Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Judging Eagle 04-10-07, 11:09 PM	Thought I'd see what people here think about some material that somene else is going to be writing to sort of have an other take on magical weapons. So far, the furthest that we've seen posted so far, no where. The problems circles themselves like a dog that can't get to bed. The other stuff in Book of Gears has apparently "written itself". The part on Magic Swords is what people want is at once both perfectly reasonable and completely unreconcilable. Is the topic of this discussion directly relevant to how the Book of Gears will function? Yes. The sections on Constructs, Vermin, Economics, Skills, and even class rewrites virtually write themselves. But the Magic Items... oh boy. That's sort of the cornerstone project of the whole thing. The big problem is that what people want from magic items is in fact contradictory. People legitimately desire the following: I want my character to be defined by who he is rather than what he has. The days of AD&D, where all Fighters were identical and people seriously showed each other a stack of index cards with owned magic items on them to demonstrate what their characters could do - were stupid and insulting. I want my character to be Aladin/King Arthur/Whatever. Magic items in lgends and fairy tales are plot devices, and control the direction of the entire story. Noone gives a damn about Sir Hubert, but who could forget Siegfried and his anvil-slicing Gram? Holy ****. These are two reasonable requests, but they don't go together. At all. What people actually want is for magic items to be game defining and irrelevent at the same time. So the real question becomes: what kind of compromise would people settle for? Because god damnit the things that people actually seem to want are completely unreasonable. -Frank Some people say that Feats and PrCs should cover getting Plot Device items, which makes some sense. He-Man was He-Man, b/c he not only had the sword, but was also He-Man. REally hard to understand, but it makes sense. He found the sword, thus qualifying for the He-Man class, then takes levels in it and uses the sword. So, his plot device item, is in turn part of his character level choices. That's my take on a method.
ScipioX 04-10-07, 11:40 PM	Seems pretty straightforward to me. People want most of their characters abilities to derive from their class and feats. They also want powerful magic items that give unusual abilities and can change the direction of the game. The difference is in 'utility' magic items; the slew of items that non-casters need to operate at higher levels. Cloaks of resistance, goggles of see invisibility, AC boosters, boots of flying are just some of the examples of items that are pretty much required. Without them a high level non caster is pretty much S.O.L. Players want to be He-Man. A powerful warrior with a (single) magic sword. They don't want to be a walking magic-mart advertisement. Just look at heroic fantasy. The hero is usually a skilled (whatever) with just a couple of special items. King Arthur had a magic sword. Beowulf didn't have much of anything as I recall. Typical Shaolin monks had almost no gear. Even James Bond, who's schtick frequently revolves around special gear, usually only had 3 or 4 special items per movie. Your average 10th level character probably has at least 10 magic items, if not 20 or more. And a 20th level character has a vast horde of magic items. The solution? Classes need to have abilities that fill the role of 'required' items. That way characters can have just a few, but powerful items. Magic items should operate in absolutes. The magic ring protects you completely, it doesn't make it 10% harder to hit you.
lrellok 04-11-07, 12:13 AM	I think i see what you are saying. Let me try a responce. Magic items are like any other item, except better. They are charicter contingent, and a part of the charicters personality, or rather an agumentation of the charicters outlook and method of opperation. A rouge trap finder would not keep a +1 might cleaving great sword, nor would a paladine have a Dark Skull for any length of time. Its not his/her style. This is one of the reasons people used to (and still do) use sets of magic item cards to define PC's. They just have Feat cards to go with them now. The items and feats a charicter chooses to keep say alot about how that charicter opperates and how they look at the world. Second, mythic charicters, like aladin or he-man, where the equivilant of lower level, 3-5, D&D charicters. At these levels, you only have a few special items. Something like a lamp with a genie in it, or a sword that casts multiple pump spells at will, is going to dominate the campain. In all likelyhood, such an item is the campain, unless the DM is VERY generous. Finaly, i strongly disagree with the idea that magic items should be absolutes, and am shocked anyone would even suggest class abilities to replace magic items. the point of magic is its versitility; swap the the items you needed yesterday for the ones you need today. you can't swap out class abilities that way. Also, incorperating spacific "nessesary" items into a class, or even one or two classes, would lead to the very "identical fighters" the poster originaly protests. Everyone would take the same build, becouse anything else is under powered. Class abilities and the powers granted by magical items are seperate and distinct classes of abilities. Class abilites are based on the aptitude of the charicter with a specific focus or skill set. Magic items allow a charicter with such a focus to go beyond the normal abilites of his peers, as well as do a few extra things outside those abilities. magic items should agument class abilities, not replace them.