Alternate Magic Item Rules and PC Wealth

[rainzax]

I want my PCs to feel free to spend their money as they please.

Does the Automatic Bonus Progression and Innate Item Bonuses from Pathfinder Unchained when used together accomplish this?

Say I have three 'types' of players: One who enjoys the magic item system as-written and wants to spend all of his money getting the very best equipment to become more powerful; Another who could care less about money altogether and if he happens to have some is equally likely to blow it on a single night out than "spend it wisely"; And a third who more or less occupies the space between these two extremes.

I would assume that the first player would benefit from the IIB variant, the second player from the ABP variant, and the third from both. Is this an accurate assumption?

Thanks is advance folks.

[kestral287]

The first player will probably enjoy the system as written-- or even automatic bonus progression-- more than innate item bonuses.

I honestly haven't pinned down the player type who would enjoy innate item bonuses.

[rainzax]

why not?

as I understand it it's more or less "magic items in head/neck/tummy slots are more expensive but provide numerical bonuses and cool powers" in effect increasing the number of 'slots' available.

[GM Rednal]

I have players in a WotR game who were actually quite keen on the idea of innate bonuses. I think people in low-wealth games might get worried, but for high-wealth games - or those with other sources of power - it's far less of an issue. XD

[kestral287]

It enforces new incentives that can actually detract from picking the best item.

For example: the Ring of Freedom of Movement is frequently considered a must for a caster (and indeed, all characters). The Ring of Sustenance is also considered highly valuable, especially for crafters (ultimately a subset of caster).

A character who equips both of these, though, never gets to max his Ring of Protection. To do that, he needs to replace a Ring-- probably the Ring of Sustenance-- with another, more expensive ring.

Now he's chosen something that's probably mechanically suboptimal, in order to gain benefits that he would have had anyway.

Of course, there are solutions to this. One is to allow the character to pay 10,000 gold to have his Ring of Freedom of Movement cost 50,000 instead of 40,000. That's not the rules of the book, and I think (but am not remotely sure) that I saw a post from Mark advising against that option. So we're into "houserule to effectiveness" territory.

Such a player is also likely to want to take advantage of the item stacking rules-- the rules mention that you can combine multiple magic items into the same one, creating, say, a Ring of Sustenance and Freedom of Movement. This is an extraordinary useful (if often very expensive) option. So, let's take those same three rings-- Sustenance, Freedom of Movement, Protection +5.

Baseline system, with the ability to combine rings:
Ring of Protection +5, 50,000 gp.
Ring of Sustenance and Freedom of Movement, 43,000 gp.

Innate Item Bonuses:

Ring of Freedom of Movement and Protection +4, 72,000 gp
Ring of Sustenance, 2,000 gp*

Innate bonuses, with the ability to pay 'over' to max out the protection ability:

Ring of Freedom of Movement and Protection +5, 100,000 gp
Ring of Sustenance, 2,000 gp*

You've now had to pay 9,000 more gold for the same thing. Not going to make an item slot optimizer happy.

If he could find a fourth ring that he wanted, that cost in the neighborhood of 7000 gp, then he could potentially be satisfied by spending the 10,000 gold overage to combine this fourth ring with his Ring of Freedom of Movement. However, that's a really narrow range of viable options.

*I assume the option in the book that allows a player to not pay for the deflection bonus with their second ring, because the reverse is just silly.

It also reduces player choice. This is particularly key with weapons and armor, where "in what order do we take the enhancements" can be just as important as what is picked.

For example: one character I have will eventually want a +2 Spell-Storing Heartseeking Katana. However, I care much more about the +2 than I do the special abilities-- Heartseeking I don't need until the mid-game, while Spell-Storing is valuable but not critical until I can spare enough spell slots to keep it powered. Innate Item Bonuses enforces the order that I take them in: I get +1 and Spell-Storing at the same time, then another +1 and Heartseeking. I don't get even that +1 until the same time that a normal progression would have had a +2, so there's a window (four-five windows, for a 1-20 character) where my PC is less powerful simply because I can't afford to upgrade the weapon or armor by +2, though I could have afforded a +1.

Not all characters-- even martial characters-- even want maxed-out weapons and armor for that matter. A Barbarian, especially an Unchained one or one who can access Unchained's powers, wants +5, Furious, and... maybe Keen, though he can probably afford to take Improved Critical. He would rather have the flexibility to spend the money saved by going to +6 instead of +10 on other items-- and let's keep in mind that that's a massive sum of 128,000 gold.

Armor's even worse in that regard because a lot of armor upgrades are just... not good. So the player's forced to dig for sub-par bonuses just to get what he really wants, and he's getting zero benefit out of the system in the process.

[Mark Seifter]

kestral287 wrote:

Of course, there are solutions to this. One is to allow the character to pay 10,000 gold to have his Ring of Freedom of Movement cost 50,000 instead of 40,000. That's not the rules of the book, and I think (but am not remotely sure) that I saw a post from Mark advising against that option. So we're into "houserule to effectiveness" territory.

Actually, I'm the one who brought it up (if you mean boosting to 50k and adding 50k for a total of 100k, paying twice). If you do find items that people consistently want to keep badly enough to pay twice, it's interesting knowledge, since it means the item is probably underpriced.

[kestral287]

... Right, that's what it was!

See, that's why I tried to qualify it, I knew you were involved in the discussion but recalling who said what was killing me.

And yeah, I explained it better in the example, but I meant paying the extra 10k gold + the extra 18k gold that the last point of AC costs.

Which... frankly I think probably reflects more on the perceived value of the extra +1 point to AC, flatfooted and Touch alike, as well as CMD.

[rainzax]

So then, aside from a high wealth game, what is the purpose of the Innate Item Bonus variant? What kind of player base does it serve?

[kestral287]

Note that we need more than a 'high wealth game'; we need a game where the party is incentivized to invest in at least three expensive rings, two very expensive Amulets, and two expensive Cloaks, along with taking weapons and armor to the full +10, and players who are okay with losing out on the mechanically optimal solutions (read as: there are not any standouts for impressive Amulets at high costs). That's... a rare group.

Beyond that, frankly? Like I said, I haven't pinned down the player type who wants to use it.

[Koshimo]

IIB was a good idea made bad by the fact that the original item needed to cost as much as the new bonus.

what really needed to be done was "you can buy a big 6 item and put a second enchantment on it without the usual 50% markup for 2 items in one" and that would have taken care of the problem

[kestral287]

Koshimo wrote:

IIB was a good idea made bad by the fact that the original item needed to cost as much as the new bonus.

what really needed to be done was "you can buy a big 6 item and put a second enchantment on it without the usual 50% markup for 2 items in one" and that would have taken care of the problem

3.5 has that rule, in the Magic Item Comp. My GM plays with it; it's pretty nice.

For my turn GMing I modified the Big Six into scaling magic items. It doesn't solve their necessity but it divorces the players from needing to focus on them once they get their initial piece.

[rainzax]

kestral287,
What is the cost of your Big Six? Do they rise with the increase in bonus?

[kestral287]

Ha, I was digging through my posts and we've had this conversation before.

kestral287 wrote:

In terms of how I used them: I went for the simplistic approach:

-Any weapon/armor/shield designated 'magical' gets a +1 enhancement at level 2, and an additional +1 per two character levels, to a maximum of +10 at level 20. Gold-specific enhancements are added normally by a crafter. AoMF and Bracers of Armor are treated as standard weapons/armor for this purpose (+1 before getting other bonuses, max +10, etc.). I'll probably cap this to three such items, to prevent Bane-swapping and similar from cropping up, but it hasn't been an issue yet.
-Cloak, Ring, and Amulet grant a +1 bonus, and an additional +1 bonus per four character levels (4/8/12/16), to a maximum of +5.
-Headbands/Belts I don't remember my setup for and don't have my notes handy, but it was a choice allocation of +2 enhancement every X levels, to a maximum of +6 in any one stat. It was designed to cap out at +12 total though, I believe.

kestral287 wrote:

Based on the theory that the huge majority of consumers are between levels 1 and 5, I set up the prices to be midway between a +1 and a +2 item. Thus the going price of a Scalar Magic Sword is 5,000 gp plus masterwork weapon cost. For Headbands/Belts, it's midway between a +2 and +4 item, so 10,000 gold.

They'll be fixed at that price. I expect the party to get kitted up at the low levels and then be settled on these items. Wealth control kicks in because a shopkeeper will only buy for those same price ranges.