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Another important detail to idea of alch items being used more frequently over things like talismans is that of categorization.
Alchemy is easy to filter and sort thanks to the trait system actually being used.
You know elixirs will provide benefits while drunk, bombs are combat throwables, ect. This makes a huge difference with the "feel" of searching the item list, or of finding alch loot.
Players are allergic to the idea of investigating the effects of some item, only to learn that they wasted their own time. The sooner you know what you are looking at, the better the "gameplay feel" of that knowledge side of pf2. More categories, traits, etc, to hint at the effect is like having more agency in the reading process.
Talismans frankly suck balls in that regard. Fulus can be anything, can do anything. You've got to read the entire fulu front to back to understand what it even does, and only then can you judge if it meets your needs/wants.
(and surprise, surprise, 80%+ of the fulu list is trash that is only niche usable while on-level, if even that)
The reason static DCs are such a lightning rod for criticism is because it's one of the few universal clues that players can read at a glance to know that at least part of the item's effect will be worthless in practice.
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That said, there really is one single game mechanic that is the tarrasque in the room.
The fact that all consumables (and static dc perm items) can be mulched for gp and put toward something really beneficial is *terrible* for consumables/items in pf2. I really want to use these neat summon-elemental gems we found, but they were -1 level when we found them, and now they are -2 level.
I *should* mulch them, and could instantly get a useful utility wand for the party, one which doesn't suffer from a static DC.
All items in PF2 are limited use in practice, the question is whether you get enough uses out of it to be worth the price. If you don’t like that paradigm, then a variation of artifacts and Automatic bonus progression with vastly less wealth per level is what you are looking for. This will be easier and better than trying to houserule around static DCs.
And I don’t think the game assumes that players should have to, or even can, be the ones combing through all items old and new to figure out what is the exact equipment to buy at every level. They might need to know what general equipment their character is looking for to keep up with basic game numbers, and then a couple times an adventure they maybe get enough wealth and information about what is coming up to buy specific supplies that will be useful. Otherwise they find treasures and the GM/adventure writer is doing most of the filtering of what equipment to populate in the game world, outside of basic common stuff. As a GM, limiting items to only be at player level will always result in disappointment outside of generic number boosting items.
Static DCs let higher level items be awesome at the point of the story where they should play an oversized role in the adventure narrative.
Sometimes treasure will just be sold, and that is ok. Selling consumables that no one will use isn’t a massive mistake, but it’s not doing the party a ton of favors. Selling everything the party finds and turning it into gold will result in under geared characters eventually, which I think can feel counter intuitive to players used to the idea that it is better to save up wealth than spend it all when you are back in town / between adventures. Gold is almost never the most useful item you can have inside a dungeon, and as you level up, the stuff you find will be worth so much more than what you had before, that equipment that helps you better explore and tackle encounters right away, without creatures running away with loot or killing PCs that have to be brought back with expensive rituals, will long term see your character have better and more useful equipment.
That is a playstyle thing that gets negotiated between players and GMs and can be easily adjusted to satisfy the table with good communication.
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As a player, I'm more than happy to pay the treadmill cost as long as I get to keep doing the thing so I can make doing the thing part of my kit and my story. This also goes for things that don't scale in other ways, like the lifting belt being stuck at +1 athletics - it shouldn't be something that you automatically discard once Sash of Prowess etc. come along because of math and limited slots.
Some people may enjoy the episode/comic-style scenario where you bust out a fun gadget during one adventure and it's never seen ever again, but I think it's more typical for people to want to build their characters up into a routine or theme. We have consumables and prescient planner for one-offs already.
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I feel a lot of the problems all relate back to items as a system being designed in a way that's a bit old-school: unlike feats and spells, items are their own system that are budgeted by gold and Bulk restrictions, rather than feat and spell slots. The intended loop seems to be to pressure players to use consumables whenever they can, lest they become obsolete, at which point the party's expected to sell them in exchange for better items. When it works for some players, it works, but otherwise there are a few problems beyond static DCs:
All of this I think suggests there's value in a simplified item system, if only as a variant. If instead of a whole collection of one-use consumables that become obsolete over time, we instead had a more limited range of items that replenish every day or encounter, and that'd scale to always remain relevant, that could reduce the tracking and paralysis for certain players. Even if this item were a net reduction in power by loss of versatility, it would still be likely to feel better to use for at least some players, because those items would be more consistent and forgiving. It could also give the Alchemist and Inventor more mechanical hooks to build upon: if scaling, replenishing per-day and per-encounter consumables were the default, the Alchemist in particular wouldn't need to invent their own system necessarily, so much as make dramatically better use of what exists in order to gain major benefits in versatility, action economy, potency, and so on.
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I don't think it's as complicated as all that. Wealth is limited. Every random consumable or trash item you pick up that you don't need is money in the bank for more important items (yes, including more useful consumables).
The problem is that "item with static DC ability and nothing else" isn't on anyone's list of important items. If you find one, you maybe, maybe use it once and then scrap it once you hit town. And that's a shame. There are some interesting items out there that get written off immediately because they aren't worth buying, and aren't worth keeping even if found.
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Why is finding a level 4 demon mask (worth 85gp) at level 3 worse treasure than finding an art object worth 42 gold and 5 silver? If you wear it for 2 or 3 levels and use its activation a couple of times while the DC is worth it, then sell it, you got more value out of the mask than a lump sum of treasure. Maybe somebody in the party values intimidation enough that they hold on to the mask well past level 6 or 7 where the DC falls off into irrelevancy, because it is just a +1 at that point. If casting fear regularly was this awesome thing for the character, they’ve had 4 levels to find another source for that ability and it will have only gotten worse than a multi class casting archetype in the last couple of levels.
I think the general issue is players approaching magic items as character defining game elements and that is very much against the design philosophy of PF2. Those kind of items are a part of a class kit like the exemplar. There are mandatory magic items for keeping up with numbers, but those items enable your class abilities (like weapons, shields, armor, etc). They are not character defining by themselves.
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Why is finding a level 4 demon mask (worth 85gp) at level 3 worse treasure than finding an art object worth 42 gold and 5 silver? If you wear it for 2 or 3 levels and use its activation a couple of times while the DC is worth it, then sell it, you got more value out of the mask than a lump sum of treasure. Maybe somebody in the party values intimidation enough that they hold on to the mask well past level 6 or 7 where the DC falls off into irrelevancy, because it is just a +1 at that point. If casting fear regularly was this awesome thing for the character, they’ve had 4 levels to find another source for that ability and it will have only gotten worse than a multi class casting archetype in the last couple of levels.
As you realize, you only hold onto it for the intimidation bonus. Would you hold onto a wand of fear 1 with a static DC or would you sell it for money you can put towards an item that didn't suck. Better yet, would you ever actually buy a wand of fear 1 in the first place, fixed DC or otherwise? I sure as hell wouldn't. This is a great example of an item whose only real value is the math bonus.
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Why is finding a level 4 demon mask (worth 85gp) at level 3 worse treasure than finding an art object worth 42 gold and 5 silver? If you wear it for 2 or 3 levels and use its activation a couple of times while the DC is worth it, then sell it, you got more value out of the mask than a lump sum of treasure. Maybe somebody in the party values intimidation enough that they hold on to the mask well past level 6 or 7 where the DC falls off into irrelevancy, because it is just a +1 at that point. If casting fear regularly was this awesome thing for the character, they’ve had 4 levels to find another source for that ability and it will have only gotten worse than a multi class casting archetype in the last couple of levels.
I think the general issue is players approaching magic items as character defining game elements and that is very much against the design philosophy of PF2. Those kind of items are a part of a class kit like the exemplar. There are mandatory magic items for keeping up with numbers, but those items enable your class abilities (like weapons, shields, armor, etc). They are not character defining by themselves.
Because an art piece worth 42gp 5 silver takes 42gp 5 silver out of my treasure by level, and a demon mask takes 85gp. I would much rather have 42gp 5 silver right now and an additional 42gp 5 silver of cash or useful items down the line than a greater demon mask for the 2 activations I get out of the damn thing before I immediately liquidate it for something actually good back in town, or in the best case scenario where someone wants an intimidation item bonus as soon as I find a different intimidation item bonus.
It's especially bad for niche things. If I get the Toxic Blood graft because I kept getting bit at level 1-8, but I don't encounter anything that it would affect again until level 16, it's going to feel really bad.
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Why is finding a level 4 demon mask (worth 85gp) at level 3 worse treasure than finding an art object worth 42 gold and 5 silver? If you wear it for 2 or 3 levels and use its activation a couple of times while the DC is worth it, then sell it, you got more value out of the mask than a lump sum of treasure. Maybe somebody in the party values intimidation enough that they hold on to the mask well past level 6 or 7 where the DC falls off into irrelevancy, because it is just a +1 at that point. If casting fear regularly was this awesome thing for the character, they’ve had 4 levels to find another source for that ability and it will have only gotten worse than a multi class casting archetype in the last couple of levels.
I think the general issue is players approaching magic items as character defining game elements and that is very much against the design philosophy of PF2. Those kind of items are a part of a class kit like the exemplar. There are mandatory magic items for keeping up with numbers, but those items enable your class abilities (like weapons, shields, armor, etc). They are not character defining by themselves.
They SHOULD be character defining. No fantasy fiction that I consumed revolved around adventurers finding and mulching magical loot after a few uses. Harry Potter CONSTANTLY uses his cloak. Bilbo CONSTANTLY puts on the ring. Percy Jackson is CONSTANTLY using his pen sword. The idea that the magic ring you pryed from the cold dead corpse of the lich 3 levels ago is now defunct feels exceedingly hollow and unsatisfying. None of your items have a story, none of them matter, bc they aren't sticking around with those static DCs. They have the same value as a cheap souvenir.
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That said, there really is one single game mechanic that is the tarrasque in the room.
The fact that all consumables (and static dc perm items) can be mulched for gp and put toward something really beneficial is *terrible* for consumables/items in pf2. I really want to use these neat summon-elemental gems we found, but they were -1 level when we found them, and now they are -2 level.
I *should* mulch them, and could instantly get a useful utility wand for the party, one which doesn't suffer from a static DC.
This is an interesting point. But we actually have some interesting sources to test this;
* PFS has always had a rule of your final gold reward for the adventure being about FINDING the item, doesn't matter if you used it up. If you find a consumable, you might as well use it, you won't have any less money at the end of the adventure if you save the item.
* Starfinder 1 went with a resale value of only 10% of the purchase price for all items.
In both cases, that should have led to more enthusiasm for using found consumables. But that's not what I saw in practice. I think what bites with a lot of consumables is that they're just not that good, compared to other things you could be doing.
You could use that healing potion to heal for 1d8 HP (spoiler: you're gonna roll a 1). But you need an action to draw it and an action to drink it. Oh, and were you using a two-handed weapon? Also an action to juggle that. Oh and it has Manipulate so you might wanna disengage from the enemy too.
I think the things that really get in the way of people using consumables is that:
* Hand economy is a real thing.
* Action cost is important.
* For items with a variable effect, how much am I gonna get at minimum?
Or to put it another way: my priority every round is to cast a spell or make at least one attack. You have to be driving in the direction of victory. I'm okay to forego an attack that already has MAP to use a consumable. But consumables that are so demanding that they eat up all your actions (like an oil that needs two hands to apply to a weapon) need to have totally transformative levels of power to be useful.
This is why talismans like the allow orb are well-designed. They don't mess with the hand economy, don't take too many actions to activate, and you're pretty sure they'll do something when you use them.
Bombs are also well-designed. You'll typically reach for them when fighting an enemy with a weakness that you'll gleefully try doing persistent damage to, or at least you'll have some splash damage. So the minimum effect is still satisfying. Especially splash damage vs. regeneration.
These elemental gems though... overpriced ways to get a so-so summon? I just don't think there will be a combat round where I feel that's the best way to spend my actions.
So even if you can't make money by selling them, I still don't expect to be using them.
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Static DCs let higher level items be awesome at the point of the story where they should play an oversized role in the adventure narrative.
This is a good point. I think PF2 wants to play around by making the level/power curve very much NOT a smooth diagonal line. They intentionally put steep jumps in there. They made sure different classes are getting their steep upgrades at different levels too, so that for a while this class will be really ahead with this, then that class will be ahead with that.
Items play into that too. When your third-level martial finds a Striking greatsword it's a bit of a power trip for a little bit. It's worth switching even if you were, say, a sword and board warrior. Because going from an 1d8 longsword to a 2d12 greatsword for a while is just wonderfully off-balance.
I still wanna do a level 1 zombie horror adventure where at some point you make it to the local temple and there's a bunch of rank 3 Heal and Fireball scrolls in a "break the glass" case, and the casters can just lay waste and see the zombies driven before them.
So, making item DC scale totally smoothly would remove that from the toolbox. There might be more nuanced designs that make it work though.
You could for example have your table of "to increase by X level and raise DC by X, pay Y". However, actual DCs go up by a bit more than 1/1 level. So when you actually hit the next higher tier of the item, you'd have a catch-up moment where it suddenly goes up in DC by 2-3.
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I think the general issue is players approaching magic items as character defining game elements and that is very much against the design philosophy of PF2. Those kind of items are a part of a class kit like the exemplar. There are mandatory magic items for keeping up with numbers, but those items enable your class abilities (like weapons, shields, armor, etc). They are not character defining by themselves.
I'm wondering though. We've been doing this for half a century now. Game designers insisting the players should enjoy these items, and players saying Nope, I don't want it that way.
I feel like there's this ongoing struggle between designers insisting that a particular design is rational and balanced and exists for good reasons, and sure, I can be convinced of the sound reasoning.
Like the demon mask. It's pretty much a design rule that you can't have items that only give a +1 to a skill without doing anything else. And there are some of these items that are well-received, like the mage's hat that gives +1 arcana and prestidigitation. On the face of it, Intimidate is probably a more useful skill and prestidigitation isn't supposed to be powerful. But this feels like a nicer item than the demon mask. You can wear a wizard hat and just wave your hands at the dirty dishes.
But wearing a demon mask is a bit of a weird gimmick. Are you gonna wear that just walking around on the street? RP-wise it's kind of a big commitment, but mechanically it doesn't give you a lot back for that. A fear spell that is kind of marginal because it has a fading DC and also you probably already had Intimidate anyway because you're the one who cared about getting a bonus to the skill.
You can always just use a minimum DC.
Getting an amazing level 10 item at level 2 only to sell it as vendor trash at level 14...
It's too much like WoW or Borderlands for my tastes, though at least without level limits to use.
As for masks... characters wearing masks is an extremely popular trope.
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I still wanna do a level 1 zombie horror adventure where at some point you make it to the local temple and there's a bunch of rank 3 Heal and Fireball scrolls in a "break the glass" case, and the casters can just lay waste and see the zombies driven before them.
I do feel that those rank 3 spells would still be incredibly effective in the hands of a level 1 party even if the party members were to use their own DCs. In general I don't think item DCs are what necessarily make higher-level items more interesting, so much as the effects they have -- if you give the party a potion of retaliation or a penultimate heartbeat, the fun factor will come from the retaliatory damage or the post-death explosion, and giving those when they're high-level items for the party will feel awesome even if they don't use an item DC. In the case of effects that deal damage, the double whammy of high DC and high damage I'd say would even be overkill -- you don't need to hugely rely on the former when you've already got tons of the latter.
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Why is finding a level 4 demon mask (worth 85gp) at level 3 worse treasure than finding an art object worth 42 gold and 5 silver? If you wear it for 2 or 3 levels and use its activation a couple of times while the DC is worth it, then sell it, you got more value out of the mask than a lump sum of treasure. Maybe somebody in the party values intimidation enough that they hold on to the mask well past level 6 or 7 where the DC falls off into irrelevancy, because it is just a +1 at that point. If casting fear regularly was this awesome thing for the character, they’ve had 4 levels to find another source for that ability and it will have only gotten worse than a multi class casting archetype in the last couple of levels.
The Demon Mask is useful for the item bonus to Intimidate if someone has the skill. That's it. If someone wants to be good at the skill, they'll take the item for the item bonus. In this case it's better than finding art.
The activate ability is irrelevant and without the item bonus, no one would use the item. In this case it's exactly the same as finding art since both are getting sold.
But that's the whole problem: this item is useful and valuable based entirely on the item bonus. The activate ability is functionally worthless in that players would not spend gold on it.
And even if a player WANTED it to be a big theme for their character that they were this frightening mask... well the ability is useless for a while, then they can get an upgrade for a couple levels, and then that's it for the entire rest of the level range.
You can't build a story around these items even if you want to because the game's math is built around item churn. PF2 fixed that with weapons via runes: you can use the same weapon from level 1 all the way to level 20 and be effective with it, making that weapon a major part of your story.
You can't do that with most other items.
I think the general issue is players approaching magic items as character defining game elements and that is very much against the design philosophy of PF2. Those kind of items are a part of a class kit like the exemplar. There are mandatory magic items for keeping up with numbers, but those items enable your class abilities (like weapons, shields, armor, etc). They are not character defining by themselves.
Players get to define what is character defining, at the end of the day. And the way people reject these kinds of items where the ones with item bonuses and the ones with utility activates that don't go obsolete are the ones that get used, shows what players think.
This is a case where the design philosophy of PF2 is simply out of touch with the stories players want to tell. In fantasy stories, characters have iconic gear and things they use for a long time. They're not replacing their entire kit every book.
(As a non system mastery example: my wife got an Astral rune for her Thaumaturge, finding the special effect on it really exciting... and it literally never came up during the level range where it would actually work. Now it's just extra damage. Extra damage is always useful, but she was disappointed that the actually cool part of the item was possibly useful for so short a time and now won't function even if the situation does come up. That's the game design fundamentally smashing player expectations for a thematic and neat upgrade into the dirt of item churn.)
The masks topic is actually near and dear to me. I have two characters about to start their PFS journey both with masks: An ifrit nagaji swashbuckler and a kholo magus.
Swashbuckler can't afford the ifrit smoke vision feat, but can use the goz mask for the same effect. The mask has no DC to worry about AND it scales! I can always use the mask to be a smoke ninja with hypno eyes.
Kholo magus has Cha as a dump stat. They're basically a stuttering noble out of combat. In combat, they put on a kitsune mask drop the kimono hiding their bone armor, and start laughing madly. Demon mask would be perfect here to let them be scary despite the dump stat, but only for a few levels
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This is a case where the design philosophy of PF2 is simply out of touch with the stories players want to tell. In fantasy stories, characters have iconic gear and things they use for a long time. They're not replacing their entire kit every book.
I'll go further on this and state that in my opinion, many items in fantasy become characters in their own right, simply because of how frequently they're used and how they become expected to appear in specific situations, often with symbolism that forms around them. This even extends to consumables, and characters with a big bag of tricks tend to have tools they use more than once. Stories rarely take a detailed inventory of dozens of different consumables a character may have: rather, it is assumed that such characters are well-equipped with a range of relevant items, and those items are generally introduced in a manner that doesn't overwhelm the reader. Sometimes, when a character starts including a new item in their arsenal, it signifies a degree of personal development that will endure as their story progresses, and it is not an uncommon trope for one of a character's very first few items to help save the day at the climax of a story. This is, effectively, the kind of fiction best conveyed through items that stay relevant as the story progresses, and I'd argue it doesn't necessarily involve that much inventory tracking either. I definitely don't think it should involve characters recycling their old items for new ones just because the old items turned obsolete, and the act of doing so I'd say prevents those items from contributing all that much to a character's story in any great depth.
Personally, I don't have any real attachment to the items themselves. I'd just prefer that if items rotate out, it is because:
1) some payoff of the item hasn't scaled (damage, healing, etc)
2) whatever niche it filled or utility it provided is now filled by a feat or spell
or 3) it plain isn't useful anymore compared to your other available actions/items
I think the general issue is players approaching magic items as character defining game elements and that is very much against the design philosophy of PF2. Those kind of items are a part of a class kit like the exemplar. There are mandatory magic items for keeping up with numbers, but those items enable your class abilities (like weapons, shields, armor, etc). They are not character defining by themselves.I'm wondering though. We've been doing this for half a century now. Game designers insisting the players should enjoy these items, and players saying Nope, I don't want it that way.
I feel like there's this ongoing struggle between designers insisting that a particular design is rational and balanced and exists for good reasons, and sure, I can be convinced of the sound reasoning.
Like the demon mask. It's pretty much a design rule that you can't have items that only give a +1 to a skill without doing anything else. And there are some of these items that are well-received, like the mage's hat that gives +1 arcana and prestidigitation. On the face of it, Intimidate is probably a more useful skill and prestidigitation isn't supposed to be powerful. But this feels like a nicer item than the demon mask. You can wear a wizard hat and just wave your hands at the dirty dishes.
But wearing a demon mask is a bit of a weird gimmick. Are you gonna wear that just walking around on the street? RP-wise it's kind of a big commitment, but mechanically it doesn't give you a lot back for that. A fear spell that is kind of marginal because it has a fading DC and also you probably already had Intimidate anyway because you're the one who cared about getting a bonus to the skill.
I think that treasure gets a lot harder to give out meaningfully when players have a very small handful of things that they want and everything else they plan on selling without even looking twice at. I get that some players bring this approach to PF2 already, but it is an outside game approach, not one fostered within the game itself, or many games in the genre.
When every item that the party finds is something that they very well may hold onto and want to keep for their entire career, it is hard to have giant bundles of treasure in every dungeon because it will just end up being too much stuff the players want to hold onto, and that is hard for adventure writers because gear is the way that adventures have meaningful milestones in play beyond just leveling up. That is actually why I personally really dislike using ABP in games that I play in. Tying more item numbers directly to what level your character is just makes leveling up even more of the only purpose in playing. With gear having more of a disconnect from direct character level, it is easier to have the power progression of characters have more steps in it and not be as large of jumps.
The Demon Mask is interesting because the DC for it is actually ahead of most equal level items already. It is pretty much running at class level progression, which is better than the typical level DC that most other items adhere to, and fear has a strong success effect, so it is not difficult for the mask to keep its utility for up to 4 or 5 levels, pending on when you found it. And I really do think that is part of the rub. For players looking to buy equipment, especially equipment of secondary importance (like skill boosts), players probably are not buying the demon mask at the earliest possible opportunity. Instead of maybe getting it at some point during level 3, they could easily be 5th level before thinking about buying a skill item like that. Then the DC is already behind an it is a level or 2 that the item might be useful. That is a pretty big difference. At that point you would really be looking for a different item. So I think it is also possible that "is the character finding this item or buying this item" can easily end up shaping the players perspective on how useful it will be and for how long.
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I still wanna do a level 1 zombie horror adventure where at some point you make it to the local temple and there's a bunch of rank 3 Heal and Fireball scrolls in a "break the glass" case, and the casters can just lay waste and see the zombies driven before them.I do feel that those rank 3 spells would still be incredibly effective in the hands of a level 1 party even if the party members were to use their own DCs. In general I don't think item DCs are what necessarily make higher-level items more interesting, so much as the effects they have -- if you give the party a potion of retaliation or a penultimate heartbeat, the fun factor will come from the retaliatory damage or the post-death explosion, and giving those when they're high-level items for the party will feel awesome even if they don't use an item DC. In the case of effects that deal damage, the double whammy of high DC and high damage I'd say would even be overkill -- you don't need to hugely rely on the former when you've already got tons of the latter.
When I look at consumables like bombs and scrolls, I feel pretty okay about them. Because they have a good balance between static power and level-scaled power.
Even a level 1 fire bomb in the hands of a level 10 character is pretty accurate based on their weapon proficiency, and you just need that splash damage to stop a regeneration. So it's effective. It doesn't do quite as much damage as a level 9 bomb, you're not gonna be mainlining level 1 bombs as your primary battle plan. But you feel good about it as a backup plan for regen monsters.
A scroll of Laughing Fit is likewise pretty good at any level as a backup plan, because the DC scales with your level. It's not as powerful as a rank 6 scroll of Roaring Applause, it's fair for its price. But if you're dealing with a boss with a reactive strike that's just wrecking your casters, it's totally fine.
And the level 1 party that gets a scroll of fireball as an ace card for a final battle, well the DC isn't crazy high but the damage is.
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The common thread here is that the effect of the items is in line with the item level, but the DC is in line with where the players are right now. If the effect is relevant at a higher level, the scaling DC means the item also stays relevant. But at level 15 you're not gonna be using rank 3 fireball scrolls as a main tactic, there's no need to worry that this is gonna totally skew balance.
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So I guess what I'm coming to is that I think higher level items should aim for better effects. Maybe they do more damage. Maybe they have more targets. Efficient actions.
Just like higher rank spells tend to start out more powerful than a lower level spell heightened to the same rank. The new toys are more powerful so that they'll get your attention, but your low rank spells in heightened slots aren't worthless.
I think I just talked myself into maybe letting item DC scale with level for free (I was expecting to ask money for it). Maybe like this, to minimize the amount of bespoke work needed?
If you're higher level than the item, increase the DC of the item's ability by the difference in level.
Note that this will lag a little bit behind after some levels. So when you get the next tier of the item you'll jump a bit in DC probably. I'm fine with that, the next tier should mean something. But until you hit that tier, your lower version of the item doesn't become completely obsolete within just a few levels.
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With regards to players feeling "too attached" to their items.
The players enjoying the game in their way is the point. Saying they're not enjoying the correct thing is not the way to go.
I think the rune system is genius here. PF2 makes it way easier to cater to different things players enjoy:
- someone who wants to keep using the same weapon across all levels, and doesn't want it to become numerically irrelevant
- someone who wants to switch weapons mid-career as it turns out a different fighting style appeals more, without having to start buying everything from scratch
- someone who enjoys finding an unexpected weapon and pivoting their fighting style to a signature weapon that came from a big story reward
Rune-swapping being fairly cheap combined with easy retraining rules and feats not requiring the narrow dedication to specific weapons make all of this very doable.
Static item DCs however get in the way of these.
When every item that the party finds is something that they very well may hold onto and want to keep for their entire career, it is hard to have giant bundles of treasure in every dungeon because it will just end up being too much stuff the players want to hold onto, and that is hard for adventure writers because gear is the way that adventures have meaningful milestones in play beyond just leveling up. That is actually why I personally really dislike using ABP in games that I play in. Tying more item numbers directly to what level your character is just makes leveling up even more of the only purpose in playing. With gear having more of a disconnect from direct character level, it is easier to have the power progression of characters have more steps in it and not be as large of jumps.
I think this is a fair point, though I also think it highlights a larger problem, which is that PF2e's loot system relies on an item treadmill and planned obsolescence. While it does work, in the sense that players will often make the rational decision to have their character switch to better equipment, I think it also cheapens gear quite significantly, and makes the feeling of getting new equipment less meaningful when it's just one more step on the treadmill, which will eventually be forgotten when you swap to the next better thing.
The way I see it, I think we're stuck with two extremes here: the fundamental purpose of loot is to inject variety into our character-building by giving us new toys to play with, but this loot is also the sole source of those rapid-fire character build adjustments when the rest of our character customization is locked behind level milestones and retraining. Because leveling up takes time and retraining takes downtime that many APs don't provide, it then falls entirely on loot to provide the short-term adjustments that keep our builds from going stale. If minor amounts of context-dependent retraining were a thing that happened more easily on the fly during the adventuring day, then we wouldn't need as much loot to be able to feel like our characters are changing at a good enough rate to remain interesting. I suspect this might have a great deal many other benefits, like appealing to players who reroll characters often because they don't like sitting with the same build for too long, or making certain situational feats more worthwhile when the cost to opt in or out of them isn't so high.
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Addressing the “very special treasure” question of items like the one ring and even HP’s invisibility cloak, items really intended to stick around…those are absolutely artifacts in PF2. I think a lot of players don’t think much about incorporating artifacts into their characters because you can’t. They represent something that the GM is going to have to design and fit around the campaign narrative and the characters, and thus they are not going to factor into players who have long term build plans in place the same way typical items do.
This makes artifacts a little tricky, as characters end up having to be built around them once the character sees what the growth progression of the artifact is, or else the GM has to really sculpt the artifact around the character. And I think that also leads to less artifacts in play and even some disappointment on players parts when they do find one if it doesn’t fit what the characters expected progression path would be.
Other than artifacts though, having equipment generally fit into “the very special item that you name and use your whole career” that really falls into stuff that should be class based, of which we only have the inventor and the Exemplar that kind of go that route. Really you see that best done in classless systems generally, where any growth of power is tied to leveling up and comes from the same bucket of resources. PF2 keeps items a separate bucket, which is why making items rely on class DCs doesn’t work currently. Items is too big of a bucket to tie on to a variable class feature.
Another GM/adventure writer side issue with scaling item DC, is that storywise, the random person finding a item of immense power works well with static DCs but doesn’t with the item relying of the holders internal power.
I do think there already are very special items that you name and use your whole career, though, that's the whole point of weapon and armor runes. It's possible to have gear that will stay and grow with you, and that gear doesn't need to have the plot-defining importance of an artifact each time.
Another GM/adventure writer side issue with scaling item DC, is that storywise, the random person finding a item of immense power works well with static DCs but doesn’t with the item relying of the holders internal power.
Give a PC a frozen lava of barrowsiege and they will be able to wipe a room even using their own class DC. This is something mentioned in discussion above: items that progress in power often do things besides have a higher DC. If the item deals damage, heals, or provides temporary Hit Points, that amount generally increases, and if the item provides utility, that utility improves. Many items that progress in this way don't use a DC at all, and increasingly more of those items do use the character's DC instead of an item DC. Powerful items with a DC don't suddenly become useless the moment they rely on what will often be a hard DC for the party's level, and in fact they are likely to remain extremely powerful.
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A lot of static DC items are once per day activations anyway. It makes it doubly confusing why such arbitrary control is put onto what is essentially a daily power. Once per day utility activations stay relevant from lvl 1-20, but for some reason, if it makes an enemy roll a save it HAS to come packaged with planned obsolescence. Id sooner have all activations be utility effects so that loot won in the dungeon can be something you decide to keep .....you know.... a prize! As opposed to the fantasy ttrpg equivalent of junk mail: trash that someone else is giving you to throw away (I really hate spam/junk mail).
Just tapping the sign...
Or use Relics.
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Just tapping the sign...
Or use Relics.
I'd prefer items that can stay relevant without being plot vital, uber powerful McGuffins. I ring of ram on a lvl 20 character that uses class DC and a late game relic with all its tiers of effects are NOT the same thing
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Running with that Ring of the Ram example, imagine this:
You, a thief rogue, and your level 5 party are on the way to your next major plot point objective. While on route, you pick up a side quest to tackle a small time gang with an interesting twist: their leader is a telekine.
The gang leader, Arde Sholve, uses his powers to push carts off the precarious mountain roads so he and his cronies can pick the spoils in the ravine at their leisure.
An interesting encounter featuring combat and possible athletics checks to maintain grips and climb up cliff faces ensues. After the bandits have been dealt with, you pull a Ring of Ram off of Arde Sholve's cold dead finger: the source of his deadly party trick!
Fast forward to lvl 16 fighting some tier 4 boss and its minions. Some brute grapples the caster and starts wailing on them. Things are looking dire but you're up next! Pushing something a couple feet might not be all that impressive at lvl 16 but in this situation it would definitely help.
Your neurons begin to fire as your eyes snap to your finger. The ring! The jewelry you got from that small time gang leader 1.5 irl years ago (what was his name again? Some sort of pun...). You've used it a couple times and though it hasn't been often those few moments were pretty clutch.
You line up your fist green lantern style and make the minion throw a save against your class DC. It rolls a 20 on the die and disregards; on the caster's next turn they magic away. What you did was pointless, but you TRIED. GODS BLESS IT, YOU TRIED AND HAD A CHANCE!!! All bc of some treasure with a story from way back in tier 1 of play.
That's much, much, MUCH more satisfying to me than a constant treadmill of soon-to-be-trash.
Running with that Ring of the Ram example, imagine this:
You, a thief rogue, and your level 5 party are on the way to your next major plot point objective. While on route, you pick up a side quest to tackle a small time gang with an interesting twist: their leader is a telekine.
The gang leader, Arde Sholve, uses his powers to push carts off the precarious mountain roads so he and his cronies can pick the spoils in the ravine at their leisure.
An interesting encounter featuring combat and possible athletics checks to maintain grips and climb up cliff faces ensues. After the bandits have been dealt with, you pull a Ring of Ram off of Arde Sholve's cold dead finger: the source of his deadly party trick!
Fast forward to lvl 16 fighting some tier 4 boss and its minions. Some brute grapples the caster and starts wailing on them. Things are looking dire but you're up next! Pushing something a couple feet might not be all that impressive at lvl 16 but in this situation it would definitely help.
Your neurons begin to fire as your eyes snap to your finger. The ring! The jewelry you got from that small time gang leader 1.5 irl years ago (what was his name again? Some sort of pun...). You've used it a couple times and though it hasn't been often those few moments were pretty clutch.
You line up your fist green lantern style and make the minion throw a save against your class DC. It rolls a 20 on the die and disregards; on the caster's next turn they magic away. What you did was pointless, but you TRIED. GODS BLESS IT, YOU TRIED AND HAD A CHANCE!!! All bc of some treasure with a story from way back in tier 1 of play.
That's much, much, MUCH more satisfying to me than a constant treadmill of soon-to-be-trash.
This is an interesting scenario and I can see the desire for something like this but I think if we look at this exact scenario closely the issues with always slightly useful magic items to horde becomes more visible as well.
The difference between the two encounters is 11 levels. The ring, at a level 5 encounter is 220 gp, or about the entire treasure expected from a severe encounter. The DC of 22 is right on level for a level 6 item and so is decent for a level 5 party but will fall off over the next several levels and really be not worth keeping by level 9. Selling it at level 9 is not much wealth, but could be like a rank 3 and a rank 4 scroll (something decently useful to a level 9 character).
The issue is that by level 16 the party should have received 54500 gold in just the adventures of their 15th level, or about 270 rings of the ram worth of treasure. even at level 5 they might have gotten 5 or 6 of them, so if they get 5 or 6 things each level they want to keep for ever, the amount of treasure the party is hauling around at level 16 is just way out of hand. The game either needs items to upgrade, so that you have to keep directing your wealth into them, or replace them so that players don't end up with giant bags of loot that may be useful some day, so we cant sell them, but getting them out of a bag of holding, equipping it, and then activating it is just way out of hand as far as action economy loss, compared to just moving up and pushing a minion, even with just a trained athletics skill.
Basically, things that just do a little damage or a minor effect don't need to be always relevant and potentially useful as characters should get newer options that can do those things better as they level up. Players may dislike a lot of the existing magic items and just sell them, but that is actually a lot better than them just holding on to everything and then never actually using any of it because the action economy trade off to get it ready is terrible and at least the party could have some better stuff if they sold off the bad stuff when it was still somewhat valuable.
I'd prefer items that can stay relevant without being plot vital, uber powerful McGuffins. I ring of ram on a lvl 20 character that uses class DC and a late game relic with all its tiers of effects are NOT the same thingJust tapping the sign...
Or use Relics.
Just to clarify your misinformation on Relics. In PF2e, relics are not the same thing as artifacts.
Relics begin as a simple item, called a relic seed, which is little more than a functional item with a minor magical effect associated with it. As the owner of the relic grows in power, so does the relic. It develops gifts, which are new magical abilities and activations. These abilities might be themed to the relic, the character, or the nature of the campaign. If a relic is passed to another character, this process begins anew, sometimes granting the same abilities again over time, but possibly unlocking entirely new powers. If someone else takes the relic from its owner, it usually works for a while, though it might lose its power incrementally over time if not returned to its owner. How the relic changes in such a circumstance is up to you and should fit the story.
Table 2–22: Relic Gifts
# Gifts.Min. Level......Gift Type.......Gold Piece Equivalent1.......1st.............Minor...........20 gp
2.......5th.............Minor...........160 gp
3.......9th.............Major...........700 gp
4.......13th............Major...........3,000 gp
5.......17th............Grand...........15,000 gp
Also note: You can use the rules for Set Relics to incorporate multiple (and scaling/upgradable) magic items.
Running with that Ring of the Ram example, imagine this:
You, a thief rogue, and your level 5 party are on the way to your next major plot point objective. While on route, you pick up a side quest to tackle a small time gang with an interesting twist: their leader is a telekine.
The gang leader, Arde Sholve, uses his powers to push carts off the precarious mountain roads so he and his cronies can pick the spoils in the ravine at their leisure.
An interesting encounter featuring combat and possible athletics checks to maintain grips and climb up cliff faces ensues. After the bandits have been dealt with, you pull a Ring of Ram off of Arde Sholve's cold dead finger: the source of his deadly party trick!
Fast forward to lvl 16 fighting some tier 4 boss and its minions. Some brute grapples the caster and starts wailing on them. Things are looking dire but you're up next! Pushing something a couple feet might not be all that impressive at lvl 16 but in this situation it would definitely help.
Your neurons begin to fire as your eyes snap to your finger. The ring! The jewelry you got from that small time gang leader 1.5 irl years ago (what was his name again? Some sort of pun...). You've used it a couple times and though it hasn't been often those few moments were pretty clutch.
You line up your fist green lantern style and make the minion throw a save against your class DC. It rolls a 20 on the die and disregards; on the caster's next turn they magic away. What you did was pointless, but you TRIED. GODS BLESS IT, YOU TRIED AND HAD A CHANCE!!! All bc of some treasure with a story from way back in tier 1 of play.
That's much, much, MUCH more satisfying to me than a constant treadmill of soon-to-be-trash.
This is an interesting scenario and I can see the desire for something like this but I think if we look at this exact scenario closely the issues with always slightly useful magic items to horde becomes more visible as well.
The difference between the two...
Then the game doesn't need a proliferance of items. I small bundle of things you can keep is better. Adjust the gold tables accordingly
Relics don't really solve the problem because those aren't an optional rule you can apply to other items, but rather an arguably small selection of items that scale. If anything making relics more common would make the problem worse because the items that still don't scale would be much worse if items that do scale became common. Also, as said earlier in this thread, using the wielder's class DC would bring other problems to the table.
Relics get a pass because access to them is 100% tied to the GM unlike a consumable or similar that most GMs can handweave as existing in most shops.
At the current age of the game I feel the only likely official solution we could get before PF3 ever comes around, would be the idea of having rules and a table for upgrading items at regular intervals. That said, personally after reading this thread I'd consider extending the option of having a small number of investment slots for any favorite items my players have that would function with the autoscaling relics use (or just use relics as a whole if they're so inclined). Try and find a balance of the current norm and letting them keep a few favorites around if they get attached.
The demon mask magic item was brought up earlier. One possible way to incorporate this with a Relic:
Another monster type that causes fear is dragons, so instead of a demon mask flavor it as a dragon mask.
Dragon mask (Relic; Aspects- Beast, Dragon)
(4th level) +1 item bonus to Intimidation checks; fear once per day (DC 20); Minor Gift- Feral Claws; 105 gp
(7th level) fear DC 23; Minor Gift- Breath of Dragons (based on dragon type the mask represents); +140 gp
(10th level) +2 item bonus to Intimidation checks; fear (3rd rank) once per day (DC 29); Major Gift- Wyrm's Flight; +1,015 gp
(13th level) fear DC 32; Major Gift- Track of the Beast (either +10 ft status bonus to land Speed or swim Speed equal to land Speed, based on dragon type); +2,300 gp
(17th level) +3 item bonus to Intimidation checks; fear DC 39; Grand Gift- Draconic Ascendance; +12,000 gp.
The increases to the fear DC and the +3 item bonus to Intimidate checks at 17th level can be included with the Relic gifts.
Relics don't really solve the problem because those aren't an optional rule you can apply to other items, but rather an arguably small selection of items that scale.
Sorry, but the rules for Set Relics do not agree.
All you need to do is account for the additional gp cost for the Relic gifts.
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I think that treasure gets a lot harder to give out meaningfully when players have a very small handful of things that they want and everything else they plan on selling without even looking twice at
That's exactly what fixed DC items do though. I get a fixed DC item, right into the sell bin. A priori.
The demon mask magic item was brought up earlier. One possible way to incorporate this with a Relic:
Another monster type that causes fear is dragons, so instead of a demon mask flavor it as a dragon mask.
Dragon mask (Relic; Aspects- Beast, Dragon)
(4th level) +1 item bonus to Intimidation checks; fear once per day (DC 20); Minor Gift- Feral Claws; 105 gp
(7th level) fear DC 23; Minor Gift- Breath of Dragons (based on dragon type the mask represents); +140 gp
(10th level) +2 item bonus to Intimidation checks; fear (3rd rank) once per day (DC 29); Major Gift- Wyrm's Flight; +1,015 gp
(13th level) fear DC 32; Major Gift- Track of the Beast (either +10 ft status bonus to land Speed or swim Speed equal to land Speed, based on dragon type); +2,300 gp
(17th level) +3 item bonus to Intimidation checks; fear DC 39; Grand Gift- Draconic Ascendance; +12,000 gp.The increases to the fear DC and the +3 item bonus to Intimidate checks at 17th level can be included with the Relic gifts.
This works. It doesn't even need the other stuff, really. A mask is an iconic part of a character's attire. I want to use the same one the whole game if that's the theme I'm going for (or it came up mid game and has become the theme I'm goin for). Just letting the mask stay relevant at all means I'm not being mechanically punished for doing so even without adding new abilities to it.
So yeah, relics can definitely help here. But they may not need as much "stuff" as the book suggests. If the relic tiers are "it gets item bonuses appropriate for its level" and "the DC goes up", that's likely going to accomplish the job in a lot of cases until apex items, and maybe you solve that by saying "the relic can absorb an apex item to gain added benefits".
There's definitely tools for a GM to address this for character defining items.
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Then the game doesn't need a proliferance of items. I small bundle of things you can keep is better. Adjust the gold tables accordingly
This, lol. One of the things I like less about PF2 over time is that as they keep adding more content, it's getting bloated with "stuff" the way PF1 was. Accessability for new players goes down over time because instead of a table of weapons that fits on a page in a physical book, AoN's base weapon table is 300 entries long. Alchemy is 776 items long. These lists are HUGE and trying to find stuff requires system mastery that a new player won't have.
I know when my son made a bomber Alchemist for Spore War, I didn't even attempt to have him pick formula that way. I pulled out Player Core 2 and Treasure Vault, and said "look in here for things that look interesting to you." Those are also large lists, but they're substantially smaller (and also easier to read, but that's the upside of a book with layout meant for that vs a website that's meant to be used as a lookup resource, no shade on the AoN folks because its an invaluable tool).
I know the game design is structured around having lots of specific items instead of a narrative game style of "the item is a narrative tool so you write it on an index card and hand it over", but there's a point where more is not better. PF1 definitely crossed over that point in its lifetime. I feel like PF2 is getting there as well.
Then the game doesn't need a proliferance of items. I small bundle of things you can keep is better. Adjust the gold tables accordinglyThis, lol. One of the things I like less about PF2 over time is that as they keep adding more content, it's getting bloated with "stuff" the way PF1 was. Accessability for new players goes down over time because instead of a table of weapons that fits on a page in a physical book, AoN's base weapon table is 300 entries long. Alchemy is 776 items long. These lists are HUGE and trying to find stuff requires system mastery that a new player won't have.
I know when my son made a bomber Alchemist for Spore War, I didn't even attempt to have him pick formula that way. I pulled out Player Core 2 and Treasure Vault, and said "look in here for things that look interesting to you." Those are also large lists, but they're substantially smaller (and also easier to read, but that's the upside of a book with layout meant for that vs a website that's meant to be used as a lookup resource, no shade on the AoN folks because its an invaluable tool).
I know the game design is structured around having lots of specific items instead of a narrative game style of "the item is a narrative tool so you write it on an index card and hand it over", but there's a point where more is not better. PF1 definitely crossed over that point in its lifetime. I feel like PF2 is getting there as well.
These days it’s absurdly easy to do a search of Nethys by traits or other factors.
These days it’s absurdly easy to do a search of Nethys by traits or other factors.
You have to know what you're looking for to do that. It's awesome for people that have system mastery. It's awful for new players, who also suffer the worst from "there's so much stuff that I'm never going to be able to read it all for making a character."
The best rules are digestable for new folks. This is why class feats were such a good idea: a given class will have a handful of feats at each level and a new player doesn't have to plan to level 20 to get started so they don't have a ton of things to try to read. Even if they did want to read them all, the core classes rarely go over 100 and non-core classes tend to have significantly fewer. It's a lot, but its doable if you want to. (PF1 had something like 3500 feats and that's absurdly difficult to navigate when you're a new player trying to find what's relevant.)
These days it’s absurdly easy to do a search of Nethys by traits or other factors.You have to know what you're looking for to do that. It's awesome for people that have system mastery. It's awful for new players, who also suffer the worst from "there's so much stuff that I'm never going to be able to read it all for making a character."
The best rules are digestable for new folks. This is why class feats were such a good idea: a given class will have a handful of feats at each level and a new player doesn't have to plan to level 20 to get started so they don't have a ton of things to try to read. Even if they did want to read them all, the core classes rarely go over 100 and non-core classes tend to have significantly fewer. It's a lot, but its doable if you want to. (PF1 had something like 3500 feats and that's absurdly difficult to navigate when you're a new player trying to find what's relevant.)
Even for new players, most ‘kids these days’ are pretty decent at figuring out how to use search functions. You don’t need to read it all. Large portions are irrelevant for any given character at any given time. If you’re trying to make a first level character only a small slice of those options are actually even on the table.
Also it is not really the players responsibility to know all the items they could possibly buy. The GM and adventure writers are the ones seeding the adventure. Some players like to do that work and GMs can let them, but it is also fine with players that don’t want to do that work to just buy basic stuff, find stuff as you adventure, and then sell treasure when it is no longer useful. The GM core is overly explicit about GMs helping to guide players through the item/treasure process and working with the player to help them not have to sell everything and scour obscure books for useful loot. The GM should have a sense of how much treasure their players have, whether they are on track with the campaign, and whether anyone is getting way out of hand with it.
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I think AoN should maybe make it easier to switch modes between a "core-oriented" mode and an "everything" mode.
Like, if I'm GMing and I give out a piece of AP-specific loot, it's convenient if players can look up the description themselves, I don't have to fuss with index cards or such. So that's when I want to use the "everything" mode.
But when it's about the players shopping, I might want to encourage them to focus on a "core + a few other books" subset.
I think you can already filter by sources a bit, but I'd want something big and obvious. One toggle you can switch that's quite visible in the UI, not having to remember to select stuff separately on every page.
Of course agreeing which books are core-ish apart from the obvious ones is another story.
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One of PF2's strengths was the siloing of many options to reduce the cognitive load of making selections. The different feat buckets is the main example.
However, item selection is not siloed, and the reduction of slot based itemization from PF1 means you don't generally shop from a selection of rings, then a selection of boots, then a selection of cloaks, etc. It's easy to get lost looking into what you should buy.
If things were categorized better, and with a more clear reference to the ABP chart that tells you what you're supposed to have when, it could make the itemization much more approachable.
If things were categorized better, and with a more clear reference to the ABP chart that tells you what you're supposed to have when, it could make the itemization much more approachable.
On a given skill, AoN has a list of the items that give bonuses to the skill. That's quite useful and one of the easiest ways to shop, though it makes "items that give an item bonus" by far what you're usually looking at.
I also find ABP gives more bonuses than what I see people in game actually getting. I'm not sure if folks are just investing more elsewhere or if ABP is just really aggressive in the bonuses it gives to explain that, though. But if you add up everything ABP is giving, it equals a huge amount of wealth.
On a given skill, AoN has a list of the items that give bonuses to the skill. That's quite useful and one of the easiest ways to shop, though it makes "items that give an item bonus" by far what you're usually looking at.
I also find ABP gives more bonuses than what I see people in game actually getting. I'm not sure if folks are just investing more elsewhere or if ABP is just really aggressive in the bonuses it gives to explain that, though. But if you add up everything ABP is giving, it equals a huge amount of wealth.
ABP gives a pretty idealized math curve where, in normal games, you'll see people forego or delay some of it for other beneficial items. Admittedly, there were very few of these at launch, but there are enough good non-math items you can buy at this point that you might want to delay a skill item/upgrade to grab them.
Then the game doesn't need a proliferance of items. I small bundle of things you can keep is better. Adjust the gold tables accordinglyThis, lol. One of the things I like less about PF2 over time is that as they keep adding more content, it's getting bloated with "stuff" the way PF1 was. Accessability for new players goes down over time because instead of a table of weapons that fits on a page in a physical book, AoN's base weapon table is 300 entries long. Alchemy is 776 items long. These lists are HUGE and trying to find stuff requires system mastery that a new player won't have.
I know when my son made a bomber Alchemist for Spore War, I didn't even attempt to have him pick formula that way. I pulled out Player Core 2 and Treasure Vault, and said "look in here for things that look interesting to you." Those are also large lists, but they're substantially smaller (and also easier to read, but that's the upside of a book with layout meant for that vs a website that's meant to be used as a lookup resource, no shade on the AoN folks because its an invaluable tool).
I know the game design is structured around having lots of specific items instead of a narrative game style of "the item is a narrative tool so you write it on an index card and hand it over", but there's a point where more is not better. PF1 definitely crossed over that point in its lifetime. I feel like PF2 is getting there as well.
TBH the main issue is that most of the stuff is dogwater. If it was mostly decent a noob could throw darts at the board and mostly be fine. You wouldn't need to search through the annals of archive of neyths for the items that actually work.
If some noob throws the proverbial dart and hits a greater rime crystal, they're not going to know that it's casting of chilling spray is near worthless and if they actually want chilling spray they need to buy scrolls/wands of it. Or that the stone bullet they just found can be liquidated into 26 bola shot, which both has a better effect and 25 more uses. Or that on level healing potions are basically pouring money down the sink and that battle medicine/heal does the in combat healing job much better, and lesser soothing tonics do the "get somebody back up from unconscious holy s%@~ we need this guy up or he's gonna die" better.
Obviously you can't just make playstyle specific items decent for anybody, how would you make doubling rings decent for a greatsword user, but most items aren't like that and the ones that are are usually obviously playstyle specific. They could probably do a better job pointing those out though, would be nice to have a tag for it or something (not with any mechanical effects, just signposting).
ABP gives a pretty idealized math curve where, in normal games, you'll see people forego or delay some of it for other beneficial items. Admittedly, there were very few of these at launch, but there are enough good non-math items you can buy at this point that you might want to delay a skill item/upgrade to grab them.On a given skill, AoN has a list of the items that give bonuses to the skill. That's quite useful and one of the easiest ways to shop, though it makes "items that give an item bonus" by far what you're usually looking at.
I also find ABP gives more bonuses than what I see people in game actually getting. I'm not sure if folks are just investing more elsewhere or if ABP is just really aggressive in the bonuses it gives to explain that, though. But if you add up everything ABP is giving, it equals a huge amount of wealth.
Heroism wands are an example of this, it's a good idea to go for them first over +2 resilient since they add the same bonus to saves and to attacks and skills. You won't have them up all the time but if you have them say 3/4ths of the time, more than achievable in most games with 8 wands and a consistent preparatory strategy, you're getting some good value.