I've been considering my next campaign, which I've decided will not be an AP but instead a game set in my homebrew world.
Two things I don't care for in modern PF2e are Medicine and Crafting. Specifically, I don't care for how easy it is to heal up without a cleric and (far more importantly) how easy it is to craft magic items. In the old days, getting a +1 sword was a big deal. Getting a +3 flametongue was amazing. These days, it feels like it's just "$19.99 at Sears". No big deal. No questing involved. I have two PCs in my current home game who each hand out 16-17 healing potions per day.
I mean, Frodo doesn't craft the Phial of Galadriel and Merry doesn't craft the sword that he stabs the Witch King with. Sure, there are plenty of modern fantasy tales (and some classic ones - The Dying Earth, for instance)(but even there the wizards had to go to the heart of a dead sun for their ioun stones...) where crafting is common. But why must we assume that crafting is common in all PF2e games? What if I want that gift from the elves to feel special and not like "do we have someone who wants to use this?"
So, my question is: If I simply rule out the various versions of Treat Wound and limit crafting to consumables, how badly does that shift game balance? Sure, we go back to the 10-minute adventuring day, but maybe that's worth the thrill of finding a legendary suit of armor you couldn't craft for yourself.
| 6 people marked this as a favorite. |
Crafting is too easy?
This is a first I've seen. It takes 4 days plus the cost of the item and given how the game is balanced with the expectation of getting important magical equipment/runes at specific levels, and casters are balanced around magical consumables and items. You are kneecapping everyone
Plus there are creatures just straight up immune to damage unless it's magical. Some at low level.
But imo, it would be terrible. Game breaking bad, and unfun.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Crafting basically can be forgotten. Especially in earliest levels. The main advantage of crafting is give access to highest item levels (via Inventor and Craft Anything feats) when the party don't have access via any accessible settlement. But regardless, they need a lot of downtime for craft to be used. So it's something that only makes a difference if you have downtime. If not only will make a difference when repairing the shields.
But ban Treat Wound will depend from party classes abilities. For parties with healers like clerics, oracles, druids, alchemists and even focus' healers like champions this won't do a great difference. But for party without any healers the players will need to pay attention in having a stock of healing items like potions and elixir because PF2 encounters usually are balanced to be used against full-health party and can easily become a TPK if the players test their luck too much.
Anyway, the use of Treat Wound is just one of many forms of healing that PF2 provides. Players can get around this from several other way to the point of hardly this will make some very significant difference if players have been prepared for it.
| 6 people marked this as a favorite. |
@Martialmasters: I don't think Tarondor is wanting to remove magic items - just the ability of the player characters from crafting them. They have to be gotten from finding, buying, or questing for them.
I would agree with YuriP. Crafting is definitely not necessary in PF2. Most people think that it is actually a sub-par option to buying the items and should only be done for character flavor, or in a campaign setting designed around wilderness and low-settlement survival.
The bigger problem is the removal of Medicine Treat Wounds.
I am assuming that you are also removing focus spell healing - otherwise the players will just gravitate to that instead in order to heal up to full after every fight.
But if the only options for healing are spell slots, consumables, or nightly rest...
Yeah, that isn't going to be very well balanced or very much fun. Wands of Heal don't have charges like the Wand of Cure Light Wounds does.
What you are going to end up with is a really gritty campaign full of player character deaths. Encounters creation rules and guidelines are designed with the idea that the PCs are at full or nearly full HP. They might be out of spell slots (and spellcasters are relying on cantrips or focus spells). They may be low or out of consumables. But they have plenty of HP.
If that assumption of all the PCs having full HP is not accurate, then the encounter design is also going to be not accurate. You could correct for that by adjusting the encounter on the fly to account for how much HP the PCs currently have - but that sounds like a lot of work to do in a short amount of time while the players are staring at you while you reference creature building rules, do a bunch of math, and write things down frantically. But the other option is TPK, so...
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Then it's still not special to get a magical item since the system assumes you will start getting them by level 2/3. And if he was the DM withholds them from his players he's going to be putting everyone in for a bad time.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
I have two PCs in my current home game who each hand out 16-17 healing potions per day.
I'm wondering if you are trying to fix the problem that you don't have instead of fixing the problem that you do have.
Your proposed changes would do nothing to prevent crafting or handing out healing potions. You are allowing crafting of consumables. You are instead preventing crafting of permanent items and using Treat Wounds instead of healing potions.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
If you want to get rid of the Magical Walmart issue, then just go with automatic bonus progression. This lets your PCs keep up with the expected math for the game, but still allows you to hand out a flaming sword as a cool item.
An alternative to feeling like your PCs are running around bandaged like mummies or carrying a case of healing potions is using stamina alternative rules. The shifts about 1/2 the PC's hp into stamina which they can recover after a short rest.
Links below.
Automatic Bonus Progression
It also sounds like you might be looking for a harder, grittier feel for your group. You might want to try Proficiency without level as well.
If you want to get rid of the Magical Walmart issue, then just go with automatic bonus progression. This lets your PCs keep up with the expected math for the game, but still allows you to hand out a flaming sword as a cool item.
An alternative to feeling like your PCs are running around bandaged like mummies or carrying a case of healing potions is using stamina alternative rules. The shifts about 1/2 the PC's hp into stamina which they can recover after a short rest.
Links below.
Automatic Bonus ProgressionIt also sounds like you might be looking for a harder, grittier feel for your group. You might want to try Proficiency without level as well.
Came into suggest stamina and ABP. Your characters can still bounce back between fights, but it doesn't involve as much Medicine and you'll likely have an easier time justifying it narratively. It also puts a cap on fights per day for martials, which is interesting.
Came into suggest stamina and ABP. Your characters can still bounce back between fights, but it doesn't involve as much Medicine and you'll likely have an easier time justifying it narratively. It also puts a cap on fights per day for martials, which is interesting.If you want to get rid of the Magical Walmart issue, then just go with automatic bonus progression. This lets your PCs keep up with the expected math for the game, but still allows you to hand out a flaming sword as a cool item.
An alternative to feeling like your PCs are running around bandaged like mummies or carrying a case of healing potions is using stamina alternative rules. The shifts about 1/2 the PC's hp into stamina which they can recover after a short rest.
Links below.
Automatic Bonus ProgressionIt also sounds like you might be looking for a harder, grittier feel for your group. You might want to try Proficiency without level as well.
Was writing a post but came back to check status of things, and this one seems like a good start.
Well first... Crafting magic generally requires getting a formula which is almost entirely at the mercy/decision of the GM. They can only craft what you let them.
If you make all magic item formulas uncommon, the primary other way of leveraging it in a manner that you seem to consider bad, would be putting some sort of limitation on reverse engineering magic items.
But I agree with Martialmasters that Crafting isn't the issue, it is the expectation of it being a baseline requirement and thus something that if not found, is expected to be found at some shop for purchase to meet the progressed expectation.
How to you get away from that... one way is the ABP (Automatic Bonus Progression) But by default doing that, they simply remove any items that get bonuses, cutting back the value of wealth you are supposed to hand out and reducing the variety of items you can hand out. (and more importantly completely eliminating the ability to jump ahead of the curve for a particular category for a limited time) So I'd implement it with some variations, rather than as written.
As to the limitation on Medicine, I was going to suggest moving to a Stamina like situation as well. Split their HP in half with part HP and part Stamina. Limit any abilities that don't consume a daily resource to either only healing stamina (or limit its application to HP only allowed once per day). I think you should allow things that heal HP to heal stamina if you really want to burn them on it. Since healing HP expects using a physical or daily resource, using it to restore stamina that is easier ways of healing, it is a significant cost, so if they want to effectively waste the higher resource for a quick heal of stamina, so be it.
That limits the bounce-back abilities and yo-you like situation which seem harder to swallow with mundane healing that with magical healing. But doesn't eliminate the ability to get back to a basically functional state in between encounters... even if it isn't' full. That actually allows you to have a little more variety in the expected starting state in subsequent encounters, where people may well not be at full, but you can likely expect they will be at least half in most circumstances. It reduces the danger of the day having to end after an encounter or two. You still have to be a bit careful about encounter designs so that later encounters don't assume you are at 100%, but it isn't as big a swing situation as if healing is completely curtailed.
Otherwise you as mentioned by people, you create very short adventuring days where you can only handle fewer encounters per day, and you have to insure the later encounters are always weaker and weaker opponents, which doesn't match most story designs.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I've been considering my next campaign, which I've decided will not be an AP but instead a game set in my homebrew world.
Two things I don't care for in modern PF2e are Medicine and Crafting. Specifically, I don't care for how easy it is to heal up without a cleric and (far more importantly) how easy it is to craft magic items. In the old days, getting a +1 sword was a big deal. Getting a +3 flametongue was amazing. These days, it feels like it's just "$19.99 at Sears". No big deal. No questing involved. I have two PCs in my current home game who each hand out 16-17 healing potions per day.
I mean, Frodo doesn't craft the Phial of Galadriel and Merry doesn't craft the sword that he stabs the Witch King with. Sure, there are plenty of modern fantasy tales (and some classic ones - The Dying Earth, for instance)(but even there the wizards had to go to the heart of a dead sun for their ioun stones...) where crafting is common. But why must we assume that crafting is common in all PF2e games? What if I want that gift from the elves to feel special and not like "do we have someone who wants to use this?"
So, my question is: If I simply rule out the various versions of Treat Wound and limit crafting to consumables, how badly does that shift game balance? Sure, we go back to the 10-minute adventuring day, but maybe that's worth the thrill of finding a legendary suit of armor you couldn't craft for yourself.
Crafting is pretty terrible except for RP purposes or because you literally can't find the item you want. In pretty much all cases it's more effective to perform the earn an income activity with your downtime and then purchase the item, you make more money than the crafting "creates" by crafting.
Unless you just want to super controlling about what players have access to, this isn't necessary. And if you do...well it comes across as being a jerk. PF2 already has rules about limiting access to items of your level. Which can go up to level + 2 in big cities like Absalom, and stated settlements usually have statements about having items up to certain levels. Controlling beyond this, and beyond the restricted access to uncommon and rare items really makes any further control unnecessary.
As far getting rid of medicine and treat wounds....you're completely changing the game at that point. Monsters hit hard and often. Your party will probably see at least one party member lose half of their hit points, possibly more. And magical sources of healing cannot keep up with the demand if you want to have more than like 2 fights a day. Players are absolutely intended to start fights at 90%+ health, and if you run fights where they aren't you need to make adjustments for stringing the encounters together. If you really hate that healing isn't now only relegated to clerics, I guess this could be a "fun" way to turn them back into a band-aid, but the rules were written to specifically avoid that kind of thing or to require having a specific class be necessary. Anyone with the medicine skill and willing to spend the skill feats can be a competent enough healer that if the party survives combat they can get people back on their feat within a reasonable amount of time to keep adventuring.
Or you go back the 15 minute adventuring day. Although casters might love that since they can blow all 4 of their top level spells in the one encounter they have, they might feel a lot more effective then they do when they have to ration their spells.
All in all, I think this a terrible idea.
Now, if you implement the Stamina system treat wounds and medicine are a lot less critical, but I suspect that you wont like that direction either as that makes healing between fights "even easier".
And Automatic Bonus Progression in lieu of crafting as others have suggested...well I still don't see crafting as an issue. But ABP means more of the power of PCs is in the character, and gear is not as necessary. Which I'm generally a fan of.
If you want loot to be cool and interesting, just make sure to drop things two or three levels above what players could normally purchase or find and you'll players will be pleased. But remember, the world of Golarion is just inherently much more magical than Middle Earth that you're comparing it to.
Middle Earth is a setting in which characters are capped at like level 6, and there's like 5 wizards in the entire world. If that's the kind of fantasy you want, Pathfinder isn't the best starting place for that.
@Martialmasters: I don't think Tarondor is wanting to remove magic items - just the ability of the player characters from crafting them. They have to be gotten from finding, buying, or questing for them.
I would agree with YuriP. Crafting is definitely not necessary in PF2. Most people think that it is actually a sub-par option to buying the items and should only be done for character flavor, or in a campaign setting designed around wilderness and low-settlement survival.
The bigger problem is the removal of Medicine Treat Wounds.
I am assuming that you are also removing focus spell healing - otherwise the players will just gravitate to that instead in order to heal up to full after every fight.
But if the only options for healing are spell slots, consumables, or nightly rest...
Yeah, that isn't going to be very well balanced or very much fun. Wands of Heal don't have charges like the Wand of Cure Light Wounds does.
What you are going to end up with is a really gritty campaign full of player character deaths. Encounters creation rules and guidelines are designed with the idea that the PCs are at full or nearly full HP. They might be out of spell slots (and spellcasters are relying on cantrips or focus spells). They may be low or out of consumables. But they have plenty of HP.
If that assumption of all the PCs having full HP is not accurate, then the encounter design is also going to be not accurate. You could correct for that by adjusting the encounter on the fly to account for how much HP the PCs currently have - but that sounds like a lot of work to do in a short amount of time while the players are staring at you while you reference creature building rules, do a bunch of math, and write things down frantically. But the other option is TPK, so...
This also may force your players to fallback and rest many more times (the casters will like this). This is a thing I already saw many times in older systems. In middle of a DG, the casters becomes without enough spellslots because they used too many of them to heal and the entire party just retreat to a safer zone to rest then go back to continue.
I have two PCs in my current home game who each hand out 16-17 healing potions per day.I'm wondering if you are trying to fix the problem that you don't have instead of fixing the problem that you do have.
Your proposed changes would do nothing to prevent crafting or handing out healing potions. You are allowing crafting of consumables. You are instead preventing crafting of permanent items and using Treat Wounds instead of healing potions.
The problem of accumulation of potions isn't happen because of the between encounters healing but usually due the existence of an efficient healer in combat. Many APs give a good amount of healing potions to allow the players to play without need a healer (they also need to use more tactical effectiveness to help to save some potions but many players already know how to play tactically well). But if you have a good healer and your players avoid to take reckless actions it's normal that they end with many potions to sell.
If you want to get rid of the Magical Walmart issue, then just go with automatic bonus progression. This lets your PCs keep up with the expected math for the game, but still allows you to hand out a flaming sword as a cool item.
...
Automatic Bonus Progression
I also think that Automatic Bonus Progression is a better option to those don't like how players have to deal with must have items in PF2 and want to make magic itens a more rare thing but you may end in a situation where there's little to do with the large amount of money a player can win in an adventure (but there are exception like war games and other kind of games where your players aren't adventuring for gold).
That's all good feedback for baseline games, so I have to ask, are you planning a baseline game? Because as noted, PF2 minus those things will either lead to workarounds or disappointment. So you'll have to make adjustments elsewhere, but which adjustments will those be? Most importantly, which adjustments will your table embrace, merely accept, or downright abhor?
And note that PF2 levels fast, meaning items need to keep upgrading, and that too will devalue the gift from the elves, even if several levels higher since they might pass that in a few weeks!
ABP & Stamina variants do seem like solutions, but check in with your table and make sure there are problems that needs some. Checking in with us online, while good at catching major faults (which there are!), still takes a backseat to your players' POVs.
P.S. I've given and received gifts in play that due to their narrative ties meant far more than their stats. But that didn't come from deprivation. One great thing about PF2 is that one can upgrade those sentimental items quite easily. Yet it's the story that makes them special, not so much the rarity.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Crafting isn't really worth much unless you have a generous and cooperative GM, and since you aren't there's not much to say. Has almost no effect on the game.
Medicine is more significant, but still not mandatory per se. What's true is that PF wants you to have some form of out of combat healing (and hopefully some ability to burst heal in combat too).
Banning medicine will primarily just reduce the number of character concepts that are allowed to help cover that need.
Crafting is too easy?
This is a first I've seen. It takes 4 days plus the cost of the item and given how the game is balanced with the expectation of getting important magical equipment/runes at specific levels, and casters are balanced around magical consumables and items. You are kneecapping everyone
Plus there are creatures just straight up immune to damage unless it's magical. Some at low level.
But imo, it would be terrible. Game breaking bad, and unfun.
You may be misunderstanding me. I don't want to prevent people from having great stuff (I mean, from 1974 to 2000, crafting wasn't a thing in D&D anyway). I want them to have to find it. Quest for it. Not make it.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Medicine got buffed specifically so that not every party needs to have a Cleric in it so I guess you just want a game where every party needs a cleric? Not the way I'd want to play but fair enough I guess.
As for magic items, if you want magic items to be special rare drops then crafting isn't the bugbear here, it's fundamental runes. If you run this without ABP then you'll need your characters to conveniently find their +1's at the levels they're listed at or else they are simply going to die. If you use ABP then you can limit magic items to whatever ultra cool thematic things you want in your game without worrying about people falling behind if they don't get them regularly.
Anyway, thanks for the responses. I'll keep working on the idea.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
You may be misunderstanding me. I don't want to prevent people from having great stuff (I mean, from 1974 to 2000, crafting wasn't a thing in D&D anyway). I want them to have to find it. Quest for it. Not make it.Crafting is too easy?
This is a first I've seen. It takes 4 days plus the cost of the item and given how the game is balanced with the expectation of getting important magical equipment/runes at specific levels, and casters are balanced around magical consumables and items. You are kneecapping everyone
Plus there are creatures just straight up immune to damage unless it's magical. Some at low level.
But imo, it would be terrible. Game breaking bad, and unfun.
So no need to worry about crafting unless your adventure has some months of downtime they are unable to craft at all.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
The one thing a crafter is handy for is being able to move runes between weapons.
So I came back to this after thinking on what other people had posted after my post, and wanted to add some more.
Pathfinder as a mechanical system, isn't set up to be a low magic system. It simply isn't. It is inherently a pretty magical place, including magical items. Characters are expected to regularly find and also purchase magic items. And it is expected that if you're in a major city (think Absalom) you're basically only limited by your wealth and level in terms of what you can potentially access. Level is really an arbitrary restriction set by the devs so a GM didn't need to justify why a 10th level player couldn't spend their wealth on purchasing a +2 greater striking weapon. For whatever narrative reasons you want to create, a greater striking rune is a 12th level item, and a 10th level character can't normally access it (although as mentioned in a previous post major cities like Absalom raise the restriction from character level to level +2 for item purchases).
Anyway, that is the baseline expectation of the mechanics of the system. If you want to get away form that, understand it will have major consequences to the power of characters, especially martial characters which are very heavily gear dependent.
ABP can help mitigate this to an extent. PCs no longer need to worry about fundamental weapon and armor runes. They no longer need to worry about items to enhance their skills for numerical values (although many items also have other, MORE important effects besides the math fixer, at least IMO).
However, what remains are a lot of options to help enhance the playability of a character. For example, heavy armor characters will almost certainly be picking up items to enhance their speed. The speed penalty can be annoying and devastating.
Many other items can really impact the overall style of play a character can manage.
Understand, that even with ABP denying players access to magical items of their level or less will reduce their options and power and you will need to alter challenges down to compensate.
Monsters are far more threatening in this system than most. Unless you are planning the “5 minute adventuring day” the players are going to require time to patch their wounds between encounters. Medicine and Treat Wounds are essentially taxes to play unless the party has and is willing to focus on an abundant amount of healing magics and consumables.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
Even healing magic in the form of spells just can't really keep up.
Or someone is just going to be playing "band aid" the class. And still run out of heals after 2 combats more than likely.
Consumables can bridge the gap, but I feel like OP wouldn't like handing out 4 on level potions with every combat either to make sure the party was topped off.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Even healing magic in the form of spells just can't really keep up.
True. Just a cleric with Healing Font and only Heal as a prepared spell will run out quickly. The party would likely need a secondary magical healer like someone with Lay on Hands for reusability or a Chirurgeon to keep passing out elixirs of life.
This is more or less what I was thinking when I said “abundance of healing magics and consumables”.
You're right if you have a cleric the devotes themselves to heal, prepares only healing spells, and you have a champion (with LoH) or a Chirurgeon alchemist then you might be able to meet everyone's healing needs without having to rest for 2+ hours after a fights but dictating that every party needs a dedicated healer class and off-healing class was the exact problem that the medicine skill was intended to get rid of.
The one thing a crafter is handy for is being able to move runes between weapons.
They are good to repair shields too.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
If you’re removing the ability to create magic items you might need to increase the frequency they appear through other methods but otherwise I think that’s probably fine.
Removing access to healing except through slots massively alters the balance of encounter formula, you’d have to make combat easier, or less frequent to compensate, or expect your players to die a lot.
Also expecting clerics to spend every spell slot healing is a boring and unreasonable expectation to lay on one player unless that’s exactly how they want to play.
D&D is nothing like Middle earth, comparing them seems at best misguided, at worst disingenuous.
How many D&D adventuring parties set off with one solar disguised as a wizard, 4 commoners, 3 fighters and a ranger in a world where you can count the number of significant magic users on your fingers. Lol
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
A lot of people suggesting ABP but I think the better option is to ...
just rebuild the entire game engine from scratch. Rework enemy stats. Rework magic. Rework healing and recovery.
Definitely a much simpler change.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Like others said, removing Crafting isn't a huge deal as long as you either provide the standard magical upgrades at the appropriate levels or use Automatic Bonus Progression so they don't fall behind on math.
Removing Medicine/Treat Wounds is a huge balance shift that I would say negatively impacts the game. Mandating every party have a Cleric is not fun, nor is requiring the party to spend a small fortune on enough healing potions to keep up. Otherwise, the party will have to quit the day after nearly every combat - which becomes fairly ridiculous narratively.
Also, one think to keep in mind is that Treat Wounds by default takes 10 minutes and makes the target immune for an hour. As long as you keep track of time - this actually makes a difference as many parties will find themselves having to adjust to environmental concerns like running out of daylight while adventuring if they rely on it too much. So while it is easy to Treat Wounds, it does come with an appropriate cost (especially if the rest of the world isn't going to conveniently wait for the party to spend 2-3 hours on a few rounds of Treat Wounds).
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Also, one think to keep in mind is that Treat Wounds by default takes 10 minutes and makes the target immune for an hour. As long as you keep track of time - this actually makes a difference as many parties will find themselves having to adjust to environmental concerns like running out of daylight while adventuring if they rely on it too much. So while it is easy to Treat Wounds, it does come with an appropriate cost (especially if the rest of the world isn't going to conveniently wait for the party to spend 2-3 hours on a few rounds of Treat Wounds).
You're not wrong, but by level 4 the party probably has their medicine user with ward medic and continual recovery. So treat wounds immunity only lasts 10 minutes and you can treat multiple people. At 7th level you can probably treat everyone in your party simultaneously assuming you raise medicine to master.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
A lot of people suggesting ABP but I think the better option is to ...
just rebuild the entire game engine from scratch. Rework enemy stats. Rework magic. Rework healing and recovery.
Definitely a much simpler change.
Adjusting the math has been claimed to be the easiest thing when ever someone wants to make the game work differently.
Want to blame someone, blame them.
Heck some of the major variants are proficiency without level, proficiency with half level, and applying the weak template to enemies.
Who is making that claim? I've never seen it. Most people seem to prefer things like free archetype which adds feats but doesn't change the math. And the weak template is not comparable to what you're selling, especially when there are numerous tools which apply it automatically. (Nethys, Easytool, and foundry.)
The most common way people talk about making the game easier (which is what you seem to be trying to do) is by putting characters a level ahead of the curve, which doesn't involve recalculating anything.
The most common recommendation I've seen for an "adjusting the math" type solution was actually to increase the level of the players relative to the expectation (for a pre-written adventure). Which actually isn't any increased difficulty relative to the playing experience since you would level up and go through the same process, but relative to the enemy you are stronger in a meaningful way and can achieve the end goal.
Proficiency without level or half level also aren't terribly difficult, simply adjusting how much you add. Applying the weak template is more something I'd do as a GM if I really wanted to use a certain monster, but it'd normally be strong for the party. Not a general solution to apply to every creature the party fights.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Making the monsters weaker is mechanically the same as increaing player level.
Yes, but it puts a lot more onus on the GM to correctly alter the stats, and they must do so for every monster of every encounter. Whereas it's much easier to tell players to run 1 or 2 levels ahead and they will gleefully recalculate their character sheets.
For healing you could have the healers kit have a number of uses before it needs to be replaced or everytime they use it they have to make a flat check to see if it runs out, or maybe even have it run out if they critically fail the medicine check.
Making the monsters weaker is mechanically the same as increaing player level. The biggest difference being that it allows a strong level 1 instead of jumping straight into level 2 or level 3. That is what I was talking about in that response.
Besides my original recommendation was about making items more important by removing from the math requirement. As opposed to just giving the item automatically. It seemed like what OP wanted more than ABP.
I don't agree because this can makes many unexpected side-effects.
For example, removal of item bonus from monsters hit/DCs may help blasters to become stronger but at same time does the same to debuffers that's already pretty strong. So in a high level campaign you may end with casters being way more effective than many martials because they are legendary and instead of having -1 when compared to a fully equipped martial, they know are +2 vs them. You're just making the balance worse by trending the other way now.
Maybe other unexpected effect may happen this is just one example. ABP is just easier and safest to do.