Magic Item Hate

[lastblacknight]

Vocal minority is putting it mildly - there are some very passionate opinions voiced in the threads.

Part of the issue is historical; back in the day you used whatever you found etc... (which usually meant the Wizard missed out as he/she is '...sooo overpowered....').

Then there are the players (not GM's) who can't learn to say No to their players.

Things shifted when organised play came out; suddenly you had to make items accessible to be fair to everyone (which is why you have a buying cap: i.e. Fame or Prestige in PFS - this limits the purchase limits).

Now you can sell dud items and by stuff that works - we have a simple rule in the game, every magic item needs to be approved by the GM - simple.

Just because items may be purchased doesn't mean they always can be purchased.

Problem solved.

[Branden Voss]

Touc wrote:

My group is now utilizing a system I developed to incorporate bonuses into character advancement since the Pathfinder system is mechanically designed on "must-have" equipment such as stat-boosting headbands or belts and cloaks of resistance. One of the most exciting aspects of AD&D was finding a magical item, and it should always be a source of excitement and wonder. Players should not have to march through a proscribed arsenal of must-have equipment in order to have success with the game. Neither should they be disinterested when magic items are found.

So, the question becomes: how can we fix a system dependent on magic item upgrades, without having to overhaul the entire system?

I have expanded on the work of others on these forums as to "fixed training enhancements," which incorporate "must-have" increases into a charcter's advancement and removes from the game "plus" items. My system takes into account the "wealth-by-level" balance and insures that when players get magical items, they will have more meaning and purpose, but party power levels are preserved against gradually escalating foe strength. Throwaway items, such as the 15th Ring of Protection +1 found during a session, cease to exist, but it frees up a slot for more creative items in the slot. ** spoiler omitted **...

I really like your system im gonna use it on my saturday game. Biggest thing for me is definitely that you can have more interesting things in say the shoulder slot which is just always gonna be a cloak of resistance +x.

[Shimnimnim]

Coriat wrote:

Beowulf attempted to battle Grendel's mother with Hrunting, already a weapon far superior to every other, but was totally ineffective until he was provided with the yet more powerful giant-forged blade equal to the task.

Decades later he would not be so lucky when inferior gear again betrayed him and he broke his sword Naegling attempting to strike the dragon:

Quote:

the war blade had failed, naked at need, as it ought not to have done

and his shield also proved unequal to his foe. It was left to Wiglaf, a total noob with an heirloom blade, to wound it.

Odysseus's specific bow plays a great role in the Odyssey, of course.

Maybe I heard it wrong, but I remember learning in class that Grendel's mother couldn't be killed with hrunting because of her magic protection, and that it took Grendel's own blade to do it because she never extended her magical protection to her own family. I always thought this a particular case of DR/GiantForged. Besides, Beowulf was hardly weak without his magic sword. He defeated Grendel without any weapons at all, after all, just so that it would be more "fair."

Likewise, Odysseus' bow is plot relevant because it has a particular requirement that it can only be wielded by someone like Odysseus. But until the final battle he doesn't have it on him. As someone mentioned in another thread recently, he doesn't even bring it with him to war, which is why his wife is able to use it to test her suitors.

These ARE great examples of very important weapons being irreplaceable. But I also think they show that a fighter needing a specific weapon is very situation dependent in literature. While I can see a character gaining great things from equipment, it'd be silly to say a character should necessarily need them to be effective outside of very plot relevant cases.

[Eirikrautha]

Having read through the thread, a couple of important points. For all of the conversation about "roleplaying," Pathfinder, like its forbearers, suffers these problems because of its heritage as an organized war-game. Both parts of this equation are important.

The original D&D was a modification of tactical wargame rules. As such, units were delineated by their combat values (i.e. pikemen are +1, swordsmen +2, elite swordsmen with "magic" weapons +3, etc.). When you are simulating the combat between Napoleonic infantry, the troops are standardized by equipment, which is how their capabilities are differentiated. D&D inherited that basic concept in its early design stages, and has never really broken free from it, even through all of its various forms and editions. So, rather than magic items being thematic in nature (or designed as unique "flavorful" items), items have always been a statistics-based, differentiating feature of the characters.

Additionally, as an "organized" game, standardized point-buy systems have been an important feature of wargames since time immemorial. In order to generate "fair" combats between players (who were competing against each other in the precursor games to D&D), players were able to equip their units according to the point buys, with only an occasional nod to scarcity or weapon availability (the focus of the games being on tactical combat more than strategic concerns). This has never gone away. With organized play like PFS, there has to be some standard to enable players to move from one GM to the next. So players get to outfit their characters much like a wargamer got to add MG-42s to his infantry units.

The consequence of this is the obvious incongruity of the magic mart in PF and other "role-playing" games. If we are really telling stories, the the weapons, items, magic, should be part of the stories. But the mechanics of the system is based around something completely different. Until RPGs are divorced completely from the organized wargaming roots, you'll never really see any other options. Which is sad, especially since I think we all like unique and flavorful magic. But selecting it off of a chart is the absolutely worst way to generate flavor.

Back when AD&D first came out, I can remember the excitement of finding a useful item in the random loot charts. Because of the time and expense of magic item creation (especially considering that a smart wizard isn't going to want to sell whatever he just made... especially to make someone else more powerful), most of us didn't get to choose our items. We could wait until the party caster was high enough to make it, or we could search out a monster that had it. There's something glorious about avoiding death at the hands of the vorpal blade so that you could then claim it as your own. Something you just don't get much from modern PF (or PFS specifically). But I don't see how this can be changed while still using the legacy mechanics...

[Buri]

The system as a rules source is fine. But, most of the immersion breaking facets can be fixed by the campaign in which they are played. Being able to purchase most any magic item from most any merchant is a part of the game world and not the rules. Being able to acquire materials to craft most any item is a part of the game world and not the rules. Rinse and repeat for the vast majority of complaints against magic items.

[Tacticslion]

Dot.

[Eirikrautha]

Buri wrote:

The system as a rules source is fine. But, most of the immersion breaking facets can be fixed by the campaign in which they are played. Being able to purchase most any magic item from most any merchant is a part of the game world and not the rules. Being able to acquire materials to craft most any item is a part of the game world and not the rules. Rinse and repeat for the vast majority of complaints against magic items.

Yes and no. Can some of the problems inherent in the system be overcome through GM design? Sure. But you could redesign your campaign to only play with d6s, too. It'd just take a lot of calculation and effort ("so I've got a 3 in 20 chance of hitting, so what is that on five d6?"). But at that point, you're doing so much work that you'd be better off with just playing another game. Is this the case with PF? Well, that's up to each GM to decide...

Note as well that your suggestion only works at an individual table. As soon as you start implementing organized play, you can't use as much GM fiat to fix the problems in the mechanics. And PFS is such a good ambassador of the product, there's no way Paizo is going to ignore it or design away from it (see the Crane Wing errata for details)...