Up until now I've used what I called an "Evolving Magic Items" houserule, which basically auto-upgrades magic items. If your wish-list, which I have players fill out as part of their character creation process, has a +5 Fortification Greater Shadow Mithral Chainmail, I throw in a +1 mithral chainmail at some point, and when they gain certain levels, the bonus increases, or a property is added on.
Typically, this means far fewer treasure troves of magic items in the world, and a consistent happiness for the players who look forward to going up a level (usually a level in which the class doesn't have the most impressive upgrade going on) to achieve a new power.
However, I've noticed that +5 <insert armour) +5 <insert weapon>, +5 Cloak of Resistance, and +6/+6 Stat boost (I limit to 2 stats in my games) are always on everyone's lists... as they should be.
So, what do you think of a new houserule in which there are no enhancement modifiers at all? So no Cloak of Resistance, and the only reason for a magic armour/weapon is for the purpose of special abilities.
What else needs modifying to make this balanced? Ie: Paladin Weapon needs mod'd to only allow for special abilities on their summoned blade.
Also, rather than grant stat boost items, I'm thinking +1 Stat per level instead of per 4 levels. Stat boosts seem pretty important to players, and while I'm ok with just removing stat boost items entirely, save for size-mods, etc... I don't think it'd be unbalancing to have stat increases per-level.
The overall result is hopefully a lesser dependence on magic items, and a much wider variety amongst what are otherwise very varying characters.
Can anyone see any problems with these ideas?
Look at pathfinder unchained innate item bonuses
Yes, that I've seen, but that still keeps the bonuses, plus makes the value calculations more complicated. I don't think there's any need at all for AC/Weapon/Save bonuses, and leaving only Stats, I feel that the cost-free, per-level boost is not only simpler, but fairer. It's a total of +15 to stats now, which is just over a +6/+6
This would be a terrible idea. Pathfinder is built around the assumption that the party will have a certain +X to Y at level Z. If they don't, it radically changes their ability to handle the challenges the game expects that they'll be facing. Replicating a Cloak Cloak of Resistance +5 alone would require +10 to dex con and wis.
Automatic bonuses from Unchained makes all those boring +X enhancement bonuses a function of character level, leaving plenty of room for the fun, interesting magic items on wishlists.
While I appreciate the opinion that it is a terrible idea, is this something you can actually support with facts? I don't actually agree with this assessment since in many games I've played in, not 100% of the party had such a Cloak, as a matter of fact I've noticed in many games a general "house rule", whether intentional or not, is that no more than 2 of an item. In my experience GMs don't go handing out Cloaks of Resistance the way I have done.
I understand that a lower save bonus increases the likelihood of negative effects, I'm just not sure thats a bad thing. Player characters are suppose to fail sometimes, and a lot of classes have multiple "good" saves, not to mention 2 levels of Paladin is common for any Charisma based class for the save bonus.
So, what makes it "Terrible" other than it just being different?
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Well, to begin with wealth by level , which indicates how much gear a player should have at any given level coupled with the magic item purchasing rules that make keeping up to date with magic items fairly easy for the first half of the game and Paizo removing the experience cost and reducing the difficulty of crafting explicitly to encourage people to craft items. There's also the way that suggested monster DC, AC and attack scale faster than class basis (even good saves) and ability bonus alone keep up with.
Yes, players are supposed to fail at times. But those failures, especially at higher level, can be catastrophic if multiple people start failing at once. Good saves, are not by themselves good enough, and "you can dip Paladin" is not a solution. That assumes the character is LG, will remain LG, has a decent Cha score and that it makes thematic sense for that character to become a Paladin. One person being dominated is bad, but survivable. Then entire front line getting dominated is asking for a TPK.
Let's take a step further, however, and address the specific rather than the general. In the proposal you outlined above, 1 stat every level, the player in question gets a total of 20 stat points. Compared to your current set up (1 stat point per 4 levels, two +6/+6 items) they come out ahead by a single stat point. In exchange for all their enhancement, deflection and normal stat boost items. This is a pretty poor deal from their end.
Now, I'm not saying you can't make this system work, or that you couldn't have fun with it, but you're going to have to reevaluate every encounter against your party's ability to handle it. And given that CR is already more of a ballpark estimate than an exact science, you're making a lot of extra work for yourself, for little gain.
If the magic items themselves are what you want to eliminate, again Unchained has a perfectly functional system that does just that, without impacting the characters' effectiveness.
Alternatively, there are other, excellent systems out there which do not have magic items as a base assumption when determining challenge.
I'm not trying to say you're doing it wrong, or having badwrongfun. I'm trying to say that you're doing it in a way that's going to create a lot of extra, unnecessary work for yourself.
To spring board off of Yyrkoon, you could make it so that every enhancement bonus for armor and weapons also counts towards a special ability to encourage the abilities over pure stats. It would still leave a +5 raw enhancement bonus cap but a +10 weapon is now +5 enhancement and +10 special abilities. For wondrous items and rings, allow them to add the effects of items like Amulet of Nat Armor, Ring of Prot, Cloak of Res, belt of Physical Perfection, etc. to another wondrous item/ring at half the cost of the stat booster (e.g. vambraces of the djinni + cloak of res +1 costs 18,900+500=19,400gp).