Eldritch Points [Archive] - Wizards Community

Eldritch Points [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
grey_omnibus
02-25-05, 10:53 PM In my gaming group my players often complain about the necessity for vast quantities of magic items, and hold the belief that the powers of a hero should be more dependent upon their own abilities, rather than on the equipment they carry.

In response to this I have proposed a system of Eldritch Points, wherein one gains points to apply to certain attributes. For example, a character who wishes to apply a +2 enhancement bonus to her Dexterity score would spend 4'000 eldritch points (replacing the 4'000 gp of Gloves of Dexterity). Attributes still occupy their "slots" on a character's body, though, so a character couldn't gain both a +2 Charisma bonus (Cloak of Charisma) and +5 competence bonus on Hide checks (Cloak of Elvenkind).

This also applies to weapons and armour: a +3 enhancement bonus on attack rolls with a dagger would cost 36'000 points. Changing the application of a character's eldritch points usually requires 24 hours of reconditioning, and can only occur under circumstances (Enhancing a bow with the shock quality might require training in the presence of a constant loud noise). A character who permanently applies a bonus to a specific weapon or armour spends the same amount of points, as well as paying an experience cost, but gains extra bonuses because of their focus on a single item.

Magic items and weapons still exist, but they are scarcer, more expensive, and invariably possess additional qualities. Finding a +3 flaming longsword would be a great accomplishment even for high level characters, because of its rarity and its ability to hurl fire spells at the wielder's opponents.

One of the main problems with this system lies in its incompatability with the wealth gained by characters in their career. Having a full set of eldritch points more than doubles the character's wealth, so the treasure acquisition after an encounter would have to be part Eldritch, and part material wealth.

This variant is of course, high powered, so it will require some tweaking.

Suggestions will be greatly appreciated.
Lina_Inverse
02-25-05, 11:25 PM tell them to deal with it.a fighter needs his magic sword.

besides,this system is crazy abusive end of story.reseting your magic items at will?cherry picking without the wizards aid?
oberyn
02-25-05, 11:57 PM so you would just pick up eldritch points as you went there woudlnt be any exp or eldritch points gained every level? thatd seem a bit smarter to me to have a set number of points you gained every level for enhancments then agian entire quests just to get eldritch points could be fun.
Lord_Anthrax
02-26-05, 01:46 AM How will spells like Mordenkainen's Disjunction affect this? Will it destroy the Eldritch empowerment of their current items, requiring reattunement? Or will it cause a permanent loss of EP?
srkingdavy
02-26-05, 03:39 AM BAH-ROKEN!

permanent character bonuses are strictly better than items... they can't be destroyed, lost, broken, melted... I as a DM like the ability to take back magic items if the characters are overpowered for their level.

and being able to cherry-pick is just wrong.
IceFractal
02-26-05, 04:12 AM Not necessarily. I've thought about using a simpler version of this system where the PCs just gain special abilities instead of treasure (for the most part; they still gain some treasure, but magic items are rare). For instance, if they would normally get a +1 sword after completing a quest, instead they gain the favor of a powerful being who will bestow "the power of magic" on their weapons, meaning basically any weapon they attune (by spending 24 hours using only it, can only have one weapon attuned at once) becomes a +1 weapon.

Now you can price this several ways:
Generous Way - Costs the same as the item normally would.
Stricter Way - Costs double the normal price because of slotlessness.
Very Strict Way - Costs triple the normal price because of slotlessness and unstealiblity (is that a word?).

Now when I say "costs", they don't actually pay for it but they get that much less treasure from a given quest. Say the quest would give them 1,000 gp worth of treasure and they get 800 gp worth of special abilities; they'd get 200 gp worth of treasure.

Also, there's ways to restrict abilities like this aside from being an item. Requiring an attunement period, having to spend time training to switch boni around, requiring a small quest to learn how to gain a particular ability, and so forth.
HailSpork
02-26-05, 05:04 AM Simpler solution:
Customize your world. Make it a world devastated by magic/war/gods/etc with dead magic zones.

Done.
grey_omnibus
02-26-05, 09:29 AM Well, thank you IceFractal, at least one of you had something insightful and helpfel to post. Honestly, I asked for assistance, not flaming for Pete's sake. If the idea's broken, suggest ways to fix it or please don't post.

But seriously, thanks Fractal. I think that idea could work.

Any more suggestions?
Lord_Anthrax
02-26-05, 10:37 AM Requiring foci for the enhancements will keep some of the flavor of items intact, i.e. your magic sword/axe/whatever is a specific weapon, and if it's broken/stolen/whatever, you need 24 hours to reattune a new one, thus preserving the idea of slots. You can then adjust enhancement requirements for nonconventional slots or "slotless" items(which still require a focus of some sort)if you wish to allow such.

To keep foci from being carried by the bundle, you might require that they be of Masterwork quality and also have another quality called Attunable, i.e. specifically made to be focused, with an additional market cost of, say, 1/10th the GP value of the maximum allowable enhancement to them. Thus a sword that could be a total +10 enhancement would cost an additional 20,000 GP. This could be covered as part of Item Creation feats, with the creation price being half the market cost, but not cost XP(thus making them more available, but still expensive).

As for killing someone and taking their stuff, enhanced items could retain a charge long enough after their owner's death to give someone who spends time taking the charge EP equal to half that of the original. To cut down on treasure gain, you could rule this process ruins the item for attunement purposes.

As for targeted Dispels and such, have them work as normal. As for Mordenkainen's Disjunction, it depends on how "lethal" you want the spell to be. It could simply destroy the attunement, it could destroy the attunement and ruin the focus, it could cause you to lose some of the EP you have invested(say half), all depends on how you view the spell as-is.
MythMage
02-26-05, 03:52 PM I like this system. I don't much care for the idea of characters running around with dozens of magic items. It just seems to make them too... mundane.

For Mordenkainen's Disjunction, I would say it is a far too lethal spell. I would say it only ruins the current attunement.

I second the idea of requiring foci to be "attunable".

I'm not sure how I'd fix it, but I don't really like the idea of taking a slain enemy's EP.

Very good concept so far. :thumbsup:
Lord_Anthrax
02-27-05, 08:52 AM Taking a slain enemy's EP is analogous to taking a slain enemy's magic items. If you don't want the PC's to gain in this way, your choice of course. You could just set gain by character level, making it (Level squared)*250 for each level. So they have 250 at 1st, then gain 1000 at 2nd for a total of 1250, then gain 2250 for 3rd for a total of 4500, etc.
Korimyr the Rat
02-27-05, 11:03 AM Are you familiar with Four Color to Fantasy? It has rules for creating super-powered characters, for use in comic-book style games, but it also has super-power equivalents by gp value.

It avoids the cherry-picking issue and the slotlessness issue, and gives a far broader variety of available powers.
Delfedd
02-27-05, 01:59 PM You could make eldritch points an "item," where you find scrolls that have them inside. You'd need a lot of them to get the enhancement bonus to everything.

Or, you could say "eldritch points are going to longsword" and get a lesser cost.
Cymraegmorgan
02-27-05, 02:57 PM What do most PCs spend their share of treasure on? Magic items. If you have replaced the need for magic items, you have reduced the PC's "cost of living". You could cut treasure by 90%, and they could still live well.

You could always go with something like Eldritch Feats. An Eldritch Feat every even numbered level. Each would emulate an effect, the powers would stack, many could be taken multiple times. This puts things a little bit more under your control, because you have created the list, not every magical effect has to replicated into a feat, and, best of all, you have not added another number to keep track of.
A fighter at second level would take, for example, Magic Damage Eldritch Feat, so all of his attack and damage rolls get a +1.
Replacing the effects of wands, etc. might be accomplished by burning the Feat space to get that spell once or twice a day, the caster level being your level when you take it. If you take such a Feat multiple times, the caster level would rise, and you would get it an extra time per day.
HailSpork
02-27-05, 06:56 PM Honestly, I asked for assistance, not flaming for Pete's sake. If the idea's broken, suggest ways to fix it or please don't post.

I don't think any of the responses have been flaming so far.
You asked about the plausibility of a system, and many people responded with honest comments as to the result.
The idea itself is broken because it pulls so much power away from both the item crafters and the limitations of the items themselves. The easiest way to fix this is to not use it; given that the original problem was that your players want to rely more on their abilities than on that of their items, my suggestion *IS* a way to fix it.

If you're that set on running this system, I suggest keeping the crafting feats, only change them to Eldritch feats. If you want to get a bonus as if your weapon were magical, you need somebody with Eldritch Weapon to meditate with you. If you want to make it more powerful, give them each an Eldritch feat at level 1 and make caster level = character level; this *may* take away from casters unless you keep the spell requirements intact. IE, a fighter can eldritch a +1 weapon, but a shocking burst weapon would require the participation of somebody who knows either lightning bolt or call lightning (as well as the person spending the points and gaining the benefit)

Also, I would put a limit to the number of points you can move per 24 hours. Crafting takes 24 hours per 1k, so 1k per day would be my suggestion. Particularly given how powerful the ability to redistribute your points is, it would make sense to limit it.

As for combining wealth into the eldritch point system, you just need a way to figure out how to get them. Perhaps there are Eldritch coins, each worth 100 gp; whenever you roll up a treasure, add some Eldritch coins in and subtract their value from the hoard. When used, the coins are consumed. Perhaps a person could make Eldritch coins in the process above. Perhaps Eldritch coins can be consumed as potions or scrolls.
IceFractal
02-27-05, 09:50 PM It seems like giving eldritch point items as treasure is kind of defeating the whole purpose of the system - to make players less item dependant. The key here is that it shouldn't be eldritch points + full treasure, it should be eldritch points replacing part of the treasure. Which was probably the original poster's intention, but many people seem to have misunderstood. Yes, if you gave special powers and normal treasure, it could be broken, but that's not how it works.

Second, systems like this only really work if you think on a "quest" basis. That is, instead of thinking about treasure per encounter, think about expected treasure for the entire quest. If a quest would give the players, say, 10,000 gp total for all the encounters, then they might, in this system, get 1000 gp in treasure and 9,000 gp worth of special abilities/eldritch points. You can fiddle this ratio around, of course.

And note that "9000 gp worth" of eldritch points doesn't necessarily mean the same amount of stuff that would cost 9000 gp. As I posted earlier, you can double, or even triple, the value of the special powers to take into account their advantages over normal items.

Now as to lone opponents like random encounters while travelling, there's two ways it could work:
1) Simply by defeating an opponent you unlock hidden power. You gain eldritch points/special abilities whenever you'd gain treasure.
2) Special abilities are only bestowed for accomplishments of note (quests), random encounters only give you a small amount of normal treasure. Random encounters should be minimized if this is used, and it should be possible to avoid or escape most of them.
HailSpork
02-27-05, 09:54 PM Well, if the amount of Eldritch points given for comleting a quest is arbitrary, than the pricing would also be arbitrary. You might as well make it match the GP value of the items and scale down the amount of points received.
IceFractal
02-28-05, 01:20 AM Well, if the amount of Eldritch points given for comleting a quest is arbitrary, than the pricing would also be arbitrary. You might as well make it match the GP value of the items and scale down the amount of points received.

True, its about six a' one either way. The amount of points given isn't arbitrary though, its proportionate to the amount of gp you'd get. You can either say that 1 gp = 1 ep for special abilities and scale the amount recieved, or you can say that the amount recieved is equal to the gp you'd normally get and scale the special ability costs.

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
grey_omnibus 02-25-05, 10:53 PM	In my gaming group my players often complain about the necessity for vast quantities of magic items, and hold the belief that the powers of a hero should be more dependent upon their own abilities, rather than on the equipment they carry. In response to this I have proposed a system of Eldritch Points, wherein one gains points to apply to certain attributes. For example, a character who wishes to apply a +2 enhancement bonus to her Dexterity score would spend 4'000 eldritch points (replacing the 4'000 gp of Gloves of Dexterity). Attributes still occupy their "slots" on a character's body, though, so a character couldn't gain both a +2 Charisma bonus (Cloak of Charisma) and +5 competence bonus on Hide checks (Cloak of Elvenkind). This also applies to weapons and armour: a +3 enhancement bonus on attack rolls with a dagger would cost 36'000 points. Changing the application of a character's eldritch points usually requires 24 hours of reconditioning, and can only occur under circumstances (Enhancing a bow with the shock quality might require training in the presence of a constant loud noise). A character who permanently applies a bonus to a specific weapon or armour spends the same amount of points, as well as paying an experience cost, but gains extra bonuses because of their focus on a single item. Magic items and weapons still exist, but they are scarcer, more expensive, and invariably possess additional qualities. Finding a +3 flaming longsword would be a great accomplishment even for high level characters, because of its rarity and its ability to hurl fire spells at the wielder's opponents. One of the main problems with this system lies in its incompatability with the wealth gained by characters in their career. Having a full set of eldritch points more than doubles the character's wealth, so the treasure acquisition after an encounter would have to be part Eldritch, and part material wealth. This variant is of course, high powered, so it will require some tweaking. Suggestions will be greatly appreciated.
Lina_Inverse 02-25-05, 11:25 PM	tell them to deal with it.a fighter needs his magic sword. besides,this system is crazy abusive end of story.reseting your magic items at will?cherry picking without the wizards aid?
oberyn 02-25-05, 11:57 PM	so you would just pick up eldritch points as you went there woudlnt be any exp or eldritch points gained every level? thatd seem a bit smarter to me to have a set number of points you gained every level for enhancments then agian entire quests just to get eldritch points could be fun.
Lord_Anthrax 02-26-05, 01:46 AM	How will spells like Mordenkainen's Disjunction affect this? Will it destroy the Eldritch empowerment of their current items, requiring reattunement? Or will it cause a permanent loss of EP?
srkingdavy 02-26-05, 03:39 AM	BAH-ROKEN! permanent character bonuses are strictly better than items... they can't be destroyed, lost, broken, melted... I as a DM like the ability to take back magic items if the characters are overpowered for their level. and being able to cherry-pick is just wrong.
IceFractal 02-26-05, 04:12 AM	Not necessarily. I've thought about using a simpler version of this system where the PCs just gain special abilities instead of treasure (for the most part; they still gain some treasure, but magic items are rare). For instance, if they would normally get a +1 sword after completing a quest, instead they gain the favor of a powerful being who will bestow "the power of magic" on their weapons, meaning basically any weapon they attune (by spending 24 hours using only it, can only have one weapon attuned at once) becomes a +1 weapon. Now you can price this several ways: Generous Way - Costs the same as the item normally would. Stricter Way - Costs double the normal price because of slotlessness. Very Strict Way - Costs triple the normal price because of slotlessness and unstealiblity (is that a word?). Now when I say "costs", they don't actually pay for it but they get that much less treasure from a given quest. Say the quest would give them 1,000 gp worth of treasure and they get 800 gp worth of special abilities; they'd get 200 gp worth of treasure. Also, there's ways to restrict abilities like this aside from being an item. Requiring an attunement period, having to spend time training to switch boni around, requiring a small quest to learn how to gain a particular ability, and so forth.
HailSpork 02-26-05, 05:04 AM	Simpler solution: Customize your world. Make it a world devastated by magic/war/gods/etc with dead magic zones. Done.
grey_omnibus 02-26-05, 09:29 AM	Well, thank you IceFractal, at least one of you had something insightful and helpfel to post. Honestly, I asked for assistance, not flaming for Pete's sake. If the idea's broken, suggest ways to fix it or please don't post. But seriously, thanks Fractal. I think that idea could work. Any more suggestions?
Lord_Anthrax 02-26-05, 10:37 AM	Requiring foci for the enhancements will keep some of the flavor of items intact, i.e. your magic sword/axe/whatever is a specific weapon, and if it's broken/stolen/whatever, you need 24 hours to reattune a new one, thus preserving the idea of slots. You can then adjust enhancement requirements for nonconventional slots or "slotless" items(which still require a focus of some sort)if you wish to allow such. To keep foci from being carried by the bundle, you might require that they be of Masterwork quality and also have another quality called Attunable, i.e. specifically made to be focused, with an additional market cost of, say, 1/10th the GP value of the maximum allowable enhancement to them. Thus a sword that could be a total +10 enhancement would cost an additional 20,000 GP. This could be covered as part of Item Creation feats, with the creation price being half the market cost, but not cost XP(thus making them more available, but still expensive). As for killing someone and taking their stuff, enhanced items could retain a charge long enough after their owner's death to give someone who spends time taking the charge EP equal to half that of the original. To cut down on treasure gain, you could rule this process ruins the item for attunement purposes. As for targeted Dispels and such, have them work as normal. As for Mordenkainen's Disjunction, it depends on how "lethal" you want the spell to be. It could simply destroy the attunement, it could destroy the attunement and ruin the focus, it could cause you to lose some of the EP you have invested(say half), all depends on how you view the spell as-is.
MythMage 02-26-05, 03:52 PM	I like this system. I don't much care for the idea of characters running around with dozens of magic items. It just seems to make them too... mundane. For Mordenkainen's Disjunction, I would say it is a far too lethal spell. I would say it only ruins the current attunement. I second the idea of requiring foci to be "attunable". I'm not sure how I'd fix it, but I don't really like the idea of taking a slain enemy's EP. Very good concept so far. :thumbsup:
Lord_Anthrax 02-27-05, 08:52 AM	Taking a slain enemy's EP is analogous to taking a slain enemy's magic items. If you don't want the PC's to gain in this way, your choice of course. You could just set gain by character level, making it (Level squared)*250 for each level. So they have 250 at 1st, then gain 1000 at 2nd for a total of 1250, then gain 2250 for 3rd for a total of 4500, etc.
Korimyr the Rat 02-27-05, 11:03 AM	Are you familiar with Four Color to Fantasy? It has rules for creating super-powered characters, for use in comic-book style games, but it also has super-power equivalents by gp value. It avoids the cherry-picking issue and the slotlessness issue, and gives a far broader variety of available powers.
Delfedd 02-27-05, 01:59 PM	You could make eldritch points an "item," where you find scrolls that have them inside. You'd need a lot of them to get the enhancement bonus to everything. Or, you could say "eldritch points are going to longsword" and get a lesser cost.
Cymraegmorgan 02-27-05, 02:57 PM	What do most PCs spend their share of treasure on? Magic items. If you have replaced the need for magic items, you have reduced the PC's "cost of living". You could cut treasure by 90%, and they could still live well. You could always go with something like Eldritch Feats. An Eldritch Feat every even numbered level. Each would emulate an effect, the powers would stack, many could be taken multiple times. This puts things a little bit more under your control, because you have created the list, not every magical effect has to replicated into a feat, and, best of all, you have not added another number to keep track of. A fighter at second level would take, for example, Magic Damage Eldritch Feat, so all of his attack and damage rolls get a +1. Replacing the effects of wands, etc. might be accomplished by burning the Feat space to get that spell once or twice a day, the caster level being your level when you take it. If you take such a Feat multiple times, the caster level would rise, and you would get it an extra time per day.
HailSpork 02-27-05, 06:56 PM	Honestly, I asked for assistance, not flaming for Pete's sake. If the idea's broken, suggest ways to fix it or please don't post. I don't think any of the responses have been flaming so far. You asked about the plausibility of a system, and many people responded with honest comments as to the result. The idea itself is broken because it pulls so much power away from both the item crafters and the limitations of the items themselves. The easiest way to fix this is to not use it; given that the original problem was that your players want to rely more on their abilities than on that of their items, my suggestion IS a way to fix it. If you're that set on running this system, I suggest keeping the crafting feats, only change them to Eldritch feats. If you want to get a bonus as if your weapon were magical, you need somebody with Eldritch Weapon to meditate with you. If you want to make it more powerful, give them each an Eldritch feat at level 1 and make caster level = character level; this may take away from casters unless you keep the spell requirements intact. IE, a fighter can eldritch a +1 weapon, but a shocking burst weapon would require the participation of somebody who knows either lightning bolt or call lightning (as well as the person spending the points and gaining the benefit) Also, I would put a limit to the number of points you can move per 24 hours. Crafting takes 24 hours per 1k, so 1k per day would be my suggestion. Particularly given how powerful the ability to redistribute your points is, it would make sense to limit it. As for combining wealth into the eldritch point system, you just need a way to figure out how to get them. Perhaps there are Eldritch coins, each worth 100 gp; whenever you roll up a treasure, add some Eldritch coins in and subtract their value from the hoard. When used, the coins are consumed. Perhaps a person could make Eldritch coins in the process above. Perhaps Eldritch coins can be consumed as potions or scrolls.
IceFractal 02-27-05, 09:50 PM	It seems like giving eldritch point items as treasure is kind of defeating the whole purpose of the system - to make players less item dependant. The key here is that it shouldn't be eldritch points + full treasure, it should be eldritch points replacing part of the treasure. Which was probably the original poster's intention, but many people seem to have misunderstood. Yes, if you gave special powers and normal treasure, it could be broken, but that's not how it works. Second, systems like this only really work if you think on a "quest" basis. That is, instead of thinking about treasure per encounter, think about expected treasure for the entire quest. If a quest would give the players, say, 10,000 gp total for all the encounters, then they might, in this system, get 1000 gp in treasure and 9,000 gp worth of special abilities/eldritch points. You can fiddle this ratio around, of course. And note that "9000 gp worth" of eldritch points doesn't necessarily mean the same amount of stuff that would cost 9000 gp. As I posted earlier, you can double, or even triple, the value of the special powers to take into account their advantages over normal items. Now as to lone opponents like random encounters while travelling, there's two ways it could work: 1) Simply by defeating an opponent you unlock hidden power. You gain eldritch points/special abilities whenever you'd gain treasure. 2) Special abilities are only bestowed for accomplishments of note (quests), random encounters only give you a small amount of normal treasure. Random encounters should be minimized if this is used, and it should be possible to avoid or escape most of them.
HailSpork 02-27-05, 09:54 PM	Well, if the amount of Eldritch points given for comleting a quest is arbitrary, than the pricing would also be arbitrary. You might as well make it match the GP value of the items and scale down the amount of points received.
IceFractal 02-28-05, 01:20 AM	Well, if the amount of Eldritch points given for comleting a quest is arbitrary, than the pricing would also be arbitrary. You might as well make it match the GP value of the items and scale down the amount of points received. True, its about six a' one either way. The amount of points given isn't arbitrary though, its proportionate to the amount of gp you'd get. You can either say that 1 gp = 1 ep for special abilities and scale the amount recieved, or you can say that the amount recieved is equal to the gp you'd normally get and scale the special ability costs.