They need something, fast, or else LFR is in limbo. Fortunately, the HotFL update document doesn't include the item rarity rules (just a list) nor the removal of the daily magic item limit. But the old rules are a lame duck, not to mention the hold on allowing Heroes of X options. Besides, we were promised CCG 2.0, which would include Essentials, in October.
I had a thought for an idea for a fix. Dunno if the admins are past this stage of brainstorming, but here it is anyway.
The totals a character should have seem pretty clear: total "found" items should not exceed one per character level, uncommon items should not exceed 1/2 their total slots, used or not (round up here, so level 1 characters aren't screwed), and rare items should not exceed 1 per tier. As before, sold items count; as before, saving up your slots means a penalty now in exchange for a reward later.
Starting at level 3, each character gets 3 "floating" item slots, one each of no higher than your level +1, your level, and your level -1. These can be commons or uncommons from any player resource, and they count against your found items. However, you can "retrain" them every level. You don't have to use all 3, and can use actual found items instead. This would mean that any character who has a total of found items greater than their level -3 gets fewer than 3 floating items. If you gain a found item when you're already at your cap, you can dump a floater to make room for it.
Characters starting at above level 1 follow the current rules. They gain the floaters once they have gained two levels, again subject to their found item cap.
Grandfathering characters into the new system: This one's a toughie, and I'm less confident about this proposal. Characters that already meet the new restrictions need no change. Here are some options for options for dealing with excess found uncommons (bought ones should just be refunded):
Trade them for commons of their level +1 or lower (subject to the level +4 limit).
Temporarily convert them into floaters. This could allow a character to exceed the cap for their current level, but they'd be obligated to retrain them into legal options when they level up.
Refund the found item slot and give them an amount of GP equal to the "more gold" option for the mod in which they found it. Players should have a record of which mod they found it in, so this just needs a shot table. SPEC, QUES, ADCP, etc. may be a bit muddy.
Thoughts?
"Edison didn't succeed the first time he invented Benjamin Franklin, either." Albert the Alligator, Walt Kelly's Pogo Sunday Book
The Core Coliseum: test out your 4e builds and fight to the death.
Good way to see half the local LFR group and almost all* the organizing DMs quit the campaign.
Not exaggerating / kidding either.
LFR has custom treasure and has gone on too long for a reset button that doesn't get people to quit the campaign. We are heading into epic and we'd be telling people to rebuild their characters just before that?
LFR needs a custom solution that doesn't involve junking the current player base.
*I'll do a poll this weekend, but every DM I spoke too so far had this opinion.
Dealing with floating slots and what not is far to complicated for what is not that complicated of a situation. Using the common/uncommon split to establish a better balanced wealth level is actually a really good idea - party wealth in LFR is well above the execpted level, and as the partie inclreases in level the situation gets exponentially worse.
My recommendation is to establish a guideline of expected wealth that roughly scales with level. Require characters to meet that guideline evertime they level, and be done with it. Keep the LFR bundles as they are, add a limited option to buy uncommon items, and allow full purchasing of commons and consumables. A system that is simple to understand and be compliant with is very important.
My recommendation is an uncommon cap equal to Level/3 +1 per tier. Level/2 results in slightly higher wealth, but also is easy enough to follow at all levels. Don't get into any issues regarding what items were picked up when or anything like that, just require characters at any given level to be within the cap, how they got there is irrelevent so long as they are legal in the here an now.
For purchasing uncommons, add a quest reward to those adventures which offer Major Quest rewards. For those characters who earn the quest reward, they are allowed to purchase any uncommon of their level (this represents the idea that characters quested for the components or what not like they would in a normal campaign). This also has the nice side benefit of encourage characters to play in quest arcs.
I really don't see how establishing a reasonable wealth guideline and expecting characters to be withing the boundaries of said guideline will resort in the destruction of half of the LFR playgroups.
LFR has custom treasure and has gone on too long for a reset button that doesn't get people to quit the campaign. We are heading into epic and we'd be telling people to rebuild their characters just before that?
I said nothing about rebuilding characters, just their loot. If Essentials doesn't work with too many uncommons, then we have two choices: rewrite the D&D play rules, or rewrite the LFR item acquisition rules. The former is an unacceptable option. If the LFR item acquisitions change, then older characters either gain a benefit by being grandfathered in, or they need to rebuild their loot. Again, the former option is unacceptable.
@MorganD: One of Keithric's concerns was in finding build-essential items by playing random adventures (which is the assumption). The floaters solve that problem. Major Quests are too unreliable, although the New LFR story arcs will make that easier. Your proposal doesn't allow any way for a character participating in rando adventures to get even a single build-critical uncommon except by sheer luck.
It doesn't really matter what the exact mechanics of the uncommon/rare caps are, just that there are caps that come close to the expectations. That's the easy part. The hard parts are dealing with uncommons, and simulating an item wish list. A complete solution must do both.
"Edison didn't succeed the first time he invented Benjamin Franklin, either." Albert the Alligator, Walt Kelly's Pogo Sunday Book
The Core Coliseum: test out your 4e builds and fight to the death.
LFR has custom treasure and has gone on too long for a reset button that doesn't get people to quit the campaign. We are heading into epic and we'd be telling people to rebuild their characters just before that?
I said nothing about rebuilding characters, just their loot. If Essentials doesn't work with too many uncommons, then we have two choices: rewrite the D&D play rules, or rewrite the LFR item acquisition rules. The former is an unacceptable option. If the LFR item acquisitions change, then older characters either gain a benefit by being grandfathered in, or they need to rebuild their loot. Again, the former option is unacceptable.
@MorganD: One of Keithric's concerns was in finding build-essential items by playing random adventures (which is the assumption). The floaters solve that problem. Major Quests are too unreliable, although the New LFR story arcs will make that easier. Your proposal doesn't allow any way for a character participating in rando adventures to get even a single build-critical uncommon except by sheer luck.
It doesn't really matter what the exact mechanics of the uncommon/rare caps are, just that there are caps that come close to the expectations. That's the easy part. The hard parts are dealing with uncommons, and simulating an item wish list. A complete solution must do both.
Well for most items, you can acquire them through the normal bundle system. All of the adventures that are 'any Implement +3', Any Weapon/Neck/Armor +3 etc. should foot the bill for most of the 'build defining items'. The things that need to be bought are off the off items - Dragonshards, Gauntlets of Blood, Sandals of Light stepping, Handband of Intellect etc. The point being that you don't buy those very often, certainly only ever few levels.
I suppose another solution would be allow people to buy whatever uncommon's they want of equal level and just apply bought items to whatever the level cap is - that would work just as well in the end.
Keep in mind that "grandfathering" here is only a temporary measure. In 4 levels, most of the excess items will be junk and the character will be in compliance with the new rules without any need for a major rebuild. Our low paragon PC is happy with his +3 items, but soon those +4s will be available. So he can only get them according to the new rules, which means that at least some of them have to be commons. And it is not too long before the character effectively only has the same number of uncommons as the PC who started after the new rules. And if there still is a noticeable difference, it will be much easier to eliminate it. We also have the advantage of avoiding all the stress of any conversion. No players steamed over losing the item they worked so hard to get... The Globals also gain this advantage. They don't have to work to find the perfect way to do something than likely has no perfect way. So grandfathering has considerable advantages and at less cost. Given we are trying something whose advantages are dubious, it is best to do it in the least stressful way.
I've been unable to find a list of which items are common, uncommon, and rate. I did update the Character Builder and it shows for each item what it is. Not having tried to look at every magic item in the program, I have so far found only common and uncommon items, so I have no idea what items are rate.
I recently tried to build a character above 1st level and discovered there is a problem trying to choose the 3 free common magic items for the characters. For many levels I have only been able, at best to find one item of that level that was common. By one item I mean among all the weapons, armor, hand, feet, head, neck, etc categories, I found one item that was common. Sometimes it was a neck item, sometimes a leg item, but many categories do not have any common items at particular levels. The armor, neck, and weapons are good for levels 1, 6, 11, etc for vanilla items, and vicious weapons are available at levels 2, 7, 12, etc. However the between levels like 3-5, 8-10, etc do not seem to have any or at most one item from all categories combined.
They should either have one common magic item at each level in each category, or allow characters created at the higher levels (5, 8, 11) to select up to 3 uncommon items. They are already limited in found item slots compared to characters started at 1st. Those characters could have as many as 11 uncommon items at 11th level, while allowing the higher level created characters to have up to 4 uncommon would not make them too powerful.
Our low paragon PC is happy with his +3 items, but soon those +4s will be available. So he can only get them according to the new rules, which means that at least some of them have to be commons. And it is not too long before the character effectively only has the same number of uncommons as the PC who started after the new rules. And if there still is a noticeable difference, it will be much easier to eliminate it.
Hm? Why do any of them 'have to be' common?
You go up a level, you get a new slot and your allowed quota of uncommons goes up. You can always fill every single slot with uncommons - and now an uncommon of your level is always an option.
And if, as suggested, you are replacing an item (replacing a +3 with a +4) then you are actually endup with an additional net uncommon slot once you sell off the old one. Which means you can both upgrade to a new +4 uncommon item (once you reach the right level) and you can pick up a wondrous item, a consumeable or other usefull uncommon item. This, of course, assumes that he doesn't just want to upgrade his weapon to +4 since he apparently now upgrade a weapon when he is still four levels lower than the items new level. I.e. if you can afford it, you can take an item (with your uncommon pick) at, say L12 for a L12 item and then when you get to L13 upgrade it all the way up to the L17 version. Note - Ithis is a change from the old rules. Is this what they really intended to say?
So you may choose to take an common if you want the extra plus more than you do any of the available uncommons. But the choice there is between the +4 at L16 or any of the uncommon +3s from L11 to L14 (i.e. most of them).
Our low paragon PC is happy with his +3 items, but soon those +4s will be available. So he can only get them according to the new rules, which means that at least some of them have to be commons. And it is not too long before the character effectively only has the same number of uncommons as the PC who started after the new rules. And if there still is a noticeable difference, it will be much easier to eliminate it.
Hm? Why do any of them 'have to be' common?
You are overlooking the date. At the time this was posted, it was expected that the PC would have 4 uncommon slots per tier, and our 13th level PC would have about 5-6, and would have maybe 18 uncommon items according to some reports, certainly well above 5. So over the next 5 levels he would get only 2 uncommon items, but would certainly want the big three and likely some other magic as well, meaning he would have to be taking several commons. Fortunately the system was revised to allow uncommons at every level, but still with a limit of one per level. So our 13th level with 18 uncommons would still be forced to take common items unless he first sells 5 of his uncommons. A number of these items will be junk, so grandfathering will not be as necessary. It is still probably a good idea since the excess items will still 'wear out', but it won't hurt as bad now.
You go up a level, you get a new slot and your allowed quota of uncommons goes up. You can always fill every single slot with uncommons - and now an uncommon of your level is always an option.
But it may not be a good option. We will have to wait and see what the treasure bundles look like. If you have your choice of any weapon of table level+2 [=6 for our example], you might want something more than a generic+2, but if the reward is a Battlecrazed axe and you use a bow, that generic+2 bow is going to look great. And if none of the treasures are appealing, you can get a 6th level generic anything instead of a 4th level uncommon. So we won't be sure whether uncommons are actually a good idea until the new adventures start coming out.
And if, as suggested, you are replacing an item (replacing a +3 with a +4) then you are actually endup with an additional net uncommon slot once you sell off the old one. Which means you can both upgrade to a new +4 uncommon item (once you reach the right level) and you can pick up a wondrous item, a consumeable or other usefull uncommon item. This, of course, assumes that he doesn't just want to upgrade his weapon to +4 since he apparently now upgrade a weapon when he is still four levels lower than the items new level. I.e. if you can afford it, you can take an item (with your uncommon pick) at, say L12 for a L12 item and then when you get to L13 upgrade it all the way up to the L17 version. Note - Ithis is a change from the old rules. Is this what they really intended to say?
Technically. But a 12th level item is 13,000. So you need to scrap up 52,000 to upgrade it to 17th level. There seems to be no way you can raise that sum before you are about 16th level.
