Old school never needed adamantium.


Gamer Life General Discussion


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I wish the game never evolved in the weapon material direction. It has taken the specialness away from finding magical gear certain encounters.

Back in the day, we would totally celebrate finding the smallest item. +1 longsowrd. Hooah!!! Potion of... Hells yeah!

Now it's more like crap, sell it to buy adamantium. (Screw wolverine for making that popular.)

Damage reduction was special in that everyone feared running a couple of werewolf. You had to think outside the box to get around the encounter. Now. Lycanthropes are a footnote. Just hand me the golf club bag and fish out the silver, boom over.

Alas, pfs melee are stuck with this system of upgrade each golf club at a time.

I guess I'll just roll a gnome witch next. You know, to keep up with the golf bag. And they're magic!

Shadow Lodge

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Lludd wrote:
It has taken the specialness away from finding magical gear certain encounters.

Oh, I think you'll find it wasn't special materials that did that...


TOZ wrote:
Lludd wrote:
It has taken the specialness away from finding magical gear certain encounters.
Oh, I think you'll find it wasn't special materials that did that...

You'd think running on a treadmill would be a great workout. Where's my +2 to physical fitness?

Grand Lodge

Sorry, I remember OD&D/AD&D, and special materials like silver and wooden stakes were fairly much as available then as they are in PFS or most home games.

Ravenloft's real difficulty mainly lay in the use of guile, disguise, non-detection/misdirectioon, and not letting the PCs find out, easily, who the Eeeevile nasty types really were.

And there are modules, APs, and scenarios that do similar things. Try Murder on the Throaty Mermaid, for example.

Liberty's Edge

I am a new PFS player and I am sorry I disagree with you whole heartily, My groups and myself jump for joy when we get an item during a scenario, or find a new item, infact we worship items like +1 swords etc (I remember the part where my PFS guys rolled off to get bows in one scenario)

I think it depends on your group some will be min maxers, some will just kill for killing sake and not get involved in the story, and then there are the others the RP'ers etc,

Dark Archive

ja'alur, you realize you don't get to actually keep any of the items found in any of the PFS scenarios, correct?

All you get is the cash value of the items found and then you have to go back and purchase what you want after the scenario has finished.

As for back in the day, instead of different materials, you just needed a stronger powered sword. Got a demi-lich to take care of? Time to bust out the +5 vorpal blade.

The only adamantine that would come up would be used by drow (+3 weapons, oh boy!). Of course, as soon as sun light hit it, the adamantine would break and fall apart.

Remember though, in Pathfinder, a +3 weapon by passes silver and cold iron, while a +4 by passes adamantine DR. Who actually saves up for such a +4 blade in comparison to just buying the blade with the correct material, who knows. But there is another option.

Sovereign Court RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8

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Well for high level season 5 (or the Moonscar) I can see using the +4 option because you want cold iron...

That said, I miss 'golfbag of weapons'.

Aside to the OP, it's adamantine, not Adamantium. (OR Promethium for that matter).

"In my day, we didn't have fancy adamantium alloys. We has vibranium/steel alloys. And LIKED IT!" - Captain America. :-)

Dark Archive

+3 with a bane enhancement (or furious for those with rage) is a better investment than a +4. Key bane against evil outsiders, and then you always have a +5 weapon to get through that DR/evil.


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Lludd wrote:
I wish the game never evolved(...)Back in the day,(...)Now it's more like crap,(...)

I think you have your answer. It's perfectly fine to continue playing old things, or even rule out specific things if they clash with your vision of a good time, you know. You don't have to go to new things and complain that they're new.

I also had to try super hard not to make a luddite joke because of your name, but I feel that would come off as excessively harsh if I didn't word it right, and I'm bad at wording.

Silver Crusade

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*Waits patiently for the get off my lawn joke*


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"Back in the day" there was no reason to celebrate finding magical stuff - Gary Gygax put loads and loads of magic gear into all of his adventures... and often the items were of significant power, not just "little +1s"

...and I have no idea what weapon materials and "golf bag" game-play has to do with the topic.


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There's a couple factors here. First off, 3rd edition came out with Wealth by Level. While I think it was a good idea to have an idea of balance and to work out CRs for monsters, they really standardized magical items. With the charts for buying and customizing magical weapons, armor, etc it really hit home that this is not special treasure you find but gear.

Apart from that though is the fact that a lot of us have been playing for a long time. Getting a +1 dagger is not as impressive as it was the first or even the third time. It takes better and more unique items to really excite experienced players.

Shadow Lodge

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However, due to WBL and "the big six", finding unique and interesting items only means a trip to Ye Olde Magik Shoppe so you can trade them in for very boring optimized gear.


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Tin Foil Yamakah wrote:
*Waits patiently for the get off my lawn joke*

Lawns? Bah. Back in my day, we didn't have lawns, and we liked it that way! You kids and your new-fangled lawns ...

Silver Crusade

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Get off my Gazebo!


Distant Scholar wrote:
Tin Foil Yamakah wrote:
*Waits patiently for the get off my lawn joke*
Lawns? Bah. Back in my day, we didn't have lawns...

That's only because you'd smoked all the grass.


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By my home dirt kit! Suckers!

♪♫Precious Roy! Precious Roy! Making lots of suckers out of girls and boys!♪♫


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This is bigger and this is smaller.

Liberty's Edge

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Players whose characters meet werewolves for the first time and get out the silverware without any Kn check are cheating (metagaming). You know that, right ?

Shadow Lodge

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I wouldn't necessarily say that. Vampires and werewolves aren't even real in our world, yet many people know they are vulnerable to garlic, holy water, wooden stakes, silver, and the like.


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Argentum of Hermea wrote:
Get off my Gazebo!

HROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMM....!!


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How many eeps for taming a gazebo?


I love Adamantine, I don't care and put aside my pure hate for Wolverine (I hate overused characters) but Adamantine is very rare in my world/stories, so finding a weapon made from it is like finding a needle in a very very big haystack. Mostly monsters (like golems or other constructs) are made from it or some creatures have adamantine teeth/claws maybe.


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The black raven wrote:
Players whose characters meet werewolves for the first time and get out the silverware without any Kn check are cheating (metagaming). You know that, right ?

The easiest way to deal with that if you don't want it as common knowledge in-game is to change all the monster weaknesses and DR bypasses to different materials, and make the players learn at the same time as their characters do ;)


Kthulhu wrote:
I wouldn't necessarily say that. Vampires and werewolves aren't even real in our world, yet many people know they are vulnerable to garlic, holy water, wooden stakes, silver, and the like.

Official "RAW" would state that it's a Knowledge Check. Think about it, how many vampire books/movies have the scene where the vamps scoff at what "everyone knows" they're vulnerable to. The opening to Interview with a Vampire being a perfect example.

That being said, GM gets to decide how rare they are, I'd bet in most settings Vamps and Werewolves are no worse than "Common". So the DC's are reasonably easy.

Kthulu wrote:
However, due to WBL and "the big six", finding unique and interesting items only means a trip to Ye Olde Magik Shoppe so you can trade them in for very boring optimized gear.

I've yet to see my players feel it necessary to optimize to the point of always getting the "big six" in the bag. I'm still testing the waters, as it were. But, for now, I think it's reasonable to say that if the GM doesn't start (or continue) an optimization race, then the players will find they don't need to go for all of the big six.

Shadow Lodge

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Adamantine =/= adamantium


Kthulhu wrote:
Adamantine =/= adamantium

Yeah, Adamantine is a lot more like Osmium or Titanium if you ask me.


Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Pathfinder Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber

Ahem.

1st Ed AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide wrote:
Armor of +3 bonus is of special meteorite iron steel, +4 is mithral alloyed steel, +5 is adamantite alloyed steel.*

Many GMs used the same guideline for weapon bonuses.

*- 1st Ed AD&D Unearthed Arcana added "Except where this obviously does not apply..." when it expanded the available bonuses on non-metallic armor.


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A +X longsword is not inherently more special than an adamantine longsword. The demands of the campaign and the scarcity in the game world make one or both special. And of course the system itself makes magic items in general not special.


Ellis Mirari wrote:
A +X longsword is not inherently more special than an adamantine longsword. The demands of the campaign and the scarcity in the game world make one or both special. And of course the system itself makes magic items in general not special.

the Way D&D and Derivative Systems are Written

Neither Magic Items nor Exotic Materials are Special Nor Exotic, and the only thing keeping exotic weapons rare, is the feat tax, which kills any hope they possess of existing in most conventional groups outside of race specific choices.

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