So as part of my series of projects in revising the Pathfinder core rules, I figured I'd take a crack at magic items. You can find the magic items here under 18. Magic Items.
So far I've got magic armor and wondrous items as I wanted to demonstrate a few different things.
Magic Armor/Shields work slightly differently than normally. Instead of having to choose between a special property or an enhancement bonus to your AC, my revised system gives you both. If you activate the special ability (normally a standard action instead) the enhancement bonus is suppressed and you get the benefit of the special property instead.
This system works exactly the same for weapons, cloaks, rings and amulets. So you can walk around with the standard cloak of resistance. And then if you suddenly need a cloak of the manta ray you can spend a standard action and lower your saving throw bonus to gain the cloak of the manta ray (cloak of the manta ray would be a +3 bonus which would require a +4 cloak of resistance). Just as there are unique armors there will also be unique rings. But as much as possible it will be compatible with the Big 5 being incorporated into the item.
The ability score enhancing belts have been tweaked. Instead of granting an enhancement bonus to an ability score they instead give an enhancement bonus to anything you add your ability modifier to. This is a slight nerf to two-handed weapon users, but I don't think it's significant enough to be too worried about. And the reason for this tweak is because of how headbands work.
Headbands work the same way as the belts. What this means is that Headbands of Vast Intelligence don't grant extra skill points (thus decreasing the amount of skill points a wizard gets), they also give a single bonus spell slot. The reason for this is to limit the amount that the DC of a spell can be pumped up. To compensate for this I give spellcasters a +2 to their spell DCs at 6th level, 11th level and 16th level. It keeps the math largely the same, but I do plan to also offer spellcasters alternatives to increasing the DC of all their spells as well.
Finally there is the medallion of magical might. This grants 1 extra spell slot per spell level. If you think spellcasters get enough spells as it is, you could easily decrease the number of spells they get by 1 at each spell level. The point of this magic item is to be a money sink for spellcasters. Fighters need a magic sword and magic armor to be effective. The medallion of magical might gives spellcasters an item that is equally important to them.
An interesting idea, but the stat boost items do seem to be doing much the same thing in a different way, which might be confusing.
the stat boost items do seem to be doing much the same thing in a different way, which might be confusing.
There's a few things they don't do: They don't increase your number of skill ranks for Intelligence. This is a problem I've found in my games where wizards start off trying not to infringe on other people's preferred knowledge skills but end up being with so many skill points they really have to end up doing exactly that. It also doesn't increase the DCs for their spells. This is important because the +2 to spell DCs I've mentioned spellcasters getting is an optional choice for casters. A wizard could choose to forego the +2 to their spell DCs and instead choose an improved familiar. A druid could choose +2 to DCs, or they could choose to enhance either their own fighting capability or the fighting capability of their animal companion. Finally if you attack someone with a stat draining attack the difference between their best stat and their worst stat will be decreased by 2-6 points.
And while this post is specifically calling out wizards, it applies to any spellcaster. It's just in my experience wizards specifically cause the most problems out of all the spellcasters when it comes to a high spellcasting modifier.
I prefer just removing the minimum +1 enhancement bonus, and allowing up to +10 worth of special abilities. I'm in the "Have magic bonuses to weapons, armor, and miscellaneous stat boosts inherent to characters and monsters" camp. Rather than get in a flame war here, I shall just hide the topic. Don't PM me.
"Why yes, I am posting just to say that I don't care for what you've written."
I'm in the "Have magic bonuses to weapons, armor, and miscellaneous stat boosts inherent to characters and monsters" camp. Rather than get in a flame war here, I shall just hide the topic. Don't PM me.
I'm... quite perplexed. Guess you get the last word?
(If anyone's interested I'm putting my ongoing work on revising magic items and other rules in this thread).