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one of my favorite rules found in a Dragon Magazine (289... duid Paizo directed that one?) was that you could sue experience to level your old magic sword isntead of buying or finding one
it was good for RP and for a memento, i was the only oen in my table who actually used the rule commonly, but i loved the fact that i didn't had to change from sword since level 3 to 9 and i was still as efficient
anyone has seen this rule? what do you think about it?
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In our games, every five levels you can use XP to enhance ONE item you posses. (To clarify you can enhance up to 4 items total over 20 levels, just each time you make the enhancement it can be applied to one item only, next time can be a different item).
In essence you can take your +1 dwarven waraxe and expend enough XP to make it +2 using the charts in the DMG for XP cost. Then you can use XP to enhance your +2 Dwarven Waraxe and add Brilliant Energy. Then maybe next time add Flaming Burst to it. The enhancement required XP so Fortification was not available.
You still have this XP, but it is tied into the weapon. If it is sundered or lost or whatever, you loose your XP. Once enhanced it cannot be undone.
We used mini rituals of bonding to achieve the in game way of doing this.
For example the first time I just kept missing in combat so I bonded to the axe to improve it's bonus. Then I fought a bad guy that just had Armor out the wazoo so I chose Brilliant Energy. I picked Flaming Burst because at lvl 12-14 and beyond we had fought a lot of Merid and I wanted Flaming Burst to help against them. At lvl 20 I enhanced a shield, which was destroyed at lvl 21!
In our games, every five levels you can use XP to enhance ONE item you posses. In essence you can take your +1 dwarven waraxe and expend enough XP to make it +2 using the charts in the DMG for XP cost.
In 3.5, I made everyone pay the full XP cost for every item they kept (or used, in the case of potions/scrolls). This slowed advancement slightly and also cut down on the "Christmas Tree Syndrome." Sometimes I'd have to adjust ECL based on too many/too few items, but that was less often necessary than you'd think.
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thanks Kyrth, Krome
both ideas are fantastic
Kyrth as you i hate the "Chrismas Three" Syndrome, and its hurts my ehad everytime i think in the need the game creates with the "planned obsolescence" (i hope that is how it swriten in english)
magic items sometimes due to the genre becomes something akin to consumible items... after a while they expire in how they worked for you and you need to get rid of them and get something new that will do the work
there is a text in dragon magazine 289 that comes to mind "what if the horoe was to keep his old sword, the one that he used to kill the giagiants and where he almost died, the one he used to kill the medusa? you punish them for trying to stick to a roleplaying persona?" (sort of... didn't wrote it literaly)
some items becomes mementos, something that is more valuable not because it has +3 or its a vorpal, but because it has been in for some its a memorable anecdote/game/adventure
i for one, when asked if i would take that, i jump saying yes, i decide how much XP i spend on it or i just add is like sort of a tax...
Krome idea of "bonding with the item" is quite similar to the Wizard's class feature, and i really liked it (was reading abou that yesterday because our GM wouldn't let the Wizard have it until he was able to pay for his MW Gauntlet... but we are 3rd level and we don't have money even for a MW set of armor... maybe if the 4 of us spend the money for a single character)
that brought me to the marvelous article called "Leveled Treasures" by Tom Gianni and Arnie Swekel in the mentioned Dragon Magazine 289
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Something else we did in parties was pool money. When we get to town enough was handed out to PARTY with. But the group generally worked to get equipment for each other. Not big huge expensive vorpal swords of throwing and returning (though I do want one of them for a BBEG someday) but for normal equipment. The GM cuts out the magic items except for some basic stuff like scrolls and potions (ya know while thinking about it... hey I wanna drink that 500 year old potion that has been sitting in the damp musty mold infested dungeon...yeah that is what I wanna do...)
Umm where was I... yeah we don't find much magic items in our games... we either enhance it through bonding or craft them if necessary, or the GM just scales the fights to the players who have fewer items.
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I will tell you one major thing I liked about this mechanic... NO ONE was getting their hands on my Axe. I even named it! When was the last time you had a magic weapon you bothered to name?
Any magic items we did have we treasured. They meant a lot more to us than picking them up from some ruin or buying them in a second hand store.
Yeah, I noticed under our system, too, people tended to have 1-3 items they really liked -- character-defining items -- rather than scores of meaningless trinkets.
I even named it! When was the last time you had a magic weapon you bothered to name?
Probably around 1975. 'Cranium Cleaver' Or maybe I stole that name; I was pretty young.
There was an RPG originally put out by FASA call Earthdawn. In the game, to use a magical items, you had to bond with it, much like some of the suggestions. Each ability cost legend points (the game's version of XP). In order to unlock some of the abilities, you might have to udergo a minor quest first (like building a shrine to the first hero to use a legendary weapon).
You could also found magic items by naming them. As a humerous note, a fellow player who constantly miss with his sword, named it Wind Beater. The GM ran with it and it eventually became magical.
I dislike the Christmas tree effect myself. I remember in 1e and 2e, holding onto a priced +2 sword for most of my character's life. The idea of leveling equipment is a cool idea. I may need to revist this idea in my next campaign.
I remember seeing a feat in a non-WOTC splatbook somewhere, called awaken item. It would allow you to grant sentience to any item for a basic cost, and then allow you to enhance the item by spending XP on it. That seemed like alternate mechanic to the item familiar rules, which I was also a fan of.
With PFRPGs elimination of xp costs, has anyone looked at these variant rules, to see how they work with xp costs converted to gp costs alone?
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my DM agrees (sort of) to at least let my character level her equipment, but it will take along time for me to be able
instead of using XP, the leveling will be using treasure as a donation to my character's church and other beneficiencies (already doing this, her first share on treasures he gave half of it to the local church to be used in the orfans)
so right now in 3rd level i have MW Longsword called Faina (shine in elven, i almost always call my weapons, even MW, its cool and its emotive) and a Breastplate of Confidence (Book of Erotic Fantasy, adds +2 to charisma as enhanced bonus and charisma mod is added to the will rolls)
my char got it as her wedding present... she is not going to let it go unless she is drowning :P
I will beusing some of this ideas for when i began my city centered campaign, forcing the players not to use a lot of magic items and trying to strenghten the ones they use.
I have toyed with something of the like as well. The way I had it was any item you used for a time could be awakened or imbued with magic.
The ideal came from moonblades really. As time went on the char's could invest xp into there item, kinda like it became part of there legacy.
It seemed to work well for are game. That was a few years back I'll see if i can hunt up my notes
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a friend commented me on his method
he as a DM give the items with an idea of what could they acomplish.
then if they where battling lets say a dragon or an undead they would have little exit in their combat forcing them to investigate about their enemies... then enxt time when they fighted it again between the knowledge, the experience and the time battling the creature it would become a weapon that would damage it... sort of it
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right now from what has been presented my favorites would be:
bonding, either by a rutual (by using experience every 5 level that stays with the item) or bleeding over it slowly ("losing" experience to the item with a cap on how much to grow it)
Temple ot Cause Donation (similar to the "bleeding experience, but donating money to a "good/evil/favorite cause)
this one i think is the one that we will be using in our game... we will pay the "magic price" of he weapon by doing donations (since my cleric is LG, we have a Paladin, and the Bard is quite close to Desna, only the Almost Atheist Wizard is left out of this... but he pretends to get the magic creation feats)
and Midnight Covenant Item, a simple item with spirit energy surrounding and filling it, so when the character grews in power the item awakens its own abilities...
this last is a good way to explain "legendary" weapons falling into low level characters and they don't having all their powers.
If anyone saw Magic Knight Rayearth this was the way in which the 3 main characters increased the power of their equipment both armor and weapons, as the characters grew in power their equipment changed to show this