How to handle item slots?

[Endarire]

Greetings, all!

If you were retooling 3.5's item slot system, how would you do it?

I've seen two main philosophies:
1: Keep things as-is.
2: Use a certain number of flexible slots per person.  For example, you have 8 slots, but can attune yourself to 6 magic cloaks at a time.  (Frank & K inspired this, starting around page 261.)

I'm a fan scrapping the slot affinity system, so any enhancement can apply to any slot with no surcharge for breaking stereotypes.  Thus, you can wear Underpants of CHA and not pay 50% more than a Cloak of CHA.

[SorO_Lost]

 

He's at it again.

P.S. MiC already does what you suggest to the must have items, it's a well known fact across every single D&D board. Least of all to that guy that opens a dozen discussion threads weekly for the last several years you'd think.

[zugschef]

frank & k's system for me. body slots suck for a ttrpg.

[veekie]

Usually when designing I prefer to go with Significant Item Limit rather than slots limitation really. It matters in 3.5 purely as a means of doing just that, making it more expensive to gain abilities past a stated number of items.

[RobbyPants]

If you were retooling 3.5's item slot system, how would you do it?

Here's what I do. I do it this why partially to try and remove WBL, to get rid of having to constantly upgrade the plusses on your items, and for my own personal taste on how many items I want to see floating around in the campaign. That last point is flexible, and I make a point at the end of the post to say how it could be easily modified. In short:

• All "plus" items don't exist.
• All of the plusses are doled out by level for free to keep people on the RNG (so I don't have to rewrite every monster).
• Crafting doesn't take XP of crafting feats.
• Anyone can craft (within certain limits).
• Crafting items requires going on quests to get stuff you need.
• You can siphon magic from a "useless" item to re-purpose it to something you want.
• Charged items are now permanent.
• You can only benefit from one potion per hour.
• You can only attune so many items, based on your character level. You have to attune an item to use it.

[Unbeliever]

Thanks for the link RobbyPants.  I've been considering doing something similar, and I may just steal your work if I decide to implement it in a game. 

One thing is that I can see some characters wanting to invest more in "numbers" than others do.  Some that might want to get higher saves than another, or invest more in accuracy, etc.  How would you deal with that? 

[veekie]

You don't, those changes are not generally relevant to character concept, and where they are, you can improve them via ability scores/class level choices. All they do is further widen the rift between minimum bonus and maximum bonus so that what one guy completely ignores kills the other 10/10.

[Endarire]

I was considering using attunement slots based on your BAB.  For example, everyone starts with 4 attunement slots and gets 1 extra attunement slot per 2 BAB.  Whatchy'all say?

[RobbyPants]

One thing is that I can see some characters wanting to invest more in "numbers" than others do.  Some that might want to get higher saves than another, or invest more in accuracy, etc.  How would you deal with that?

Like Veekie said, I don't. The idea was to try and keep everyone on a similar path. I did put in one point of divergence, where you can choose to get a boost to natural armor and a deflection bonus, or an improved enhancement/inherent bonus to one ability score. Really, it doesn't seem like a good trade, but some SAD classes might decided it's worth it.

One side effect I've noticed is handing out easy enhancement bonuses to stuff like ability scores makes a lot of low level spells less appealing.

I was considering using attunement slots based on your BAB.  For example, everyone starts with 4 attunement slots and gets 1 extra attunement slot per 2 BAB.  Whatchy'all say?

You could. It makes sense with weapons and armor, although it doesn't so much for stuff like Rings of Invisibility or metamagic rods.

[Unbeliever]

You don't, those changes are not generally relevant to character concept, and where they are, you can improve them via ability scores/class level choices. All they do is further widen the rift between minimum bonus and maximum bonus so that what one guy completely ignores kills the other 10/10.

I don't necessarily agree with this.  A two-weapon fighting character, for instance, is going to (arguably) prize accuracy more than a melee character built around single attacks since he's taking an accuracy hit and probably wants his iteratives to hit more often to fuel his per attack damage bonuses.  Likewise, the twf-er might be a bit more MAD than another type of character. 

All of this points to him wanting to devote more resources to these types of items.  And, that seems firmly tied to his concept.  Likewise, builds that are just more MAD in general probably lead to the same underlying logic.  A Paladin might (for the sake of argument) want Strength, Charisma, and Constitution bonuses.  Another type of character might need a lot less in stat bonuses. 

[veekie]

That would be even more reason to keep their numbers straight. The differences between styles are intrinsic and significant, they'd operate differently. Don't forget, due to asymmetries in styles they already have extremely different efficiency ratios, which is enormously magnified by wealth differences.

-TWF: By wielding multiple weapons and also having MAD, they need to split their resources to enhance 2 weapons and an additional ability score relative to 2HF(who can re-invest the whole difference into significantly more damage).
-2HF: It is more difficult to over-invest in damage and firepower of a single strike so that multipliers go less crazy. This is also considered a plus by the goals of design.
-Thrown weapons: One of the few ways where dealing with throwing focus isn't going to bankrupt you rapidly.
-Archery: Mostly unchanged, though they COULD spend more money adding special effects to bow and arrow.
-Natural weapons: Much like TWF, they save money since the bonus is built in rather than having to take the amulet of mighty fists tax. The gains are considerable.
-Spellcasters: They lose out a lot in this setup. What they'd normally sacrifice because they don't need those things, now cannot be sacrificed.

Overall it forces things towards a median and away from extremes. There remains other statistical enchantments that can be obtained, while you can account for AC and attack bonuses, the bonus damage enhancements are not usually covered similarly, nor are things like Speed, Keen or Distance enhancements. If you want to differentiate, again, permanent character resources can still do that.

Classes with the highest wealth dependency and MAD gain the most benefit from the setup, but they are significantly behind on the numbers game to begin with.

[Unbeliever]

I feel like one of us is missing something.  It might be me for all I can tell.  From my brief glance over the suggestion, it removes all stat boosting items from the game and gives everyone a set schedule of stat boosts to replace them.  Something similar is done with enhancement bonuses to attack, damage, armor, etc.

Suppose I'm playing a Paladin and you're playing a Fighter.  We're both (for the sake of argument) melee dudes, so we all want the relevant stats -- we like Strength and Con and so on.  But, a bunch of my jazzy class abilities also require Charisma (not to mention my spellcasting requires Wisdom, but that's kind of a side thing). 

Now, in baseline D&D, I could very much imagine the Paladin wanting to spend some of his gold on some boosting Charisma abilities, whereas the Fighter might prefer to spend them on other items, perhaps some of those cool tactical swift action ones in MiC.  What I'm saying is that the proposed system removes those choices.  And, it's not like there are a lot of ways outside of magic items to boost stats or a lot of things that depend on stats. 

That strikes me as a bad thing.  Or, am I missing something?  While it may clean up some imbalances, it's removing some viable character choices.  If I were playing the Paladin I might justifiably be annoyed by just this sort of thing. 

Now, I don't want to turn this into another caster v. non-caster debate or anything.  I picked the two examples above -- Paladin and Fighter -- b/c they were just the sort of people who might actually care about this sort of rule.  The Conjurer, etc. are indifferent.  I think Veekie's right in that they lose out b/c they can't cannibalize those resources for something else, but I think we all agree that's fine. 

Please let me know what you think. 

P.S.:  mucking with the numbers is part and parcel of D&D.  Many class abilities, ranging from humble Iron Will to Divine Grace, are designed to do just that.  You're investing resources into saying "I'm really really good at this so it's unlikely that I'll fail."  I think the idea of "maintenance" magic items is dumb, it's just a trap for newbies, but the idea of someone committing resources to being the hardiest in the land or having a tower of iron will not only seems fine to me, but good. 

[veekie]

I feel like one of us is missing something.  It might be me for all I can tell.  From my brief glance over the suggestion, it removes all stat boosting items from the game and gives everyone a set schedule of stat boosts to replace them.  Something similar is done with enhancement bonuses to attack, damage, armor, etc.

The preferred way of doing this is actually giving these bonuses out across the board. No scheduling. Everyone just gets a flat bonus to everything that would normally obtain a flat bonus.

So ability score bonus? All of them at once. AC bonuses? Likewise. Weapon enhancement bonuses? All the weapons all the time.

You can still do these things, but you do them with integral resources. Your stat array, your race, feats and class features become much more relevant when they provide one of the few ways to differentiate from the pack.

[Endarire]

The scheduled + increases make things feel more like 4E, where items (to my recollection) stopped using the +s.

[veekie]

Items do use +s in 4e, they're just tied to + values(and you're expected to have the right one) in addition to whatever other effects they may have.

[Endarire]

Have any samples?  If so, what are they?

[Keldar]

The scheduled + increases make things feel more like 4E, where items (to my recollection) stopped using the +s.

That was an optional rule.  A very good one, that the character generator supported.  It was so good, once it became available, all the 4E games I played used it.  It let magic items focus on being interesting again rather than having players chasing numerical bonuses.  You could keep your first magic weapon your entire career and not suffer for it one bit.
4E does lack outside bonuses to ability scores.  But the system in place means if you need more than two stats to be good, you suffer for it.  Not that many characters do.  The game mostly forces you down predefined build paths.

[RobbyPants]

Suppose I'm playing a Paladin and you're playing a Fighter.  We're both (for the sake of argument) melee dudes, so we all want the relevant stats -- we like Strength and Con and so on.  But, a bunch of my jazzy class abilities also require Charisma (not to mention my spellcasting requires Wisdom, but that's kind of a side thing). 

Now, in baseline D&D, I could very much imagine the Paladin wanting to spend some of his gold on some boosting Charisma abilities, whereas the Fighter might prefer to spend them on other items, perhaps some of those cool tactical swift action ones in MiC.  What I'm saying is that the proposed system removes those choices.  And, it's not like there are a lot of ways outside of magic items to boost stats or a lot of things that depend on stats. 

Well, the way I set it up, you get to boost three of your scores on a schedule. So, presumably, the fighter would go Str/Dex/Con, and the paladin would go Str/Con/Cha. It's not a perfect system, but the idea is that the MAD characters tend to be the weakest, and I'm giving them three boosts for free. The SAD characters have the resources to boost the crap out of their one ability, and I'm making it harder to do so.

I'm not claiming that this is a perfect balancing fix, or anything, but it's part of me removing the "plus" items from the game.

P.S.:  mucking with the numbers is part and parcel of D&D.  Many class abilities, ranging from humble Iron Will to Divine Grace, are designed to do just that.  You're investing resources into saying "I'm really really good at this so it's unlikely that I'll fail."  I think the idea of "maintenance" magic items is dumb, it's just a trap for newbies, but the idea of someone committing resources to being the hardiest in the land or having a tower of iron will not only seems fine to me, but good.

It is part and parcel to 3E, and it's a lot of what I don't like about the game. If that's something you like, then you might not like my set of rules that I'm using. My line of thinking was this:

When you're telling stories about the game, no one cares about your Amulet of Natural Armor, and no one cares about how big of a plus you got on it. Sure, it's part of the game, and it can be fun figuring out how to get the most plusses for your gold, but it doesn't make for interesting stories, and it makes for really boring items. Any random PC I roll needs to have roughly half a dozen stock items just to function, and I find it so trite and bland. I wanted items to be something that people would care about more because they were interesting and because they did things, rather than just keeping them on the RNG. So, I dropped all the RNG-modding items, and handed out the bonuses for free. Now, you don't have to worry about dropping your AC by a point to get that Hat of Disguise.

[awaken_D_M_golem]

Items do use +s in 4e, they're just tied to + values(and you're expected to have the right one) in addition to whatever other effects they may have.

Yeah 4e tried to make up +1/2 per level,
via wackadoodle builds + the x-mas tree
but had the maths wrong.  So add in the
feat fixes.  They could'a had the monsters
switch to +1/2 per level, ditched the tree,
and cut back the wackadoodle.
But that wouldn't fill up a lot of books.

I think people don't like x-mas tree because
most Fiction doesn't have anything like it.
The BBEG has a sword or a fancy sword, but
not 12 items that need paragraphs to explain.

[PlzBreakMyCampaign]

"Are you able to craft things? Are you able to cast magic? Have you ever met someone who can? Then I have the fluff solution for you!

Just ask them to move the benefits of your new magic item to your favorite tunic! No more looking silly with three shirt on! No more color mismatches!"

I don't see the harm in this even without the MIC +50% cost factor. Sure you lose some of the "flavor" where cloaks do x, but you no longer have to track if your 23rd magic item was a necklace or mask. Reducing book-keeping is good.