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Old 07-04-2018, 11:17 PM   #48
ak_aramis
 
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Join Date: May 2010
Location: Alsea, OR
Default Re: Attribute Adding Magic Items

Quote:
Originally Posted by guymc View Post
Myself, I don’t love Attribute-adding items because they are (forgive me) metagaming, not roleplaying. Anything that is generically referred to and functional only as a reference to the system rather than the setting is a suspect that the GM should watch closely. It encourages playing the rules rather than the game.
A ring of Strength makes perfect non-mechanical sense. So does a ring of Dexterity. And a crown of Intellect. And boots of speed. Logically, all these directly map to an obvious attribute, and thus, given the realities of play, provide full bonuses...

The thing is, given the 4 attributes (ST DX IQ MA), the other natural concepts — Rings of Agility, rings of endurance, rings of stamina, rings of awareness, crowns of knowledge — all are, mechanically, either going to map to the same attributes, or are going to result in essentially being half-as-valuable as one of the ones that maps directly to the attributes...

But the attributes themselves map out to many functions
Strength - Maximum weapon size, hit points, lifting strength, stamina/fatigue-capacity
Dexterity - Manual dexterity (use of hands), agility (use of whole body, excepting movement), ranged accuracy (which involves perception), melee accuracy (which involves perception, as well)
Intelligence - Willpower, Charisma, Knowledge, mental acuity/problem-solving, maximum complexity of learned abilities...
MA - movement speed. (It's the only one narrowly construed, and thus often ignored as an attribute, especially since it's racially fixed.)
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