Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 Duke5150 Oct 01, 2009 7:59:15	So, if a player has 10 magical items, each with a daily power, he/she can use them in a single day without the need of a milestone or anything else. This would also mean that the encounters would need to be adjusted and that milestone effect on magic item dailies would have to be changed. Some of the player's I play with are requesting this houserule from our DM and I found the idea interesting for MY players, who don't like the idea of only using a max of 4+ item dailies at the highest levels of play and using  milestones.   So, I open this up to discussion. What do you believe are the pro's and con's of this? I'll start. Balancing issues. Encounters would have to be adjusted to balance out the extra powers. I believe this will take practice, trial and error playtesting would be the only way "I" would be able to learn how to adjust encounters accordingly. a single milestone can be used to recharge a single magic item daily power. Yes this could be abused. Carrying around a bag of wands/orbs/rods or having straps of daggers and other ways to abuse it. Which is why I believe there should be a limit to the number of useable item dailies. I think a max number of useable item dailies could equal the number of different body slots you have +3. So 12 total useable item dailies each day. head, neck, body(armor), arms, hands, waist, feet, ring(x2), weapon 1(mainhand), offhand, +1 extra use of an item daily so someone can switch out an item if they want.   So lemme know what you think, suggestions on how this houserule could happen and what sort of adjustments you think would need to be made. If you think its a terrible houserule or a great houserule, please explain why. Keep it constructive. Thanks!
#2 slobo777a Oct 01, 2009 8:38:26	If you are prepared to re-balance encounters, then the only other problem I can see is the "Christmas Tree" effect of having +9 or so dailies (at Heroic Tier) all coming from different items. If you re-balance to account for the house rule, then the players may well feel the need to have a bunch of cheap (L-3 say) magic items available, to get the power level right for the game. At the very least, players will need to have roughly the same number of items, to be able to pull their weight within the team. That's a lot of focus on the items, which is what the original limitation is there to prevent. If you and the players want the heroes' abilities to revolve more around their magic items than their race and class choice, and you want to make the effort to raise the difficulty to match, then it should be possible to make this work.
#3 Duke5150 Oct 01, 2009 8:53:15	That is one problem. I don't want the item powers to be more important than the class powers. But at the same time, I'd like to allow the PC's more useable item dailies. I need to find a balance between the two.   [edit] How about this. At heroic, players can use three item dailies per day. At paragon, six item dailies and at epic, 9 item dailies. (since epic characters might be in combat for days at a time with no rest)   This might also allow epic players to fight above the level 35-36 monster level max.  I'll keep working the numbers until I can find a balance. Another possible is 3 at heroic, 4 at paragon and 5 at epic, Or, 3 at heroic, 5 at paragon and 7 at epic.   The problem is, the interesting magic items all have dailies instead of encounters and a lot of the players I play with have been wishing they could use more item powers. Our DM's are still new at this and I think I'm the only one who participates on this forum, so I'm trying to gather info for the groups. Plus it would be nice to be able to suprise MY players with a little power boost.
#4 alisair_longreach Oct 01, 2009 11:02:40	I like this houserule of letting a magic item daily power be a daily power without restrictions. I, personally loathe the Milestones rules because they restrict my use of magic items and seriously downgrades the functionality of having multiple magic items. Let me illustrate this with an analogy. Imagine Little Peter. He just got a lot of electronic toys for Christmas. But only one rechargable battery with a recharge time of 12+ hours. Imagine Little Peter's disappointment. Magic items with a daily power are like electronic toys and Milestones are like the rechargable battery. An electronic toy without a battery is just some useless plastic junk. A magic item without a Milestone to power it is just unclaimed Residuum. An experienced player prefers magic items with Properties, At-Wills and Encounter powers before any with a daily power because of the Milestone restrictions. To prevent abuse of magic item daily powers restrict them to one use per day per item slot, this will prevent the swapping out of spent items during short rests. I don't think there needs to be further restrictions as a daily power is a resource in itself.
#5 Duke5150 Oct 01, 2009 20:08:28	I like this houserule of letting a magic item daily power be a daily power without restrictions. I, personally loathe the Milestones rules because they restrict my use of magic items and seriously downgrades the functionality of having multiple magic items. Let me illustrate this with an analogy. Imagine Little Peter. He just got a lot of electronic toys for Christmas. But only one rechargable battery with a recharge time of 12+ hours. Imagine Little Peter's disappointment. Magic items with a daily power are like electronic toys and Milestones are like the rechargable battery. An electronic toy without a battery is just some useless plastic junk. A magic item without a Milestone to power it is just unclaimed Residuum. An experienced player prefers magic items with Properties, At-Wills and Encounter powers before any with a daily power because of the Milestone restrictions. To prevent abuse of magic item daily powers restrict them to one use per day per item slot, this will prevent the swapping out of spent items during short rests. I don't think there needs to be further restrictions as a daily power is a resource in itself. Thats a good analogy! In one of my groups (as a player) we have been awarded 4 magic items each, total. 3 of which have dailies. So far, the cleric and paladin have been stuck using their holy symbols and only those holy symbols as they are the most useful for the party. (symbols of life) but they have armor and weapon dailies they NEVER get to use. I'v seen that problem, and know it will come up with MY players, so I'd like to avoid it by expanding the total number of item dailies usable. Not sure how I want to handle this yet. Need to think it out some more.
#6 bastard_dm Oct 02, 2009 9:00:03	The problem with that is there are a number of lower-level magic items with daily powers that can be useful at higher levels.  With the nonlinear scaling of wealth in 4e, higher-level characters can purchase (or create) an absurd number of these lower-level items, and effectively use their daily powers at will.  This "inexhaustable bag of magic" was a minor problem in prior editions, and would have been made far worse in 4e (where nearly every item has a daily power) without the limit. That having been said, I do agree the limit feels a bit stifling at heroic tier- but once you get the base of 2/day at paragon it works a bit better. In my opinion, if you want to grant players a few more uses of magic items, increase the limits by one: At heroic tier, you may use two item daily powers (recharging one use of an item per milestone). At paragon tier, you may use three item daily powers (recharging one use of an item per milestone). At epic tier, you may use four item daily powers (recharging one use of an item per milestone). In my experience, most of the players in my games deliberately choose magic items with encounter powers or properties, not because of the daily item limit, but because a power they can only use once per day isn't very exciting.  I have yet to see a character with more than 4-5 item daily powers. -The Bastard DM (Reformed)
#7 Tony_Vargas Oct 03, 2009 0:55:19	It's potentially abuseable.  A a player would have to do is acquire a lot of items with useful dailies and he's added a great deal of versatility and not a little power.  They can be quite inexpensive items, even. It's also easy to head off that abuse:  Don't hand out too many items.  Don't have quantities of items available for purchase.   Your variant would let the DM highlight items he's wants to see used in the campaign.  He gives out the items he wants the PCs to use, and lets them use them with less restriction.  It's ideal of there are specific sorts of items that are somehow tied to the background of the campaign, and thier acquisition and use is a key feature of the story.
#8 Hippolyte Oct 03, 2009 1:08:34	Some items have daily powers which are very good indeed. But in my experience, many daily item powers are situational. If a party of four uses two or three daily item powers per encounter, they will be getting all those great benefits and should not feel very deprived. In my opinion (based on the modules), the default for 4th edition is that there be easy encounters interspersed with the harder ones: that way a party can easily accumulate the milestones they need for action points and daily item powers when there are tough encounters. As a dungeon master, if the party is almost exhausted (but not completely) before the final fight, but the story demands no extended rest, I just throw a very easy encounter at them, so that they will have action points and some more daily item powers for the end.
#9 Chimerasame Oct 03, 2009 2:27:11	I like 3/5/7, or "one per day per item slot" or what have you--those're both fine ideas. I would be hesitant to make it completely limitless, though, because then why not get like 100 wands of whatever?
#10 pbn Oct 03, 2009 2:38:19	I think the system is fine the way it is.  It's more than simple rebalancing.  With the additional dailies, you're setting yourself up (imo) to have your party nova EVERY encounter.  At the higher levels, there aren't tough enough monsters to handle that (unless you start playing groups of solos)  edited: typo
#11 warcolonel Oct 03, 2009 10:00:42	Rule we've played with: Any number of item dalies a day, limited to one per slot/per encounter, and limited to one per encounter/ per tier. Worked well in our games, and bumped up the power level w/o going too high.
#12 Duke5150 Oct 03, 2009 13:02:54	Rule we've played with: Any number of item dalies a day, limited to one per slot/per encounter, and limited to one per encounter/ per tier. Worked well in our games, and bumped up the power level w/o going too high. For now I think I'm going to allow one item daily per slot per day. Explaining that its not core and then later, when my group finishes this learner campaign and are ready to jump into the game 100% with all the rules, I'll go 3 dailes per day per tier. So 3/6/9. Limiting one per encounter per tier is not bad, but my players tend to rest after each tier, and the groups I play in tend to do the same, as milestones are usually not worth the same as an extended rest to us. Thanks for all the feedback!
#13 forgelord Oct 11, 2009 16:46:12	I allow my players to use as many as they want each day.
#14 drunkenxmaster9919 Oct 13, 2009 3:20:18	Here's what I do for my players. It's based off of a homebrewed idea taken from 3E. Use Magic Device: Charisma, right? I let them use a number of items per slot equal to their charisma modifier per recharge (Minimum 1). This lets characters that want to focus on using magic items (Artifacers, for example) The ability to do so, but only with a high tolerence of their force of will on the world (Cha)