|
I first to start off by saying that I love how the game currently works, for the most part, but the two things that are really problematic for me are the influence of magic items over characters and the inflated stats of monsters. I think these issues go hand-in-hand, but this is probably due to a personal philosophy about how these two things work. For me, magic items (specifically weapons and armor) should be there to push against higher level enemies. As such, I will be making the following changes to my game:
1. Instead of magic weapons increasing damage, the increased damage will come from the characters themselves (as many have proposed before) with martial characters increasing a die of damage at 4, 8, 12, 16, and 20. Spellcasters would increase damage at 6, 12, and 18 with multiclassing into an archetype giving another die bump at 4 and a possible feat for the final die at 20.
2. Potency runes will be gotten rid of, while expert, master, and legendary crafted weapons will increase the damage of the weapon by +1d4, +1d6, and +1d12, respectively, as I think a piddly +1 per quality bump is too little and makes legendary weapons feel legendary without necessarily being magical.
3. Monster stats would either be changed to reflect an appropriate level without magic items (or the same with appropriate ones), or they would just have a changed CR to match their current stats.
These changes are because I hate the idea of requiring magical items against equal leveled creatures who do not have any magic themselves, and I like to think of characters as the powerful ones, not their items.
martial characters increasing a die of damage at 4, 8, 12, 16, and 20. Spellcasters would increase damage at 6, 12, and 18 with multiclassing into an archetype giving another die bump at 4 and a possible feat for the final die at 20.
A spellcaster multiclasser gets a second extra damage dice at level 6 while a pure martial has to wait until level 8?
I agree that PCs should be able to get die increases without 'having' to use magic items, but I disagree with the idea that Magic shouldn't' be able to help someone be 'better' at things.
Looking through the bestiary, looking at creatures that used weapons, I was able to find that although not 100% accurate, it appeared that as a general rule, it looked like creatures that had a +10 or higher on their attack roll got an extra die of damage with their weapon, despite them having no indication that it was/should be magic. This seemed to extrapolate, as well. A +20 normally yielded +2dX and +30 or higher were normally +3dX with the exception of the +5dX which the description clearly stated they were wielding +5 magic weapons, which really takes them out of the loop for needing to be equivalent so someone without a magic weapon in my opinion.
Magic weapons you would either (simplest) not have their bonus dice for potency not stack with the inherent ones, or you would drop potency runes max to at most +2 and allow them to stack(getting you back up to an available +5 via magic item). You'd then have to spread the +1 and +2 runes out over the 20 levels then probably.
An interesting alternative I just came up with this morning was to have level/bonus needed to get an extra die inherently for a weapon based in part on the die type of the weapon.
If you based the required bonus as something like:
+1 inherent bonus die = 5 + 1/2 die type.
+2 inherent bonus dice = 15 + 1/2 die type.
+3 inherent bonus dice = 25 + 1/2 die type.
or perhaps something like the following if you want to potentially get up to +4 bonuses for small weapons
+1 inherent bonus die= 4 + 1/2 die type.
+2 inherent bonus dice = 12 + 1/2 die type.
+3 inherent bonus dice = 20 + 1/2 die type.
+4 inherent bonus dice = 28 + 1/2 die type.
Meaning if you get to a +7 to hit, you will get an extra die on d4 weapons. [which are typically simpler to use] However, to get the inherent extra die on the enormous greataxe with the d12 it will take getting your bonus up to +11.
Anyway, I don't think that the inherent damage should scale to +5, unless you are playing the exception (one where magic doesn't exist), magic items should be something that can make you do at least some better than if you don't have it. I however agree that not having it shouldn't make you unable to do appreciable damage.
If you disagree that magic should have the ability to be better, then I at least would agree with Matthew Downie, that rather than adding another specific level they get additional bonuses, have it change the progression.
Martial:
4, 8, 12, 16, 20
Caster:
6, 12, 18
Caster with a martial archetype
5, 10, 14, 18
|
|
martial characters increasing a die of damage at 4, 8, 12, 16, and 20. Spellcasters would increase damage at 6, 12, and 18 with multiclassing into an archetype giving another die bump at 4 and a possible feat for the final die at 20.A spellcaster multiclasser gets a second extra damage dice at level 6 while a pure martial has to wait until level 8?
This was completely unintentional for what I really was looking at. It the increase was supposed to occur after, but I overlooked it.
If you disagree that magic should have the ability to be better, then I at least would agree with Matthew Downie, that rather than adding another specific level they get additional bonuses, have it change the progression.
Martial:
4, 8, 12, 16, 20Caster:
6, 12, 18Caster with a martial archetype
5, 10, 14, 18
I think this is far better.