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1 year ago ::
Apr 12, 2012 - 9:02AM
#1
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In my 3e experience, fighters only upped their damage by wielding +5 vorpal flaming burst weapons. Other such stuff wasn't as needed, but I do think the game focuuses too much on magic items. Does anyone agree?
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1 year ago ::
Apr 12, 2012 - 10:05AM
#2
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In my 3e experience, fighters only upped their damage by wielding +5 vorpal flaming burst weapons. Other such stuff wasn't as needed, but I do think the game focuuses too much on magic items. Does anyone agree?
I'd like to see magical gear be much more optional and much less about bonuses to things like attack roll and damage roll; instead, being more about effects that they provide (a flaming weapon changes damage to fire and slashing, for example, instead of slashing only, giving you the ability to overcome some threats more easily, or armor that provides you with a Resistance in addition to the armor value, not a simple "+2 to AC," or whatever).
Balance = Equally effective, but different, ways of reaching a goal or overcoming an obstacle.
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1 year ago ::
Apr 12, 2012 - 10:54AM
#3
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Date Joined:
Jan 12, 2012
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I would like D&D to be balanced without magical items, but I am worried about mobility.
A fighter without magical items is not very mobile, so he will have trouble getting close to monsters and escaping from fights. In comparison a high level wizard will probably get teleportation powers so he will be highly mobile.
This may result in an unequal game where the fighter has to depend on the wizard for teleportation or haste. Or alternatively it may convince WOTC to give fighter an artificial teleportation feat that can only ruin my fragile verisimilitude. I don't know which approach is worst, but I don't see easy solution.
DISCLAIMER: I never played 4ed, so I may misunderstand some of the rules.
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1 year ago ::
Apr 12, 2012 - 11:20AM
#4
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Date Joined:
May 20, 2011
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Game balanced by magical item is considered bad. But a game balanced with magical item will be most likely umbalanced when they come on the table without a carefull planned introduction of magical item by an expert dungeon master. And even that a mistake is always possible. As often said I care little about balance, but how can balance fanatics handle this?
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1 year ago ::
Apr 12, 2012 - 11:37AM
#5
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Date Joined:
Oct 26, 2004
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Well to put it simply a game with magic items is difficult to balance without them or with too many. In regards to fighter mobility this can be planned for with powers/feats that give bursts of speed or help ignore/shrugg off immobilizing conditions. (not perfect but it helps) that said party composition should have some influence on your capabilities, so maybe a group without a caster needs to buy/steal an air ship before invading the floating castle of the giant?
Anyway I agree that an excellent way to deal with magic items is to ditch the +1/2/3/4/5/higher stuff and focus on special abilities. This means that from a brute hit-defend-damage angle the non-casters aren't totally dependant on a bunch of magical gear to stay effective at higher levels, but they're still nice to have around, and can be cool and interesting instead of wasting time and gold on boring stuff like +2 to hit and damage when instead you could have does fire and weapon damage and on a critical hit all creatres adjacent to the target of your critical hit (except for you) take fire damage equal to the extra damage of the critical hit, or something like that.
Really powerful or complex items may even require feat investments to truly master so in a game where one person has a sweet magic item and the other guy prefers to not focu as much on magic items, there's less of a huge power disparity.
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1 year ago ::
Apr 12, 2012 - 11:44AM
#6
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Date Joined:
Jun 29, 2008
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I want to see static bonuses removed from magical items and instead see magical items with flavor and abilitites.
The +X items are just annoying maintainance, and provides no flavor.
The Character Initiative
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Every time you abuse the system you enforce limitations.
Every time the system is limited we lose options.
Breaking an RPG is like cheating in a computer game.
As a DM you are the punkbuster of your table.
Dare to say no to abusers.
Make players build characters, not characters out of builds.
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1 year ago ::
Apr 12, 2012 - 12:36PM
#7
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Date Joined:
Jun 30, 2008
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I think I want magic items to be rare and special but not overpowered. Is that too much to ask for?
I like the 4E general approach wear you didn't have to have magic items, but 4E magic items had some big flaws particularly with how they did daily powers. I want to get rid of +X items, but don't think they are going to do that. Things like iron armbands of power are boring, but by far the best choice for a lot of builds. While other builds that could have really used an item like that were left out.
I think in general they need to either give all or almost all items of a type (rings, gloves etc) a decent static effect or no items in that slot should get one. The whole "this item lets you do something sort of special for one round out of the day" was inferior to the "this item is always helping you". Combining the two in one item is ok.
And if you they do keep +x, I really hope that they don't do untyped bonuses and limit the game to about 5-7 bonus types.
my handbooks & builds
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1 year ago ::
Apr 12, 2012 - 12:53PM
#8
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Date Joined:
Oct 26, 2004
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Did you not play until darksun or something? Much as I love 4e it may be the single best example of my issue with magic items. It assumes that players of x level are gonna have magic items of +y or better. A lot of time and book keeping goes into making sure your items are all up to date, and I'd rather not spend time and treasure spots on handing the druid his next higher plussed staff of ruin.
Also what's the issue with bonus types I don't quite understand what you're getitng at there.
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1 year ago ::
Apr 12, 2012 - 1:03PM
#9
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Did you not play until darksun or something? Much as I love 4e it may be the single best example of my issue with magic items. It assumes that players of x level are gonna have magic items of +y or better. A lot of time and book keeping goes into making sure your items are all up to date, and I'd rather not spend time and treasure spots on handing the druid his next higher plussed staff of ruin.
Also what's the issue with bonus types I don't quite understand what you're getitng at there.
I think, and I may be wrong, that by bonus types he's referring to armor bonuses from 3e: Armor Bonus to AC, Shield Bonus to AC, Natural Armor Bonus to AC (usually from magic items), Dodge Bonus to AC, etc.
Why Mechanics-Alignment Integration is Bad
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so why even play a fighter if you can play the paladin the exact same way behaviorally and get added power to boot. "Paladin" is about accepting better game-enhancing mechanics at the price of more rigid in game behavior.
Really? So it goes something like this?
Fighter: "I want to be a paladin."
NPC: "Really?"
Fighter: "Yes."
NPC: "Very well." Starts reading from a holy book while still in-character "Do you accept having to choose and stick to the lawful good alignment, eventhough neither of us actually knows that it exists or what it is?"
Fighter: "I do."
NPC: "Do you reject good game balance because you accidentally rolled a high Charisma?"
Fighter: "What?"
NPC: "I don't know what it means either."
Fighter: "Oh. Umm, ok I do."
NPC: "In the name of all that is metagamey and broken, accept these better game enhancing mechanics."
Fighter: "These what?"
NPC: "Just get out there and try to fulfill a million different people's notion of good while not violating and part of any of them."
So the system is designed such that every single hit needs to be described to avoid confusion? Here's a scenario. The players are nudists, everybody in the world are nudists, it's not weird, it's totally normal in this land. They are naked and they fight drakes taking damage throughout, but healing up with surges. Later they meet the guy who raised the drakes.
Part 1: I didn't describe any of the hits. What does he see?
Part 2: Lets say I described the drakes as biting the players, yet they healed up. What does he see?
D20 Modern Toon PC Race.
Mecha Pilot's Skill Challenge Emporium.
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1 year ago ::
Apr 12, 2012 - 1:07PM
#10
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Date Joined:
Oct 26, 2004
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Well yeah but what about them? That's what I don't get.
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