeti-king of the Mountain of Uttercold and gets a rad palanquin of snow elementals. Also, he can make a room frigid with just a glance.

...I hope that makes sense, because that's how I wanted to handle the magic item system in 5th Edition.

[RobbyPants]

At that point, it sounds like you're blurring the distinction between class abilities and items. This isn't a bad thing, but it seems you could almost track it all by level. You'd literally have WBL built into each class. Maybe the 5th level ability manifests as an awesome sword, or eye lasers, or a hoard of wights.

Really, it sounds like you just want to let players pick level-appropriate abilities whenever you feel it's the right time, sort of like XP-less leveling (where the DM says "okay, you finished the adventure. Everyone gains a level.").

[Username17]

That being said, why not just have the player influence what they get?

4e's wishlist system was part and parcel of the worst magic item system that D&D has ever had. If you always know what you're going to get, it becomes like late stage heroin addiction: there is no joy in acquisition only pain in absence. It's the worst thing that has ever happened to the D&D magic item system.

That's why.

Now, giving out something that gives neat abilities that affect the story but don't affect how well you kill things being handed out like Christmas presents I'm perfectly fine with.

The game centers around your ability to kill things. If something explicitly cannot affect your ability to kill things, it becomes a negligible portion of the game. Remember that things will affect your ability to kill things in all kinds of ways that my not be directly comparable to getting a +3 bonus to attack rolls. If you make no noise while walking you can often leverage an extra surprise attack when you otherwise would not be able to do so or to begin combat from an otherwise inaccessible location of relative advantage. If you resign yourself to having things in your game that "cannot affect combat" you're pulling out the 4e shenanigans where suddenly you're not allowed to use Mage Hand while "combat music is playing" or some shit.

In short, not only is it desirable for items that are supposed to be desired to be beneficial in combat, but you couldn't actually stop them from being useful when fighting demons in the future without a level of railroading that would make Chris Perkins wet himself.

Okay, so I have to agree with K here. Having the GM give out DM penis NPC slayers randomly isn't a good thing, because if it ends up not fitting or not coming to the player's character then he or she gets to be the big bitch for the rest of the game.

My sympathy is extremely limited. The fact is that there is going to be stuff in the game that is tactically advantageous and stuff that is not. And if you refuse to use tactics that are advantageous you should be punished mechanically, because otherwise neither the tactician nor the personal code have any meaning.

Let's say you get a bonus for stabbing a fool in the back. That seems kind of reasonable, and a lot of people add that technicality to their game in one way or another. And now, let's say that your character doesn't stab people in the back, for whatever reason. Should you be compensated for not taking advantage of your opponent's weakness? Absolutely not! If you get compensated, your decision to not stab people in the back is no longer meaningful, because nothing actually happened.

If you quest for the Ice Blade Svengir, you had better be encouraged to fucking use the Ice Blade Svengir. Otherwise that whole quest was a waste of time and has no emotional impact. "Yeah, I know we just braved the Halls of Morstave and bested the Dragon Cholnax to get this mighty ice blade, but I'm a fire trident guy, so I'm just going to leave this hear and assume my fire trident will get better." No. Fuck that. That shit is exactly why 4e is a game that is not entertaining and does not generate interesting stories.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty2]

Let's say you get a bonus for stabbing a fool in the back. That seems kind of reasonable, and a lot of people add that technicality to their game in one way or another. And now, let's say that your character doesn't stab people in the back, for whatever reason. Should you be compensated for not taking advantage of your opponent's weakness? Absolutely not! If you get compensated, your decision to not stab people in the back is no longer meaningful, because nothing actually happened.

If you quest for the Ice Blade Svengir, you had better be encouraged to fucking use the Ice Blade Svengir. Otherwise that whole quest was a waste of time and has no emotional impact. "Yeah, I know we just braved the Halls of Morstave and bested the Dragon Cholnax to get this mighty ice blade, but I'm a fire trident guy, so I'm just going to leave this hear and assume my fire trident will get better." No. Fuck that. That shit is exactly why 4e is a game that is not entertaining and does not generate interesting stories.

This is basically the eternal struggle between character concept and cooperative storytelling. People generally want a specific character concept with some specific abilities. and part of the game is letting them have those.

However, part of the game is also the element that the world and character should interact. The character should impact and affect the story and the story should come back and impact the character. And that can't happen if characters are independent entities that can basically say, "Fuck what happened in the story, my character is just going to live in a vacuum and upgrade his longsword."

Having a total character planned out from day one is bad for the game, because it makes the story trivial. When you've got that build of exactly what classes, magic items and whatever you're going to pick, there actually is no impact from the story itself ever. That means that pretty much playing through the game is meaningless because the character is set on rails from day one. You don't change the direction of your training, you buy or create all your magic items and the only real thing you care about is how much GP and XP you get.

Now somewhere you've got to draw the line at where in-game events can influence your character. Magic items is really the most logical area to do that.

[Mask_De_H]

Frank, if you are on the quest for the Ice Blade Svengir, it is an assumption that someone wants said blade. If that is the case, then the player who wanted the blade would get it under my system by saying "hey, I'm claiming the plot coupon now.". If the quest was not an arbitrary fetch quest, nobody wanting the blade would be a moot point because they wouldn't have needed it. If it happened to drop from the Ice Queen and you don't want it, then cool, put it on your mantle piece or something. Treat it like a Wish Economy item under 15k. Or trade it in for a favor, or use it as a Chekov's Gun. It can still be an interesting thing to have without being a necessary tool. If I was unclear in my meaning for the example, I apologize; basic competency should and would be upheld through levelling, with necessary bonuses coming from Chakras. Once core competency is achieved, other things can be given out to add horizontal power. I attempted to get people out of the item drop bullshit rodeo, as that was what I assumed the aim was.

Also, I thought the problem with 4e items were the fact that all they did was boost core compentency and there was no narrative reason for that to occur. It was dicking you around with the illusion of control. With narrative influence, you can just take something that you thought was cool off of an enemy, and make it your own. It allows you to say "ooh, I want that black blade that the Hobgoblin chieftan had" instead of "if you don't give me the Iron Armbands of Power I asked for I'll fucking cut you.". The basic ability to flip out and kill things should be in the hands of the players, the GM gives them the backdrop, the narrative thread, and the opportunity to do as such. If I'm misunderstanding your argument, please break it down for me. You can use sock puppets and everything.

[Lago PARANOIA]

If you get compensated, your decision to not stab people in the back is no longer meaningful, because nothing actually happened.

Of course, then you can't have characters in the game who fight honorably and make pre-fight speeches and all that. You gained a tactical element at the cost of eliminating a story element. It's really not as obvious of a choice as you make it seemed.

Magic items is really the most logical area to do that.

For Shadowrun or a Superhero game, sure, but in D&D-land and lots of other heroic fantasy characters are heavily defined by their equipment. Unless you're planning to make character concepts a lot less dependent on magical items then this is a pretty bad place to stick the DM penis.

[RandomCasualty2]

For Shadowrun or a Superhero game, sure, but in D&D-land and lots of other heroic fantasy characters are heavily defined by their equipment. Unless you're planning to make character concepts a lot less dependent on magical items then this is a pretty bad place to stick the DM penis.

Wait what?

In Shadowrun, you can literally go out and buy whatever shit you need so having equipment define you doesn't really make sense, because the Ares predator you're using isn't special. It's seriously just an Ares Predator. You can't be defined so much by special equipment because there is no special equipment. No matter how awesome your deltaware wired reflexes are, there's another dude who has that stuff.

As for superheroes, Ironman is the fucking suit. That powersuit defines him in a way far beyond Harry Potter's wand or Elric's sword. He's literally powerless without it and just an ordinary dude. A smart normal dude, but a normal nonetheless.

Fantasy characters actually have the most flexible equipment, because they are actually expected to find shit. You can really give Conan a frostbrand or a flaming sword and he'll still be Conan. The story of Elric may well be that he finds a vicious soul sucking sword or it may be that he wields the sword of Light. But neither is particularly mandatory or prevents the character from being what he's intended to be. It just means the events of the story take the character down a different branch. And that's okay. Finding a different magic sword probably isn't going to force Conan to turn into a cleric or a rogue. It just means he'll freeze shit when he strikes it instead of burning or cutting it. Seriously if people's character concepts are that rigid, they're probably being too inflexible for a cooperative storytelling game.

We often tell DMs who have inflexible plots to just go write a novel if they don't want PCs to affect the story. I think we could tell a similar thing to players who write completely immutable character builds.

[Dr_Noface]

Would you say Tome characters are defined by their equipment? They appear to do a pretty good job of being memorable with even generic magic items that grant only numbered bonuses.

[K]

If you quest for the Ice Blade Svengir, you had better be encouraged to fucking use the Ice Blade Svengir. Otherwise that whole quest was a waste of time and has no emotional impact. "Yeah, I know we just braved the Halls of Morstave and bested the Dragon Cholnax to get this mighty ice blade, but I'm a fire trident guy, so I'm just going to leave this hear and assume my fire trident will get better." No. Fuck that. That shit is exactly why 4e is a game that is not entertaining and does not generate interesting stories.

Whooo! Where to start with the wrong things about that? How about a list?

1. This is not an adventure people want to play.
OK, we know this is not something you can get other people on board with. I personally have tried to convince countless people to go on little milk-run detours so we all can get something awesome, and they wouldn't do it.[/u] Good luck trying to get other players to go on a major quest to make your character better than theirs.

This is perfectly fine quest for a single-player computer RPG, and in that framework the sword had better be damned awesome, but in a cooperative game this is just a dumb idea for an adventure and should not be something you want to see.

2. Making your character more awesome than other player's characters is bad on first principles.
Some players are better than others, and can get more out of their character than a less skilled player. That's a fact and nothing anyone can do fixes that.

That being said, compounding the problem by creating the potential for one character "get the rare drop" and just be more powerful than his peers is just.... compounding the problem. That creates resentments, makes other players feel like their character sucks if they don't also get a rare drop, and makes balancing the opposition to the party a more difficult task.

Bad, bad, bad, from a design and from a playability standpoint.

3. Tying the story to breaking the system is not necessary.
We all know that fantasy fiction is all about the fetch quest. Getting the super powerful thingie to kill [insert evil guy here] is a classic part of the genre.

But, breaking your system isn't needed to do that. You can do the whole "we are fighting the Fire Lord, and the only way we can beat him is to find this artifact ice weapon" without making that weapon so good that the character is now either the "ice weapon guy" or an idiot, and do that by:

*you can make the weapon very good with flavor abilities(ex. +6 vs fire monsters, which as we know might never come up again in the entire campaign).

*you can make the weapon powerful but be cursed (ex. turns the user into a soulless ice elemental over a period of months, so you use it on the Fire Lord and then hang it next to the giant penny when your skin starts turning blue).

*give it super-specific powers (ex. specifically counters the Fire Lord's burning aura that makes it almost impossible to fight him, or auto-kills his mooks so you can reach him, or makes the killing blow negate his immortality, and the rest of the time its a normal ice weapon).

-------------------

What you can't do is hand out items that straight power-up single players. I mean, DnD is based on a basic system where at the end of the adventure people are supposed to pick from the big pile of loot and everyone is generally powered up at the same rate. 3e's and 4e's "shopping list" mentality comes from cRPGs like Diablo where programming in more plusses is easy, and making items with actual abilities is hard, and there is no reason to do that in a ppRPG like DnD (and yes, it's necessary in wargames where unique abilities are just more complication to unit play). These games are addictive mostly because you are expected to lose over and over and those plusses are the goal of the game, not the story or the cooperative play.

You can have stories where players pick up powerful, iconic, and legendary new weapons and have that be cool. I mean, we totally know that Inuyasha and King Arthur are more about the sword and less about the guy, but at the point when the sword is as good as class features, you should be paying class features for it.

I mean, you can give up the idea of balance and have a mostly playable game. Storyteller games don't even pretend to be balanced and they are playable, but at no point am I ever going to use them as a model for anything.

PS. Please forgive the craziness with the bolding and italics.

[Username17]

I mean, you can give up the idea of balance and have a mostly playable game. Storyteller games don't even pretend to be balanced and they are playable, but at no point am I ever going to use them as a model for anything.

White Wolf products are consistently and permanently unbalanced. If you wrote "Setite" on your character sheet you are better than if you wrote "Gangrel" on your character sheet. And the difference only gets more stark over time. That's a bad model of inter-party imbalance. But it's also not what I am talking about.

What I'm talking about is handing out definite and noticeable asymmetric powerups one at a time, so that the players at the table will really notice each one. And yes, I am aware that this sounds dangerously close to the 4e Treasure Parcel system, which was the worst item system ever made, but I got plans for keeping it from becoming boring and constitutively unfair. It's called: rolling some fucking dice. See, when the items are actually random, the players have fair chances of getting the Ring of Power. That means that even though one player actually gets a Ring of Power, the game is still fair. This contrasts sharply to 4e, where the DM chooses to give one player a Level 3 item, one player a Level 4 item, and one player a Level 5 item - the DM is purposefully and with malice of forethought playing favorites. You can't be sanguine about getting "better luck next time" because there is no luck involved.

For an item, or any asymmetric power gain for that matter, to get the dramatic import that it deserves, it wants to get an episode dedicated to itself. That way the players can all properly "ooh" and "aah" at the new plot element. But as 4e laid spectacularly bare: you can't fairly distribute one new car. The only way you can get fairness into the equation is to introduce a random element - because randomniscity can be fair.

OK, we know this is not something you can get other people on board with. I personally have tried to convince countless people to go on little milk-run detours so we all can get something awesome, and they wouldn't do it.

Sometimes they will, sometimes they won't. It depends on the group and the thing and the campaign situation. The players would not go along with the plan to go get giant riding hawks, but as I recall a different party was willing to go along with your scheme to go hunt a greenspawn razorfiend so that you could have wings of flurry in your power suite before the assault on Thundara.

Note: that wasn't even "everyone learns a spell" or anything. That was just you learn a spell. Sometimes people are cool with that sort of thing. Sometimes they are not. I've DMed a lot of games, and it seems pretty random as to when players will accept doing a sidequest for a minor powerup for one or more characters. I've personally been on no less than two separate dungeon crawls run by different DMs in order to get an overpowered magic axe to give to the party Barbarian so that they could play the same game as the spellcasters walking into mid level.

-Username17

[K]

OK, we know this is not something you can get other people on board with. I personally have tried to convince countless people to go on little milk-run detours so we all can get something awesome, and they wouldn't do it.

Sometimes they will, sometimes they won't. It depends on the group and the thing and the campaign situation. The players would not go along with the plan to go get giant riding hawks, but as I recall a different party was willing to go along with your scheme to go hunt a greenspawn razorfiend so that you could have wings of flurry in your power suite before the assault on Thundara.

Note: that wasn't even "everyone learns a spell" or anything. That was just you learn a spell. Sometimes people are cool with that sort of thing. Sometimes they are not. I've DMed a lot of games, and it seems pretty random as to when players will accept doing a sidequest for a minor powerup for one or more characters. I've personally been on no less than two separate dungeon crawls run by different DMs in order to get an overpowered magic axe to give to the party Barbarian so that they could play the same game as the spellcasters walking into mid level.

-Username17

Dude, that was a "everyone learn a spell" situation in the sense that we were close to a level and doing a BS milkrun fight and everyone getting a level before a major assault on an enemy fortress was a good idea I didn't have to sell very hard (despite the fact that a new spell level for me was a major power-up, people still got their levels too).

I mean, you don't have to convince people to get levels since levels = whatever you want. Its everything else like treasure, goals, adventures, etc, that people need to be conned into doing. I mean, I literally had to convince people to NOT give me a fair share of the treasure so that the fighters didn't suck.

You can make an argument that I convinced people to go back to town so we could sell off treasure and I could buy an animate dead scroll so that the party could fly on a zombie and beat the timed aspect of the adventure, but again I was convincing people to do something that would get them anything they wanted (selling loots and buying items).

[RobbyPants]

Dude, that was a "everyone learn a spell" situation in the sense that we were close to a level and doing a BS milkrun fight and everyone getting a level before a major assault on an enemy fortress was a good idea I didn't have to sell very hard (despite the fact that a new spell level for me was a major power-up, people still got their levels too).

Well, technically, isn't any BS milkrun for PC1 going to benefit the others by giving them XP, then? If not, then I don't see what the problem is. If it is, because PC1 gets a bigger benefit than the other PCs, then you getting Wings of Flurry would count to.

[Mask_De_H]

OK, we know this is not something you can get other people on board with. I personally have tried to convince countless people to go on little milk-run detours so we all can get something awesome, and they wouldn't do it.

Sometimes they will, sometimes they won't. It depends on the group and the thing and the campaign situation. The players would not go along with the plan to go get giant riding hawks, but as I recall a different party was willing to go along with your scheme to go hunt a greenspawn razorfiend so that you could have wings of flurry in your power suite before the assault on Thundara.

Note: that wasn't even "everyone learns a spell" or anything. That was just you learn a spell. Sometimes people are cool with that sort of thing. Sometimes they are not. I've DMed a lot of games, and it seems pretty random as to when players will accept doing a sidequest for a minor powerup for one or more characters. I've personally been on no less than two separate dungeon crawls run by different DMs in order to get an overpowered magic axe to give to the party Barbarian so that they could play the same game as the spellcasters walking into mid level.

-Username17

But Frank, your example is for something that is not "a minor bonus". It's something that the barbarian player needed to play the same game. In a remotely balanced system, that should not happen. I'm fine with random bonus shit, as long as it doesn't overshadow the core competencies of any character. What you seem to be proposing is the 2e? magic item model, which is inherently unbalanced. That's fine if and only if chargen is quick and death is cheap, or the other players can still play the same game without getting the +10 Fuck You Stick. Having certain items basically come online as class features (like the soulmeld/chakra system for the Power of Blue classes you designed) allows for this to happen, as does K's consumable artifact idea.

[Murtak]

I don't think artifacts or random vertical powerups should necessarily be removed just to get a balanced game. They can just be labeled as balance-breaking and anyone who wishes to include them runs the risk of breaking his game. None-game-breaking but balance-disrupting items are even easier. If you have balance guidelines and those guidelines say a level 10 character is supposed to have 3 lesser and 1 major magic item then obviously handing out a grand magic item will break the party balance and possibly the encounter balance.

We don't need to enforce balance throughout the whole game. It is just important that balance can easily be achieved and that departing from it is obvious.

[Starmaker]

How would you implement consumable artifacts?

If they have charges, people are going to save charges.

If the power vanishes over time, the player is going to run around killing everything in sight.
When I quit Lineage II, they have just implemented an awesome cursed sword. The idea was that it gave huge bonuses dependent on player kills done with it equipped. Also, PKing prolonged the time the sword would stay in one's possession, and if anyone killed the owner, he'd drop the sword. So players ran around killing other players to power the sword and then raided as many bosses as they could.

Which is to say, I'm sure K can make it work, I'm just not seeing how.

[Ice9]

I don't think you'd want a time-based limit - then the artifact guy either gets screwed if the game involves a long but uneventful voyage, or wins like crazy if the game is back to back action.
Use-based encourages hording, and can often take the fun out of items, as you feel like you can't use them for the hell of it, and must always wait for the ultimate danger.
Action-based (such as a sword that corrupts whenever you strike the killing blow with it) is a possibility, but often it ends up being either a semi-random use-based limit, or just a bookkeeping thing to easily avoid.

So I'm not sure there is a good model for consumable artifacts. Although actually, 4E's model might have some potential. It's basically an time/action-based limit, but it at least avoids the "burned out during downtime" problem (you're generally only gaining/losing favor when you're actually doing stuff), and the gaining/losing favor can be interesting in itself.

[Kaelik]

I'm pretty sure that K's model was "You get like one artifact per every 6 levels, and they have exactly one use."

Were use is not defined.

I could see a use being "Kill the boss." so you can use it to power yourself up and be awesome only when actively in his presence trying to kill him or people getting in your way.

Or something like "Defend this city" so it only works when defending that city, and then when the PCs consider it safe, they just toss it off to the captain of the guard and head off.

[Jilocasin]

Farslayer howls across the world
For thy heart! For thy heart! who hast wronged me,
Vengeance is his who casts the Blade,
Yet he will, in the end, no triumph see.

[Thymos]

Something being fair does not always mean it's a good idea.

A completely random lottery is fair, but that doesn't mean we want our games to play like one.

[Ice9]

I'm pretty sure that K's model was "You get like one artifact per every 6 levels, and they have exactly one use."

Were use is not defined.

I could see a use being "Kill the boss." so you can use it to power yourself up and be awesome only when actively in his presence trying to kill him or people getting in your way.

Or something like "Defend this city" so it only works when defending that city, and then when the PCs consider it safe, they just toss it off to the captain of the guard and head off.

Well that sounds terrible. Either you use the artifact to deal with a planned situation ("The ice blade is the only thing that can kill King Inferno") which is pretty much like not having it in the first place. Or you shortcut an entire session and hope the DM prepared extra stuff - and if not, game over for that day.

[Red_Rob]

Either you use the artifact to deal with a planned situation ("The ice blade is the only thing that can kill King Inferno") which is pretty much like not having it in the first place. Or you shortcut an entire session and hope the DM prepared extra stuff - and if not, game over for that day.

This is pretty much "artifact as plot coupon". If you travel through the Frozen Kingdom to gain the Ice Dagger so that you can then travel to the City of Brass and kill the Lord of all Flames, unless you get to keep the Ice Dagger its just an excuse to lengthen the "kill the Lord of all Flames" quest.

[Kaelik]

Well that sounds terrible. Either you use the artifact to deal with a planned situation ("The ice blade is the only thing that can kill King Inferno") which is pretty much like not having it in the first place. Or you shortcut an entire session and hope the DM prepared extra stuff - and if not, game over for that day.

Wall of Stone is a terrible spell! Either you use it to deal with a planned situation ("We need to build some fortifications") which is pretty much like not having it in the first place. Or you shortcut an entire session and hope the DM prepared extra stuff - and if not, game over for that day.

If successfully defeating something the DM planned for you to be, and successfully beating something the DM didn't plan for you to beat are both terrible, what in all the world of D&D is not terrible?

Dying?

Are artifacts bad because only when your character fails miserably do you have any fun?

[K]

How would you implement consumable artifacts?

I'd be tempted to go the whole LotR style and make artifacts into radioactive isotopes and people get more altered the more they use them and the more power they draw out of them.

So exposure to the artifact might cause changes in various stages, with some flavor powers and flavor flaws being forced on you as you become more tainted by the artifact. Carrying around the artifact would be a small exposure, and drawing on its low-end and high-end power will be proportionately greater exposure. Eventually, your exposure would be so great you'd be forced to let it go or turn NPC.

Drawing on a tier of its power would be like an on/off switch with drawbacks when the artifact is in the On Position. So maybe when you turn on the Holocaust Ring's low-end powers, you have to shoot a Flame Blast every turn on top of whatever you do with the ring or with your other actions. So that's not a real drawback in battle, but it does make it hard to count your loot or buy a drink at the tavern.

After you let go of the artifact, you should able to revert mostly back, but it you ever pick up the artifact again it takes to right back where you were. In fact, you don't even want to be near it and risk more exposure.

So you might go on a quest to get Soulcutter from the Citadel of Screaming Stones, and after a vicious fight with various undead you find and open the vault where it rests.

But you want to use it on the Red King's army that is threatening your land, and that means a three month journey. Trying to limit your exposure to the artifact, you put it in an obsidian box that dampens its power. So right now you have a Stage 0 exposure.

But, while on the trip you get attacked. The rolls go badly for you and the party, and you decide to pull out Soulcutter. Turning on it's low-end powers, you save the day. Now you are pushed to Stage 1 exposure, and your arm has turned dead white and aches in the presence of the undead, and one of your normal class features has been traded out for a Necromancy power.

Deciding you either don't care or that you need the power of the sword close at hand, you start wearing the sword on your waist and using it in normal battles, but you don't activate its low-end or high-end powers. Within the two months it takes to get back to your land, you have Stage 2 and more of your class features are Necromancy and you are now healed when you drink blood, but can't be healed in any other way.

Facing down the Red King, you turn on Soulcutter's high-end powers and smite his army. Luckily, you time it so the Red King is at the battle, and you and the party start climatic fight with him and win. You are now in Stage 4 and pretty undead-licious, and now have a choice whether to let go of the sword or let it eventually progress to Stage 5 and NPChood.

To choose to let it go and seek healing, and drop down to Stage 1/4, but the instant you pick it up or get exposed to its power you are back to 4.

[CatharzGodfoot]

Eventually, your exposure would be so great you'd be forced to let it go or turn NPC.

Wow, darkside points. What a great* idea.

* By "great" I mean "terrible".