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5 years ago ::
Jul 31, 2008 - 8:49AM
#11
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My big issue with it is - I've decided I'm not going to pick up a +1 armour or weapon for my character. It feels like a waste of a slot. I'd rather pick up an armour or weapon that is +1 with another bonus or ability.
Of course.. by that time, I may decide to hold out until the +2.
Thinking long term, it makes sence to skip items that have 'small bonuses' that are nice, but are easily replaced.
Now I know you can upgrade your +1 item to +2.. but at a gold cost.
I know some of you probably think I"m being min/maxxy and maybe I am, but it's my nature to manage resources to get the most effectiveness out of what I'm doing, in the same way I'd manage mana when playing Magic: the Gathering.
I don't think that this system will truly achieve the results it is designed to achieve, and instead create abarations that are quite different.
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5 years ago ::
Jul 31, 2008 - 12:18PM
#12
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Date Joined:
Jul 16, 2002
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Every +1 item has it's relative merits though. There's a big difference between a vanilla +1 longsword and a longsword that is a +1 Lifedrinker. (one's level 1 the other is level 5... both are +1) It would be silly to say that you don't want a +1 item. To Hit bonuses are few and far between in 4e. As the people on the CharOp boards say, 4e is more about DPS in combat, and to do that you either need to hit or have powers with damage on a miss (or a feat like Hammer Rythm). The longer you delay getting items, the farther behind you will fall in being able to contribute in combat. Yes, I know combat is not everything in the game, but it has the greatest chance of killing your character. :P
Sorry WOTC, you lost me with Essentials. So where I used to buy every book that came out, now I will be very choosy about what I buy. Can we just get back to real 4e? Check out the 4e Conversion Wiki. 1. Wizards fight dirty. They hit their enemies in the NADs. -- Dragon9 2. A barbarian hits people with his axe. A warlord hits people with his barbarian. 3. Boo-freakin'-hoo, ya light-slingin' finger-wigglers. -- MrCelcius in response to the Cleric's Healer's Lore nerf
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5 years ago ::
Jul 31, 2008 - 3:18PM
#13
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Date Joined:
Aug 11, 2006
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I think you've confused the idea of evaluating things by 'wealth' with liquidating and repurchasing things. That's a big confusion.
I don't think I have confused the idea of "wealth" with the idea of "gold piece value" because "wealth" is meaningless. I'd rather have 400,000 gp "worth" of magic items of varying levels that are all useful to me than 975,000 gp "worth" of random magic items that I picked just because they were the highest level available but that aren't necessarily useful to me. If I can't use the items as magic items, then their only value is what I can get for selling them, and 20% of 975,000 gp is substantially less than 400,000 gp.
What can you do with "wealth" in D&D? Where is the advantage that you gain from optimizing on a metric (market price of found items) that is irrelevant? The relevant metrics are utility and sale price. Suppose I have five 15th-level magic items and you have five 10th-level magic items, but I can't use any of mine and you can use all of yours. Regardless of our actual character levels, which of us is wealthier in real gameplay terms?
Sorry, but I still don't see the incentive here to delay making most of your found item selections until you reach the higher tiers of play. I think there is an assumption that you are going to find an item that you want in every single adventure once you finally decide to start making your picks, and I can tell you that is incredibly unlikely to happen. If you knew that you were only going to find one or two items that you might actually want for every three adventures you played, would you still want to delay your picks to the paragon tier? Because by so doing you are passing up one-third of all the magic items that you will ever see during your adventuring career. Once you realize that you aren't finding enough items that you want to fill up all those slots you have been hoarding, and you are still accumulating more slots because you gain a level every 3 adventures, you are going to start picking items for no other reason than their market price, whereupon you are going to be caught in the "liquidation" trap that I explained in my earlier post.
Talk to you later --
Sean
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M. Sean Molley | sean [at] basementsoftware [dot] com
LFR Global Administrator
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5 years ago ::
Jul 31, 2008 - 4:18PM
#14
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Date Joined:
Aug 19, 2007
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If you knew that you were only going to find one or two items that you might actually want for every three adventures you played, would you still want to delay your picks to the paragon tier?
Yes, emphatically yes. You just stated my ideal set of conditions - a useful item every other adventure. That means I pick up an extra item every other level from 11-22nd or so just as I stated I'd want to do. Basically from about 12th on, I'll have more treasure than the guy who didn't hoard.
Not to mention, even if there's only one item I want per three adventures played, I'm not limited to playing just those three adventures to get my character up a level. If a character is truly clogged up in terms of item slots, all I have to do is have another character play the mods and then replay say one or two mods I need for the items I want.
I'm not saying I'm planning to do that, but I can see a lot of players doing this and you'll end up with two set of players in Paragon tier just like LG had - those who abused the living daylights out of CWI and those who didn't. Given the loophole is easily closed, I'm not sure why it is worth risking the system to try to prove us gamers wrong.
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5 years ago ::
Jul 31, 2008 - 5:03PM
#15
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Date Joined:
Aug 11, 2006
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Greetings...
So what I seem to be hearing is that there are basically three objections to the current system for "found" items:
1 - The system can be seen as unnecessarily punitive, particularly at the lowest levels, because found item choices are irrevocable. If you choose an item in your very first adventure at 1st level, you are locked out of choosing a different item until you reach 2nd level no matter what other items you might find in your next two adventures. This same problem can occur at any point where a character has used up all of his or her found item slots (until the character gains a level). There are other variations on this theme (I picked chain mail but then I take a feat that gives me training in scale mail, etc.)
2 - The system can be seen as encouraging metagaming, because some people will be so concerned by the risk of "missing out" on the best possible item for their character that they will have a strong incentive to find out ahead of time exactly what items are offered in which adventures so that they can arrange the order in which they play things to obtain the maximum benefit. (For extra consternation, season with a dash of replay rule, which makes it not only perfectly legitimate but also completely unavoidable that a player will gain advance knowledge of what treasure is in a particular adventure, which cannot help but inform his decision to replay that adventure with a different character who might want a certain item.)
3 - The system can be seen as encouraging players not to use their found item choices until higher levels, so that they will be able to fill more of their total slots with higher-level items. (I list this for the sake of completeness, even though I don't think it has much merit, as I have tried to demonstrate in my previous posts in this thread.)
Does that about sum up the objections? What other objections or concerns have been raised that do not fall into any of the above three categories?
I am certainly listening to what everyone has to say and I am not averse to the idea of recommending some changes to the system if those changes would make the system unambiguously better, but I would need to be convinced that those changes are actually strictly better than the system that has already been established, and so far I have not been convinced by anything I have seen either on this list or on the LivingFR Yahoo! Group. I don't mean that to be dismissive of the ideas people have posted or insulting of their efforts; I have seen some good ideas, and I appreciate the time and thought that has gone into these proposals. (I should also be clear that even if I personally were to become convinced that a particular change was beneficial, all I could do would be to advocate that change to the other admins and most importantly to Chris Tulach, who ultimately has the final say.)
Talk to you later --
Sean
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M. Sean Molley | sean [at] basementsoftware [dot] com
LFR Global Administrator
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5 years ago ::
Jul 31, 2008 - 7:44PM
#16
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Date Joined:
Aug 19, 2007
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Greetings...
So what I seem to be hearing is that there are basically three objections to the current system for "found" items:
1 - The system can be seen as unnecessarily punitive, particularly at the lowest levels, because found item choices are irrevocable. If you choose an item in your very first adventure at 1st level, you are locked out of choosing a different item until you reach 2nd level no matter what other items you might find in your next two adventures. This same problem can occur at any point where a character has used up all of his or her found item slots (until the character gains a level). There are other variations on this theme (I picked chain mail but then I take a feat that gives me training in scale mail, etc.)
2 - The system can be seen as encouraging metagaming, because some people will be so concerned by the risk of "missing out" on the best possible item for their character that they will have a strong incentive to find out ahead of time exactly what items are offered in which adventures so that they can arrange the order in which they play things to obtain the maximum benefit. (For extra consternation, season with a dash of replay rule, which makes it not only perfectly legitimate but also completely unavoidable that a player will gain advance knowledge of what treasure is in a particular adventure, which cannot help but inform his decision to replay that adventure with a different character who might want a certain item.)
3 - The system can be seen as encouraging players not to use their found item choices until higher levels, so that they will be able to fill more of their total slots with higher-level items. (I list this for the sake of completeness, even though I don't think it has much merit, as I have tried to demonstrate in my previous posts in this thread.)
Does that about sum up the objections? What other objections or concerns have been raised that do not fall into any of the above three categories?
I am certainly listening to what everyone has to say and I am not averse to the idea of recommending some changes to the system if those changes would make the system unambiguously better, but I would need to be convinced that those changes are actually strictly better than the system that has already been established, and so far I have not been convinced by anything I have seen either on this list or on the LivingFR Yahoo! Group. I don't mean that to be dismissive of the ideas people have posted or insulting of their efforts; I have seen some good ideas, and I appreciate the time and thought that has gone into these proposals. (I should also be clear that even if I personally were to become convinced that a particular change was beneficial, all I could do would be to advocate that change to the other admins and most importantly to Chris Tulach, who ultimately has the final say.)
Thanks for listening Sean:
Two last specific points:
The fix is relatively minor(make specific level item slots that are then filled with found items that range from levels 5-30) and in most cases will act exactly like the current system. It isn't a major change of the system, it is just the plugging of a loophole.
Regardless of whether or not hoarding is actually a good idea or not, the fix means there is no possible significant advantage to hoarding or metagaming mods. To use a D&D analogy, even assuming that there's a 95% chance you're right Sean, why risk rolling a 1 when you can take 10? We can hope hoarding won't be an issue or we can know it won't. It is strictly better to know it won't.
Andy
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5 years ago ::
Jul 31, 2008 - 9:56PM
#17
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Date Joined:
Aug 19, 2007
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Sean - like you I think that the risks are being exxagerated. However, I think that the proposed found item list based on *Item level* rather than *Character level* would indeed solve some of the perceived problems without drifting that much farther from the DMG guidelines than we already are. You still end up with 30 found items by 30th level, and they are more likely to match up with the levels of item that you'd find in a home-game (actually, they are more-or-less *required* to match up).
I really hope that you seriously look at that specific alternative. I think that it might be an acceptable alternative to the WotC brass.
Thanks,
Big Mike
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5 years ago ::
Aug 01, 2008 - 8:08AM
#18
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What other objections or concerns have been raised that do not fall into any of the above three categories?
As for #3 - it's not that it will make sense for characters. It's that many people will think it makes sense and under-power their characters for several levels.
But the main objection I have is that it makes the assumption that people plan their characters in detail ahead of time and understand the majority of magic items available at a specific level.
Many people (myself included) do not have the time or inclination to plan my character ahead of time other than a quick glance at the recommended archetypes. I certainly don't have an encylopedic knowledge of magical items. This will only get worse as we have more source books.
So I very well may pick up a magic item that doesn't work well for my character. I will be forced to bypass items that would have been better suited for my character for several levels.
If you have people who don't understand how a magic item will fit in to their character concept, it is very stressful to give them a minute or two to pick out an irrevocable choice. It's not fun.
If I can swap a found magic item for another found magic item of the same level (or lower) I will have had time to think about whether or not the magic item I currently have selected makes sense. I'll still be a little stressed out at times, but at least I will have a second chance if I mess up.
As the current rules stand I probably won't be picking up anything shiny until I'm second or third level. Once again, not fun.
Allen.
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5 years ago ::
Aug 01, 2008 - 8:50AM
#19
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The proposal of one item per item level dosn't fly with me. Because you could never find two +1 vanilla items (item level 1). You could never find two +1 weapons for a dual weilder... or a +1 sword and shield or a +1 weapon and armour.
I think I preffer the current way over 'one item per item level'. (Dont' get me wrong, the current way bugs me, but it's better than the supposed 'fix')
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5 years ago ::
Aug 01, 2008 - 9:19AM
#20
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Date Joined:
Aug 19, 2007
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The proposal of one item per item level dosn't fly with me. Because you could never find two +1 vanilla items (item level 1). You could never find two +1 weapons for a dual weilder... or a +1 sword and shield or a +1 weapon and armour.
You don't have to put a level 5 item into a level 5 slot...you want to put a vanilla +2 sword into the level 6 slot and another plain +2 sword into the level 7 slot, that would be perfectly legal.
Also, because you typically should only find one magic item per level per D&D rules, it is unlikely that you should be finding 2 items of the exact same level anyway, in LFR or a home game - unless you're nearing retirement at 30th, of course.
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