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Ok, this is a work in progress but I have to admit I'm kinda excited about it. The name needs some work I think....
I've been pondering how to "get rid" of the more "mundane" magical items that compromise the must-have assortment commonly referred to as the big six (ring of prot., magic weapons and armor, resistance boost, ability score boost, can't think of the sixth.) without unbalancing the game. Definitely a certain level of wise investment in magic items is required by players to keep up with the power curve of increasing CRs. You can't simply remove these items without unbalancing the game.
I want to do away with the most common magic items because they make magic FEEL mundane. There's nothing particularly fantastical about a ring of protection, or a +1 dagger in my opinion. Combined with the fact that most of these things are so good that players feel like they should buy them before any of the more unique, but less-useful stuff is even considered, makes me wonder why the stat increases shouldn't just be rolled into character advancement. Incidentally, this technique would work for a Low Magic campaign quite handily.
I'm definitely not the first to try my hand at some homebrew solution to this. Most offer some modified progression that might-or-might-not-be balanced. In a lot of ways it is similar to erian_7's Advantage Point System but without changing the costs of the bonuses in regards to the expected wealth of the characters. I feel like this method is inherently balanced.
The main idea is this. Remove 75% of the wealth in gold, and replace it with gold-equivalence-points that can be spent on the effects of the big six magic items, without having to buy the items themselves. In effect, the most common magical item stat boosts can be bought with points that characters gain each time they level up. The choice cannot be undone, although you can horde unspent points from level to level. The pricing works out exactly in terms of expected wealth by level. 1000g in the expected income per level becomes 1 point.
Enhancement bonuses work on any armor/weapons (though I think requiring them to be masterwork is not unreasonable). You can still add other magic effects to weapons and armor, but you don't have to have them enchanted to +1 anymore. Thus you can have a masterwork keen greatsword. In the hands of a fighter who spent points to gain +3 weapon enhancement, it becomes a +3 keen greatsword.
Here's a table showing expected wealth gained per level, and points gained per level:
Level Wealth-Gained Points-Gained
2 250 1
3 500 3
4 1000 5
5 1625 9
6 2375 14
7 3500 20
8 4750 28
9 6750 39
10 8750 53
11 11750 70
12 15250 93
13 19750 120
14 26500 159
15 33500 207
16 45250 270
17 57250 353
18 75250 455
19 96000 589
20 124000 756*Note that this is not WBL, but how much you are expected to increase your wealth by upon reaching the next level.
**If you consider each point as 1000g, the WBL progression is completely unchanged
You can use the heroic advancement points gained in this way to buy stat increases for your character according to the following point-buy costs. The costs are taken exactly from the Magic Item costs section (1000g = 1 pt.) Here's a table of everything you can spend your heroic character advancement points on. It is awfully formatted, but the main idea is that the cost is always the same for the point-buy bonus as for the magical item that would have conferred it.
PROTECTION
Deflection-Bonus Cost
1 2
2 8
3 18
4 32
5 50
Armor-Bonus Cost Note: Does not stack with actual armor
1 1
2 4
3 9
4 16
5 25
6 36
7 49
8 64
RESISTANCE
Sav.-Throw-Bonus Cost
1 1
2 4
3 9
4 16
5 25
Spell-Resistance Cost
13 4
15 9
17 16
19 24
ABILITY SCORE
Ability-Increase Cost
1 2
2 4
3 8
4 16
5 25
6 36
ARMOR
Enhance.-Bonus Cost
1 1
2 4
3 9
4 16
5 24
Shield-Enhance. Cost
1 1
2 4
3 9
4 16
5 24
Natural Cost
1 2
2 8
3 18
4 32
5 50
ATTACK
Weapon-Enhance. Cost
1 2
2 8
3 18
4 32
5 50
Unarmed/Natural
1 5
2 20
3 45
4 80
5 125
SPELLCASTING
Spell-Recall Cost
1st 1
2nd 4
3rd 9
4th 16
5th 25
6th 36
2x{6th or lower} 70
7th 49
8th 64
9th 81
Note that the armor, shield, and weapon enhancement bonuses apply to ANY weapon, shield, or armor you use. This massively increases the utility of the spent points since you can now replace your +3 longsword with a +3 greatsword for the price of a masterwork greatsword. I think this is great for players since you don't have a lug around a ton of magic weaponry, and go about selling your +2 sword so you can afford your +3 sword. Magical items become more rare, and thus more exciting without gimping anyone. In fact, PCs are more powerful using this system since no item slots are taken up by any of these bonuses, and they cannot be dispelled, or suppressed with anti-magic fields, sundering isn't as terrible anymore, etc. I don't believe this is unbalancing in itself since these types of tactics are rarely used by the BBEGs anyway.
Conversely, PCs have less disposable income this way, and there are no rings of protection, pearls of power, +X this and thats in the game anymore. I can sort of see this being a problem for those players who want to get creative with the way they spend their gold since they have less to spend, although the 25% gold, 75% points ratio could be altered to suite your playstyle. Also, perhaps more bonuses should be added to the table, but I'm at a loss as to what to add at this point. I noticed that there are no hit-point increasing magical items. That might be something worth buying.
Finally, I would think this system totally breaks down around the 12-14th level range as the expected wealth gets into ridiculous ranges. I haven't thought of a way to fix this yet, but perhaps at levels beyond 12, the wealth-to-point ratio should change to 50/50 or even 75/25.
If anyone has made it this far, what do you think? Any potential balance issues that I'm ignoring?
You can always add fluff or new names, and, what I have started to do, is give magic items the feel of the older editions.
So, run the game as low magic, with no magic shops. There are the usual buffing items out there, but they are not ubiquitous. There are also items that do very specific things without mechanically effecting the stats. Low magic, more minor wondrous items, more and unusual potions, curious swords.
Do away with magic item shops (allow some trading or exchange amongst interested buyers) and say heroes don't do magic crafting, they head out and adventure, and you really kill so many problems right there and then. Say no, this isn't the crafting/accounting chronicles, get out in the world I've made and be heroes.
The wealth per level issue has gotten quite bad in pathfinder. Tackling many monsters, you are absolutely expected to have the full range of magic kit for your level. Stats of creatures have been buffed, they have been made more difficult to deal with as power-gaming has become more the norm, and the bonuses higher than ever before alongside new powerful abilities and ability combos. There is no reason we have to play this way. A dm can let the players find loot and treasure, alter the treasure to be more interesting (less +1-+5) and then mess with dr later, drop it a bit. It can always be balanced to whatever the party is.
It has come to my attention that this system (Heroic Character Advancement) is almost completely identical to a previous system proposed by Kelso: NHEP Point System (Never Having Enough Points)
Oops. The differences are rather minor, as far as I can tell
(1) mine does not allow abilities like Flaming, Frost, etc. to be purchased with points. Anything other than +x enhancement bonuses must be purchased as part of the weapon/armor/etc. and are a property of that specific item, not the wielder
(2) I don't reset character choices at each level, rather they are permanent once the points have been used. Obviously when 'upgrading' something (from +1 to +2 and the like) you only pay the difference in points.
(3) the bonuses are non-magical in my system. The bonus type remains the same (enhancement, deflection, etc.) but it cannot be dispelled or suppressed by anti-magic fields.
(4) i don't categorize weapon enhancements as main-hand, off-hand, and ranged, but lump it all into one category (armed). Actually this could be an imbalancing issue...
I was under the impression 4E did a fairly decent job of levelling up stats by level, although I'm unsure of the exact progression.
Simply giving all the characters a +1 to a stat every level, no bonus higher then 1/2 level or so, max +6, would approximate magic items fairly well. 20 pts at level 20 is equal +6/+6/+4/+4, which is a decent array.
==Aelryinth
Oh, the point isn't to level stats, the point is to literally remove the Big 6 magic items from the game, and assign their "powers" to the PCs according to a point-buy scheme (they need the bonuses conferred by the Big 6 items to keep up with monster CRs).
Also, I made a massive math error in calculating the points gained at each level, it should look like this:
Level, Gold Gained, Points Gained
2, 250 1
3, 500 2
4, 750 2
5, 1125 3
6, 1375 4
7, 1875 6
8, 2375 7
9, 3250 10
10, 4000 12
11, 5000 15
12, 6500 20
13, 8000 24
14, 11250 34
15, 13750 41
16, 18750 56
17, 23750 71
18, 30000 90
19, 38750 116
20, 48750 146
Incidentally, this fix means that I was wrong in saying that the system doesn't scale to 20th level. I now believe that it does.
If you want a lazy man's approach to the system, have the PCs add half their level to everything, including damage rolls. It gives them a slight edge, but ultimately you're reproducing the effects of a +6 stat booster and a +5 something-or-another (weapon, ring of protection, cloak of resistence, etc.).
