Setting justification for not having magic item "christmas trees"

[Talakeal]

Take your typical fantasy game world where magic items equal an increase in personal power. Also assume that magic items have some sort of a "market value", either because they can literally be bought and sold for gold, can be created or reduced to a tradable commodity, or are made from sort of universal magic essence that can be shaped into different forms.

Why wouldn't all the magic items in the world be hoarded by a select few powerful people?

If you were the ruler of an empire and a powerful entity in your own right, why wouldn't you spend massive amounts of your nations wealth in supplying you with all the magic items you could ever use?

Why would the BBEG ever equip his lieutenants with magic items rather than breaking them down to add another + to his own weapon?

Why wouldn't high level adventuring groups spend all of their time using scry and die tactics against other adventurers half their level to loot their magic?

And the biggest problem that would actually come up in an RPG, how do you have a "fair fight" against another party without the victor doubling their wealth (which = power) after every fight?

[The Oni]

The ambient magic fields given off by some magic items might interfere with others, sometimes violently. I.E. the forcefield of your +3 magic armor might cause your +2 flaming burst katana to explode prematurely, searing your hand.

[Honest Tiefling]

Or if you are a Lovecraft fan for a slightly different twist, the more stuff you have bonded to you (i.e., affecting you) wears at certain barriers and lets things through who would love to set up a summer home in your brain. And hey, you can put an extra ring on that tentacle in your eye socket! Score!

Could come in abyssal flavors for traditionalists.

[The Oni]

Righto. You probably want to pick a justification that fits your setting's tone. Eberron's all about dat magitek so "Magic Interference" makes sense. Likewise, a "spacial warp threat" that lets in Lovecrafties might be more at home in a World of Darkness or Exalted setting (can't think of a good D&D analogue).

[Honest Tiefling]

Far Realm. The Abyss has a different feel, but well, its still not Happy Fun Place if you get my drift. Personally, I'd go with the idea that a being gave mankind (Or elf-kind, dwarf-kind, kobold kind) the ability to make magical items...And somewhat neglected to tell them that use of such would drain their soul, piece by piece until they were added to the armies of this being. Maybe make some big bads (Such as Dragons) actually souless abominations that wander eternally, a sham of their former glory.

[The Oni]

...I like this. I like this idea a lot. Said being might even have an aspect that's worshipped among artisans who aren't aware of his true nature, and that's why all the best artisans and inventors go mad.

[Honest Tiefling]

Ooh! Good idea! But that would mean that your typical dwarf or dwarf like society would go mad pretty quick. Maybe they chain up their insane artisans, believing them to have magical powers and consult them like oracles despite them being frothingly insane. A secret they keep from the surface dwellers. (And yeah, I was inspired by Dwarf Fortress)

[jaydubs]

There are all just extrapolations of why equipment is shared out in the real world as well:

There's some kind of law of diminishing returns, much like with mundane items. In the real world, a $2,000 rifle might be a lot better than a $50 rifle. But a $1,000,000 rifle wouldn't be that much better than a $10,000 rifle. Magic items might well run into the same issue.

There aren't a lot of passive magical items, and you can only actively "use" one at a time. The same way a fighter doesn't benefit from carrying 20 extra sheathed swords, big bad doesn't benefit from keeping 20 extra magic items in his belt.

Offense is vastly easier than defense. And offense is more than enough to kill characters. Doing 1,000 damage vs doing 10,000 damage is irrelevant if characters only have 50 hp.

While magic items do make a person more powerful, that power does not greatly overshadow the power of individuals. And the BBEG is not miles above his lieutenants. If any leader tried to hoard all the loot, his underlings would murder him and replace him with someone less selfish.

Concentrating that much power just isn't technologically (magically) feasible. The same way we can't build the power of a battleship into a soldier no matter how much money we spend, there's just no way to make +20 magic items or whatever.

[The Oni]

Ooh! Good idea! But that would mean that your typical dwarf or dwarf like society would go mad pretty quick. Maybe they chain up their insane artisans, believing them to have magical powers and consult them like oracles despite them being frothingly insane. A secret they keep from the surface dwellers. (And yeah, I was inspired by Dwarf Fortress)

That's brilliant. You should write this. If you're not gonna write this, I'm gonna write this.

[Honest Tiefling]

I will look forward to your efforts. I personally have some ideas, but not enough for a setting. Go right ahead.

Another idea is that magical items are made out of souls, so if you have too many, you get too many voices in your head trying to take the driver's seat and you might get possessed by your sword. Most people can fight off one or two, but if you have too many you quickly get overwhelmed. In fantasy, sword wields you!

[The Oni]

There's some kind of law of diminishing returns, much like with mundane items. In the real world, a $2,000 rifle might be a lot better than a $50 rifle. But a $1,000,000 rifle wouldn't be that much better than a $10,000 rifle. Magic items might well run into the same issue.

There aren't a lot of passive magical items, and you can only actively "use" one at a time. The same way a fighter doesn't benefit from carrying 20 extra sheathed swords, big bad doesn't benefit from keeping 20 extra magic items in his belt.

This is, in fact, quite logical - but optimizers and their tactics can sometimes subvert this rule in defiance of all logic.

[The Oni]

Another idea is that magical items are made out of souls, so if you have too many, you get too many voices in your head trying to take the driver's seat and you might get possessed by your sword. Most people can fight off one or two, but if you have too many you quickly get overwhelmed. In fantasy, sword wields you!

Sort of a collective-ego-overload, like when a high-Ego item fights its wielder in standard rules. Non-intelligent magic items don't have enough ego to singularly cause a conflict, but add too many and they'll dogpile you into submission...neat.

[Honest Tiefling]

Aha! Another idea is that one must power items with a soul...And you only have so much to spare. Use too much and it can ripped out of your body too easily...Or worse.

[The Oni]

Aha! Another idea is that one must power items with a soul...And you only have so much to spare. Use too much and it can ripped out of your body too easily...Or worse.

Well, then you're basically playing Shadowrun.

[Honest Tiefling]

Not terribly familiar with it, but it does the job. I take it that it is also the reason for limiting cybernetics too.

[Arbane]

AD&D handled this by just not having that many magic items available, and no PC control over what stuff they had inflicted on got.

Exalted (which nobody sane has ever accused of being a low-powered setting) handles this problem with 'committed essence' - to use most man-portable magic items, you have to invest some of your essence (magic points) in them to attune them. This is fine, but then you don't have that essence handy for fueling your superpowers.
The 'kill them and take their stuff' problem is handled by the fact that using the magic material associated with another Exalted type costs double essence to attune if you want all the cool benefits. Aside from that, it's a perfectly valid tactic. (Also, magical items in Exalted tend to be very obviously magic - which can draw unwanted attention.)

One idea I've been noodling for a homebrew game: as you get more powerful, magic +stat items become redundant, because you're just too powerful for them to help. Sure, when you were only as strong as an ox, that magical belt of giant strength was amazingly useful. But now that you're as strong as a giant yourself, you don't need it.
(For D&D-ish games, just give the PCs bonuses to hit/damage/saves/casting stat that won't stack with magic items as they level.)

[Altair_the_Vexed]

+1 for "attuning"

In my E6 game, characters can only have 1/2 their level in permanent magic items attuned. Any other items don't function as magical (a +1 sword is still a masterwork sword, but it doesn't bypass DR).
Attuning to items takes a 10 minute ritual, which is discovered during the identification process.

For a regular 20 level game, I'd maybe set the number of attuned items at 1/3 level.

(Items that you've crafted yourself don't count against your limit - you've spent the XP to make them, you should gain the benefit!)

[Frozen_Feet]

Why wouldn't all the magic items in the world be hoarded by a select few powerful people?

In real life, wealth and land are distributed according to Pareto Principle - 80% of things are owned by 20% of people, and 50% are owned by 1%. You'd definitely see centrification of resources even when magic items are super-rare and hard to get. Some items would still roll around and swap hands simply due to trade and logistics.

If you were the ruler of an empire and a powerful entity in your own right, why wouldn't you spend massive amounts of your nations wealth in supplying you with all the magic items you could ever use?

Because a lot of magical items are redundant in application and eventually you hit diminishing returns. After a while, more magic simply won't give more utility, just like money ceases to matter once you can buy everything you want, or owning more land ceases to matter if you have plenty of room and the leftover are barren wastelands.

Then there's the fact that magic can't do everything in most settings and mundane things tend to be much cheaper. In later editions of D&D, you can outfit a small army with the cost of a single +5 weapon. Action economy alone means you can do more with the former than the latter.

Why would the BBEG ever equip his lieutenants with magic items rather than breaking them down to add another + to his own weapon?

in D&D, most bonuses scale linearily, but their cost increases exponentially. Ask yourself, which is more effective: increasing your own to-hit by 15%, or increasing to-hit of four of your underlings by 10%? There's also, again, action economy. Wand of Awesome Destruction might kill people, like, super dead, but a handful of people using a handful of ordinary Wands of Destruction will cover more ground and incapacitate more foes in the same unit of time.

Why wouldn't high level adventuring groups spend all of their time using scry and die tactics against other adventurers half their level to loot their magic?

Because magic of those "half their level" isn't actually useful to them. It could also be a simple matter of being on the same side. It's not smart to scrap half you armored divisions just to get one fighter plane.

And the biggest problem that would actually come up in an RPG, how do you have a "fair fight" against another party without the victor doubling their wealth (which = power) after every fight?

For one, resources, especially items, have a bad habit of being expended or destroyed in a fight. So it's almost never a straight doubling. Then there's the minor problem of people tending to die. A "fair fight" generally implies a 50/50 chance. From a military standpoint, that's awful! Even if you win, you're likely to have your own force decimated or destroyed (losing 20% to 50% of manpower). So you don't actually end up with more power, because you have less people capable of utilizing the stolen magic.

Beyond this, becoming wealthier and more powerful as a result of winning conflict isn't a problem. It's, you know, the whole point why it's done! All smart tactics, strategy and logistics aim to make the fight as unfair as possible towards your enemy precisely so you can annex their resources. If you don't want this to happen, the resources of the enemy have to be somehow unusable. For example, demonic items might require you to sell your soul to Satan, so you'll end up with a net loss if you try to use them. Or maybe they turn to dust in sunlight.

[Angel Bob]

I avoid the Christmas tree effect by using inherent bonuses: PCs automatically get the bonuses to attack and defenses at certain levels. It allows me to give out fewer magic items per level, making each item I do give important and unique, and it alleviates the need to obsessively calculate exactly how much treasure to dole out for every encounter.

[Tengu_temp]

Why wouldn't all the magic items in the world be hoarded by a select few powerful people?

Because those select few people cannot locate every magic item in the world, cannot reach many of those they can locate, and cannot obtain many of those they can reach (stealing a magic sword from a powerful king with a strong army and a court wizard and champion who are at least as good as you? Not a wise idea).

If you were the ruler of an empire and a powerful entity in your own right, why wouldn't you spend massive amounts of your nations wealth in supplying you with all the magic items you could ever use?

Because my nation's wealth is better spend on other things than giving me another small bonus. If there was an important artifact that would greatly benefit me and my kingdom (or save it from a catastrophe), then I'd make sure to get my hands on it - but every magic item? Not worth the bother.

Why would the BBEG ever equip his lieutenants with magic items rather than breaking them down to add another + to his own weapon?

Because it's better to have two guys with +3 weapons than a single guy with a +4 weapon. Also, the assumption that you can "disenchant" a magic item and then use its magic to power up another item is weird. I don't know any RPGs that let you do that.

Why wouldn't high level adventuring groups spend all of their time using scry and die tactics against other adventurers half their level to loot their magic?

1. Because scry and die is extremely hard to pull off outside DND 3e, for a good reason.
2. Because you have no guarantee the other adventurer party is actually "half your level", and that they won't kick your ass.
3. Because, as it was mentioned before, if these guys are weaker than you then it's unlikely you'll get that much mileage out of their magic items.
4. Because this is not something good guys would do. I can totally see a storyline where a team of bad guys decides to do this, and has to be stopped.

And the biggest problem that would actually come up in an RPG, how do you have a "fair fight" against another party without the victor doubling their wealth (which = power) after every fight?

Dissociate wealth with power. Get rid of the strange disenchanting idea I already mentioned, and get rid of the magic item market.

[Psyren]

The answer to pretty much every "why" setting question in D&D is "deities."

Take FR - Yeah there are really powerful guys who can hoard the world's magic if they wanted to. Problem is, Mystra is against that and wants magic to be reasonable accessible to everyone. Her followers are commanded to craft, take down cabals and to liberate items from dragon's hoards etc. FaP:

Dogma: "Seek always to learn and create new magic."

Clergy/Temples: "The clergy actively seeks out sources of old magic, often from tombs, dangerous ruins - even liches. They consider it more crucial to know the predcise location of artifacts and items of magical power than to possess them, but wherever possible, they work to wrest control of such things from the aggressively evil, the irresponsible, or the unsound of mind."
...
"All clergy of Mystra are expected to devise their own new magic (whether it be spells or items) upon gaining sufficient experience."

Boccob is less altruistic but no less proliferating:

Clergy/Temples: Boccob's clergy actively creates magic items, which they usually sell to anyone with the cash to buy them. During war, Boccon's clerics happily sell magic items to all sides. Many of Boccon's clerics keep busy rooting out bits of magical lore, recovering lost magic items, and investigating mysteries. They adamantly oppose any attempt to destroy a magic item or any magical place."

[Storm_Of_Snow]

Aha! Another idea is that one must power items with a soul...And you only have so much to spare. Use too much and it can ripped out of your body too easily...Or worse.

Well, maybe not your soul (at least not with low level items, or small numbers of them), but energy absorbed from your body. A low powered ring of protection? Maybe you can eat a little more without putting on weight. Maybe you feel very hungry after a fight. Or you find yourself catnapping because you're more easily tired out.

By the time you're wearing moderately powerful armour and carrying a shield with an ability, wielding a decent + weapon, toting the ring of protection on one hand and a ring of regeneration on the other, with magic boots, a handy haversack and a bag of holding, you might almost be at the point where you're having to permanently eat high calorie foods, or your body will start cannibalising itself to feed the energy demands.

[Honest Tiefling]

Or, the items are built directly into your body. Sure, you get a +1 item for giving yourself a tattoo, but the big stuff requires opening up your flesh and inlaying metal onto your very bones. As the very price of the magic is in pain, you do not get to use painkillers at all. And if you screw up, well...Hope you didn't need those eyes, buddy! Emperors or other leaders might balk, not just because it hurts like a mofo, but they need a lot of magical healing to do it and need to trust the chancellor to not decide to bribe the healers to give up mid-way.

At that point, doodling on your minions seems like a great investment.

[Lord Torath]

Gary Gygax got around this by having his bad guys' weapons disintegrate in sunlight.

[Galen]

I used to run a 3.5 game with Virtual Wealth rules. When people level up, they gain some amount of Virtual money that can be used to improve selected pieces of equipment or give themselves abilities as if using a magic item. For example, for 2,000 virtual gold, you can gain +1 to attack and damage with that ancestral greatsword you've been lugging (happens to be the same cost as an actual +1 weapon). For 4,000 virtual gold, you can increase your Constitution score by 2, as if wearing an Amulet of Health. And so on.

The thing is, those boons only work for you. The +1 ancestral sword is your ancestral sword. The Constitution boost is your constitution boost. Conversely, the bandit lieutenant's +1 armor is only a +1 armor for him. To anyone else, it might appear a regular tarnished half-busted plate armor that underwent one patchwork repair too many. (ie. "with authentic battle damage" )

[Belial_the_Leveler]

Solving the "christmas tree" effect is easy if you do the following;


Many magic items don't give combat benefits.
Let's face it, only a small percentage of people in the world actually cares about combat.
A) 60% of everyone in a medieval setting dies of mundane hazards like really bad weather, extreme temperatures, food/water shortages, mundane accidents, diseases, poisons, falling from great heights, smoke inhalation in fires and so on. So a good percentage of magic items would be crafted to prevent those problems. Never being subject to hunger, disease, frostbite, drowning and the like is a big deal - just ask Henry VII.
So many magic items would be Rings of Protection vs Hazards +1 to +10, with every point of bonus providing immunity to a hazard.
B) Another 20% of everyone dies of the gradual weakening that comes with old age and of old age itself. So I could see lots of powerful people buying magic items that make them ageless like monks (reduce or negate penalties from old age) or vitrually immortal (preventing them from aging at all or even reversing old age). Being able to live a full life of 60+ years with the vitality of a young man or woman is a bonus far more desirable than combat prowess. Doing so for longer than a lifetime is even better.
So many magic items would be Amulets of Agelessness +1 to +10, with the first four points reducing age penalties by an age category, the following five points extending your lifespan by your maximum age each and the tenth point slowly reverting your biological age to adult status.
C) Beyond hazards and aging, the needs people would have would be for items improving trade and travel (containers of holding, magical transportation), providing home security (repulsion and nonviolence wards), and providing education and communication (magical communication and information).
So containers of holding of +1 to +10 providing extradimensional storage of 1 to 1000 cubic feet, magical transports of +1 to +10 moving at speeds 2 to 11 times faster than their nonmagical equivalents, magical wards of+1 to +10 giving benefits to residents and penalties to attackers, and communicators ranging from +1 crystals that can send a message a mile away to +10 crystals that provide intelligent interactive personal assistants/computers that interface with your thoughts.


Magic items offering combat benefits don't give static bonuses.
A) Items that enhance abilities would replace your own instead of give bonuses. I.e. gauntlets of Ogre Power just give STR 18 while a Cloak of Resistance would give saving throws of +10. Eventually a high-level character would surpass the exchange and no longer need the item - especially in their specialty.
B) Magical weapons would give different attack types, not bonuses. I.e. a flaming sword would have its original damage also be fire instead of adding fire damage dice. A magic sword would negate armor, hardness or Damage Reduction instead of giving bonuses to attack and damage. A magic armor would apply its protection to attacks that would negate lesser armors such as incorporeal blows, ray spells, touch attacks and magic weapons rather than increase its bonus to AC.
C) Wands, rods and other spell completion would simply offer additional stuff to do with your actions, as always.


Sufficiently powerful items are hard to wield and control.
A) Sufficiently powerful magic implements throwing supernatural effects would need high willpower/intellect/force of personality to use correctly. Otherwise you might make that Rune of the Ram blow up at your feet instead of the enemy. And the more of them you try to wield at once, the higher the required ability.
B) Sufficiently powerful enchanted weapons would need high strength or dexterity to control. The hammer that strikes with the force of a thunderbolt might need a giant's strength to even lift and the weightless sword that can cut through anything needs perfect hand-eye coordination or you might cut off you own limbs by accident.
C) Sufficiently powerful protective items would need high constitution for your body to take them. The ring that makes your skin like stone might petrify you outright if your body is weak and the armor that sunders all weapons that strike it needs to be worn by someone tough enough to be immovable. And you need to be twice as tough to wear both at once.
D) Magic items that sufficiently alter how you function in combat require agility and coordination or tremendous focus to not lose your own skill while using them, because they don't come from your ownabilities you innately understand. A solar flies perfectly with her wings because she has inhuman dexterity - if you don't, wearing a ring of solar wings might cause you to crash. Using a ring of invisibility means you can't see where you're stepping or where your own hands and weapons are, making coordination impossible for the inexperienced.

[Haldir]

In a setting with magic, coherent social structures and sufficient time any sentient being will probably become a magic user. Imagine Group A vrs Group B where A teaches it's young magic from the earliest possible age and B has a group of high and mighty Elites keeping all the magic to themselves.

Who is realistically going to win there? Magical knowledge, like scientific knowledge, will diffuse and magic items will become nearly impossible to horde without a concerted, BBEG style quest to stomp it all out and gather everything up for themselves.

[Esprit15]

As has been said before, if I have a +5 longsword, why do I need a +1 longsword? If I'm going to be amassing magic items, it will be to outfit my army, since there are only so many places on my body to wear magic items, and I'll likely only want or need a small closet of things, not every magic robe ever regardless of how useful it is.

Also, scry and die tactics to amass weapons from any lower level adventuring party? Well that assumes that they have something I want. If so, sure, why not? If I'm Evil, that is. I can't exactly see a Good or Neutral character staying such for long if they would normally consider this.

Furthermore: Isn't that what bandits kind of do? The problem is that attacking people who kill nearly everything for a living has a surprisingly short life expectancy. Better off finding a level appropriate encounter and taking the inevitable loot that it's carrying around for unknown reasons.

[The Insanity]

I used to run a 3.5 game with Virtual Wealth rules. When people level up, they gain some amount of Virtual money that can be used to improve selected pieces of equipment or give themselves abilities as if using a magic item. For example, for 2,000 virtual gold, you can gain +1 to attack and damage with that ancestral greatsword you've been lugging (happens to be the same cost as an actual +1 weapon). For 4,000 virtual gold, you can increase your Constitution score by 2, as if wearing an Amulet of Health. And so on.

The thing is, those boons only work for you. The +1 ancestral sword is your ancestral sword. The Constitution boost is your constitution boost. Conversely, the bandit lieutenant's +1 armor is only a +1 armor for him. To anyone else, it might appear a regular tarnished half-busted plate armor that underwent one patchwork repair too many. (ie. "with authentic battle damage" )

We also do something like that.

[TheThan]

The short answer is that is how the game is designed.

In dnd 3.5 the game forces the Dm to hand out magical treasure. By fourth level the players are going to start coming up against creatures with damage reduction and elemental resistance. So the players must have magical weapons and armor to punch through that.

It’s an intentional game design, the makers did not want magical loot to be an option, they wanted to force the Dm to start handing out magical gear to the players. While the DM does not have to shell out loot like in a Monty Haul game, the DM is still forced to do it or risk his players not being able to defeat the encounters he puts in front of them (contrary to popular belief, most DMs want to see their players succeed and progress forward).