How to handle item slots?

[Unbeliever]

...
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.

Certainly, I was just pointing out something that had occurred to me about the fix as I was considering it. 

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.

I am very sympathetic to this.  There is a slight counterpoint with regards to things like Girdles of Giant Strength (viz. Thor), but with that extremely nitpicky point aside I wholeheartedly agreed. 

My, admittedly kludgy, approach has been to essentially bury magic items "under the hood."  In a lot of campaigns we distinguish between items that exist within the narrative, an actual hat of disguise that can be traded, etc., and things that are just game concepts like feats and classes are.  In many of our campaigns -- about 60% of the ones we've played in the past year -- we've even divorced "treasure" in the sense of magic items and things that do stuff from wealth.  This way the average PC isn't rich as Croesus after a few levels, and you can distinguish rich characters (either PCs or NPCs) for fluff purposes from others. 

Like I said, it's a bit kludgy as there's a bit of an incentive to hide some items away from the narrative, though we rarely sunder or steal magic items anyway, and doesn't get rid of the "maintenance" items which RobbyPants' system elegantly does.  If it were to come up, I might aim for a hybrid system, where maintenance was taken care of so that everyone had the "appropriate" bonuses and could then devote resources as they see fit.  I'm not against exceptionally good swords, even for magic ones, but I do hate maintenance items. 

This is way off topic as well, but I do sort of like random magic items.  They can be neat and add something unexpected to the character, and there's a nice linkage there with fantasy literature (e.g., Perseus' invisibility helm).  Too often they get swept by the wayside, though, b/c (i) they are a ton of niggling things to keep track of and I have developed a keen hatred for bookkeeping, (ii) they aren't things you need or are eclipsed by other priorities.  I've had games where informally there were some items or some proportion of items and WBL that were up for optimization, selling, crafting, etc.  And some, often those that were way overpriced for their utility, that were "off limits" and there for us to use but not sell, etc. 

[RobbyPants]

My, admittedly kludgy, approach has been to essentially bury magic items "under the hood."  In a lot of campaigns we distinguish between items that exist within the narrative, an actual hat of disguise that can be traded, etc., and things that are just game concepts like feats and classes are.  In many of our campaigns -- about 60% of the ones we've played in the past year -- we've even divorced "treasure" in the sense of magic items and things that do stuff from wealth.  This way the average PC isn't rich as Croesus after a few levels, and you can distinguish rich characters (either PCs or NPCs) for fluff purposes from others. 

Like I said, it's a bit kludgy as there's a bit of an incentive to hide some items away from the narrative, though we rarely sunder or steal magic items anyway, and doesn't get rid of the "maintenance" items which RobbyPants' system elegantly does.  If it were to come up, I might aim for a hybrid system, where maintenance was taken care of so that everyone had the "appropriate" bonuses and could then devote resources as they see fit.  I'm not against exceptionally good swords, even for magic ones, but I do hate maintenance items. 

So, if I'm understanding this right, you have two types of items: those that are real, physical items that are interesting, and all of the plus items, which you write on your PC sheet, but aren't actually real in the game world?

One approach if you want customization, would be to give players some amount of "virtual gold" each level, that they can use to "buy" various plus items. These items don't physically exist, but their benefits are real. So, if you buy a Ring of Protection +1 and a +2 enhancement bonus to your armor, your armor bonus increases by 2 points and you get a +1 deflection bonus to AC.

The serious downside to this is that it works a lot like normal items: the more powerful characters really only need to heavily invest in stuff like their casting stat, whereas the weaker characters are stuck spreading the resource across a lot more attributes. This is why I locked everything down into a single progression (kind of).

This is way off topic as well, but I do sort of like random magic items.  They can be neat and add something unexpected to the character, and there's a nice linkage there with fantasy literature (e.g., Perseus' invisibility helm).  Too often they get swept by the wayside, though, b/c (i) they are a ton of niggling things to keep track of and I have developed a keen hatred for bookkeeping, (ii) they aren't things you need or are eclipsed by other priorities.  I've had games where informally there were some items or some proportion of items and WBL that were up for optimization, selling, crafting, etc.  And some, often those that were way overpriced for their utility, that were "off limits" and there for us to use but not sell, etc.

I like the idea of random items. So long as WBL not being an issue, they can be a lot of fun.

[Unbeliever]

^ yup, pretty much.  Actually,  we've gone the other way as well.  I played a character who for fluff/background reasons had a coat of frost wyrm scales, which was actually a persistent spell effect.  If, for some reason, I had been caught without my armor, though, I would have lost a big portion of my AC.  The same was true for his "claw" attacks that were represented by weapons he carried.  Had someone disarmed me of my frost wyrm tooth dagger I would have lost some of my attack capacity.  It didn't come up much, though, and was sort of an experiment and a series of self-imposed limitations.

You are totally right about the potential power differentials in characters/concepts -- nothing these vague rules ideas do changes that formula at all.  As I'm sure I must have mentioned before, my gaming groups rarely have serious power differentials in them.  This is one of those cases where a combination of optimization and restraint cures those ills.  But, I freely admit that is just a player-driven version of the Oberoni Fallacy and that mechanically there is an issue. 

[SorO_Lost]

FYI, cost increases for off slot stems from slots having affinities. IE Bracer for physical strength like stuff, well if you want a Tunic of puncheserminthefaceharder, you would already have Bracers of facepunch. The price of expertise has always been higher than an all rounder, deal with it. And without using MAD vs Expert classes with same cost items, it almost sounds lazy (I only 'fix'ed half the game, the items, screw the classes!).

The point of providing those stupid must haves for free in favor of more unique gear. That is one aimed in a good direction, but don't forget that the option to excel at AC or an Ability Modifier should still exist.

[Endarire]

If you use a Schedule of Bonuses (SoB) like RobbyPants proposes, how does that affect wealth by level?

[TuggyNE]

If you use a Schedule of Bonuses (SoB) like RobbyPants proposes, how does that affect wealth by level?

Y'know, that's a horrendous abbreviation.

But I'd expect you'd have to mostly eliminate it, leaving only enough for the various interesting items that don't provide strict numeric bonuses (or essential immunities, in some cases).

[RobbyPants]

If you use a Schedule of Bonuses (SoB) like RobbyPants proposes, how does that affect wealth by level?

I don't use it. The whole point of doing that, and changing how things are crafted, was to divorce money from the process. That way, it can be used to buy castles and fun stuff like that.