One of the things I disliked about 3e was the magic christmas tree effect. That is, to meet the expectations of the CR system you were expected to be decked out in a dozen or so different magic items.
4e fixed this to an extent, three items are now "required" or at least assumed if you are to compete with equivalent level opposition. These are weapon/implement (adds to power attack and damage rolls), armour (adding to AC) and amulet/cloak/neck item (adding to other defences).
The advice on treasure generation suggests a group should attain 4 magic items over the course gaining a level. This raises a couple of issues:
1. Magic items in my mind should generally be iconic and important and therefore fairly rare. I would rather people only be using 1 or 2 key items. This would also seem to be in genre.
2. At the expected pace of advancement (at least every other session) I would have to rain magic items down on you like confetti.
So, what is to be done?
Legacy Items:
These are items which are intrinsically bound up with their owner. As the owner grows in strength so does the item. Over time they become part of their wielders destiny, their Legend growing with that of their owner.
Mechanically such items would give you some unique special ability tied directly to your character, the same bonuses expected of the "three big items" and a daily power per tier of the item. These bonuses would improve to match the expected bonus of items as you level.
For example, if you attained your Legacy item at level 1 it would work as a +1 item. It would go to +2 at level 6, +3 at level 11 and so on. It would start with one Heroic Tier daily power, gain a Paragon Tier power at 11 and an Epic Tier power at 21.
I would still occasionally add in the odd other magic item. These would be for flavour, the odd extra daily power or special ability. Legacy items would possess plot immunity, other gear might be broken, lost or stolen.
Because I wear the GM Hat of Viking Awesomeness I would initially decide on which items are Legacy. If you haven't obtained one by the time you hit Paragon Tier then you get to pick a piece of your own equipment to build your Legend with.
So, any comments, questions or suggestions?
7 comments:
Seems like a good idea to me. I never liked the Christmas tree thing either, and the way it sort of forced you did get rid of items with important, iconic or ancetral status.
Is the idea to have a legascy item in each of 3 required slots? Or just one main one and then fill out the others?
Can we also have some input into what those iconic items are - since we are going to be living with them for the whole campaign?
It did hit me last week the magic item issue might come up when I tied it into the level advancement - if we level faster we have to have items ahead of the curve to make them useful for a number of sessions.
I plan on just the one Legacy Item. Other items may crop up from time to time but wont be required as the Legacy Item would generate all the required bonuses.
Naturally you can have some input.
The plan would be for you to have complete control over the daily powers but I will set the "special power" bit bearing in mind your characters abilities.
I should also have added that the Legacy items which you find are likely to have histories all of their own, histories which will probably bring in additional complications and interesting twists.
Yep - thats cool. I cannot stand random magical items. Everything should have a purpose. Love the idea of Legacy items as well.
I will put one caveat on this, which I am sure you have already thought about. IF you mess with the XP-Encounter-Leveling balance and then that, in turn, alters the distribution of magical items, we could see a point where we become underpowered compared to the threats that are presented to us. (I'm assuming here that the game is as internally balanced as it claims to be)
However, I am sure you have thought of that.
Neil
Thats why Legacy items scale with you autamatically.
They are desgined so that you always get the right plus in all areas you are supposes to have it.
Then I am more than happy! Bring on my +5 Holy Sledgehammer of Doom
Neil
I think this is a great idea. I build my entire 3.5 campaign around Legacy Weapons that I designed for the players in my group. These items had a special purpose in the world and would scale in power as the characters advanced so they wouldn't have to keep swapping out their +1 sword for a +2 sword, etc. It really threw a wrench into my plans when we switched to 4e because magic items are so much different (basic benefits but big stuff is tied into daily powers and such), but in a good way.
I had to do an entire redesign of the items which would affect the campaign design a bit (ick... re-writes!).
I was wondering how to keep the legacy weapons scaling in ways other than just bumping up the “to hit/damage” bonuses (that would be boring). I really like the idea of adding a daily power at heroic, paragon and epic as this lets you continue to bump up the power of the weapon and the characters would still be able to use all the powers in a day. They might not be able to use all the daily powers of the Legacy Weapon if they use daily powers from other items they have, but it would add versatility which is always nice.
As for treasure distribution, (you are supposed to get so much treasure value in order to stay on pace with monster CRs), I will probably figure out the power level of the legacy items as they go up in power and then use that as part of their treasure. So for example if they have a +1 sword and then at 6th level it goes to +2, they would receive this bonus instead of receiving a new item with a +2 bonus. Less items will be given out, but there will also be less “waste”.
It might get a little tricky because I don’t want the weapon to “be” the character, that is I don’t want the weapon to be the main thing and the character becomes just the wielder or conduit that the weapon’s power flows through, but I like idea of additional daily power at each tier and I don’t think this would be too overpowering.
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