Wealth By Level

[Username17]

So, taking 4>1 as a rough estimate, you would say that at the point where a level 7 character is able to fill his slots with Minor items, they would have 1 slot filled with a Medium item and one with either a Medium or a Major? Depending on how we price Major items, that would be more like 40,000gp equivalence at lvl 7. Thats a fair whack over the 19,000gp DMG recommendation.

Absolutely.

The equipment that the DMG suggests giving people is drastically and substantially less than what warriors actually deserve and need. And the official "fix" is simply to allow each such character to benefit for wealth doubling by having crafted items count for half, or to provide artifact weapons that count zero against wealth by level, or both.

Getting things on a more honest footing is part of the point of the enterprise. And honestly, a big step towards that is getting rid of the idea that Artifacts should have a zero cost or that people should get radically different amounts of total equipment because they do or do not have Craft feats in the party.

The problem of course, is that craft feats allow a character to make minor magic items, pretty much by definition. And if you expect people to have 8 item slots filled by 7th level, it's pretty clearly problematic to have characters getting craft feats at 3rd or 5th. That may call for reduced magic item slots for people of low level. Like maybe even 1 slot/level to a maximum of 8.

-Username17

[PhaedrusXY]

The craft feats are a bad idea to start with. They're either useless or overpowered inherently, depending on how they wind up being used in the campaign. So I just got rid of them entirely, and said that anyone can craft* their own items, but they're limited to crafting one "level appropriate" item per character level, which is from the Tome rules somewhere... (but it was called a Masterpiece item there).

Crafting doesn't cost anything, except time. I'm not bothering to track money at all, and I think using XP to pay for things is a bad idea. This "crafting" is basically just a way to make sure that the PCs get the items that they want, and that everyone has a full set of level appropriate gear, without me having to hand plant everything, or have McMagic Marts on every corner.

Of course, nothing is stopping them from just using the stuff they loot off their enemies, either. Or from trading for items, which is basically just another way to RP "crafting" them. With the 8 attuned item limit, and a few other houserules I'm using, I think this basically eliminates a lot of the bookwork centered around character wealth without inherently unbalancing things.

*I don't care how they want to do the RP for getting the item. If they want to say that they enchanted it themselves, using ancient dwarven scrolls or whatever, that's fine. If they want to RP some benevolent leader giving it to them, that's fine too.

[Red Archon]

That's a very effective way to govern the "stuff" minigame - eliminate it. This brings to mind, how far have people taken, and how far would it be "sensible" to take the reduction of magic items in general. It would be a broad and valiant effort to factually remove the whole stupid fucking concept of minor magic items like fucking +2 to an ability or a combat stat, or scrolls you carry a libraryful of, potions for every ailment you might pick up from the sahuagin brothel next door and so on and so forth. Gadgets are cool. On Batman.

So, following the faint idea of actually eliminating the whole "stuff" minigame and inheriting the bonuses hence accumulated directly to the characters... could that work and would some of you even consider it anything but completely pointless?

EDIT: Yes, I understand what the Tomes are doing and no, I'm not THAT stupid. I'm asking in a vaster sense than limiting and managing the unfair and badly designed loot division/accumulation. I'm asking how far back could stuff reduction be taken and still retain some sense AND an element of D&D.

[PhaedrusXY]

It could certainly be done, but I don't think it is something that everyone would want to be done. People like to RP stabbing other people and taking their stuff. That's always been a big part of D&D, and was why Diablo was so popular.

What I basically want to do is to remove having loot acquisition actually matter to a great extent, while keeping the illusion that it does. If you can be guaranteed that everyone will have level appropriate shit, that they themselves picked if they wanted to, then they should all be on somewhat of a level playing field, at least as far as gear is concerned. But I also want to preserve the interesting in-game methods of acquiring that shit, and still have their gear actually matter for their characters' performance.

Having crafting feats is not a good approach. If one guy can double (or more) his wealth via a feat, then that feat is broken (unless wealth doesn't matter, in which case the feat is worthless). Likewise, if he spends a feat on crafting, and it actually doesn't do anything for him in game (i.e. everyone is already getting hand-picked, level appropriate gear), then that feat is worthless.

[Murtak]

Crafting or not, it is probably a good idea if a minimal set of items makes you combat ready - say a weapon, armor and a save booster. That way, you don't need half a dozen magic items on every NPC, you can run prison break scenarios, and of course balancing is a lot easier when you have fewer items to keep in mind. On the other hand, it doesn't feel like DnD if at least some characters are looting left, right and center - so other items still need to be important.

That leaves either faking it - and I doubt that's doable - or having items give options, not numbers. Magic weapons might automatically scale by level, but differ by letting you switch damage types (a flaming sword optionally dealing fire damage) or enabling combat maneuvers. Bracers of Archery would need to lose the number boosts and instead let you negate cover or pin your targets to walls. And if more items don't mean more power, crafting feats are fine (not needed, but I doubt they'd hurt).

[Judging__Eagle]

Ok, so... what's the deal with Acid swords and shit?

Are they "you swing for Acid damage" or ... what?

b/c I'm running a lvl 11 game, and I've been ad hoc'ing how I'm doing treasure. Mostly, it's "scaling items are 15,000 [ie. free]; you have Wish economy access; everything else, you have to pay out of your WBL (it's listed in GP, but it's seriously 66k in Souls, or Chaos or Hope), found items can be used to buy things [and items don't devalue], and 'currency' (ie. planar currency) that is paid to you".

I'm very eager to see how this thread continues.

[ubernoob]

Horizontal power, not vertical power. Getting the ability to do an acid damage whirling blade effect or simply change your damage type to acid is a totally cool thing to get from your sword.

[Judging__Eagle]

Well.... if it affects all of a PCs damage, that could be a lot of Acid damage per swing.

On the other hand, there's stuff like Resistance being common on monsters, so w/e; you win some, you lose some.

[ubernoob]

Well.... if it affects all of a PCs damage, that could be a lot of Acid damage per swing.

On the other hand, there's stuff like Resistance being common on monsters, so w/e; you win some, you lose some.

Exactly, it doesn't boost the raw numbers, but can be totally useful to have against a high DR, low ER enemy.

[Judging__Eagle]

-nod-

Yeah, that was the idea that I was playing around with in my own game, but I wasn't sure if it was alright or not.

This actually encourages a small amount of Golf-bagging again; but you can seriously have 4 weapons; adamantine, mithral, [wood] and [stone], and each could be a different element

[ubernoob]

-nod-

Yeah, that was the idea that I was playing around with in my own game, but I wasn't sure if it was alright or not.

This actually encourages a small amount of Golf-bagging again; but you can seriously have 4 weapons; adamantine, mithral, [wood] and [stone], and each could be a different element

And once medium magic items become no big deal, that's seriously no big deal.

[Murtak]

Also you can still have swords with multiple abilities. There is nothing wrong with an axe that can be thrown for a lightning bolt-like line of damage and that also lets you switch to cold damage.

[Username17]

I don't think you can have D&D without a Ring of Invisibility in it. And once it's in, a Medium Magic item is a fairly large deal. Even for 7th level characters. Even Minor Displacement is a huge deal for mid level characters.

-Username17

[Crissa]

I really don't see a problem with having more than one sword.

In fact, I think that's awesome.

-Crissa

[erik]

I really don't see a problem with having more than one sword.

In fact, I think that's awesome.

-Crissa

Hrmmmm...




Verrry interesting.

[Red_Rob]

I have a few questions about the effects listed earlier:

If scaling bonus items are minor items, however in the effects listed there were several weapon rider effects listed at minor, does this make 2 tiers of minor weapons? Those with a simple scaling plus and those with a rider? Or is the idea that every weapon will have a rider and there are no more boring "+ to hit and damage" weapons.

Also, now that we have removed the whole "effects instead of pluses", how do we regulate additional effects on items? Previously, if a +2 sword had 2 abilities, it cost like a +4 sword. Now, however, a scaling sword with Flaming is a Minor item.

So what happens if i want to make a scaling sword "Blade of the Fire Giant King" that boosts strength, is Flaming, provides Cold resistance and is Frost Giant Bane. Thats a lot better than a simple Flaming sword, however these are all minor effects. Are we having a simple cost increase per power? This may mean Medium items get pushed over the 15,000 limit into major items without actually having the power of a weapon of ruin or whatever.

[Murtak]

I am not a fan of items like this. Swords are used to attack people. Thus they should come with attack options. Differing damage types, whirlwind attacks, flurries - stuff like that. So I am going to pretend that sword hands out fire damage, whirlwind attack, double damage vs frost giants and free bull rushes against creatures more than one size category smaller than you.

Such a sword is of course better than a simple flaming sword. It is also better than 4 separate items, firstly because you save item slots and secondly because such powers are found on other weapons, and you are freed from switching weapons in mid-combat. I can certainly see a setup for a simple scaling magic weapon is a mere trinket, one power makes for a minor magic item, two powers for a medium and so on. Ideally higher-level weapon powers would not strictly be better than the lower-level ones but more specialized or simply not useful to lower level characters (such as "prevents resurrection").

I am not sure if you can put that in terms of gp though. And of course if you do decide to rework weapons in this way, you should also rework other items. Items with multiple abilities would need to be constrained by function (putting evasion on a ring of resistance would be fine, putting it on a ring of invisibility would not).

The alternative is of course "one ability per item". So you'd end up with an extra [insert item limit here] abilities per character and higher level items get more desirable powers. Some of these can simply be broader abilities (double damage vs all giants instead of only frost giants, use any damage type instead of only using fire). Others may have no lower level counterpart ("prevent resurrection") or no higher level counterpart (I can't think of anything right now, but I am sure there is something).

Both systems seem viable to me - the difference is mainly in how many extra abilities characters end up with.

[schpeelah]

I'd say that that sword could benefit from flaming OR giant bane at any one time, while the Strength boost and Cold Resistance cost an additional item slot each. I'm totally cool with the idea that a character has like 2 iconic items which provide all the bonuses that keep them level-appropriate as if they were using the standard 8.

[CatharzGodfoot]

A system similar to monk fighting styles could work, such that a major item can have two moderate item abilities (rather than one major), and a moderate item can have two minor item abilities.

Seriously, though, a flaming/frost/acid/shock sword is kind of dumb. A big advantage of the minor/moderate/major system is getting away from that. I think that somebody one said that 'A fire katana is totally awesome: It's a katana, and it's on fire! What more do you want?'. I agree with that statement.

There's no reason that the fire giant king's sword can't just be a huge flaming greatsword. He's probably wearing a girdle of giant strength too, and might even have favored enemy: giants. A flaming greatsword is already extraordinarily effective against frost giants, and a fire giant king is already really strong.

[Red_Rob]

Ideally higher-level weapon powers would not strictly be better than the lower-level ones but more specialized or simply not useful to lower level characters (such as "prevents resurrection").

I don't think this would work. To me at least, it wouldn't be DnD without Sharpness and Vorpal weapons, however these are abilities that are too good at lower levels. I think you need to have a power scale from Minor > Medium > Major to account for the fact some weapons just do more damage whilst some cause death no save on a critical.

The alternative is of course "one ability per item". So you'd end up with an extra [insert item limit here] abilities per character and higher level items get more desirable powers. Some of these can simply be broader abilities (double damage vs all giants instead of only frost giants, use any damage type instead of only using fire). Others may have no lower level counterpart ("prevent resurrection") or no higher level counterpart (I can't think of anything right now, but I am sure there is something).

Both systems seem viable to me - the difference is mainly in how many extra abilities characters end up with.

Whilst having only one ability per item would definitely be the easiest way to do things it seems a little... unsatisfying to me. Throughout history DnD has always had items with multiple abilities, such as Frost Brand, Holy Avengers and the Sun Blade. After a while you get used to the standard magic weapon effects - its an acid blade, or a defending blade or whatever, but when you pick up an item with multiple effects it feels really special.

Now this would be hard to balance with the 8 item limit, as people have mentioned, but I think it is worth doing. I mean, we have already decided that a sash with a bonus to listen checks takes up the same slot as a Vorpal Battleaxe, so there is some lee-way in how much power a slot can provide.

I think that somebody once said that 'A fire katana is totally awesome: It's a katana, and it's on fire! What more do you want?'. I agree with that statement.

The thing is, a katana thats on fire in real life would be totally awesome, but this is a game we're playing. And in this game, if all the Fire Katana does is some extra fire damage, its not that different to a +5 or +7 sword, and thats not really all that awesome. To make a fire weapon cool you want to give it varying fire-based abilities so that in the game it can use its firey-ness in varying ways.

So i'm not saying you should get a Fire/Acid/Cold blade, but that the Fire blade should be on fire, able to shoot fire, set enemies on fire when it hits and project a firey aura that nullifies cold effects.

But we need to work out how that would be balanced against a weapon with only one of those abilities.

A system similar to monk fighting styles could work, such that a major item can have two moderate item abilities (rather than one major), and a moderate item can have two minor item abilities.

This could work, assuming the abilities scale correctly. Since the weapon bonus will scale automatically, more rider effects that are less powerful could equal a single more powerful effect. This would put a hard cap on the number of effects at 4 minor abilities making a major item, however I think I could live with that.

This means that the 8 item limit would in actuality be an "8 Major effects" limit, as you could load up on up to 16 medium effects or 32 minor effects. However, since the Tome rule is that 2 items cannot affect the same stat, this would only produce horizontal power not vertical. You could gain a level appropriate bonus to all your stats, but not 32 level appropriate bonuses to one.

So how would people feel about a Greater Ring of Protection giving + to AC, Arrow catching & Tremorsense as a medium item? Would that compare to Invisibility or Blink?

[CatharzGodfoot]

I think that somebody once said that 'A fire katana is totally awesome: It's a katana, and it's on fire! What more do you want?'. I agree with that statement.

The thing is, a katana thats on fire in real life would be totally awesome, but this is a game we're playing. And in this game, if all the Fire Katana does is some extra fire damage, its not that different to a +5 or +7 sword, and thats not really all that awesome. To make a fire weapon cool you want to give it varying fire-based abilities so that in the game it can use its firey-ness in varying ways.

So i'm not saying you should get a Fire/Acid/Cold blade, but that the Fire blade should be on fire, able to shoot fire, set enemies on fire when it hits and project a firey aura that nullifies cold effects.

But we need to work out how that would be balanced against a weapon with only one of those abilities.

You're probably the only person in this thread who sees "fire katana" and thinks 'sword that deals an extra 1d6 damage' rather than 'sword which sets things on fire' (like the ToA rules), 'sword that deals fire damage' (as was suggested earlier in the thread), or both.

A system similar to monk fighting styles could work, such that a major item can have two moderate item abilities (rather than one major), and a moderate item can have two minor item abilities.

This could work, assuming the abilities scale correctly. Since the weapon bonus will scale automatically, more rider effects that are less powerful could equal a single more powerful effect. This would put a hard cap on the number of effects at 4 minor abilities making a major item, however I think I could live with that.

This means that the 8 item limit would in actuality be an "8 Major effects" limit, as you could load up on up to 16 medium effects or 32 minor effects. However, since the Tome rule is that 2 items cannot affect the same stat, this would only produce horizontal power not vertical. You could gain a level appropriate bonus to all your stats, but not 32 level appropriate bonuses to one.

So how would people feel about a Greater Ring of Protection giving + to AC, Arrow catching & Tremorsense as a medium item? Would that compare to Invisibility or Blink?

Things are a little confused in this discussion relative to the ToA rules, because a ToA "minor" magic item provides only a basic bonus that can be used to further build better items.

A 'lesser' magic item has an additional special quality. For example, a "flame dagger" is a lesser magic weapon with a level-based enhancement bonus to attack and damage that has a chance of setting anything you attack with it on fire.

A "sickle of sharpness" is a moderate magic weapon with a level-based enhancement bonus to attack and damage that has a chance of chopping off the limbs of people you attack (and ignores the hardness of objects).

Under the proposed rules, an 'axe of flame and terror' is a moderate magic weapon with a level-based enhancement bonus to attack and damage that has a chance of setting anything you attack on fire and might cause the target to become shaken. This might be balanced with the sickle of sharpness, but because of the extra rider ability it will take longer to adjudicate.

For a major weapon things could get really stupid: throw dispelling, time distortion, thunder, and terror all on one weapon and you'll take minutes for every attack. On the other hand, a defending ghost touch time distortion mace of berserking takes no more game time to use than a regular time distortion mace, and basically just acts like a set of different minor magic items while providing only one bonus.

[IGTN]

The craft feats are a bad idea to start with. They're either useless or overpowered inherently, depending on how they wind up being used in the campaign. So I just got rid of them entirely, and said that anyone can craft* their own items, but they're limited to crafting one "level appropriate" item per character level, which is from the Tome rules somewhere... (but it was called a Masterpiece item there).

Re: Crafting feats, I have a solution I'm working on for them. Let me just quote a section:

They've got another problem, where item creation feats either suck or own depending on the campaign, but always suck for the person taking them. Unless you've got huge piles of downtime, huge piles of gold, and some EXP abuse loop of some kind (provided by the default rules if you're cunning enough, since you get more EXP if you're a level behind), they suck. If you do, they make your party own by allowing you to turn all the magic items you find as loot into magic items you want for free, and all the gold you find as loot to buy magic items you want at half price. But the character taking them isn't getting any special benefits for this. The crafter wizard is getting to buy magic items for half price, but so's the fighter, and the fighter didn't set any character power on fire to be able to do this. Compounding this, making your cohort, or even follower, take these feats is just as good as taking them yourself, so there's actually no reason to take them.

The way I solve this problem is by combining all item creation feats onto two tome-style scaling feats (one for charged items, one for permanent items), and give benefits you might actually ever care about on those feats, too.

[Murtak]

Ideally higher-level weapon powers would not strictly be better than the lower-level ones but more specialized or simply not useful to lower level characters (such as "prevents resurrection").

I don't think this would work. To me at least, it wouldn't be DnD without Sharpness and Vorpal weapons, however these are abilities that are too good at lower levels.

How so? DnD starts with save or dies and one-shot melee attacks at level 1. I don't like vorpal myself, but I don't think vorpal is more useful than, say, stunning on a hit.

The thing is, a katana thats on fire in real life would be totally awesome, but this is a game we're playing. And in this game, if all the Fire Katana does is some extra fire damage, its not that different to a +5 or +7 sword, and thats not really all that awesome.

Sure, 3E flaming is not all that exciting. But we are not talking about that. We are talking about dealing all of your melee damage as fire damage. In a lot of fights you won't care at all, but against anything with the cold subtype, with high DR or something like an ooze it will be damn powerful. More importantly, it is an ability you have to decide to use. It will always be more interesting to me than a collection of extra d6 I always roll or than "look, I rolled a 20, it's dead". When my flaming sword kills a weapon immune ooze it does so because of me being smart, not because of me being lucky. Oh, and of course you will finally be able to kill trolls with flaming swords. I rather like that.

That doesn't mean multiple abilities on an item are generally a bad idea. But please, don't cite "an extra d6" as an example of anything. And please don't talk about rider effects. You cited some good examples of what a flaming sword might be able to do - stay with those. Rider effects just encourage building a single supermove you then perform over and over. They actively destroy variety - and that is the exact opposite of what I propose.

[Red_Rob]

You're probably the only person in this thread who sees "fire katana" and thinks 'sword that deals an extra 1d6 damage' rather than 'sword which sets things on fire' (like the ToA rules), 'sword that deals fire damage' (as was suggested earlier in the thread), or both.

Sure, 3E flaming is not all that exciting. But we are not talking about that. We are talking about dealing all of your melee damage as fire damage. In a lot of fights you won't care at all, but against anything with the cold subtype, with high DR or something like an ooze it will be damn powerful. More importantly, it is an ability you have to decide to use. It will always be more interesting to me than a collection of extra d6 I always roll or than "look, I rolled a 20, it's dead". When my flaming sword kills a weapon immune ooze it does so because of me being smart, not because of me being lucky. Oh, and of course you will finally be able to kill trolls with flaming swords. I rather like that.

That doesn't mean multiple abilities on an item are generally a bad idea. But please, don't cite "an extra d6" as an example of anything.

Allow me to clarify - I wasn't referring to the "+D6 fire damage" Flaming ability when i said a weapon that just does fire damage was lame. I meant any power who's only effect is to increase damage is going to get boring after you've seen a few like it. I was including Tome "your on fire" and "all your damage is fire" in that, and the reason is that most combats don't go on longer than 2 or 3 rounds, so D6 fire damage a round is just 2-3D6 more damage over the fight. And thats not great. Similarly, dealing all fire damage might be flavourful, but overall its not going to matter in 9 out of 10 fights. I want the Fire Katana to bring more than that to the party, hence the "shoots fire and has other abilities".

Under the proposed rules, an 'axe of flame and terror' is a moderate magic weapon with a level-based enhancement bonus to attack and damage that has a chance of setting anything you attack on fire and might cause the target to become shaken. This might be balanced with the sickle of sharpness, but because of the extra rider ability it will take longer to adjudicate.

For a major weapon things could get really stupid: throw dispelling, time distortion, thunder, and terror all on one weapon and you'll take minutes for every attack. On the other hand, a defending ghost touch time distortion mace of berserking takes no more game time to use than a regular time distortion mace, and basically just acts like a set of different minor magic items while providing only one bonus.

The question is, how do we link these into WBL? For the idea of WBL to remain sound it must provide a rough estimate of power level by looking at the value of items. Therefore, we need to determine costs for Lesser, Medium and Major powers and determine how these are going to stack. Say for arguments sake Minor items start around 2,000gp, Lesser items are 4,000gp a pop, medium items are 12,000gp and Major start at 15,000gp but average around 20-25,000gp. How are we going to determine the cost of these multi power items? Simply add the cost of each of the powers? This would mean a Medium item with an additional Lesser power would be over the 15,000gp Major item limit, but I'm not sure it would provide the same level of power as a ring of Spell Turning or a Weapon of Ruin.

[Crissa]

Hrmmmm...

tvtropes.org/.../drizzt_poster.jpg

Verrry interesting.

You know what? You didn't provide a url to the thing, so all we have is a file name, and we don't even have that unless we quote you.

-Crissa