Teh Epic Lootz

[Conchobar]

How important is it? I've played in a few campaigns, and the only time I've ever had access to real magic items was when I was 12 and our DM, the Montiest of Monty Hauls, threw XP and epic loot our way at the slightest provocation. I played a half elf dual-scimitar wielding blast sorcerer, and had a heck of a time. No, I've never read any of the Drizzt books, but he had and that was enough.

So, in every other campaign I've been in, I just haven't had much access to anything beyond masterwork. As an example, in our last campaign I played a Warblade from levels 1 to 12 and never got beyond 2000 gp--my character sheet shows I ended at 1217 gp. It was a fully magical world and the DM had some great plot-central homebrew magic weapons/armor that she handed out about midway through the campaign, but those weren't always reliable/useable: my particular weapon had ridiculous bonuses (especially compared to everything else, which was of course mundane) but also tried to suck out my soul every time I used it, ensuring I only ever did when we finally went up against the BBEG (after the initial use when I found out about the nasty side effect, of course. The usefulness of Moment of Perfect Mind really cannot be overstated).

Meanwhile, I get on these boards and have a good chuckle about people saying things like in-combat healing is useless, just use wands of vigor between battles! UMD is the best class skill! Boosting stats or skill checks is trivial, just buy an Unobtanium +X Codpiece of Whatever! It all sounds complicated, but deliciously so, and I wonder sometimes what I'm missing. I still have a blast, of course, so there's no need for "every game is different, what's important is that you have fun!"--I already know that. What I'm asking is, what do you think the game loses when you throw out WBL?

[jaybird]

Not much, so long as the GM is able to compensate for it. For example, I doubt you would have had as much fun as a Fighter in that Warblade 1-12 campaign.

[JellyPooga]

Personally, the way I run my games, I tend to keep loot down. I charge a fee for the training to gain a level, I insist my players pay for their rooms and board in town and keep track of things like how many rations and arrows they have left. I also don't have the Magical Shop of Magical Stuff in every city that the PC's can just go buy whatever they want. They want something particular, they're going to have to earn it (and before anyone chimes in with "if it were me in that situation I'd just craft my own", then let me forestall you by saying that you can't just spend the money and get the item after the required time...you're going to have to go actually find those 7 flawless rubies, the manticores eye and 6oz. of gold smelted under a blue moon on a tuesday to make your Necklace of Fireballs, thank you very much!).

So basically, I'm saying that I'm coming from the same (or similar) angle as you!

In the few games I've played where magic items and "phat lootz" were commonplace, I found that it took away the special nature of those items. With limited funds, even a +1 Sword is something treasured. With super-loot, a +1 Sword is either more gold for the pot or dead weight to be left behind. I know which I'd prefer.

[Remmirath]

When you throw out only Wealth By Level? Nothing. I don't think I've ever played in a game that used it, except perhaps as a benchmark for starting equipment if not starting at first level.

Throwing out magical items, however... well, it certainly changes things. Power level increases much more quickly the more items you have, of course. So, you lose a fair amount of power in an ultimate sense, although if the rest of the world is playing by the same rules it may not be all that noticable.

However, you also gain the feeling of magical items being something special, which you don't really get if they're everywhere. I think it's a bit of a trade off.

There are some classes which rely more on magical items than others, also. Non-magical classes tend to get a bit behind when there are less magic items - though not always, and mostly at higher levels, and there are ways around that.

Honestly, I prefer it when magic items don't really start showing up until at least a few levels in, and it takes a long time to get the really good items. I think it's refreshing to play in campaigns with not all that much loot now and again (though I suppose the opposite would be true if I usually played in such games).

[Hiro Protagonest]

Whatever delicate balance 3e has left.

Fighters can't do magical things on their own, but the game expects you to be able to. So what did the devs do? Magical loot! Your fighter can fly all day long and there isn't a tenuous explanation for it!

However, it's not just for imitating the unique tricks spellcasters get. They took it to the point where not only do you need Winged Boots, you also need a +X sword appropriate to your level in order to hit your enemy more than 50% of the time without using Power Attack. And you will get hit 95% of the time without miss chance and AC-boosting magic items because unlike attack bonus, armor class does not scale with level outside of certain weak feats and WBL.

Some of you think that there's some "special nature" to magic loot. There is, in some games. In Exalted, your Behemoth Heartpiercer is probably a prized possession that you wouldn't trade for any amount of cash. In 3e, though, your +2 Rifle of Distance... isn't. It's expected to be there once you reach a certain level, and you're expected to toss it away or upgrade its powers at a higher level. There is no "magic mart", I don't give a damn about that. But when my team clears out that squad of fire giants working with the hobgoblin army, I expect, between the loot from the giants and the reward from the guys in charge, to get a direct upgrade to my greatsword and a new cloak of Wings of Flying.

[Conchobar]

It's true that their relative scarcity made them more fun. The infinity+1 spear that I had was named Godslayer, was made by the elves with the help of the elder gods, and was created with the sole purpose of killing the BBEG du jour of our campaign. It had been used only once before, weakening him, and in the process of doing so all the other gods were killed and the race of elves made extinct. So, the fact that it was an artifact of real in-game importance made it highly memorable. That and the fact that it had +12 to attack and did 3d8+15 damage, with +2d6 vs undead, evil, or fey creatures, which somewhat outclassed the masterwork greatsword I had been rolling with before. I knew it would come with baggage even before I found out about the soul sucking thing, so when we came to the final city of the campaign (and the strongest city-state in the entire game world, both militarily and economically) I asked the DM what sort of other magical spear I could use when I wasn't off slaying Cthulhu. The only magic spear in the ENTIRE CITY that I could buy was a +1 Flaming Burst spear, which I didn't really want but bought anyway and promptly named Gonorrhea.

So, I guess what's lost in terms of power is made up for with memorability. And as has been stated, you don't feel underpowered when everybody else is operating under the same mechanic. Still think I'd like to play a game with access to tens of thousands of gold someday, though, just to see what it's like.

[Triaxx]

Really depends on the game type. If it's ultra high magic, I tend to have better loot. However, the value of loot can be countered by the quantity. The more loot you put in, the cheaper it should be.

For example the Moat house in Temple of Elmental Evil. Take that, and call it a 3000gp dungeon. That means the total loot cost is going to be about 3000gp. With a +/- five hundred variance for whether or not they arrive when the raiding party is in. (I add a raiding party.) And the boss goes with the raiders, so you might get his powerful sword or not, depending on the time of day you get there.

That way I can give them 3000gp worth of rusty iron junk. And one good one.

Or give them nothing more than one Super strong sword.

[Randomguy]

I think it really depends on the campaign style: There are high magic settings, "standard" settings and low magic (or just low-item) settings, and all of them can be fun.

With high magic settings the party has to ratchet up the paranoia and have counters to everything in a tippy-verse like world, since everyone has at least as much magic as they do.
In low magic, just surviving in the wilderness can be a struggle. Here VoP becomes not only viable, but actually powerful.
In "standard" you get a setting where fighters and monks can keep up (ish) with the casters, by using magic items.

All of them have their own particular charm. Of course, not all classes can be played in all settings. Artificers and cash dependant classes would suck in a low-magic world, for example, but it doesn't really matter since they don't fit with the setting anyway.

[DarkestKnight]

I've had both the epic lootz and the lack thereof. In the campaign of epic lootz, the dm pretty much overloaded us with magic gear, in particular a cross bow that would create random effects. memorable ones include firing a direshark, turning things to stone, planeshift, fireball, turning the target into gibbs, firing the tarrasque, and so on. This was a face paced campaign and was pretty fun though it was a large group. The other was when I was playing an Artificer (the DM warned me whatever I could do he could do better) and somehow ended up starved for magical gear even with me cranking out items as quick as I could.

Though I'm tempted to say that tossing out WBL unbalances the classes, I cannot say it with a straight face. What it does is put more emphasis on the items a character uses as opposed to who the character is. The Psion in the group who used the earlier mentioned crossbow rarely used his powers as he enjoyed the bow too much.

[Conchobar]

Yeah, I wasn't about to mess up my group's synergy with powergaming nonsense, but just for fun last campaign I made an unarmed VoP-based character that would have absolutely destroyed anyone in the party/the entire party, just because the power levels it grants were so much more than anybody else had. I ended up giving him to the DM, who loved him and used him as a one-off NPC. She also said we might be seeing him again in this campaign, which would be cool.

DarkestKnight, I want that crossbow. That sounds like exactly the sort of thing that would make magic items both fun AND memorable.

[DarkestKnight]

Let me tell you, you DO NOT WANT. please take my word on it.

in case you do not in fact take my word on it a quick scenario of events that actually took place.
I cannot stress how many stupid situations we got ourselves into, and out of (grudgingly conceded).

"oh hey kobolds. *twang* OMGBBQ why is there a Tarrasque? *Twang* OMGBBQ why is the tarrasque now in six inch chunks? *twang* OMGBBQ why is there now two tarrasques looking at each other?"

" *twang (nat 1)* you hit the druid* Druid (out of character): [psion] you ******! DM: [Druid] how do you feel about the astral plane? The rest of you take a break, I'm going to find a way so that [druid] doesn't have to roll up a new character."

"*twang* DM: you fire a dire shark. it tries to eat the lure that is between it and the Giant. and by lure I mean the cleric [me] who is wearing some shiny fullplate. *rolls* the shark is now trying to swallow [Cleric] whole. *twang* DM: you, uh, turn the shark to stone. [cleric] is now stuck up to the waist in a stone shark's mouth. by the way a dragon crashes in through the roof. *twang* DM:....you turn the dragon to stone as well.

So that is why you should have taken my word on it. Don't get me started on "Mr. Woo's magic fortune cookie". it was almost worse. Almost.

[Kol Korran]

As a DM and player, I find loot useful, at least loot that gives INTERESTING options: the ability to turn to a snake for a short time per day, the ability to know some obscure lore, teleport short distances, slip through cracks while in darkness, cards that create illusions and so on. These ind of loots give the PCs more options, and I welcome more options.

I quite dislike the static "Add X to Y" kind items, though some of my players like them, so i sometime give those too. It's their kind of fun, right? I used to have sort of Magic Marts in the bigger cities, though those were partly limited as well, but in the current campaign i'm implementing a different rule set for creating magic items, which will make acquiring them, at least the uncommon ones, a potential quest in itself. Not sure how it will affect the campaign, but i'm waiting to see.