Ok, DnD 3.x has had one basic assumption that I don’t understand: low-level means low magic.
This is something I don’t understand. I know why bonuses are scaled with level…because monsters are built on that metric. The +5 sword comes in at a time when you need a +5 weapon to hit things.
But the rest is a mystery to me. Why do I need to wait until 7th level until I can afford a Cloak of Arachnia and why must it be the bulk of my wealth? It wouldn’t be unbalanced at 3rd level, and considering what it does compared to items like the 10K Ring of Blink, I’m never going to actually own one. All this adds up to useless items I am given at early levels which I sell at some point for real items.
Low-level doesn’t have to be low-magic. You can travel the planes and fight fiendish orcs and lemurs and still be fighting level appropriate things, and you can have a Crystal Ball at 1st level instead of 10th level and it won’t unbalance your game. The degree of fantastic things and magical elements doesn't change play. You could easily consult a sage and fight regular orcs and have the same adventure, but it'd be less memorable.
This is one area of RPGs that have been corrupted by MMORPGs. I don’t want to fight sewer rats at low level and I don’t want my reward for those fights to be a stone that glows. Interesting magic items and monsters and locations are even more fun at low level than at high level, because by high level your own powers eclipse anything an item does and you have powers that allow you to avoid locations. Why hop from stone to stone to pass a lake of acid if you can just dimension door the Party?
I’d like to point to the Adventure Path that takes place in Cauldron. The first few adventures were awesome. In the first, you had a trap-filled gnomish dungeon with illusions and clockworks everywhere. In another, you have to enter another dungeon by being suspended over a glowing green lake and then fight your way through an underground fortress. Both are memorable and fun adventures that are low level and have crazy things happening.
I mean, a sword that catches fire is interesting at 3rd level. By 12th level, a “fire sword” sword should be commanding fire elementals or blasting open city gates. Fun things should happen at all levels, and we shouldn’t let 3.xs dependence on Diablo II or 4e’s dependence on card games and WoW to ruin our fun.
Actually, there's a fairly simple explanation for this. As PCs increase in power, they expect to have a corresponding increase in options and power available to them, including in terms of magic. Thus, PCs with high magic at low levels will (reasonably) expect higher magic as they increase in level. The problem here, as anybody who's played an epic game can attest, is that there's a direct positive correlation between the amount of magic and the amount of paperwork; if you have the magic paperwork of a 10th level character at 1st level, then you get to crack open the ELH by level 12, and then everything goes all melon-shaped.
Not to say that there aren't ways around this. Eberron, for example, is high magic at all levels; the secret is that all of the high magic is very limited in application (travel, for example), and while you can acquire the services of them, you can't own them and use them for your own nefarious PC purposes until the sort of level you'd ordinarily be able to have that kind of power. Thus, airships work just fine, because even though you have access to them at first level, that access is predominantly limited to obtaining passage aboard one.
Actually, there's a fairly simple explanation for this. As PCs increase in power, they expect to have a corresponding increase in options and power available to them, including in terms of magic. Thus, PCs with high magic at low levels will (reasonably) expect higher magic as they increase in level. The problem here, as anybody who's played an epic game can attest, is that there's a direct positive correlation between the amount of magic and the amount of paperwork; if you have the magic paperwork of a 10th level character at 1st level, then you get to crack open the ELH by level 12, and then everything goes all melon-shaped.
I don't see a reason why the paperwork has to increase. I mean, the system as it stands involves getting a pile of little things that add up to big things.
We could just replace little things with big things, so that little things don't matter. I mean, a Cloak of Elvenkind is a interesting and fun little item, but it seriously is something you get at 1st level. By 3rd level Wizards are tossing around Invisibility and have enough illusions to hide the whole party whenever they want, so the ability to hide a little better is nearly worthless.
The biggest problem with high level magic items ownership is exemplified by the problem between your armor, shield, deflection bonus, natural armor bonus, and dodge or insight bonus.... you have five or six items basically giving you one lousy bonus to AC.
Why?
We seriously could just give people nonstackable bonuses on single items that add up to the old bonuses, but we don't have to do as much paperwork. Your +1 chain with a +1 Ring of Protection and +1 Amulet of Natural Armor might cost 6,000 in total, but we could just price +3 magic chain at 6,000 and just say that the other junk doesn't stack. Its actually a simplification of the old system with bigger things replacing many smaller things.
You could even still have Rings of Protection +3. Some people might wear a "non-magical" armor like adamantine and get their AC bonus from the Ring.
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Interesting things don't have to be low-level. A Ring of Shooting Stars is an interesting and flavorful item, but at the level you get it you don't care. Its appropriate at maybe 6th or 7th level when you have several items like it and its a poor second to what a Wizard can do (so you don't show him up), but not at 11th level when it takes up 80% of your wealth.
An interesting idea, and perhaps not one totally without merit, but as intrigued as I am by your suggestions, any changes approaching what you suggest would be an enormous blow to backwards compatibility. If fully implemented (and as a personal philosophy, anything that you'd have to do a half-assed job on doesn't warrant doing at all), you might be looking at making extant 3.5 magic items wholly incompatible with new material.
An interesting idea, and perhaps not one totally without merit, but as intrigued as I am by your suggestions, any changes approaching what you suggest would be an enormous blow to backwards compatibility. If fully implemented (and as a personal philosophy, anything that you'd have to do a half-assed job on doesn't warrant doing at all), you might be looking at making extant 3.5 magic items wholly incompatible with new material.
I'm not sure it would.
First, the armor problem. If I look at Pathfinder 5, we can look at Lady Athroxis on page 53-54. She has a mithral breastplate +1, a ring of protection +2, and an amulet of natural armor +2. We can straight up replace that with a ring, amulet, or armor of +5.
She also has two wands(lightning bolt and clauraudience), a +2 Strength belt, +2 Dex gloves, +2 Int Headband and a ring of resistance +3. She could keep the wands because for a warrior mage in a dungeon they make some sense, but the stat mods are so small that they could be missing and you'd never miss them. She also has an iconic +3 Flaming Adamantine ranseuer.
Ok, to fix that we remove the belt and add a +1 to the ranseur for a +4. We then give the ranseur the ability to cast 5d7 fire bolts (as lightning bolt several times a day, but fire) and wall of fire. We drop both wands, the ring, and the headband and give her a crystal ball.
At the end, we've reduced her to three items out of eight, and the ransuer is suitable trophy of a memorable encounter. The crystal ball and armor can be used, sold, or traded for swag considering PCs are 14-16 in this adventure and most likely have better armor and already have a crystal ball. She loses her resistance bonus and Dex bonus, and is -1 from her Grapple, but this is offset by the wall of fire as a general "protection" that is more flavorful than the bland stat bonuses.
Overall, considering how much easier playing her just got I think its worth it.
That's interesting.
I'm not sure it would.First, the armor problem. If I look at Pathfinder 5, we can look at Lady Athroxis on page 53-54. She has a mithral breastplate +1, a ring of protection +2, and an amulet of natural armor +2. We can straight up replace that with a ring, amulet, or armor of +5.
Enhance...
If I look at Pathfinder 5, we can look at Lady Athroxis on page 53-54. She has a mithral breastplate +1, a ring of protection +2, and an amulet of natural armor +2. We can straight up replace that with a ring, amulet, or armor of +5.
Enhance...
We can straight up replace that with a ring, amulet, or armor of +5.
Enhance...
We can straight up replace that
And THAT is the problem. If you are modifying a stat block, such as changing a creature's equipment, then you are converting things. And if you have to do conversion work, then that's not backwards compatible at all. To truly be backwards compatible, you need to be able to use the old stat block, as printed, with the new rules, without problems popping up. For example, if we used your rules and the existing stat block, players would notice that their loot contained two items the Lady couldn't have legally been using, and they'd be liable to also notice that for her AC to have been what it was without those two items, her dex mod would have had to have been rather larger then the max dex mod of her armor.
And THAT is the problem. If you are modifying a stat block, such as changing a creature's equipment, then you are converting things. And if you have to do conversion work, then that's not backwards compatible at all. To truly be backwards compatible, you need to be able to use the old stat block, as printed, with the new rules, without problems popping up.
You mean like the way that Pathfinder skills are backward compatible? Or that the Pathfinder Fighter class is backward compatible with its AC bonuses and additional feats (and changed feats)?
Seriously, you are fiddling with the stat block anyway. Removing the stupidity out of magic items actually simplifies the process since you are already recalculating the AC for the Pathfinder Fighter's AC and adding new Feat abilities anyway.
You mean like the way that Pathfinder skills are backward compatible? Or that the Pathfinder Fighter class is backward compatible with its AC bonuses and additional feats (and changed feats)?
Seriously, you are fiddling with the stat block anyway. Removing the stupidity out of magic items actually simplifies the process since you are already recalculating the AC for the Pathfinder Fighter's AC and adding new Feat abilities anyway.
To be perfectly honest, I'm not really delighted with the volume of things being changed in the alpha; it seems a little weird to me, since as I recall one of the big arguments against going 4e was that 3e was perfectly fine.
Even so, it's different, for two reasons. First, unlike loot, players don't get the skill points or class levels from monsters they kill. With or without any of the alpha changes or your equipment system, you can run the fight with Highlady Athroxis straight from her printed stat block and not encounter any problems. After she's dead and the players are looting her, it doesn't matter how her skill points were calculated or how many feats she had, but it does matter what equipment she has, because the players get that same equipment, and they'll call foul if there's a double standard.
This brings me to my second point: Hypothetically, the alpha improvements are universally improvements, as opposed to changes that make something work better at the expense of some other thing. Give your players the choice of playing a PHB fighter or a Pathfinder fighter, and they'll want to play the Pathfinder fighter. Give them the choice of your loot system or the old loot system, they might not want to use your system. It's not hard to find scenarios where multiple items giving stacking bonuses would be advantageous to a non-stacking system - for example, if you have a +5 AC item and your opponent has a +4 AC item, then that's useless to you, but if you have, say, Bracers of Armor +4 and a Ring of Protection +1 and your opponent had a Ring of Protection +2 and an Amulet of Natural Armor +2, your AC just went up by 3. It's more paperwork, but it's also more pluses, and for some of us that's not a bad tradeoff. (For example: I've been known to play, among other things, GURPS and Shadowrun, and I think making spreadsheets is fun and exciting!)
This brings me to my second point: Hypothetically, the alpha improvements are universally improvements, as opposed to changes that make something work better at the expense of some other thing. Give your players the choice of playing a PHB fighter or a Pathfinder fighter, and they'll want to play the Pathfinder fighter. Give them the choice of your loot system or the old loot system, they might not want to use your system. It's not hard to find scenarios where multiple items giving stacking bonuses would be advantageous to a non-stacking system - for example, if you have a +5 AC item and your opponent has a +4 AC item, then that's useless to you, but if you have, say, Bracers of Armor +4 and a Ring of Protection +1 and your opponent had a Ring of...
Yeh, thats what we call "broken." Forcing players to min-max to be effective is just wasting energies that could be better spent making the game awesome.
I'd probably recommend you check out the article on WotC site about magic item slots then. Because if your PC's are like mine, they go through all the magic items in all the books and make shopping lists of stuff they want.
What I found is that there are way too many slots in 3.5 for magic items, which leads to way too many magical bonuses to a PC and a lot more bookkeeping. By combining many of the magic item slots (from the 4E rules) you reduce the bookkeeping, and force your PC's to really focus on what they need rather than what they want.
Now that fighter will really need to decide if they want to go defensive and use a shield, or offensive and use a set of bracers.
I'd probably recommend you check out the article on WotC site about magic item slots then. Because if your PC's are like mine, they go through all the magic items in all the books and make shopping lists of stuff they want.
What I found is that there are way too many slots in 3.5 for magic items, which leads to way too many magical bonuses to a PC and a lot more bookkeeping. By combining many of the magic item slots (from the 4E rules) you reduce the bookkeeping, and force your PC's to really focus on what they need rather than what they want.
Now that fighter will really need to decide if they want to go defensive and use a shield, or offensive and use a set of bracers.
I agree that there are too many slots (and slotless items makes it worse), but I think thats a separate issue. Its an important issue, but one issue at a time here.
I can certainly see the potential when it comes to reworking magic items. I know I tend to go for a few flashy pieces of kit rather than a multitude of lesser ones when making a new character. I think, however, that any such alterations would have to be optional, rather than core rules. I can see alternative wealth by level guidelines for low, regular and high magic campaigns existing in a similar way to the revised experience charts.
I think that reworking magic items would be a great deal trickier in terms of backwards compatibility than skills or classes. After all, as long as you know what the old skills fold into, you can still use the old skills bonuses to determine an NPC's rating. Likewise for fighters - A simple jotted note about increased AC, to hit bonus and damage ought to suffice. Sure, the fighter would be nastier with those extra feats, but he'll work well enough with the old ones. Important NPCs might warrant conversion, particularly those who reappear over multiple sessions, but the rank and file can go without.
By contrast, fundamental changes to magic item allocation necessitate not just altering the loadouts of each NPC in an adventure, but also the contents of any treasure troves. It can be done, certainly, but a GM shouldn't be forced to do the work if they want to run an old-style adventure.
I think that this goes in the exact opposite direction of what I'd suggest.
Personally, if they want to change the number of magic items in the game, make it go down instead of up.
I'd just increase the power of races and classes (and of characters in general) so Pathfinder characters without magic items are as powerful as 3e characters with them. Then I'd cut out magic items as we know them. After fixing a couple of specific issues like damage reduction and saves, it should work just fine.
And the beauty of it: You can pit your new-and-improved Pathfinder characters against critters and NPCs from 3.5 rules without converting them - just leave them with their weaker races and classes as they are in the stat block, with fewer feats and all that, but with their magical gadgets. The numbers should be similar, and you don't have to give them better numbers through character choices but worse though lack of magic items. The DM just treats the item bonuses as "inherent" or maybe "bonded item" bonuses, and explain that their abilities were not dependant on the items, or they otherwise only worked for them (whatever floats your boat), so you won't get stronger characters with old magical bling.
As for magic items: I don't say we should get rid of them. Their role would just change from something that is basically mundane because you need it to stuff that really does magical and wondrous things - without affecting the character's raw power level too much.
As long as player abilities are better than magic item powers, you'll never have problem with players being overshadowed or dependent on their equipment. I mean, a 7th level wizard doesn't care if he finds a Wand of Fireballs since he can shoot his own fireballs that are bigger several times a day.
Its a problem with fighting characters where they MUST have level appropriate armor and weapons or else they can't even contribute to the game that is the real problem. You could get rid of item pluses and armor pluses and just rewrite all the MM monsters to suit, but that would still mean that an archer character turns into an NPC the moment his bow breaks.