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Adding Common Item Effects
Topic Started: Aug 9 2008, 05:30 PM (334 Views)
Spirit_Athesia

There has been a question on Adding Common Item Effects on p234 of the Magic Item Compendium. It allows Stat Bonus effects to be added to items, removing some of the requirements of Items that add to Abilities, AC, Attacks and Saves (mostly). Have a look at the rules and post what people think.

Personally I think I like the Items as they are; from a reffing point of way it is easier to keep track of the player character Magical Items (not that most people send in their character sheets and Item selections :P). Also this means that characters have to decide which stat-ups they get rather than have all of them (or all of the ones they want) - which while not adding to Game Balance overly, it does add favour and primary stats are stronger when compared to the secondary stats (creating a strong and weak aspect to the character).

What do you others think?
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John K
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Proconsul Marcus Princaii
I feel that the rules are good. The advantages are two fold:

1) Casters are rather powerful, especially when they buff up. Since these bonuses from items don't stack with most buffs it gives the non-casters a bit of an edge, which is always welcome.

2) It lets people use interesting items without affecting their stats, thus they aren't penalised for deviating form the standard item choices, i.e. what rogue/ranger is going to get the 'Garb of the Hunting Cat' set [MIC p 198] when the Hand slot is needed for Gloves of Dexterity.

The general (well founded) aversion of 'custom items' comes from the 'olden days' when the guidelines in the DMG where taken as rules for use by players.

People then abused these to get 'free slot' items so they could carry as many magical items as they liked, then add +5 bonuses of every kind they could find to every statistic, creating very cheat items that pushed all the numbers 30 points higher than they should have been. Finally you could add a spell as a persistent effect to items, allowing permanent out of class buffs all day long.

The MIC rules bypass this problem by only allow common bonus types, and not allowing for the invention of 'free slot' or persistent spell items.

John,
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jeremy.barrass
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Sir Luther Tir'Crannoch
It doesn't seem like too bad an idea, as it will allow for more interesting items to be used. It will make all the stat increases that much easier to get, but if everyone has them I don't think that'll make too much difference - and there'll still be primary/secondary balance - it costs 120,000gp to get all 6 stat boosts added at +6, plus the cost of buying the items to add them to (though these could still be rather cheap by comparison to the normal stat boosters, admittedly).

Personally, I would prefer to spend some of that 120,000 on other things.
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Spirit_Athesia

Dont forget that in the context of this discussion, the rule that allows Athesia Characters to spend no more than 65'000 Gold Pieces on any single item would still in the game - so the best a character could do would be to apply a +6 bonus to a different Magical Item.
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John K
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Proconsul Marcus Princaii
But you could add +6 to all 6 stats, assuming the items in the 6 relevant slots didn't cost more than 29,000 to start with, which in itself is probably quite a good restriction... you can have the stat boosts, but not if you put a really powerful item in that slot already.
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Pummage
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Perinoir Pyreheart-Vespoya
Allows me to have +6 Con and +5 NA. I'm happy.
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Ansob.
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Alexander Norris
Ditto to what Ren said. Seems like this'll make a few people's lives easier and wouldn't that dangerous. Why the hell not.
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