Need help making an idea feasible

[Azoth]

Okay, I gotta admit that I hate the idea of the golfbag of weapons. I also hate when you finally get your weapon upgraded to the gills just right for you character's strengths, and the realize for the next chunk of the campaign you would almost do better beating things in the face with a table leg.

So, an idea hit me while replaying FF7 and flipping through the MIC to kill some boredom. Making a new enhancement system based around enhancement "slots" that can be filled with items similar to weapon augment crystals. This way with some cash and a few minutes you could change out your weapon abilities.

I don't know how to make the costs not astronomical or barely a blip. I figured a weapon's total slots could depend on its "quality" and that special enhancement materia could be fitted until the slots were full. Other than this I am a blank.

Making the enhancement materia cost what the enhancement would is too cheap, but scaling the costs is impossible to figure out. Afterall, what is to stop someone from stripping all the materia from a weapon before loading up on new ones?

Maybe have some kind of fixture piece that has a cost depending on which slot it goes in to help balance it?

Ugh...please help. My brain is hurting trying to think on this.

[danzibr]

Okay, I gotta admit that I hate the idea of the golfbag of weapons. I also hate when you finally get your weapon upgraded to the gills just right for you character's strengths, and the realize for the next chunk of the campaign you would almost do better beating things in the face with a table leg.
First, and I hate to be a rude person, you should really change it to feasible. I stared at feesable for a long time wondering what it could mean.

Anyway, I really like this idea. I love FF7 for one thing. But yeah, it would add a great level of versatility. Instead of having to reenchant a weapon from the ground up you can just swap around your materia-like stuff. And maybe some things could go in weapon and armor.

So, an idea hit me while replaying FF7 and flipping through the MIC to kill some boredom. Making a new enhancement system based around enhancement "slots" that can be filled with items similar to weapon augment crystals. This way with some cash and a few minutes you could change out your weapon abilities.
I would think... you'd probably make like +1 materia, +2 materia, flaming materia, et cetera. Then you put those in weapons with various numbers of slots.

I don't know how to make the costs not astronomical or barely a blip. I figured a weapon's total slots could depend on its "quality" and that special enhancement materia could be fitted until the slots were full. Other than this I am a blank.
Well, you could probably go either way. Like, the more slots a weapon the better it is since it can be made stronger, but at the same time you can have strong weapons with few or no slots. I'd agree that more slots should mean a higher price but not much higher. The materia itself would be the expensive stuff.

Making the enhancement materia cost what the enhancement would is too cheap, but scaling the costs is impossible to figure out. Afterall, what is to stop someone from stripping all the materia from a weapon before loading up on new ones?
You could probably just do something simple like... double it. Like figure out what a +5 enchantment is, double it, then that's your +5 materia. It would make something like a +5 flaming, flaming burst, valorous weapon MUCH cheaper (assuming you just plop in a +5, a flaming, a flaming burst and a valorous), but I've always thought they were ridiculously expensive in the first place.

Maybe have some kind of fixture piece that has a cost depending on which slot it goes in to help balance it?
Huh? I don't get this. Like... certain slots can only take certain materia?
Ugh...please help. My brain is hurting trying to think on this.[/QUOTE]
Hopefully I said at least one thing useful.

[Azoth]

No, I more meant that you had to have something to house the materia in the weapon. This item would cost a certain amount depending on which "slot" it went into.

Say a weapon had three slots for materia, each slot would need a fixture to hold the materia in place and transfer the benefit to the weapon. Buying a fixture for the first slot would be cheaper than one for the second slot.

Or maybe, if I went with a fixture idea, the fixtures could only work with certain materia. I.E. a bronze fixture could work with a +1 equivalent materia but not a +2 or higher.

I was also kind of thinking of tying the slots into the base numerical enhancement of the weapon. Say a MW weapon has 1 slot, +1 weapon has 2 slots, +2 has 3 slots, +4 has 4 slots, +5 has 5 slots. Sure it allows earlier enchanting, but it also limits the players from having the standard optimizer weapon of +1 and +9 equivalent enchantments.

As an aside, by your calculations materia would cost as such:
+1=4k
+2=16k
+3=36k
+4=64k
+5=100k

Which could make it possible to attain a +10 equivalent weapon for 120k. Or if we combined the ideas for 70k.

[JeminiZero]

Standard D&D pricing system has weapon price be the square of its total enhancement. If you want to keep this pricing system intact, the easy way to go about it is as follows:

0) Each slot represents a +1 enhancement bonus.

1) Some Materia (like transmuting), may occupy multiple slots.

2) Each Materia crystal has a cost, based on the number slots it occupies (lets say it costs 2,000 gp per slot).

3) A weapon now has a cost equal to the number of slots squared * 2000, BUT minus a fixed cost per slot to offset Materia (which we assume to be 2,000 as stated above) .

So what does this get us? The cost of weapons are as follows:
{table] Total Slots (Total Allowable Enhancement) | Slots ^2 * 2000 | Materia Cost Offset (Slots * 2000) | Effective Total (besides base weapon and masterwork cost
1 | 2,000 | 2,000 | 0 gp
2 | 8,000 | 4,000 | 4000 gp
3 | 18,000 | 6,000 | 12,000 gp
[/table]

So as an example, Stabby McFighter can but a 3 slot sword for 12,000 gp (plus base weapon and masterwork cost). He can buy any 3 Materia crystals (each providing the same effect as a +1 enhancement) for 2,000 gp each. So maybe he buys 2x +1 enhancment Materia, and a flaming Materia. This nets him a +2 flaming sword. His total cost is 18,000, which is the same as the old system.

However, he can swap out the materia. Maybe he sells off one of the +1 enhancement materia, and buys a frost materia. So he gets a +1 flame and frost sword.

[Djinn_in_Tonic]

Standard D&D pricing system has weapon price be the square of its total enhancement. If you want to keep this pricing system intact, the easy way to go about it is as follows:

0) Each slot represents a +1 enhancement bonus.

1) Some Materia (like transmuting), may occupy multiple slots.

2) Each Materia crystal has a cost, based on the number slots it occupies (lets say it costs 2,000 gp per slot).

3) A weapon now has a cost equal to the number of slots squared * 2000, BUT minus a fixed cost per slot to offset Materia (which we assume to be 2,000 as stated above) .

So what does this get us? The cost of weapons are as follows:
{table] Total Slots (Total Allowable Enhancement) | Slots ^2 * 2000 | Materia Cost Offset (Slots * 2000) | Effective Total (besides base weapon and masterwork cost
1 | 2,000 | 2,000 | 0 gp
2 | 8,000 | 4,000 | 4000 gp
3 | 18,000 | 6,000 | 12,000 gp
[/table]

So as an example, Stabby McFighter can but a 3 slot sword for 12,000 gp (plus base weapon and masterwork cost). He can buy any 3 Materia crystals (each providing the same effect as a +1 enhancement) for 2,000 gp each. So maybe he buys 2x +1 enhancment Materia, and a flaming Materia. This nets him a +2 flaming sword. His total cost is 18,000, which is the same as the old system.

However, he can swap out the materia. Maybe he sells off one of the +1 enhancement materia, and buys a frost materia. So he gets a +1 flame and frost sword.

This is a good system, but, for maximum flexibility, I'd switch it around. Make the MATERIA have the scaling price based on how many slots they occupy, and keep the weapons static. This will allow characters to switch weapons if they have time and inclination, and will put a premium on different Materia. That puts the cost where it should be: on the effect flexibility, not the weapon flexibility. The standard with the new system will be to keep the Materia and switch the weapons around, rather than find a nice 5 slot sword and just use only that with a thousand different effects. Basically, it makes the player pay a premium to diversify the effects he or she wields, but allows her to switch weapons quickly and easily if a newer weapon might offer more power, more slots, or more effectiveness against a given foe.

[Amechra]

Eberron has things called Dragonshard Pommel-Stones.

You slap them on a weapon, and that weapon gains the weapon property in the pommel-stone.

Simple!

They cost 50% more to make than it normally costs to stick that enhancement on your weapon directly.

So you could just have an enchantment for a weapon that let's you plunk more than one on.

So, yeah, totes feasible.

[Hanuman]

I'd suggest using the dragon pommel option as it's in source and this sounds like a player complaint, not a DM.

Any fight which renders a beatstick into a meatshield should allow other imaginative options, like sketchy-looking stalactites on the ceiling you could throw a rock to break, or pots of oil to throw as the wizard ignites the monster, ect.

[NichG]

I'd start by identifying what parts of the system you want to be in the weapon, and what parts you want to be in the materia. What I mean is, lets say everything relevant to the weapon is in the materia - then there's never any reason to switch unless something has a different number of slots or whatever. But if everything relevant is in the weapon you have the current scenario.

So perhaps you want special weaknesses/etc to be part of the weapon (e.g. this thing has DR/silver, that thing has DR/cold iron)? Or maybe retain that different weapons have different tactical choices associated with them, and then expand that a bit (reach weapons vs non-reach weapons is really the primary dichotomy right now, so you might want to expand on that).

Personally I'd separate the +'s of the weapon from its nontrivial enhancements (like Flaming/etc). A given weapon could be a +X weapon of Y material. The +X tells you how many Materia slots there are. Slotting a Materia into one of these slots replaces the +1 to hit/damage with the Materia's effect. Slightly weaker than normal since you have to buy the Materia separately, but slightly more powerful than normal in that you don't need to keep the first +1, you could have a weapon that only has effects and not numerical plusses. Actually, in my campaigns I'd just leave the +1's there and allow the effects to sort of 'gestalt' over them; that would make non-numerical weapon enhancements a lot more attractive.

This works nicely since the quadratic cost of +X keeps the number of slots from getting out of hand, and individual Materia can be priced with regards to how good their effects are. You could even allow all Materia to merely be one slot, but ones that were originally multi-slot enchantments are just more expensive.

[JeminiZero]

Basically, it makes the player pay a premium to diversify the effects he or she wields, but allows her to switch weapons quickly and easily if a newer weapon might offer more power, more slots, or more effectiveness against a given foe.

As far as switching weapon goes, you can take care of that problem with a Materia Holder system. Basically, there is a device that holds the Materia, which cost as I described above, and which can be anchored to any Masterwork weapon. This lets the player switch the holder to different masterwork weapons. And of course, he can also swap out what Materia is in the holder.


This is a good system, but, for maximum flexibility, I'd switch it around. Make the MATERIA have the scaling price based on how many slots they occupy, and keep the weapons static.

This is significantly trickier to price. You would need different levels of the same Materia to account for exponential costs. Under the old system, adding Flaming to a +1 sword, is much cheaper than adding flaming to a +9 sword (+5 base enhancement, and +4 in other properties). You would need to have 9 different versions of the same flaming materia, each of which can apply its effect to a given enhancement level (or lower).

E.g. Under the old system it cost +6,000 to add Flaming to a +1 weapon, but +38,000 to add Flaming to a +9 weapon. So to keep the price the same, you have a Flaming level 1 Materia which can be added to any +1 weapon which cost 6,000 gp. And then you also have a Flaming level 9 Materia which can be added to any +9 (or lower weapon) which cost 38,000 gp.

[maceman121]

Not sure if you are still interested in this concept, but I used a lot of the ideas here to come up with my own concept. Check the link for full details, but a quick summary is below, just to make it easier.

http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Magic_Items_(Existence)

An item (weapon, sword and shield only) can only have a number of socket power levels equal to 2 * Enhancement bonus, and must be crafted when the weapon is. Each socket pass the first cost money to build into the weapon, and cannot be later upgraded to a more powerful socket power. The socket power level dictates the strongest Materia that it can hold (its equivilent enhancement cost)

Materia costs 2*Enhancement Base Price
Sockets cost 1,000, 4,000 and 10,000 for each additional socket beyond the 1st (max 4)
Weapon must be at least a +1 to have a socket of any kind.

This way of doing it means that newer weapons can be better, since it might be a higher + value, meaning more powerful sockets, or it might just be the same + with a different socket power level mix. Also, the Materia are only the special abilities, not a material type, and not a base enhancement type, meaning that if you want a cold iron and a silver weapon, you need two weapons still. This allows for improving the weapons as the game goes on and not have just a single weapon you change out.

Putting in, and taking out, a Materia takes a full round DC 10 UMD check. Makes it so the fighter cannot spend 1 round in combat switching all the Materia on his weapon to suit the fight, pre-planning is still needed.

The way this is done does allow for weapons and armor above +10, to a max of +15, but the cost are extremly high (upwards of around 300,000gp), and the DM can always say the +10 is still a hardset. So maybe instead of 2* enhancement bonus, only can do a 1* enhancement bonus. I like 2* as it allows the weaker enhancement bonuses to still improve decently, but not get overpowered too easily. No +1 Vorpal Swords, it needs to be at least a +3 XD.