[4e] Item Balance Questions

[Forte]

How important are magic items to the power of PC's in general and how important is the separation of magical items into their respective slots.

For example: If a PC were given the opportunity to ignore body slots and equip a full set of equipment in any way they wanted (i.e. using 5 arm slot items instead of a helm, neck, boots, and hands or 4 rings in place of his belt and neck slots) would there be any harm? The items don't seem to offer that much in terms of power to me and bonuses don't stack anyway, so I can't really see anything to unbalance things.

[Blackfang108]

How important are magic items to the power of PC's in general and how important is the separation of magical items into their respective slots.

For example: If a PC were given the opportunity to ignore body slots and equip a full set of equipment in any way they wanted (i.e. using 5 arm slot items instead of a helm, neck, boots, and hands or 4 rings in place of his belt and neck slots) would there be any harm? The items don't seem to offer that much in terms of power to me and bonuses don't stack anyway, so I can't really see anything to unbalance things.

I'm assuming that we're leaving Weapons/Implements/Armor out of this, right?

In that case, maybe. Someone else would be better suited to answer this question.

[Hal]

An interesting question. My understanding is that items are balanced within their slot and not against other item slots, so this might be a bad idea.

Do correct me if I'm wrong, though.

[Kurald Galain]

I concur that it's an interesting question.

As to whether it's unbalanced in general, I would estimate that it's probably not. However, I'm sure that there's a few weird combos to be had if you look hard enough. True, there are often two items that you can't use together (e.g. boots of the acrobat and boots of the fencing master) but this is largely arbitrary, and not generally important to balance.

Overall, the point is that there are several restrictions to item usage, of which slotting isn't really the important one. The three main restrictions are,
(1) items don't stack. It's pointless to e.g. equip a belt of defense +2 and a ring of defense +2 because they're both item bonuses.
(2) the limit to item daily powers you can use.
(3) the fact that you only have two hands. Off-hand weapons and implements are generally among the most important items you carry (after the main-hand one, of course).

Probably one of the better tricks to pull with this is to wear an armor of necrotic resistance, a hat of poison resistance, a belt of fire resistance, and so forth.

What I'd consider a reasonable houserule: you may "re-slot" items, but doing so raises their level by one (that's approx a +30% cost increase), and weapons and implements cannot be re-slotted, and such things may be veto'ed on an individual basis in case of extreme cheese.

[ocato]

You would have to rule hard and fast that no item stacks with itself, to avoid someone from buying 5 phrenic crowns, 5 belts of vim, 5 rushing cleats, or somesuch other combination that isn't explicitly stated not to stack due to item/power/etc bonuses.

Even then, you open yourself to a player finding a combination of 2 head slot items or something along those lines that creates minor havoc.

It strikes me as something that wouldn't necessarily throw the game off, but at least something that should be approached with a great deal of care.

[Yakk]

Rings are more powerful than many other magic items.

How do you justify wearing 5 boots? 5 pairs of gloves?

[Kurald Galain]

Rings are more powerful than many other magic items.

They are intended to be, but I'm far from convinced that they are. For instance, out of the dozen or so rings in the Player's Handbook, none are particularly impressive except for the regeneration ring.

How do you justify wearing 5 boots? 5 pairs of gloves?

By playing a drider

[Forte]

I'm not really asking in an attempt o justify 5 pairs of boots or what not, I'm just kind of trying to understand if there's a particular reason for the division of body slots as opposed to combining them all into one big list and saying, "You can use X number of items at one time".

The reason I'm asking is that I'm trying to create a setting using 4ed rules but the concept of magic items and body slots doesn't fit at all. If I were to just take the mechanical info from the item section of the PHB and just said to my players, "You can use 4 (for example) magic item effects at one time", would there be any obvious balance issues? If they took the mechanical bonus from 4 helms as their allotment of items, would that have a negative impact on the game?

[Oracle_Hunter]

I'm not really asking in an attempt o justify 5 pairs of boots or what not, I'm just kind of trying to understand if there's a particular reason for the division of body slots as opposed to combining them all into one big list and saying, "You can use X number of items at one time".

The reason I'm asking is that I'm trying to create a setting using 4ed rules but the concept of magic items and body slots doesn't fit at all. If I were to just take the mechanical info from the item section of the PHB and just said to my players, "You can use 4 (for example) magic item effects at one time", would there be any obvious balance issues? If they took the mechanical bonus from 4 helms as their allotment of items, would that have a negative impact on the game?

I'm not quite sure what kind of system wouldn't work with the "slot" idea. I mean, by and large, they're physical limitations - you can't wear two hats, you can't wear 5 pairs of boots, and you can't use a dozen swords at a time. The only "constraints" would be rings (I guess you could wear 20 - toes, y'know) and neck slots (how many pendants can you wear at a time ).

As far as I can see, 4E's "Daily Use" limitation is a sufficient barrier if you really want to make this an "X items at a time" deal. So, go do it, I say.

[Forte]

It's not a matter of "5 hats or 20 rings". It's a matter of, say:

+1 item bonus to acrobatics; at-will power to stand up from prone as a minor action

+1 item bonus to speed in heavy armor

When you fall or jump down, you take only half normal falling damage and always land on your feet with a free action daily power to gain a +5 bonus to your next acrobatics or athletics check

At the same time.

If you ONLY take the mechanical effects from the items and completely remove the body slots (let's pretend for the sake of argument that they're magical enchantments on the PC and not enchantments on the items he wears) would there be obvious balance issues?

[Oracle_Hunter]

I'd still say no problem.

What you have to worry about is Encounter Power overload, or stacking of weapons properties - basically anything that isn't a straight bonus.

[Forte]

I can see that. Kind of where someone might stack all at-will and encounter powers. Isn't there a limit on how many item powers you can use though? Like, 1 item daily per tier? Does that apply to encounters too?

[Oracle_Hunter]

I can see that. Kind of where someone might stack all at-will and encounter powers. Isn't there a limit on how many item powers you can use though? Like, 1 item daily per tier? Does that apply to encounters too?

It does not apply to Encounter Powers - that's why I listed them.

The real problem is stacking Weapon/Implement Properties (e.g. always-on abilities). In a very real sense, you can end up with the 3.5 Superweapon Problem, where someone has stacked a ridiculous number of properties on a single weapon. If you plan on just allowing those properties to "float" around the character, rather than be tied to items, you can get a similar focusing effect.

Personally, I'd keep the "slots" for Weapons/Implements (or at least tie the properties to items) to solve this.