Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Karn_Maradis 09-22-06, 04:47 AM	Hello, For my halfling low-magic campaign I am working on better masterwork types. I find normal weapons to be bland, so I want to bring in more variation. Next to normal masterwork I want to add stuff like sharper weapons made of finer materials. Example: -longsword doing 1d10 damage for 2,000 gp's extra. -greater crit range (like keen?) for 2,000 gp's extra. -Bonussen on initiative because of lightness weapon (cost ???) Practically this works just like magical weapons. -weapons with +2 or +3 on attack ((2x2x300) 1,200 gp's and (3x3x300) 2,700 gp's (seems too cheap)) I want to do same kind of things with armor and shields. Besides this I want to make magical weapons more expensive. I'm thinking of doubling the cost and make bland +1 weapons and armor rare, because they're not needed much. See the better masterwork. Instead they also have abilities like CLW 1x day (just an example). These weapons are made for slaying beasts with resistances (can someone say dragon?). Next to that I want to ban stuff like +4 and +6 ablityscore items and manuals and tomes that raise ability scores. Any ideas?
Garonak 09-22-06, 07:06 AM	You could also do what one of my groups are doing in our low-magic campaign. Instead of magic items we have personalized items. That is we spend XP to give the weapons enchanments, much like Kensai (except we pay more). The XP cost is 1/5 of the gp cost. That means that if you want to make your mwk sword into a +1 sword you pay 400XP. This works fine for our group. The DM gives just a tad more XP (about 10-20%, not enough to cover the cost entirerly, but it helps a bit). The downside is that a weapon will only work for the person (and maybe blood-relatives) that made it.
Crimsonrhino 09-22-06, 07:11 AM	Hehe, you say its low ,magic without magic weapons then you just give the magic weapon a new name and use it. Just keep using the magic weapons but have them be very rare as the ons that create it are very rare. A low magic world has VERY few spell casters and so much less magic trinkets floating about.
Garonak 09-22-06, 07:32 AM	Point taken. ;) As for price, you could just work out from the magic item prices in DMG. How are you going to work around DR /magic and such?
Karn_Maradis 09-22-06, 07:49 AM	I am keeping the DR system. Only the players still need magical weapons to bypass certain DR's (or just substract some of the damage). Crimsonrhino: I get your point. But the problem I experience now is that you have normal items and masterwork. That's it. I want more possibilities without using a magical item. I hope I achieve that normal weapons appear more special and magical weapons even more special. And low magic in this campaign means banning the wizard, substituting cleric for cloistered cleric in Uneathed Arcana and changing druid to the one described in PHB2. Maybe I should call it "Nerfed Magic". :D
Arkan_Shadesfire 09-22-06, 08:09 AM	Well, the problem is that if you make non-magical enhancements that do the same thing for less GP, you're borking game balance. I like the idea of the +1 Keen sword that isn't magical, it's just made really well--but pricing it can be a problem. The thing is, if the bonuses are nonmagical, they can't be dispelled or supressed by antimagic fields--so they'd have to cost quite a bit more than a magical weapon. One way to think about it would be to come up with a "can't be dispelled/supressed" ability, price it, and then change the flavor text so that it's a "non-magical, just made really well" ability instead. The point is to figure out how much magic items that can't be dispelled, supressed, or disjunctioned are worth in your campaign.