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I'm interested in this system since I've heard it gets rid of the magic item Christmas tree situation by offering ways to make them rarer. Before I buy the book just for thay I figured I'd ask if anyone had personal experience with using it and what they thought of it? Did it work well, badly, generally ok with some issues that need ironing out, other.
There is no alternate magic item system in Occult Adventures. By getting rid of magic items do you mean Automatic Bonus Progression from Pathfinder Unchained? Looking it over, it seems like it really doesn't mesh with classes whose class features grant Deflection bonuses to AC, Resistance bonuses to saves, or Enhancement bonuses to ability scores, nor with classes that don't use weapons. It's meant to eliminate the need to buy the big six, but not everyone gets everything in the big six. It doesn't account for, say, a Paladin who doesn't buy a Ring of Protection because he gets a Deflection Bonus from Smite Evil and has a less expensive Cloak of Resistance because his saves are already phenomenal.
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If you're really curious about it, you can find the information here. It's not a bad system, but it definitely favors certain characters over others. Personally, I'm finding in my current game, playing a witch, that I'd rather just be able to spend money on the big six items.
On the other hand, ABP along with wound thresholds have combined to make this a fairly challenging campaign, even with 4 players who usually create fairly optimized characters. So it does have it's uses, even if I don't find that it actually fixes the problems with magic items in Pathfinder.
I don't have a lot of experience with it, but I have observed that GMs are using it quite a bit in the recruitment thread. Particular builds may lose out a little, but not overwhelmingly so and players can concentrate on weird and wonderful items given them by the GM rather than selling them to get an upgrade to the big 6. It seems quite popular because of that.
Of course, Pathfinder unchained is worth getting for the unchained Rogue, Monk and summoner. I don't know about Barbarian - I'll leave others to comment about that.
You can of course access it for free online from this site, so you can check it out for yourself.
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I don't have a lot of experience with it, but I have observed that GMs are using it quite a bit in the recruitment thread. Particular builds may lose out a little, but not overwhelmingly so and players can concentrate on weird and wonderful items given them by the GM rather than selling them to get an upgrade to the big 6. It seems quite popular because of that.
Of course, Pathfinder unchained is worth getting for the unchained Rogue, Monk and summoner. I don't know about Barbarian - I'll leave others to comment about that.
You can of course access it for free online from this site, so you can check it out for yourself.
It gives more gp value worth of bonuses than the amount of value it's assumed to reduce from expected wealth, but yeah, it intentionally forces you to spread it out rather than concentrate in a few big items. While that is sometimes helpful to avoid some math traps for starting players (for instance, buying a +2 armor, +1 natural armor amulet, +1 deflection ring costs the same as a +2 ring and gives twice as much benefit), it is absolutely not going to give you quite as powerful of benefits as if you handed the money to an advanced player, since it forces you to round out your items when you might not care about weapons, or mental stats, or the like. That said, the intention is just as you say Gavmania: it frees the experienced players from the tyranny of the part of their brain (my brain too, that's why I petitioned for this system to be in Unchained!) that sings a siren song of selling all the cool items to upgrade Big 6 bonus items to a higher level than expected.
Its certainly true that if I ever GMed, I would use this alternative system. I occasionaly look through the lists of magic items, getting nostalgic about those I have used I previous editions of AD&D (when there were no crafting systems or means of getting what you like, when you like), knowing full well that if given one in an adventure I would feel obliged to sell it to upgrade one of my "more necessary" items. Its saying something when every character has to have similar items just to keep up, and something is lost when the party has to sell e.g. an eversmoking bottle to get better Mcguffins. I don't think I would ever create a character around using an evesmoking bottle, but I'm sure I could find a dozen creative uses for one if I had it, and if there is no reason to sell it to get something "necessary", then I'd be inclined to keep it. Stories get told about the creative uses of items handed out randomly as loot, and not having them around means the party has fewer options at its fingertips and diminishes the storyline of the game. Of course, players will still enjoy themselves but why not give them better chances to enjoy themselves?
All in all, I'd say this was one of the better developments. You'll always find someone who will complain that they could do better, or that they lose out or that it doesn't cater for their favourite build, but I'd say its worth it for the opportunities it does give you.
And it makes it easier for newer players. They don't have to learn how to keep up with the big 6, which is a bit of a bookkeeping nightmare for new players, and just get to enjoy whatever they find. Probably the biggest complainers will be those who grew up under the existing system and know nothing else; to them all they can see is that they lose out and no wonder they complain about that; it will take time for them to appreciate what they gain out of it, but I hope they give it a go.
Personally, I hope this becomes adopted as standard, perhaps when they produce Pathfinder version 2.
I use a system where there is no permanent magic items. Instead any noble (PCs and NPCs with adventuring classes) uses a virtual gold and virtual slot system to purchase magic item abilities.
I looked at the automatic bonus progression rules for no magic items to see if I wanted to replace it. It looks like it would work really well for martials and for a low magic campaign. My campaign is much more high magic though, and the bonus progression system really hurts wizards and sorcerers. In general, they don't use weapons, they don't use armor, the bonuses to AC and physical stats aren't that great for them. The resistance bonus is a two edged sword, as most npcs will have higher saves than they normally would. The only thing that is good for them is the mental stat boost.
Wizards especially get the shaft. Much of their gold, especially early on, goes to improving their spell books. With much less gold, they won't be able to have too many spells known, their big advantage over sorcerers.
Now in some campaigns this may be a feature, not a bug, but you need to be aware of it. I ended up deciding to stay with my own system.
Its why it got my interest there's a lot of magical items I'd love to have but I can't because that slot is already taken up with one of the "required" items instead.
One of the many reasons that I love the Occultist is that with the Transmutation and Abjuration Schools you can free up the shoulder slot and belt slot for some of those fun options.
In my experience the automatic bonus progression (with a couple of tweaks for my preferences) works very well indeed. I have no problem with wizards becoming a little more physically competent and a little less magically competent by means of this system.
I've thought about doing something similar to Dilvias's method--simply reflavor static bonuses as extraordinary abilities, reducing found treasure by X and adding X to a pool of bonuses that follow the same rules as magic item progression but don't actually manifest as magic items. With separate amounts like that, I can feel better about awarding interesting items without curtailing the players' ability to decide their character's direction of growth. Some magic items might still exist that give static bonuses, but they wouldn't stack with similar extraordinary bonuses and would be more expensive than usual.
Figuring out X is the immediately-tricky part. There are probably pitfalls to this approach that I don't see yet, but it could be interesting nonetheless.
I have been enjoying the automatic bonus progression in our Mummy's Mask campaign:)
I would imagine using only consumable bonuses would be a balancing nightmare for the GM and players alike.
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I was thinking instead of +1 weapon attunement casters could take +1 on casterlevel checks or +1 DC to spells. But it would be a certain # of times per day, like 3/day. All day would be too powerful (Orange Ioun Stone is 30k , giving that at 4th is a bit much)
I am going to use it next campaign, my players won't even look at items that are not the big 6, calling them 'worthless' even when I carefully pick treasure to be things they could use. They don't even want them. And they spend all their gold on retraining for hp. Making the big 6 disappear might be a way to have players look at other things (unless they just sell and train more hp anyway :) )
Honestly if a character has no need for a magic weapon whatsoever, I guarantee you they dont need a power boost either.
I'm happy with things as they are, but if I were playing a character under the old system I would be looking to stock up on pearls of power/pages of knowledge and scrolls/wands. It might be worth giving players the option of taking the monetary equivalent in those.