[3.p] Appropiate gear without wealth can it be done?

[Malroth]

I'm Trying to come up with some homebrew for my next campaign whose objective
is to allow the trappings of high level rich magic worlds (pc's getting access to enough magic weapons/armor that they mathematically need to fight high CR encounters) without the magic marts and their accompanying multiple nations worth of wealth they assume the pc's have.

Idea 1. Give all PC's/NPC's access to all item creation feats and replace caster level requirements with Craft rank requirments and eliminate gold and spell requirements alltoghether. XP costs and crafting times remain the same.

Idea 2. there are no inherently magical items, but great heroes/villians have some personal power that allows mundane items to function as whatever magic items they want up to their next lv's WBL.


I'd like to hear other ideas on this subject as well as whatever flaws people can find in both these and other ideas posted in this threads.

[andromax]

is to allow the trappings of high level rich magic worlds (pc's getting access to enough magic weapons/armor that they mathematically need to fight high CR encounters) without the magic marts and their accompanying multiple nations worth of wealth they assume the pc's have.


Are you concerned with the players having too much wealth by giving them magic items are loot?

Or are you concerned that their WBL isn't enough to purchase gear that you think they'll need?

If you want them to have more powerful gear and not wealth, a simple fix is to create magic items that are restricted by alignment (only worth 70% of base price) or by class (another item = 70% base price) or by skill (ranks in whatever skill, 90% of base price).

Or toss in some cursed magic items that have some drawback to them. They can be fun and make the player choose if they think it is worth it or not. On the plus side they get a magic item for very cheap, on the downside they... well thats up to you.

[rot42]

Ericgrau has a pointbuy system for basic magic pluses (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=134805). I have not tried it myself, but it looks solid. For the rest, I would go with your second idea as it involves less lampshading. In any case, you will need to decide what to do about saving "wealth" until next level, crafting between level ups, "retraining" magic item abilities, dragon hoards, and Dispel Magic.

[Malroth]

What i'm shooting for is a complete seperation of the value of Mundane objects like food, land and buildings, and the value of the magical items adventures use to slay monsters. I want it to be possible for NPC merchants to be impossibly wealthy by PC standards but not have them be able to buy their way to absolute power and to have mighty heroes with weapons capable of slaying gods poor enough to have to sleep in barns because he spent his character time sparring instead of "honest work".

[GenericMook]

Huh, so it's basically like BoED's Ancestral Relic feat, without the silly fluff/XP shenanigans?

That would work and make more sense. I'd reverse engineer some of the more awesome items to figure out the equivalent prices in terms of WBL, if I were going with that route.

But you should be careful. A advantageous player might completely shuffle around his magic items when he hits the next level, if you're following the idea of the Ancestral Relic in BoED, but you can always houserule stuff in.