I'm honestly confused that there are people who don't play with the magic item availability that Pathfinder suggests.It can be really fun to simply have less magic items. As for the host of issues we'll encounter, that argument goes both ways. Haven't we all seen a game be less fun when the players are overloaded? I think every group's going to play it a little differently.
The argument really doesn't go both ways in Pathfinder. Pathfinder has magic items baked into its design process and expects them to be fairly easy to acquire and has its challenges designed around that. Meddling with this has many many unintended consequences that will catch those who lack the system mastery to understand *why* magic item availability is so important in Pathfinder unaware. Now if you were talking FATE or HERO, sure high v. low magic is purely a matter of preference, but in Pathfinder messing with magic items is a sure way to screw up balance in the game.
To be honest the whole low magic thing has always read to me "I really like this magic fantasty tabletop RPG, if only it didn't have so much magic in it."
To be honest the whole low magic thing has always read to me "I really like this magic fantasty tabletop RPG, if only it didn't have so much magic in it."
That comes up in a lot of game systems. Take Exalted for example. It's Core is Epic Heroes who battle Gods, Demons and armies using city destroying magic and Artifact weapons that cut through mountains.
but several groups out there Play Heroic Mortal games with that system. No Charms, no Artifacts and Thaumaturgy as the only available magic. Just weak and fragile mortals in a world of demi-gods and monsters
and it's actually a huge amount of fun.
Any Game system exists to be tampered with to create the version of the game you want to play. The only real concern is recognize how your playstyle should alter the base assumptions of the game.
If you were to use the Armor as DR rules from Ultimate Combat you have to acknowledge that it makes Large creatures more dangerous. Plate Mail lets you wade through an army of Kobolds without fear but it means nothing against an Ogre.
Pathfinder in a world with less availability to magic items just needs to be run with that in mind. If anything better than a +2 Sword is going to be a rarity that means creatures with DR Silver or Cold Iron are more dangerous. It's not a problem if the DM keeps that in mind but if he ignores it then your group runs into a fight that ends up being harder than it should be.
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At the core of the argument, we've never read a great story where the hero bought his power.
Disagree.
“I pulled out an enchanted dagger. It was a cheap, over-the-counter enchanted dagger.” ~ from Jhereg, by Steven Brust. I'm a huge fan of the Vlad Taltos books.-TimD
At the core of the argument, we've never read a great story where the hero bought his power.
The Myth series by Robert Asprin often has the characters solve problems through magical items that they bought over the counter.
1) I think it is a more complicated issue then you think it is. Its not just about having the right kind of weapons. It is balancing out your saving throws, (at high levels certain effects are absolutely brutal, and saves go up very slowly without magic), it is being able to survive attacks as a front liner, and its making sure your abilities and attacks are sufficiently powerful to get past the enemies defenses. Its not about having one or two things that can be easily compensated for by spells. And different monsters stress that issue in different areas. Some do in more then one area.They really arent exhagerated at all.Yes, they are - proven by the fact that you just implied that it takes an experienced GM to compensate, when I know that all it takes is a GM that has read enough of the rules to know that 1) some monsters are very hard to deal with if you don't have certain kinds of weapons and 2) spells exist that make any weapon temporarily the right kind of weapons to deal with those monsters.
Like I've mentioned a few times, AC is one of the biggest issues in no-magic games. After all half of the traditional Big Six items are AC-boosters. One you hit mid-levels, a martial without magic armor, a ring of protection, and an amulet of natural armor isn't going to last very long on the frontlines unless he has a cleric, wizard, and druid all buffing him to make up for what he's missing.
At the core of the argument, we've never read a great story where the hero bought his power.The Myth series by Robert Asprin often has the characters solve problems through magical items that they bought over the counter.
Why didn't I think of this! The Bazar at Deva! Through much of the series the main characters live and work at the bazar where "if it can't be found on Deva, it can't be found."
The D-Hopper they have was from a deveel. Its a rare item, but still one that can be bought and sold in that fiction. They also routinely equip themselves with merecenaries, gear and other goods from Deva and no one is any less awed by the immense scope and expanse of the bazar. Now THAT was a magic mart...
They pick feats and skills based off of finding certain things along the way to make their concept work. Making magic items random means their plan for their character is dependent on a die roll which may never go in their favor...
That's good - I don't want players planning their characters under the expectation that they were receive certain magic items.
What happens to the archer who never finds a magic bow?
Again, this is an extreme example. Even in non-magic mart games, fighters get magic weapons, archers get magic bows, etc. But the fighter might not get boots of stringing and striding because he determined that by level 6 he needs them to increase his movement.
In the campaign world I am running right now, the players have devised a system of loot distribution that resembles WOW's Need or Greed. They keep a list of each player, 1-5. If a player wants an item, he can use his "Need". If he does so, and he is highest on the list, he gets the item. He then drops to the bottom of the list.
If no one really needs the item, then they all just roll d% and highest gets the item.
Rings of protection, magic swords, and shields have all been decided this way, when they could really have gone to multiple people.
2) making magic items "rare" in a world with something called the world wound that harbors vile demons and devils seems inappropriate as there will be a world filled with magical casters to balance the tide of evil who would in turn be commissioned to arm the melee warriors who go toe to toe with evil.
I run a homebrew world - demons are incredibly rare. Other planes aside from the prime for the most part don't exist.
Its a taste preference. Some people like playing in a magic rich economy like Forgotten Realms (which has even more magic available than Gol). Some like Westeros which has very little.
Greylurker hit on a big point. The rules as written do have the GM rolling for availability and that is a big difference from anything you want is available for purchase today.
What's the fun in playing a game that you don't get to plan your outcome to some degree.
Again, an extreme. You DO get to plan your character. You get to select your race, your class(es), your skills, your feats.
There will be a variety of magical items available to the PCs, either through finding them, earning them as gifts from quests, or purchasing them.
They simply don't get to pick exactly what they want. As others have mentioned, even if you play exactly by the rules (which few groups do), not every time is available even in the largest of cities.
Arguing extremes in a random environment makes no sense. Random is random. The extremes would be just as common as any other outcome. There's no guarantee a character finds a +1 bow, then a +2 bow and so on. Maybe he finds a +1 longbow, then a +2 short bow, then a +3 composite longbow with a +10 to strength, then a +1 dagger.
Where are you getting this random idea from?
honestly by the Core rules the DM should be rolling up randomly what items are available for purchase in a city and if the PCs can't find what they are looking for from those random rolls they are SOL
Even in a Metropolis you only get a 75% chance of getting the item you want if it's 16,000 gp or less. Anything more valuable than that and you pray to the Gods of random Dice rolls.
That pretty much caps "buy what you want" at +2 weapons, +4 armor and +4 single stat enhancement items.
The core rules are not you're SOL if the city doesn't have it. Rolling items doesn't negate the 75% to find an item under the base price of a settlement.
Controlling your character to some degree is an extreme?
I'm not following. I guess just chalk this up as as different strokes for different folks.
You roll dice to determine treasure. You roll dice to determine what items are in a town. Rolling dice is random. Not picking something specifically means you pick something randomly.
This all depends on the campaign world. If ogres are known to use large long swords in TWF style, then the PCs should expect that they'll find large long swords, and occasionally magical versions.
If a town is famous for its alchemists, that town likely has a lot of potions available for the PCs to purchase. And so on.
In my campaign world, every city, every town, every village is mapped out. I have varying degrees of information about each one. There are no random towns that PCs walk into that would justify the need to randomly determine what is there.
Yes, treasure brings in a random element. As a GM I generally will not include items that would not be of any value to the PCs if that is what is randomly generated. If I roll axe +1, and then another axe+1, I will definitely change the second axe to something more appropriate.
I've never been a fan of magic marts. My games have always been lower on the magic scale than most. You get what you get in my games, you commision someone else to make what you want, make it yourself. Or if you're REALLY lucky, another adventuring group has the item your looking for and will be willing to sell it.
Same here. Glad to see I'm not completely outside the norm :)
The core rules are not you're SOL if the city doesn't have it. Rolling items doesn't negate the 75% to find an item under the base price of a settlement.honestly by the Core rules the DM should be rolling up randomly what items are available for purchase in a city and if the PCs can't find what they are looking for from those random rolls they are SOL
Even in a Metropolis you only get a 75% chance of getting the item you want if it's 16,000 gp or less. Anything more valuable than that and you pray to the Gods of random Dice rolls.
That pretty much caps "buy what you want" at +2 weapons, +4 armor and +4 single stat enhancement items.
Which as I said, Caps out at +2 weapons, +4 armor and +4 single stat enhancement. The GP Limit for a Metropolis is 16,000 gp. That is as high as it goes.
A +3 weapon is 18,000gp
+3 Ring of Protection 18,000gp
+3 amulet of natural armor 18,000gp
Go to the Biggest city you can find and all of those are still outside the 75% chance of finding it. +2 is as good as you can reliably buy, everything else is GM rolls randomly.
So yes, by the Core if you want a +3 Weapon you can go to the largest city in the area and if the DM doesn't roll one up randomly for the Available items you are SOL.
The only way for it to be included in the 75% or less chance is if your DM is using the options for city design in the GM Guide and gives the town some qualities that increase the Base Value for the city.
Yes, treasure brings in a random element. As a GM I generally will not include items that would not be of any value to the PCs if that is what is randomly generated. If I roll axe +1, and then another axe+1, I will definitely change the second axe to something more appropriate.
Same here. Glad to see I'm not completely outside the norm :)I've never been a fan of magic marts. My games have always been lower on the magic scale than most. You get what you get in my games, you commision someone else to make what you want, make it yourself. Or if you're REALLY lucky, another adventuring group has the item your looking for and will be willing to sell it.
Right. I've always run low-wealth games. It's just the style I like.
The only actual effect I've seen of a low-wealth game is the characters are a bit under what a magic-heavy party would be. I'm sure someone could tell me which character classes make out better in a low-wealth game, but it's never really mattered much to me.
The only time I found it distracting was when I let a monk with the 3.5e Vow of Poverty into a game. Now, that is an overpowered element in a low-wealth game, since the Vow of Poverty (and its step-brother the Vow of Nonviolence) give lots of goodies to overcome the lack of magic - and if everyone has a lack of magic the VoP monk is going to be killer ... and was.
To put it a different way, as a GM I get more mileage out of opponents, encounters and the like from a low-wealth game, as it's far less likely for the PCs to be able to pull out the Acme Encounter Nullifier if they don't have more than a handful of magic items.
What about Tormsskull's other question: Do Player Characters know of every magic item in the book?
For instance, are they reasonably expected to know about a xorn robe? (For that matter, do they even know what a xorn is?)
Well, to be honest I started playing pathfinder with a prior experience of 2nd ed and a DM that didnt allow any shops, or much gold for that matter.. only loot and gifts perhaps from npcs.
So I didnt like it at first that the core pathfinder rules or 'gm guidelines' suggested that many magic items would be readily available (75%). Even more so for scrolls/spells that are very cheap and by core rules 9th lvl scrolls should be readily available even in medium-sized towns.
For everything else except scrolls I soon realised that even the largest city in a world isnt expected to have anything more powerfull than a +2 weapon available, so that made me happier :p.
...but my problem still remained with the scrolls which I feel should be even more rare than permanent magic items (well their rarity should be directly proportional to the number of 'living' mid-high lvl casters in the world I imagine plus their will to share their researched or looted spells)
Anyways, since my players arent much interested in how they get their stuff or if it makes much sense world-wise, I made a rulling that a scroll of a certain lvl has an equal rarity of a weapon of certain enchantment and thus, price, so as to be able to tell my players which scrolls are available (75%) at every town.
The rulling is that a lvl 4 scroll corresponds to a 10k gp permanent magic item, a lvl 5 to an 18k one, a lvl 9 to a 70k one etc etc.
This rulling effectively means that scrolls of lvl 5 spells and above are as rare to find as are +3 weapons and similar items. I am putting it to use from the next session and I think my players will like it and it will make my life a bit easier too :P
Even under 3.5, I usually made my major cities under 250,000 people, so you couldn't buy just any old thing. Pathfinder dials it back even further. Plus, in my campaigns, there have been times when characters haven't seen the inside of a city in weeks.
But at really high level play, I was like, "You meet a friendly mercane merchant," and let them buy anything up to XYZ gold pieces. That allowed me to transition from low level to high level play without introducing new metropolises.
I have one shop with a very limited set of magical items in every medium or large city, the prices are very high, the store is rather hard to find and its always run by the ridiculously powerful wizard who crafts the items, and I don't care if you're the best rogue there is, you try to steal something he will catch you and you will die if you don't apologize and return what you've stolen.
Its kinda a toughie, but the challenges of things tends to be built around the idea that the characters are not only the appropriate level, but not of truly silly build, and have access to roughly their estimated loot rating. You can run high or low, but then run into issues of too easy encounters or too 'oops I just TPK'd the party' encounters. Something like a ghost would be a holy(un) terror in a low magic game.
I've run several campaigns in the past decade; of these 2 were "low magic" where I tried to use either legacy items or extra traits/feats to pad the PCs and thus reduce magic items. The effort was to create an air of rareness and specialness around permanent magic items. Y'know what I got? Players who frankly didn't care.
My experience has been whether I make magic rare or common, my players regard magic and magic items merely as tools like they regard cell phones and tablets IRL. Sure, they enjoy receiving the items or the gold to purchase/craft them, but at the end of the day they just jotted them on the character sheet and moved on.
It's literally been decades since any player anywhere said "Oooo! I wonder what THIS does?" to a magic item. Who are these players that are mystified by the wonder of magic items and regard them with childlike curiosity and innocence? If they exist please tell any in MN to get to one of my games since I'd love to have one in my campaign!
I agree. I dont feel amazed by any magic items, even ones I dont know about in real life. Once I read the description I simply put it in the useful or useless pile in my mind and further categorize it from there.
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Frankly the best magical items are the ones that actually advance the story. If you need to get Vorpal Sword of Wonderland +5 to kill the Jabberwock roaming the country side.
Do you need to go quest for a magical item, which will seal the gate that are summoning Dagon from the depths of the sea?
In my opinion, I always tend to remember these items more than the ones that I acquired in magical shops. My second favorite are particular/unique magical items wielded by my enemy.
Villains have style and often they have gear that look like their styles. Sure it's a +2 flaming sword but did you see the black dragon hilt and gems encrusted into the blade?
Yeah sometime I just like the little things. Is the magic item glowing? does it have magical runes written all over it? etc...the little things really, make the whole difference. I try my hardest when I make look for players to make each magic items look distinctive.
Indeed, as was also previously mentioned, I think that the little details are far more important than the where/how you got the item.
..I now feel sry that I didnt pay much attention in describing the items my PCs looted in RoTR so far :(
PS .. to complement the ruling described above about scroll rarity, I will only be placing higher-than-base lvl scrolls in the extra magic items cities have, if a scroll pops on the random roll.