Removing magic items

[Thatwarforged]

I have never particularly liked how you needed magic items in d&d 3.x, pathfinder and 4e. I have no real idea how to remove such a large game system without making players suck, since the Monsters are stated assuming the players have items. So does anyone have ways to lessen the impact or edit monsters ro work well. I personally like the idea that magic items are special and should be remeberable not which gives me a better bonus. Should I just give the party scaling buffs by level, should I have a scaling debuff for monsters by their cr, or should i just out right calculate challenges differently. If it helps I plan on making the mundane character classes (fighter, monk, paladin and rogue to be more precise) into modded and fluffed tome of battle characters.

[torrasque666]

I think Grod once wrote up a post about a subsystem he devised that was about "cutting down the christmas tree"

[Karl Aegis]

You could play at such a high level that magic items are entirely useless.

[Deophaun]

I have never particularly liked how you needed magic items in d&d 3.x, pathfinder and 4e.
4e was actually easy to play without items. You just used the inherent bonus alternate rule and never need look at them.

3.PF is hard because, unlike in 4e, classes need items to cover very big holes in their abilities. You try to get rid of them and you're looking at a VoP homebrew, which really is no different than the Christmas Tree only without the possibility of stealing/sundering the items.

[SinsI]

Gestalt everything with Totemist or Incarnate and give everyone all the bonuses from Vow Of Poverty.

[TheCrowing1432]

I think Grod once wrote up a post about a subsystem he devised that was about "cutting down the christmas tree"

and here it is

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?357810-Chopping-Down-the-Christmas-Tree-Low-Magic-Item-Rules

[Quild]

I'm what people usually call a "lootwhore". Or sometimes "lootvore", but I don't mind the first term since I'm proud of being that because I always want to deserve my loots.

Constant improvement is my motivation. In some games, once you reach the maximum level, only stuff can do that (besides "Learning to play" obviously). During the leveling phase, you usually don't mind stuff much because each new level is more important than quickly outdated stuff.

In D&D, you can't give a quick level progression to your characters. Stuff thus allows to slow and linearize the progression of characters. You don't just have "gaps" of power each new level.
This progression is often a false impression because you face stronger monsters. But at least, you face new monsters!

There was a video or flash animation that I watched a few years ago that explained how some games tend to lead gamers to power creeping, while others tend to keep a way to have everything balanced and to avoid that each new content makes the old one outdated. Can't find it anymore, maybe someone will.
D&D would more be in the first category. Items grants bonuses and you want to replace your item by another that grants the same bonus, but stronger. Some items grants the equivalent of a "feat", or something close and you chose the one you want because of your gameplay rather than because of stats(boots for instance).

Door-Monster-Treasure players wants power creeping.
More roleplay player's don't.

[Thatwarforged]

I think Grod once wrote up a post about a subsystem he devised that was about "cutting down the christmas tree"
Just toke a look at and I like it other then talents and gifts give some issues I had with magic items. Thank you for telling me about it.


You could play at such a high level that magic items are entirely useless.
I'm not sure that might work.


4e was actually easy to play without items. You just used the inherent bonus alternate rule and never need look at them.

3.PF is hard because, unlike in 4e, classes need items to cover very big holes in their abilities. You try to get rid of them and you're looking at a VoP homebrew, which really is no different than the Christmas Tree only without the possibility of stealing/sundering the items.
I think I might do Christmas Tree but I will pull out my BoED to take another look at VoP.


Gestalt everything with Totemist or Incarnate and give everyone all the bonuses from Vow Of Poverty.
Totemist and Incarnate don't really replace magic items, they do not really give similar enough of bonuses. Plus this creates more issues then it solves and doubles if not triples character creation time.


and here it is

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?357810-Chopping-Down-the-Christmas-Tree-Low-Magic-Item-Rules
Thank you, you saved me quite a bit of time.


I'm what people usually call a "lootwhore". Or sometimes "lootvore", but I don't mind the first term since I'm proud of being that because I always want to deserve my loots.

Constant improvement is my motivation. In some games, once you reach the maximum level, only stuff can do that (besides "Learning to play" obviously). During the leveling phase, you usually don't mind stuff much because each new level is more important than quickly outdated stuff.

In D&D, you can't give a quick level progression to your characters. Stuff thus allows to slow and linearize the progression of characters. You don't just have "gaps" of power each new level.
This progression is often a false impression because you face stronger monsters. But at least, you face new monsters!

There was a video or flash animation that I watched a few years ago that explained how some games tend to lead gamers to power creeping, while others tend to keep a way to have everything balanced and to avoid that each new content makes the old one outdated. Can't find it anymore, maybe someone will.
D&D would more be in the first category. Items grants bonuses and you want to replace your item by another that grants the same bonus, but stronger. Some items grants the equivalent of a "feat", or something close and you chose the one you want because of your gameplay rather than because of stats(boots for instance).

Door-Monster-Treasure players wants power creeping.
More roleplay player's don't.

Don't get me wrong I understand what magic items are for, but before I started playing D&D I thought magic items were glorious awesome things. After playing it kind mundaned the magic in these items. It made me feel like I'm playing an MMORPG half the time, and GMs tend to randomize gear which slows game play and gives less money as they think some one can use it when they might not be able to. I tend to find constantly selling and collecting to gain marginal bonus that at later levels are needed becomes boring quickly.

[SinsI]

Totemist and Incarnate don't really replace magic items, they do not really give similar enough of bonuses. Plus this creates more issues then it solves

They allow to replicate almost everything from List of Necessary Magic Items (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=187851), and your casters should be able to provide anything else.
VOP bonuses replicate most passive magic item bonuses to an acceptable degree.


and doubles if not triples character creation time.
Why? What exactly are you going to spend that extra time on? All you need to do is choose CON score and alignment (if you are incarnate), everything else can be switched, at worst, on a daily basis.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Why? What exactly are you going to spend that extra time on? All you need to do is choose CON score and alignment (if you are incarnate), everything else can be switched, at worst, on a daily basis.
It adds an extra element of "how many of my resources should be devoted to my primary class, and how many to supporting the meldshaping side?" It'll also make races with Essentia bonuses significantly more common among PCs (that +1 is really nice, especially at low levels). Finally, while character creation doesn't get that much harder, it adds an extra level of complexity to the gameplay itself-- every class gains a separate, entirely new subsystem they have to deal with. And not a plug-and-play one either-- you're pretty much constantly shuffling essentia around between your melds, and preparing new melds every morning. That's not to say it's a bad solution (although I'd pair it with something a little more nuanced than VoP's storm-o-numbers scaling), but it is a complicated one.

Another thing to note about this kind of situation is that class abilities become much more important. In standard 3.5, it's possible to find or buy magic items to make up for your weaknesses-- getting flight, sensory abilities, immunities, and so on. DMs also have the ability to drop custom items to help underperforming party members. That's somewhere between harder and impossible in a low-magic-item system, depending on how you've set up your magic item replacement.

[endur]

Easiest solution is to use legacy items instead of the magic shop.

1e DMG had a great section on how difficult it should be to acquire a magic item (several quests to get a DMG magic item commissioned for creation).

Instead of a +1 sword that glows when enemies are near, you found a magic item with a name and a history.
http://lotr.wikia.com/wiki/Orcrist

Later on, after slaying many orcs and gaining levels, that +1 Sword becomes a +1 Orc Bane Sword.

You don't even have to tell the PCs that the sword is a legacy item, just mention to them that the sword is now extremely effective against orcs.

From a gold perspective, legacy items can have a gold piece value equal to the expected gold value of PCs of that level.

What did Bilbo have? 3 magic items ... sting, mithral shirt, and the One Ring. Most of the other party members didn't even have that many magic items.

[Zirconia]

What did Bilbo have? 3 magic items ... sting, mithral shirt, and the One Ring. Most of the other party members didn't even have that many magic items.

That ties in with the other solution, though it is a bit more work. Don't just throw random monsters at the party, use ones with flight, special abilities, immunities, etc. very sparingly and reduce the value of immunities. Note that the first thing they ran into in Lord of the Rings that needed anything special to damage it was the Chief Ringwraith, the right hand lieutenant of the most powerful BBEG in the world. Aragorn managed to scare off several of the Ringwraiths on Weathertop with a torch!

If "incorporal" means "normal weapons have a 50% chance to work, and magic weapons 100%" then that magic sword is still special, but the group doesn't HAVE to have one to fight the critter. You don't even need to adjust the CR if your party has a bunch of mundane swords and one magic one, it would be similar to a "standard" group where one might have a Ghost Touch weapon and the others are merely magic.

So maybe humanoid foes are very common, and "monsters" are fairly rare. That also allows you to adjust challenge by good or bad tactics, instead of abilities baked into the monsters.

At higher levels I would suggest reducing the tohit chance of monsters, because otherwise it is so high it forces people to use items or spells (Displacement, etc.) to survive melee, and you may need to similarly reduce monster ACs some, but those are easy adjustments to make.

[Thatwarforged]

They allow to replicate almost everything from List of Necessary Magic Items (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=187851), and your casters should be able to provide anything else.
VOP bonuses replicate most passive magic item bonuses to an acceptable degree.


Why? What exactly are you going to spend that extra time on? All you need to do is choose CON score and alignment (if you are incarnate), everything else can be switched, at worst, on a daily basis.

The extra character creation I'm talking about is the party passing one book around and reading 30+ pages of abilities to choose from. None of my players have even heard of magic of Incarnum. It also adds more book keeping for my group, with me making every martial character a ToB classes kind of makes it a bit much. I hate giving melee characters fly so they can kill monsters that fly is stupid to me.


That ties in with the other solution, though it is a bit more work. Don't just throw random monsters at the party, use ones with flight, special abilities, immunities, etc. very sparingly and reduce the value of immunities. Note that the first thing they ran into in Lord of the Rings that needed anything special to damage it was the Chief Ringwraith, the right hand lieutenant of the most powerful BBEG in the world. Aragorn managed to scare off several of the Ringwraiths on Weathertop with a torch!

If "incorporal" means "normal weapons have a 50% chance to work, and magic weapons 100%" then that magic sword is still special, but the group doesn't HAVE to have one to fight the critter. You don't even need to adjust the CR if your party has a bunch of mundane swords and one magic one, it would be similar to a "standard" group where one might have a Ghost Touch weapon and the others are merely magic.

So maybe humanoid foes are very common, and "monsters" are fairly rare. That also allows you to adjust challenge by good or bad tactics, instead of abilities baked into the monsters.

At higher levels I would suggest reducing the tohit chance of monsters, because otherwise it is so high it forces people to use items or spells (Displacement, etc.) to survive melee, and you may need to similarly reduce monster ACs some, but those are easy adjustments to make.
I don't think I will make incorporal hit by non magic attacks or non force attacks, I will just make them a major challenge or require some long ritual to suppress or destroy the incorporal being. I do plan on making Flying critters rare but players should have access to range.


Easiest solution is to use legacy items instead of the magic shop.

1e DMG had a great section on how difficult it should be to acquire a magic item (several quests to get a DMG magic item commissioned for creation).

Instead of a +1 sword that glows when enemies are near, you found a magic item with a name and a history.
http://lotr.wikia.com/wiki/Orcrist

Later on, after slaying many orcs and gaining levels, that +1 Sword becomes a +1 Orc Bane Sword.

You don't even have to tell the PCs that the sword is a legacy item, just mention to them that the sword is now extremely effective against orcs.

From a gold perspective, legacy items can have a gold piece value equal to the expected gold value of PCs of that level.

What did Bilbo have? 3 magic items ... sting, mithral shirt, and the One Ring. Most of the other party members didn't even have that many magic items.

I was planning to do something like this but not enough to give them replacement for the lack of them, I.E. the fighter does something super epic and saves the life of the wizard or something, he gains something like a +1 to his weapon or something relatd to the epicness.

[Grod_The_Giant]

I do plan on making Flying critters rare but players should have access to range.
Having access to range usually isn't the problem-- most martial characters have bow proficiency. The problem-- and this is the real reason flying foes are hard to deal with without magic-- is that archery takes a lot of investment. I'm not just talking about a second enchanted weapon, or even the Dex requirement. Doing more than a d8 or two of damage requires the feats to launch lots of attacks, the bonus damage to pump up your attacks, or ideally both. Joe the Barbarian isn't going to have any of that.

If you do go this route, I suggest letting Power Attack work for ranged attacks as well as melee (at, say, a 1:1 ration with crossbows and thrown weapons and a 2:1 ratio with bows), removing Point Blank Shot and Precise Shot (along with the normal penalty for shooting into melee), and maybe add Dex to ranged weapon damage. That way a melee fighter can at least have a chance to contribute with a bow.

[Thatwarforged]

Having access to range usually isn't the problem-- most martial characters have bow proficiency. The problem-- and this is the real reason flying foes are hard to deal with without magic-- is that archery takes a lot of investment. I'm not just talking about a second enchanted weapon, or even the Dex requirement. Doing more than a d8 or two of damage requires the feats to launch lots of attacks, the bonus damage to pump up your attacks, or ideally both. Joe the Barbarian isn't going to have any of that.

If you do go this route, I suggest letting Power Attack work for ranged attacks as well as melee (at, say, a 1:1 ration with crossbows and thrown weapons and a 2:1 ratio with bows), removing Point Blank Shot and Precise Shot (along with the normal penalty for shooting into melee), and maybe add Dex to ranged weapon damage. That way a melee fighter can at least have a chance to contribute with a bow.

I do plan to make them rare, I'm also allowing Wizards and the like, Maybe I will give players specific Crossbow capabilities if they don't buy Bow feats and the like. Or maybe I will make flying monsters have low HP so that range is good for something here if in a none heavy range build. I just don't like the whole I need this kinda of magic item so that I can be helpful in this kinda combat way of thinking.