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I am planning on starting up a game again in a couple months and would like to see magic items be more special. At the same time, I would like to have the materials they are made of have more of an impact than they do. I would like some input on these ideas and others ideas if folks have them. I was brought to this by the idea of having +1 weapons and armor all over as loot, which implies everyone is walking around with them, making them commonplace.
On Materials - I was thinking of having different materials give unique qualities to weapons and armor in addition to their normal properties. For instance, a one-handed weapons made of mithril would be able to be used with Weapon Finesse. I would like every material to have some sort of appeal other than DR bypass.
Crafting of Magic Items - I would be moving that up in level requirement of the feats and adding a Craft(x) requirement that would relate to making the specific items. *Regarding the item below, weapon and armor qualities would be altered to fit the new system.
Item Quality - +'s on weapons and armor would be replaced by crafted quality. A base average item would be +0. Depending on the result of the crafting check, the quality may be better, giving it +'s. The tiers could be: Normal(+0), Superior (+1), Exceptional (+2), Great (+3), Masterful (+4), Legendary (+5). Normal masterwork would change to "Well-Balanced"(weapons) or "Sturdy" (Armor). The cost would represent more than just materials, but an intangible aspect. The DC for the craft check would be scaled up for each tier. This would be more like the weapons from Middle-Earth, where they did not need to be magical to be legendary.
This is still being developed right now, and since the game is a slow running play by post, I will have more leeway in making things for detailed. There are several other things being run through as well, such as a class-based Defense bonus and armor providing percent-based damage mitigation instead of armor bonus.
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Regarding materials/item quality:
Consider adding additional special materials (in line with adamantine, mithril, etc) that help represent the "+s". This way, people still have something to look at. Similarly, assign a "+" value to the existing special materials. Such as mithril == +1, cold iron == +2, adamantine == +5.incorporate flat bonuses to saving throws at every five levels.
Hit lvl 5, +1 to saving throws
lvl 10, +2
lvl 15, +3
lvl 20, +4Basically, hunt down threads about killing the "christmas tree effect", if you want to reduce the presence of magic items.
That is kind of what I was looking for with materials. I really want them to have unique effects that are useful beyond lower levels. Cold-Iron is one of the materials that really stands out, as it is really only used as a backup ammo material. I could maybe have values of a special bonus, like a save bonus, that scales up as the item quality increases. So if Cold-Iron armor gave +1 saves vs arcane magic. This bonus would increase with every quality step, like an Exceptional Cold-Iron Breastplate would give a +3 save bonus instead of +1.
I will try to search up that phrase, as the other searches came up empty.