TNE: A Sensible Magic Item System

[K]

Ok, here is a model I think works.

Minor Magic Items
These are little things that can be bought in shops and off of old men in the mountains. You can wear them like they were just good equipment.

Power level: In 3e terms, it's somewhere around level 1 spells or the best that nonmagical items can get.

Examples:
-Armor with fire resistance, or feather fall, or floats.

-Potions, herbs, scrolls, sacred incense, etc, that heals 2d6 damage.

-magic items that summon dogs, hawks, etc that run messages or act as distractions, or guard a spot by making noise when intruders get close.

-cloaks that give a hiding bonus as good as hiding behind a bush and boots that give sneaking bonuses as good as walking on hard ground in very soft shoes (and they use the same mechanics).

-fantasy versions of grenades, self-poisoning daggers, and smoke bombs

Objects of Power
These are items of real power. They don't end up in shops because only special characters can even use them, so they end up hidden away in a dungeon for a hero to rise up or they are actually in the hands of living heroes.

The power level is on par with the best that a character can do. Essentially, you spend a 3e feat to get a level-appropriate power that grows in power as you do.

Examples:
-A cloak that gives increasingly better flight powers that allow better flight attacks

-A sword that grants an ever wider AoE attack that penetrates more and more things

-A belt that grants a strength-based power like tossing objects and other characters in more and more interesting ways

-A crown that allows the summoning of more and more powerful demon assasins(only killers, no pseudo-adventurers or servants).


Artifacts
Objects of extraordinary power. Using one of these items has character-altering and campaign-altering consequences.

Examples:
-Rod that blows up cities, but gives permanent conversions to demonic form(forces you to permanently spend feats on demon powers, thus reducing your "choosable" powers that can be switched out between adventures). Eventually you can't use it anymore as you are too demony.

-Crown of Bones that summons an undead army, but causes the living to hate you (and draws heroes and armies of light to kill you).

-Flashing ruby that grants death-dealing powers, but causes losses of your abilities until you stop using it (and the longer you use it, the longer it takes to get your powers back).

-Holy relic grants "autosaves" to all effects and merges with your flesh, but it moves your save bonuses permanently to one save, then gets taken by powerful angel and leaves you with permanent wound.

[Username17]

Objects of Power actually fit well into a Chakra bind setup. Hopefully not a retarded one like the one in Special Blue Magic of Incarnum, but more like the item limit we had talked about earlier. Let everyone bind a finite (and possibly level dependent) number of "things" which can be items of power, magic sites, demonic pacts, or whatever.

-Username17

[ckafrica]

How will gadgeteering/achemy work in relation to this? I know it was mentioned as possible classes but are their gadgets useable by others, can they be sold/traded/given to others?

Also will players actually be able to craft their own items?

[RiotGearEpsilon]

One of the things that Exalted does to limit item bloat is 'attunement', where you have to devote some of your innate magical mojo to powering an item, lightening it, or otherwise making it usable. You could use something similar with your chakra thing, where if you leave a chakra un-devoted, you get some fairly minor bennie to lessen the sting of poverty.

[K]

Aaa, I realized I haven't explained one of the core ideas I've been bandying about.

GET YOUR FEATS NOW.

I honestly don't know why I have to wait 20 levels just to fully customize my character.

So the idea is that your character gets four feats at first level that that immediately exchangeable for level appropriate abilities from your class list.

But, between adventures you can move them around when you want to master items of power, pick up adventure-specific abilities, or just use different class abilities.

Sometimes they won't be exchangable, but that's only for particulaly character-altering abilities like Blind Swordsman, Multiclassing, or Demonic Transformation.

[RiotGearEpsilon]

That sounds fairly cool. I approve of that concept. Be wary, however, of degenerate combinations!

[Ravengm]

I like this.

I also like the Exalted "attunement" system, or at least something that makes it so you can't hot-swap your 30 different belts in the middle of battle.

[Voss]

I like that idea. I've been toying with the idea of a lower magic D&D setting where bonuses aren't stacked up from items, and magic items are fairly rare. It kind of spun out into two directions, where the Rule of 3 kind of took over. You can have 3 magic items ever (which may grow in power), but they're mostly special effects type stuff, to the point that a flaming sword is actually cool (and does something), and maybe yeah, its your inheritance from your parent and you actually start with the bloody thing.

The alternative would be getting bound to a Spirit and getting some sort of power from that partial possession. A bit more themed, however than the typical D&D grab bag of either spells or the weirdness that binders get (today I can use wands, tomorrow I kill people with my mind, and thursday I can breath water and shoot lightning!). And of course, getting a spirit bound into you counts against your bonding magic item limit. No bonding multiple spirits (because they're jealous fuckers that don't share), but you can strengthen the bond to get more stuff from the one you've got.

Maybe the same thing could apply to magic items- if you strengthen your bond to your flaming sword, it can not only burn people (and things) when you smack something with it, but you can now also fire off a 'flaming wave' power a level appropriate number of times per day, and burn corpses to ashes so they can't be animated (or rezzed or be questioned by speak with dead).



The fun part is figuring out a way to do summoning (and necromancy, and for fucks sake, appeasing those people who just want a pet wolf) that doesn't make other players cry. I'm pondering the possibilities of a shadowrun style 'services' thing.