[3.5] Innate Magic (or how to decrease the importance of magic items)

[Eeezee]

My DM is proposing a rule variant known as Innate Magic.

http://www.zipworld.com.au/~hong/dnd/innate_magic.htm

Basically, as you level up you get points that you can spend in various ways. This would be absolutely overpowered in a normal D&D game, but the bonuses don't stack with the bonuses from actual magic items; having +2 Dex gloves don't do anything if you've already dumped points into boosting your Dex by 2. And there's a cap on attribute/skill/enhancement bonuses that scales with level.

I really like the idea, it places less of an emphasis on magic items (but unlike VoP, you can still have possessions and don't need to be Lawful Good). So if for some reason your +5 sword of awesome dicing gets sundered or Disjunction is cast and destroys everything you own, your character won't go kill herself. Instead you'd just carry a Masterwork sword and pump points into enhancing your weapon.

What do you all think?

[ericgrau]

It'll work fine as long as the abilities (and their cost) match up 1-to-1 with magic items and you decrease treasure by an equal amount. Otherwise it will be a balancing nightmare.

I was working on something similar before but I put it on hold for other priorities. I may pick it up again eventually. Basically i was going to give an array of bonuses (mostly +X bonuses to Y), figure out what they would cost with magic items, record that and compare it to wealth by level so I can figure out how much to reduce treasure given out. Similar to your point, I'd remove +X magic items & spells or make sure they don't stack. Players would still have some treasure after the amount I subtracted to get other magic items (whether from encounters or purchased).

[Eeezee]

The DM is planning on pretty much using this to replace the equivalent magic items (so you can still grab a Ring of Feather Fall, but not a Cloak of Charisma +2)

[bosssmiley]

Making character awesome a function of the character, rather than his toys? Seems fine. Just watch out for optimisation cheese potential...

[Oslecamo]

Why don't just replace money for soul fragments of the stuff you kill and your character absorbs them to make himself stronger?