[4e] Phat lewts

[LibraryOgre]

1) It was determined last night that my character is no longer Optimus Prime, but Awesomest Prime. I think my net damage (taken) in the 3-hour long combat was something like 20 points, and I was engaged in hand to hand for most of that.

2) Something is starting to annoy me about 4e. And that is, as the thread title mentions, Phat Lewts. It's not that we don't get treasure, it's the changed paradigm of weapons in the hands of intelligent opponents.

For example, last night we fought this "mystic" who teleported around, banished people to the occasional extra-dimensional space and dazed everyone. A real pain in the Belkar, especially when he's got foulspawn back-up. So, we put a beat-down upon him and, eventually, loot his corpse. He has some neat yet-to-be-announced gear that we looted, and we found some more hints to the creation of the warforged (gnomes ensouled them; it's speculated that drow did something similar, but he didn't have any details). But back to loot.

His staff, that dazed people every time it hit them was non-magical. All that at-will dazing was hisownself.

Now, never mind the number of PCs I would cheerfully murder to have a weapon that dazed on a per-hit basis.... I would be like the star of a stomp-fetish movie while the meatbags slept, and the eladrin sitting to meditate would just be my kicking tee for his head.... let's talk about the fact that bad guys don't have magic weapons you can steal. That flaming sword wielded by the efreet? It was normal... the efreet was flaming. It's a distinct paradigm change from previous editions, where if you killed someone and took their stuff, their stuff did more or less what they were doing to you.

Why are we killing these people if we don't get their toys to beat people up with?

[Kurald Galain]

Why are we killing these people if we don't get their toys to beat people up with?

That's a very good question. There are several monster abilities that are called arcane magic, that my arcane caster character would love to learn.

I've also seen the opposite happen: frequently when monsters in a certain encounter drop a certain item as loot, they aren't using it.

[Demonix]

this is what is killing 4th ed. for me. I like the system changes, I like the combat changes, I can design interesting tactical encounters (the party I was running actually ended up doing benny-hill style laps in the dungeon and triggered 5 encounters at once), the design guidelines are better than 3.5 (CR was broken).

but when it comes to assinging loot, its all very meh. Gone are the rods of lordly might with thier impressive ladder powers, or the bag of beans, the wands of wonder. Now, everything has a straight bonus to a stat or roll, and maybe a daily power...but unless you are high enough level you can only use ONE power from ONE item per day/extended rest.

In previous games, I had players planting beans in the middle of combat and hope for the best, parties being snuck behind enemy lines in a portable hole by an invisible gnome, and wands of wonder being fired desperately to produce beneficial and baneful, but always hilarious effects.

Now, its not so grand...all the power comes FROM the players, not thier equipment and while I can see why that was done (xmas tree effects) it would seem, for me at least, that a little part of what made D&D so great for me has died.

Even potions! there are what, 3 types of potions and they are all healing potions? what about chameleon? what about heroism? what about potion miscibility tables (oh the fun we had!)?

because there is little that is useful, it seems that choice is taken away, especially at low levels. ooo! +1 magic armor! +1 weapon! +1 to all defense amulet/cloak!

Bah.

[Kylarra]

Why are we killing these people if we don't get their toys to beat people up with?

Other than amusement value, probably just because they happened to cross our paths...


Oh on topic, I agree completely, it's really frustrating to see awesomesauce stuff happening and then mundane gear drop.

[Saph]

Other than amusement value, probably just because they happened to cross our paths...

Yeah, pretty much. Plus, XP.

Of course, gaining XP doesn't really get you much in 4e once you hit level 8-10 or so, either. You're always going to be fighting level-appropriate monsters no matter how long you adventure.

I think if I was an actual 4e adventurer I'd probably retire at or just before Paragon level. You've got most of the really good abilities by then anyway, so continuing to risk your life isn't really worth it. :)

[Tiki Snakes]

If you want the hoopy magic item feeling, add them back in. Done.

Also, it's worth remembering; The assumption is that you do not need to equip monsters/npc's with magic items to make them function. They get level appropriate defences instead, but those defences are to model the creature having taken the various feats and items to increase their defences/attacks.

The only caveat relevant to this in the guidelines is that when you DO equip them with a magic item, you do NOT increase their stats further, (if I remember correctly).

I think a large part of what I'm reading here is coming from the assumption that if an opponant is doing cool stuff, It must be coming from equipment. That's simply not the case, and neither is it the case for the PC's.

The Swordmage doesn't need a Flaming Sword to do a fire-based burst attack, why assume that an item is behind the enemies version?

Think of it this way; When you killed the Vampire in the previous edition, what Vampire Abilities did his sword give you? Generally I'm guessing none, for the most part. There's nothing edition unique about creatures and foes having their own power, rather than exclusively relying on items for their tricks.

Isn't that the main reason why the 'Joker Monk' build gets so much stick?

[Kurald Galain]

Now, its not so grand...all the power comes FROM the players, not thier equipment and while I can see why that was done (xmas tree effects) it would seem, for me at least, that a little part of what made D&D so great for me has died.

The ironic thing is that the Christmas Tree Effect still isn't gone: PCs have many item slots, can easily fill most of them by late heroic, and are expected to do so by the level-appropriate power meter (or to need extra features to compensate for the lack of items).

But yeah, I agree. I like quirky items that do weird things. Heck, I even like wild surges.

[gman]

The DM can have bad guys drop magic items that they were using if they want. A staff with an at-will daze effect is almost certainly overpowered, so some of the dazing goodness must have been the bad guy's awesome power, but it would make sense and feel rewarding for the staff to be somehting like a Resounding staff, which can daze as it's daily power. Then you appropriately fluff it by saying the magic was partly the staff's and partly the bad guy's, or that the staff's magic was weakened at the end of the fight, or even that it's an intelligent item that resists being used for good as best it can and therefore only works occassionally.

Or, homebrew something. Maybe the staff gains its dazing property for one encounter by spending a charge, and it only has a handful of charges left. Maybe it's infused with it's power temporarily through a ritual the bad guy used, so it's at-will dazing fun for now, but tomorrow it's just a standard resounding staff. That's a nice incentive for players to press on to the BBEG without stopping to rest.

[Tiki Snakes]

Also reguarding the bag of beans, etc;

Wonderous Items. On a quick scan of what that list currently contains, it includes such oddities as a box, with a leaf in it that lets you become a tree, indefinately if you like, suspending all aging.
A feather that becomes a boat when placed in water,
A Barrel of Beer that refills each morning,
A Window that lets you safely jump out of it no matter how far you will fall,
Bag of Tricks,
Portable Hole,
Immovable Rod,
A piece of chalk that never runs out, or -
The Flagon of Ale Procurement, which lets you (daily) find water within 30 squares, and alcoholic beverages within 60 squares. If you are a dwarf, it lets you find ingredients for making alcoholic beverages within 60 also.
You also, as a property mind, always know the distance to the nearest alcoholic beverage. It's like a compas that always points to drunk!

Yeah, so, there's plenty of fun junk to be had. It's no hard task to add in further loopiness.

[Artanis]

I dunno, it seems kinda out of whack if a powerful being of fire needs a magic item to make his sword attack you with fire when a low-level Swordmage can do just that.

[Kurald Galain]

I dunno, it seems kinda out of whack if a powerful being of fire needs a magic item to make his sword attack you with fire when a low-level Swordmage can do just that.

Yeah, it doesn't apply to all enemies. If you meet an efreet or a vampire, it makes sense that they have all kinds of innate powers. On the other hand, if you meet an orc warrior or a tiefling warlock as an enemy, it makes sense that some of their power comes from their axe or rod, respectively.

Overall, the point is that humanoid enemies can do certain things innately, that humanoid player characters either require an item for, or cannot do period.

[Artanis]

*facepalm* I totally misread his bit about the Efreets.


Let me try again...

Humanoid enemies don't have to be a guy with a sword. Humanoid PCs can do things like shoot a bow ten times in six seconds or put a half-dozen guys to sleep with a wave of their hands, all without the help of magic items. A PC Wizard can't use Twin Strike, so why do they have to be able to use all the abilities that every humanoid enemy has? Why do humanoid enemies have to have a magical crutch to use their own special abilities?

[mikeejimbo]

Also reguarding the bag of beans, etc;

Wonderous Items. On a quick scan of what that list currently contains, it includes such oddities as a box, with a leaf in it that lets you become a tree, indefinately if you like, suspending all aging.
A feather that becomes a boat when placed in water,
A Barrel of Beer that refills each morning,
A Window that lets you safely jump out of it no matter how far you will fall,
Bag of Tricks,
Portable Hole,
Immovable Rod,
A piece of chalk that never runs out, or -
The Flagon of Ale Procurement, which lets you (daily) find water within 30 squares, and alcoholic beverages within 60 squares. If you are a dwarf, it lets you find ingredients for making alcoholic beverages within 60 also.
You also, as a property mind, always know the distance to the nearest alcoholic beverage. It's like a compas that always points to drunk!

Yeah, so, there's plenty of fun junk to be had. It's no hard task to add in further loopiness.

There is also a table that creates food, and then cleans it up for you.

[jmbrown]

There's nothing stopping the DM from making monsters that utilize their magic items they just have to take into account that they shouldn't get any bonuses from it and it should be considered when calculating experience points. A +2 wand of firewall can let an orc sorcerer cast firewall as normal but he won't get the +2 bonus to attack or damage with it because that's figured into design already.

[FoE]

So when you kill a red dragon, are you disappointed when you don't find a ring of fire-breathing on its corpse afterwards?

Basically, this is an argument against monsters having innate abilities. It's part of designing cool and unique monsters. As a DM, I'd be immensely disappointed that all anyone needed to gain the powers of, say, an illithid by taking the amulet he wears off his neck. PCs already get a ton of cool stuff and powers. I'm sorry you don't get to duplicate the abilities of any monster you want, but tough s***.

[alchemyprime]

Sorry dude. I gotta side with the main peoples here.

When I throw one of my super evil Lightning Trolls at my players, they aren't surprised when, big surprise, his weapons aren't Lightning weapons, they are weapons he coated in lighting.

When I throw a human at them, they see a flaming sword (unless its green) they expect a flaming sword. They see the golden armor, they expect golden armor. They see a big flaming demon with a flaming sword, they don't expect to get that. He's made of fire, so is his sword. They expect a firebending sorta deal.

However... sometimes they will be thrown for a loop. And I actually have had a dragon have a ring of fire breathing, but to be fair, he was a black dragon I made specifically to mess with them (mutant drow blooded steampunk cyborg prismatic ancient black dragon with demonic heritor feats and good items and metabreath feats and spells. Oh acid breath fused with negative levels and searing light... such a fun breath...)

[Guinea Anubis]

I know when I am DMing if the PCs want a neat magic weapon they have to take it from the cold dead hand of the guy the owned it if they did not want to pay to have it made.

But if they are fighting something like an angel they dont get a sword that can burst in to flames since its his power that did it.

[Kylarra]

As Kurald said, it's mostly a call against humanoid enemies who don't actually have gear, but rather due to the way "monsters" are statted out, end up with inherent/etc abilities that are just given because they were built as monsters.

Granted, they do end up having loot piles in the back that they aren't using, but it's somewhat less satisfying to kill someone, find out he was wearing mundane chainmail, and then find that he's got +1 dwarven chainmail hiding in a chest in his room, rather than killing him and taking it off his dead body.

[Artanis]

Granted, they do end up having loot piles in the back that they aren't using, but it's somewhat less satisfying to kill someone, find out he was wearing mundane chainmail, and then find that he's got +1 dwarven chainmail hiding in a chest in his room, rather than killing him and taking it off his dead body.

If the players are getting the +1 Dwarven Chainmail anyways, there's nothing saying that they can't get the loot off the chain-wearing enemy's body instead of from a chest.

The PCs kill an enemy. The PCs then get magic chainmail. The only reason to have a short walk between the two steps is if the GM absolutely wants them to.

[Bagelz]

first off the designers did this for a reason. If you had potions that gave bonuses, and rods that you activate on every round (not once per day per teir) then you'd play the stacking game, and it'd be more about how many circumstances you can stack and less about the players.

also every +2 counts, and the game is balance around having a certain amount of bonus at each level, and some of the magic items that most of whiners are pining for would break that bonus.

lastly, its an open ended rpg, dm's make your own magic items. 3.x half the stuff you read on forums is homebrewed. 4e I think i've seen 2 homebrew magic items. WHY?
Your not limited by what is in the phb, your limited by your imagination (or the imagination of your dm)


the same problem existed in older editions. "you kill a goblin. he drops..." rolls dice.. "2 peices of artwork and a fullplate suit of armor" say what? that goblin obviously wasn't carrying a suit of fullplate. If your dms are dropping (or not dropping) stuff that doesn't make sense, that's not the system's fault

[Giggling Ghast]

Here's my two cents: "phat lootz", as the OP put it, should come into play when an enemy is using abilities that normally they shouldn't have. The oft-used example in this thread is the orc chieftain with the flaming sword. There's no reason why the chieftain should have the flaming sword. In that instance, it's shouldn't be out of the PCs' realm of expectation to pick up said sword after the battle is over.

However, there's no reason why some abilities demonstrated by 'humanoid' opponents aren't innate. Apologies, OP, but the example you posted was a bad one. You were fighting a 'mystic' with a group of foulspawn allies in tow; that pretty well guarantees that the guy would have some unusual abilities, particularly of the psychic variety. I might expect the guy to have the goodies to supplement his powers — that teleportation ability is suspect, considering that's more of a 'fey' thing — but you didn't give any reason why he had to use some magicked-up beatstick.

Kurald suggested the example of a warlock with a magic rod, but that doesn't really apply either, since PC warlocks have innate abilities through their pacts. They don't need implements at all.

[vartan]

Granted, they do end up having loot piles in the back that they aren't using, but it's somewhat less satisfying to kill someone, find out he was wearing mundane chainmail, and then find that he's got +1 dwarven chainmail hiding in a chest in his room, rather than killing him and taking it off his dead body.

Irontooth? Does 4e magic armor resize to fit a new wearer, because Dwarven Chain is for Medium guys right?

[Mando Knight]

first off the designers did this for a reason. If you had potions that gave bonuses, and rods that you activate on every round (not once per day per teir) then you'd play the stacking game, and it'd be more about how many circumstances you can stack and less about the players.

I play the stacking game. I also play the "Holy Carp, the Avenger is Unhittable at Level 30 and Still Deals Strikery Damage, Even After the November Update" game. They tend to be the same game.

Irontooth? Does 4e magic armor resize to fit a new wearer, because Dwarven Chain is for Medium guys right?

Same-size armor doesn't care by RAW, since apparently the same armor will fit an elf or a starved dwarf as well as an overweight Goliath. Different-size armor can by RAW be resized for free with the Enchant Magic Item ritual, but is just as often conveniently ignored for the sake of bookkeeping.

[valadil]

but when it comes to assinging loot, its all very meh. Gone are the rods of lordly might with thier impressive ladder powers, or the bag of beans, the wands of wonder. Now, everything has a straight bonus to a stat or roll, and maybe a daily power...but unless you are high enough level you can only use ONE power from ONE item per day/extended rest.

I think one of the things that makes 4e more balanced is that its less open to interpretation. A +1 sword is a straightforward item. A portable hole could have its own source book. In order to keep 4e homogenized and consistent, WotC went with the simpler items. IMO this was a deliberate trade off in order to get some balance into the game.

But it doesn't stop a creative GM from adding his own innovations to the game. Hell, he doesn't even have to be particularly imaginitive. Just have some leftover gear from 3.5 sitting around in an antique shop and your players can have that kind of creative gear again.

I agree that 4e is less gear centric. I still haven't decided if that's a good or bad thing yet. Coming from 3.5, winning less loot is kinda boring. Coming from every other system I've ever played, 4e isn't doing anything wrong. It'll just take some getting used to.

[vartan]

Same-size armor doesn't care by RAW, since apparently the same armor will fit an elf or a starved dwarf as well as an overweight Goliath. Different-size armor can by RAW be resized for free with the Enchant Magic Item ritual, but is just as often conveniently ignored for the sake of bookkeeping.

Yeah that's what I was getting at. Irontooth was a Small Goblin. He couldn't have worn that chain without magic. It took me a while to get that too.

[Gralamin]

I play the stacking game. I also play the "Holy Carp, the Avenger is Unhittable at Level 30 and Still Deals Strikery Damage, Even After the November Update" game. They tend to be the same game.

I'm going to assume you are crit fishing, but I'd like to see that build anyway.

[Chaelos]

I have to say, the 1/day item usage seems rather lame to me relative to most of the stuff in 3.5's books. I appreciate the simplification they're attempting with 4E gear--it is really nice that most amulets/capes give a fort/ref/will bonus, or many of the head slots provide some sort of skill-sensory bonus--but there comes a point where there's just a sense of pizazz that's lacking in 4E gear.

[Demonix]

I have to say, the 1/day item usage seems rather lame to me relative to most of the stuff in 3.5's books. I appreciate the simplification they're attempting with 4E gear--it is really nice that most amulets/capes give a fort/ref/will bonus, or many of the head slots provide some sort of skill-sensory bonus--but there comes a point where there's just a sense of pizazz that's lacking in 4E gear.

BINGO! That's exactly it. 4e magic items are just...blah.

As far as making my own; Yeah, i can do that, you just have to be careful to make sure it works within the frame of rules. Take a potion of heroism for example...should it give +1 to hit or hit/damage for an encounter? That sounds about right...superheroism can be +2 or even +3. Chameleon can give you concealment AC bonuses if you don't move during your combat turn, etc.

And its not that odd items dont exist...but the ones listed that make drink or food, or act as lightweight portable ladders just arent the same as things like luckstones, wands of wonder, ebony flies, or even the apparatus of kwalish. They are, in the end, useful if somewhat mundane; there arent many items that exist -because they can!-

I guess that's up to the DM, but still.

[jmbrown]

I find artifacts to be the fun-and-varied magic items in 4E. They're like more managable intelligent items in previous editions and can definitely spice up an otherwise boring scenario.

[tcrudisi]

...Now, everything has a straight bonus to a stat or roll, and maybe a daily power...but unless you are high enough level you can only use ONE power from ONE item per day/extended rest.

I wanted to address this statement as false. Under the Milestones section on pages 259-260, there is the following:

Each time you reach a milestone, you gain one additional use of a magic item daily power.

So, while at levels 1-10 you only start by being able to use one magic item daily, that can quickly increase.