In OD&D, lacking a magical weapon, we occasionally managed to loot a room with a single gargoyle in it (they were only 4 dice, so Sleep affected them), but we had no way to kill them, lacking magical weapons. Once they became more than 4 dice in AD&D, we had nothing and ran away. Add in that the most common thing that would distinguish characters in OD&D was what magic items they had.

Yes, you're more manly because in your campaign PCs die permanently all the time and get no magic items while everyone else is doing it wrong. Yes, I sincerely believe that you've played that way for 40+ years. Pat yourself on the back if you can reach it.

No, see, in my campaign any character that lives long enough will inevitably get magic items. Practically guaranteed!

But the difference is that instead of a wheelbarrow of magic items they treat as boring tools, it's one or two or maybe three magic items that they treat as a fundamental character-defining feature.

Get it now?

Quote from: RPGPundit;1110203No, see, in my campaign any character that lives long enough will inevitably get magic items. Practically guaranteed!

But the difference is that instead of a wheelbarrow of magic items they treat as boring tools, it's one or two or maybe three magic items that they treat as a fundamental character-defining feature.

Get it now?

If you're keeping the numbers low, how do you feel about the magic items that grow with the character? This way PCs 'unlock' abilities slowly rather than all at once. I believe D&D had something like this in 3.5 (I recall "legacy something" in the description) and it's the basis for almost all magical (thread) items in Earthdawn.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1110203No, see, in my campaign any character that lives long enough will inevitably get magic items. Practically guaranteed!

But the difference is that instead of a wheelbarrow of magic items they treat as boring tools, it's one or two or maybe three magic items that they treat as a fundamental character-defining feature.

Get it now?

That is more or less how I treat them in my campaigns, as well. Although it depends on the PC too. Some players don't necessarily want magic items, and that's fine too. My games aren't 'balanced' around them, but they make a nice well-earned reward, and some players do greatly enjoy integrating them into their character's identity.

I remember playing in a D&D 3.5 campaign my buddy was running...we had a bunch of powergamers and munchkins who strictly adhered to the alleged minimum magic per level nonsense. He decided to give EVERY permanent magic item a personality, with all of them being able to talk. Hilarity ensued when one of the munchkins got a really powerful sword that was basically an obnoxious tattletale, not to mention had a somewhat puritanical outlook. Every time he killed anyone or anything, the sword would say something like, "Why are you so evil? How can you live with yourself?" During combat the sword would apologize to the enemies, and start giving them tactical advice. Whenever the party would interact with an NPC, it would butt in and explain how horrible the player was and start listing all the bad stuff he had done.

I think he ditched that sword about three sessions after finding it because it was just so annoying, and he never once complained about not having enough magic items again.

Quote from: deadDMwalking;1109850In 3.x, they make magic weapons much too expensive for wealth by level guidelines.

Some prices needed adjustment, especially wands, but at least the ratios were better. In AD&D, you could trade two +1 swords for a +2 and only eight +1 swords for a +5. In 3e, you'd need four +1 swords for a +2 and twenty five for a +5 sword. That's a decent ratio for a top tier weapon.

Quote from: hedgehobbit;1110244Some prices needed adjustment, especially wands, but at least the ratios were better. In AD&D, you could trade two +1 swords for a +2 and only eight +1 swords for a +5. In 3e, you'd need four +1 swords for a +2 and twenty five for a +5 sword. That's a decent ratio for a top tier weapon.

3e weapons just cost too much relative to wizard items, and relative to armour. Halving the costs for +s so they equal armour costs would pretty much fix it; energy damage bonuses like +d6 fire need to stay at least that much though.

Quote from: HappyDaze;1110223If you're keeping the numbers low, how do you feel about the magic items that grow with the character? This way PCs 'unlock' abilities slowly rather than all at once. I believe D&D had something like this in 3.5 (I recall "legacy something" in the description) and it's the basis for almost all magical (thread) items in Earthdawn.

I think that can sometimes feel very contrived, unless you're very clever about how you do it.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1110203No, see, in my campaign any character that lives long enough will inevitably get magic items. Practically guaranteed!

But the difference is that instead of a wheelbarrow of magic items they treat as boring tools, it's one or two or maybe three magic items that they treat as a fundamental character-defining feature.

Get it now?

I get it. No longer are the pc's treated as Swiss army knive men who have a magical item as the solution to everything. Every player only has a handful of items that define their character. For example a thief might have a lockpick which opens every lock, but he can only use it once every mooncycle. He also has cloak of invisibilty that hurts his health every minute he uses it and a scroll of identify he can use as often as you want, but cause the character to slowly go insane.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1111889I think that can sometimes feel very contrived, unless you're very clever about how you do it.

I keep this rare, but it works well for special items. Eg Ralf the Uthgardt Barbarian in my FR campaign took a great axe from a dead orc war chief at level 5. It was just a +1 greataxe, but he loved that axe. The player had a steel mini made of his PC with that axe, lovingly painted by his wife. The axe is slowly revealing more powers as he attunes to it and grows in power, now at level 9 it does +d6 frost damage. I decided it is actually the axe of Uthgar, the race-hero demigod of his people, slowly coming back to life. My plan is it goes to +2 at 13th and +3 at 17th.

Quote from: HappyDaze;1110223If you're keeping the numbers low, how do you feel about the magic items that grow with the character? This way PCs 'unlock' abilities slowly rather than all at once. I believe D&D had something like this in 3.5 (I recall "legacy something" in the description) and it's the basis for almost all magical (thread) items in Earthdawn.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1111889I think that can sometimes feel very contrived, unless you're very clever about how you do it.

The best take I've seen was on an osr game Eorathril, that had two ways to do this: (and I believe they got the idea from another game.)

 You found that +1 whatever, and like S'mon's player the  item grew as the PC did greater deeds with it. The game had a little chart that listed the various types of deeds that would accrue points, which when enough were earned, would bestow various "upgrades" to the legendary weapon.

The other way was basically the same as the first except that the player would invest I think some amount of XP in a mundane weapon that they had, which would then become a +1 something, and then the chart would kick in as normal.

I thought it rather clever as the bonuses ought to usually reflect the uses the weapon was put to - like if you killed a lot of Orcs, you can have it glow when they are near, or a +bonus to dmg for a given enemy, or induce a morale check, etc.

Quote from: Jaeger;1111908You found that +1 whatever, and like S'mon's player the  item grew as the PC did greater deeds with it. The game had a little chart that listed the various types of deeds that would accrue points, which when enough were earned, would bestow various "upgrades" to the legendary weapon.

I was thinking about making a class for magic weapons. They gain XP as you use them and level up like a wizard. Forex, a 3rd level magic sword would have two first level powers and one second level power.

Of course, if the owner of the sword dies, the sword loses two levels. With enough wielder deaths, the sword ends up cursed. If you use a cursed sword enough, you'd eventually bring it back to positive levels, making it valuable.

What bugs me the most about too many items and too much bending of rules and finding tricks to defeat the npc's is that it's just too meta for me. It becomes just like a card or a board game and it doesn't make me immersed in the setting. I have the same with grids, positioning and line of sight mechanics. You are playing the game and not really playing your character. Way too meta.

Quote from: jan paparazzi;1114874What bugs me the most about too many items and too much bending of rules and finding tricks to defeat the npc's is that it's just too meta for me. It becomes just like a card or a board game and it doesn't make me immersed in the setting. I have the same with grids, positioning and line of sight mechanics. You are playing the game and not really playing your character. Way too meta.

Playing the game versus playing your character? I understand what you mean but you're pretty much playing both if you're playing. I like grids/positioning/line of sight because it makes the situation clearer without a lengthy back-and-forth with the GM, and I accept the oddities (faster to move with the grain of your grid than against it, for example) the same way I accept the oddities that go with hit points and combat mechanics and so on. You pretty much have to know if you can see an opponent and how far away they are to target them with a spell or a bow, and the game goes faster if you can just look at some figures on a grid, and faster play helps immersion.

I dislike it when players calculate based on the mechanics and then port their conclusion back into the world being simulated, but I don't think that large numbers of magic items make this more likely. It can spoil immersion in the game when the character disappears under a pile of magic items, though.

I don't have a set rule on magic items, but I've always been at odds with them in D&D. Part of the reason I never got around establishing a set of rules for them in my games is the magic weapon requirement for damaging certain creatures in D&D (which may require a specific "+"), which sort of pigeonholes me into including +X weapons for characters to be able to fight those creatures. Granted, I could just ignore that rule or handle it a different way, but that tends to go against expectations from players experienced with D&D, and becomes one more thing I have to drag time explaining to them that things work differently in my game (as many other things already do).

The main issue I have with magic items in D&D is the wealth of items that persistently modify stats--not just ability scores, but also attack rolls, AC, skills, saves, etc.--which tends to throw things off in terms of balance when stacked with ability-based bonuses, especially if I already include a wealth of options to improve the character's rolls and such through character abilities. This became a major issue in AD&D 2e when I introduced my own modified "Player Options" rules, including weapon mastery, which allowed bonuses as high as +5 for Grandmasters on top of the (up to) +5 bonus for magic weapons, STR/DEX bonuses, etc.

A +1 or +2 bonus may seem like crap on its own, but when you have three or four other things that ALSO give you bonuses ALL the time (not even on activation) it starts to get ridiculous. And I the end of the day I would MUCH rather characters get bonuses from their own abilities rather because they have a magic toy that does it for them. I've been thinking of eliminating persistent magic bonuses from magic items for a while and making magic items something that generates spell-like effects on activation instead. Rather than a +X flaming sword, characters could get a high quality weapon with no permanent bonuses (except maybe a +1 quality bonus) that can temporarily inflict a extra flaming damage upon activation a limited number of times per day, or perhaps based on a magic device using skill roll.