Magic Swords

[RandomCasualty]

1176026211[/unixtime]]
Weapons should scale with character level. Which I thought was one of the original options.

Well no, the original option was that magical enhancements scale with character level. So if had a frost brand, the cold damage gets better based on your character level, but a guy with an ordinary longsword doesn't spontaneously turn his weapon into a frost brand.

Based on what you're saying it doesn't seem that you want weapons to scale, so much as you don't want magic weapons to matter. If an ordinary long sword is as good as a magical one, then you might as well not hand out bonuses for equipment at all, then you can forget the whole scaling business entirely and go purely by individual skill. Because really, if you want ordinary weapons, like the sword you got off the coat of arms on the wall, to scale competitively with magic gear, then you might as well not even bother having equipment bonuses at all.

[PhoneLobster]

Oh for the love of...

The subject is magic swords, everyone is talking about magic swords, the thread title is magic swords. The original question, and options I am responding to, was about magic swords.

I am not talking about non-magic swords.

I am not even talking about the discussion of multiple levels of scaling (or not) items. I am just saying that the suggestion of scaling magic swords, yes those frost brand ones, should not be some dumb frequent flier deal.

The D&D world deals in magic items like candy.

The show piece swords on the wall ARE magic swords, the sword your father gave you IS a magic sword, the D&D equivalent of a gun you loot off the stormtrooper and gun down the remaining storm troopers IS a magic sword.

The place is dripping with the things. The magic sword is to D&D what the musket is to the three muskateers.

And as such you shouldn't have the suggested situation of not getting your magic swords scaling abilities unless you've been carrying it since level 1.

Yikes.

Its a pretty simple point.

No flybys.

[User3]

I agree that weapons should immediately scale up as far as they're allowed to.

Keeping track of what weapons we've been using is unnecessary bookkeeping.

[Neeek]

1176031989[/unixtime]]
I am not talking about non-magic swords.

You *are* talking about non-magic swords. You've been talking about a character who breaks his weapon constantly then fights with whatever is handy. That's not a magic weapon.

The show piece swords on the wall ARE magic swords, the sword your father gave you IS a magic sword, the D&D equivalent of a gun you loot off the stormtrooper and gun down the remaining storm troopers IS a magic sword.

The show piece swords on walls are almost never anything but pieces of crap with no point and dull edges. The sword your father gave you *might* be magical. If it's not, and you become awesome, some of your awesomeness rubbing off onto the sword sounds like a reasonable option to me and it allows a mechanic for non-casters to create/improve magic items. The 47 trillion identical stormtrooper guns aren't magic weapons either. They're just weapons.

[User3]

1176052779[/unixtime

The show piece swords on the wall ARE magic swords, the sword your father gave you IS a magic sword, the D&D equivalent of a gun you loot off the stormtrooper and gun down the remaining storm troopers IS a magic sword.

The show piece swords on walls are almost never anything but pieces of crap with no point and dull edges. The sword your father gave you *might* be magical. If it's not, and you become awesome, some of your awesomeness rubbing off onto the sword sounds like a reasonable option to me and it allows a mechanic for non-casters to create/improve magic items. The 47 trillion identical stormtrooper guns aren't magic weapons either. They're just weapons.

Actually, I think PhoneLobster has a point. Remember, the king is only king because either he or some of his relatives can kill dragons. (see Dungeonomicon). At which point, he really does have arbitrarily many magic swords laying around - they're cheap and his brother the wizard chain-Planar Binds efreeti for giggles and gets them to magic up a pile of magic swords for the armory. Seriously, if they aren't in the wish economy the King has however many of them he needs and/or wants, and why decorate your halls with cheap pieces of shit when you can get magic ones basically for free?

Everything D+D wants you to believe about its world is *wrong*, that's the first lesson you should have learned from Frank and K's work (if you didn't already know). Like Magic Weapons somehow being hard to get/find. They're not - every King arms his wife's chambermaid with a magic dagger just in case. The world is literally overflowing with basic magic weapons. That's just the way it is.

[Username17]

Several notes:

1. Magic Swords are not normally used, traded in, or even seen by commoners. However, this does not mean anything at all about the relative amount of magic swords used in the day-to-day opeations of the warrior classes. After all, commoners don't even normally get to touch swords, bows, or even weapon-grade axes and this in no way says anything about the relative availability of those to the warrior classes. Indeed, the common man is a serf who is specifically forbidden from using or even having military-grade weapons in almost every society ever. In D&D, the military grade wepaon is the magic sword.
   
   
2. Player Characters in D&D are normally assumed to be upwardly mobile commoners. That's what first level means. You don't get their father's magic sword because their father doesn't fvcking have a magic sword. If they were the son of a mighty warrior they'd begin their life as a genuine trainee beligerant and they would go out adventuring when they hit fifth level with a pile of high-grade and magical equipment. That's how being the son of a mighty warrior works in D&D. If you start at first level at all, it's because your parents don't have a magic sword, and neither do you.

Purple Dragon Knight is a prestige class. People take it at like 6th level. And while it's a shit class and bad from a lot of game design standpoints, the fact is that it demonstrates something important about the D&D world. Namely that people who are major functionaries in the armed forces of even mediocre kingdoms are chaarcters in the 4th-8th level range and we already know that characters in that level range have not just magic weapons but actual flaming swords and keen scimitars and shit.

When the King puts a Knight in charge of a region, that's a guy with an actual magic weapon. But when you start out as a first level character, you don't have one.

-Username17

[Draco_Argentum]

Didn't Skywalker get given his father's magic sword by his mysterious mentor and subsequently lose it only to replace it with one he forged himself? Whats that about bringing Solo into this again?

To be more constructive, looting shouldn't be mechanically the best option IMO. I hate playing mercenary characters who are after the loot. Scaling swords in the hands of every mook means their equipment is probably useful to the PCs.

Possible compromise, scaling mook cannons but also RoW feat that makes you totally rock out with your signature weapon out. Make it take a week to change signature weapons and at least you can play a character who has a reason not to loot.

[Brobdingnagian]

I posed a question earlier that doesn't seem to have been answered, so let's ask it again.

Is the topic of this discussion directly relevant to how the Book of Gears will function? If so, I am of no opinion, because they both seem like viable options to me and I honestly couldn't decide which one is really better.

If not, it's best to put both options and any reasonable comprimises in your magic gear section and let people pick out what's best for them and their campaign. I know it's a little more work for you guys, but I can guarantee it'd be appreciated.

[Username17]

Is the topic of this discussion directly relevant to how the Book of Gears will function?

Yes. The sections on Constructs, Vermin, Economics, Skills, and even class rewrites virtually write themselves. But the Magic Items... oh boy. That's sort of the cornerstone project of the whole thing.

The big problem is that what people want from magic items is in fact contradictory. People legitimately desire the following:

• I want my character to be defined by who he is rather than what he has. The days of AD&D, where all Fighters were identical and people seriously showed each other a stack of index cards with owned magic items on them to demonstrate what their characters could do - were stupid and insulting.
  
  
• I want my character to be Aladin/King Arthur/Whatever. Magic items in lgends and fairy tales are plot devices, and control the direction of the entire story. Noone gives a damn about Sir Hubert, but who could forget Siegfried and his anvil-slicing Gram?

Holy shit. These are two reasonable requests, but they don't go together. At all. What people actually want is for magic items to be game defining and irrelevent at the same time.

So the real question becomes: what kind of compromise would people settle for? Because god damnit the things that people actually seem to want are completely unreasonable.

-Username17

[Brobdingnagian]

Well...

Most of the other stuff you write in terms of classes and races and societies and what-not satisfies the first criteria. Because of RoW, the Dungeonomicon, and the Tomes of Necromancy and Fiends, characters can be self-defining.

So, from that standpoint, magic items should have a set power, because with RoW classes and feats, and various other things from your other books, means that characters made by your rules are self-defining to begin with (unless someone is really unimaginative), and so magical items should be something that are set in their power, because unless it's an artefact, anyone of a certain level can acquire a level-appropriate magic item, and your items don't define your character, simple as that.

I dunno, seems to me like set power is the way to go.

[Crissa]

He rocks because he has Gram, sure.

But Gram wouldn't rock in anyone else's hands. It'd just be another sword.

[*]All swords should scale appropriately; There should be also crap swords that aren't masterwork that mooks have, and spells to boost them into zbrands. Heros don't care about a -1 when they're scrounging for a weapon, seriously.

[*]There should also be a way to make a masterwork or better sword into /your/ signature weapon. These abilities only work for you, and only work on another sword after a specific, non game breaking time if you can't get yours back.

[*]There should be artifacts and rules for your father's father's sword as well. These swords should only work (without the aid of an NPC) as a level-appropriate sword.

[*]There should be no way for a sword from the pile, artifact or not, to give a character more effect than they should have.

You have swordpoints - you can keep them, and use level appropriate equipment. You can spend them, and make a multitool or magic weapon out of something that's not. You can use them to prove you're of sufficient height to use an artifact or magic sword. You can regain them from your crafting by melting down/losing/meditating appropriate.

-Crissa

[CalibronXXX]

1176097055[/unixtime]]Holy shit. These are two reasonable requests, but they don't go together. At all. What people actually want is for magic items to be game defining and irrelevent at the same time.

So the real question becomes: what kind of compromise would people settle for? Because god damnit the things that people actually seem to want are completely unreasonable.

-Username17

Ooh, ooh, I know! You could make your average frost brand or just plain magic sword not scale, and thus quickly become irrelevant or seem totally awesome dependent on how awesome the wielder in question is, while making any unique and name-worthy sword scale to level; not to mention making any sort of artifact level sword be independently badass for a good deal longer than any generic +3longsword would be and then be somewhat better than level appropriate for a sufficiently powerful character.

...sorry, I won't needlessly reiterate my opinion again, but I seriously don't think you're going to satisfy a majority of the people unless you actually make systems for both options; I could see that coming from since before I first posted in this thread, but I didn't want to be the guy to tell you to do more work than you already are.

Thanks for all the effort.

[Judging__Eagle]

How much do you want to bet that they've already done layouts for both systems.

It's a matter of deciding what people want their magic iems to do.


Oh, is there a similar thread to this on the WoTC boards?

[Fwib]

Make it like the undead thing - different choices, pick one. ?

[MrWaeseL]

So the real question becomes: what kind of compromise would people settle for?

Let the players pick for themselves at character creation: Do you want to be King Arthur or someone who can decapitate people with a toothpick? (Someone give me an example, quick)

[josephbt]

Riddick in The Chronicles of Riddick.

Kills a guy with a cup of coffee.

[MrWaeseL]

Thank you Joseph.

[User3]

Okay, given that split, I would like regular magic items to be interchangeable, level-appropriate, and basically forgettable.

Artifacts, though, need to actually have rules that work, to allow for Alladins/King Arthurs/etc.

[User3]

1176097055[/unixtime]]
So the real question becomes: what kind of compromise would people settle for? Because god damnit the things that people actually seem to want are completely unreasonable.

The only remotely palatable compromise I can think of (and it's still going to be pretty damned unpalatable to the people in category 2) is the old "Champions" method of having foci. For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, Champions allows you to buy powers with a limitation called "Focus" which essentially means that the power is embedded in an object, rather than inherent in the character, to enable you to simulate characters like Green Lantern (ring) or Captain America (shield). You got some extra points based on how easy it was to notice that the power was invested in the object, and how easy it was to temporarily deprive you of the object. (But only temporarily -- you always got the object back, typically at the end of every fight scene, or earlier if you could grab it back from whoever stole it.)

So some people have their awesome swording powers inherent in them, and can just pick up whatever sword happens to be handy and slash people with it. Other people have their awesome swording powers because they have Excalibur, but they always have Excalibur, so they can always kick the requisite amount of ass with it. (And so they probably don't get any extra bonus for this, like they do in Champions.)

People will complain that the former are just better, because they can't be deprived of their awesome swording powers, but of course the DM can deprive them of their awesome swording powers whenever he feels like it just by saying "That doesn't work."

--d.

[Catharz]

Then there's the option of 'Excalibur is a hardcore magic weapon, but mainly it's just a symbol of "I'm the high king."' You don't get rid of Excalibur, because if you did you'd no longer be the king of all England.

Similar to the 'every samurai keeps his daisho (which embodies his honor), but many fight with spears and bows.'

[erik]

I'm a fan of the scaling weapons such that you fufill the desire of having equipment be mostly irrelevant (i.e. very rare swapping/trading up).

To fufill the desire of having badass weapons that are remembered and plot influencing, that kind of stuff is either an artifact or at the very least intelligent items. Those kind of items can decide whether or not they want to grant their awesomeness to a particular owner.

So two classes of weapons, which the DM can see fit to distribute as desired for their particular campaign:

• Vanilla scaling weapons (with tiers if you please, or not)

• Intelligent items which grant funky powers to a wielder of its choosing

[Brobdingnagian]

Agree with Clikml.

[Digestor]

^ Aye.

[Fwib]

Hmmmm... I think that normal magic weapons probably shouldn't scale, since the wielder ought to be doing the scaling with level, and probably shouldn't be getting two bites of the cherry.

[Falgund]

[*] I want my character to be Aladin/King Arthur/Whatever. Magic items in lgends and fairy tales are plot devices, and control the direction of the entire story. Noone gives a damn about Sir Hubert, but who could forget Siegfried and his anvil-slicing Gram?[/list]

Can't this be done by using the first definition and adding a fvcking feat (I have the Sword of Power) or prestige class (The Most Powerful Man in the Universe) that does something like Ancestral Weapon/Anointed Knight, only better implemented ?

Or maybe two type of them, one more adapted to Arthur/Siegfried as a Knight-With-Named-Sword, and another allowing them to channel approprietly leveled spells from their item of power (He-Man is using his sword mostly to buff himself and his tiger).