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Old 07-06-2018, 04:21 PM   #71
John Brinegar
 
Join Date: Jul 2018
Default Re: Attribute Adding Magic Items

Yes, characters obviously must have some concept of attribute points. The whole point of my post about the humors was to come up with a plausible way that characters might talk about attribute points. Imagining them talking about ST, DX, and IQ is somehow not satisfying.
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Old 07-06-2018, 04:34 PM   #72
Steve Jackson
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Default Re: Attribute Adding Magic Items

Yep. It's possible, for instance, that in Ardonirane the Thorsz enforces a monopoly on ST and DX enhancers, and grants the Wiz Guild a monopoly on IQ enhancers, just to give his guards an edge over random rabble.
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Old 07-06-2018, 08:39 PM   #73
ak_aramis
 
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Default Re: Attribute Adding Magic Items

Quote:
Originally Posted by guymc View Post
Hm. OK, good analogy.

I still want to encourage thinking in terms of “the ring makes you stronger” rather than “the ring raises your ST one point”, but I suppose that’s really a function of the GM.
The "Strength +1" function is a hassle to keep secret from the player, and sooner or later (usually sooner in a 4 att system) catch enough rolls that should have failed succeeding to figure it out, and start referring to it mechanically anyway.

For simplicity, it's much easier to encourage them to get it identified ASAP so that the GM can offload the math to the player side of the table.
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Old 07-07-2018, 01:41 AM   #74
zot
 
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Default Re: Attribute Adding Magic Items

Quote:
Originally Posted by John Brinegar View Post
Yes, characters obviously must have some concept of attribute points. The whole point of my post about the humors was to come up with a plausible way that characters might talk about attribute points. Imagining them talking about ST, DX, and IQ is somehow not satisfying.
I like your terms for them.

Sheesh, I gotta apologize -- I read that lying in bed after midnight and somehow skipped everything from "As any Master Physicker", down. I.e. the whole point of your post. My mention of humors was in reference to the four humors, not your three humors (which are a great idea).

I do think that wizards probably actually know about the points, just based on the quantization of spell costs, effects, and rest times. They might even have ways to find out what peoples' values actually are, using Aid, Clumsiness, Confusion, and fatigue tests. I think that'd be a real hoot. I've never heard of in-game stat knowledge in any serious system!
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Old 07-07-2018, 01:50 AM   #75
Skarg
 
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Originally Posted by Steve Jackson View Post
Let us hypothetically assume that I was good with increasing the cost of attribute enhancers. The next question would be "how much?" Double? Tenfold? Something in between?
I'd compare to other magic items. I also ban Charm, but is seems only somewhat better than a ST +1 DX +1 IQ + 1 item. Charm +1 is $30,000, so on that basis I'd say +1 Attribute might be about $10,000 (5 x current). But I DO ban Charms. Other enchantments are sort of apples & oranges, though there are the equivalent potions (which I didn't ban).

(Note that the potions are nice not only because they're consumed when used (which is a huge difference), but also because they have interesting/limited/dangerous ingredient requirements, and they have interesting side-effects (yay).)

Given that those potions are fun/interesting/limited, and still cost $450-$600 per dose, I'd say that an item that just does the effect and has no fun/interesting limits or side-effects (boo) and subverts/shortcuts the multi-year quest to survive enough adventure to add +8 to your actual attributes, hmm, well the proud owner would tend to use it all the time and get the benefit of huge amounts of such potions. I mean, if you take more than 6 doses of Increase IQ potion in one month, you can lose IQ permanently! And it still costs $600 and needs a fresh human brain. Hard to compare, but probably at least $10,000.

I'd want it to be harder to make than seems like something most enchanters would just do as a logical thing for themselves, or that wizards' guilds would just logically enchant as many of as they could. I think I'd want to add challenging ingredients rather than rely on increased cost to reduce "industrial" production. After all, I'd think the most wealthy and powerful people would tend to want to get whatever was produced, driving up the cost to almost whatever it took to out-bid casual consumers.

I still like my idea that the item not be able to raise an attribute higher than that of a corpse ingredient. That means if you want to be able to raise to a high attribute level, you need the corpse of someone who had that level of that attribute. The doubling rule per level would make that especially prohibitive. e.g. to get a +3 IQ ring that can raise IQ of someone to IQ 20, you'd need 4 fresh corpses of people who had IQ 20...


Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve Jackson View Post
Remember, as GMs you ARE going to put some of these in your dungeon, and if they are overpriced relative to their utility, they'll just turn into extra bags of gold that will be spent on OTHER magic items and so on.
I never did, and don't think I would, as I'd ruled that enchantment was not known.

Last edited by Skarg; 07-07-2018 at 01:53 AM.
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Old 07-07-2018, 07:42 AM   #76
flankspeed
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve Jackson View Post
I wonder how far this paragraph would go toward regulating issues?

Items that act directly on attributes, increasing ST, DX, or IQ, are a special case. Only the most powerful one works; if you had a ring granting +2 DX and another granting +1, only the more powerful one would work. And you may get only a total of +5 to attributes from magic items.
I like this idea. Forgive me if I’m forgetting something that has already been mentioned or is already in the rule books, but perhaps attribute enhancers could be further differentiated.

The item adds to ST, but only for the purpose of qualifying to use a more damaging weapon. It does not increase Hit Points. Or vice versa.

The item adds to to DX, but only for Missile/Thrown Weapon/Spell attacks, NOT melee attacks. Or vice versa.

The item adds to IQ, but only for disbelieving Illusions (The Ring of the Skeptic, for example, which could have humorous side effects such as needing to make a save to avoid making scoffing sounds when an NPC speaks). It does not work for any other IQ-based rolls.
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Old 07-07-2018, 11:49 AM   #77
JLV
 
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Default Re: Attribute Adding Magic Items

Quote:
Originally Posted by ak_aramis View Post
The "Strength +1" function is a hassle to keep secret from the player, and sooner or later (usually sooner in a 4 att system) catch enough rolls that should have failed succeeding to figure it out, and start referring to it mechanically anyway.

For simplicity, it's much easier to encourage them to get it identified ASAP so that the GM can offload the math to the player side of the table.
What four attributes would those be? I'm only aware of ST, DX, and IQ. Unless you're adding in MA, which really isn't anything like the others...
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Old 07-07-2018, 11:52 AM   #78
JLV
 
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Default Re: Attribute Adding Magic Items

Quote:
Originally Posted by flankspeed View Post
I like this idea. Forgive me if I’m forgetting something that has already been mentioned or is already in the rule books, but perhaps attribute enhancers could be further differentiated.

The item adds to ST, but only for the purpose of qualifying to use a more damaging weapon. It does not increase Hit Points. Or vice versa.

The item adds to to DX, but only for Missile/Thrown Weapon/Spell attacks, NOT melee attacks. Or vice versa.

The item adds to IQ, but only for disbelieving Illusions (The Ring of the Skeptic, for example, which could have humorous side effects such as needing to make a save to avoid making scoffing sounds when an NPC speaks). It does not work for any other IQ-based rolls.
That's not a bad idea at all, but it might better be a GM call than a formal rule. If Steve wanted to include something along those lines, I suspect it would something along the lines of; "The GM may choose to further restrict the utility of these items by making their effects limited to one single type of action for that attribute; e.g, ST enhancing items only allow the player to use a weapon or armor requiring higher ST, but not to improve Hit Points, etc., etc."
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Old 08-19-2018, 02:14 PM   #79
Nils_Lindeberg
 
Join Date: Jul 2018
Default Re: Attribute Adding Magic Items

Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve Jackson View Post
I wonder how far this paragraph would go toward regulating issues?

Items that act directly on attributes, increasing ST, DX, or IQ, are a special case. Only the most powerful one works; if you had a ring granting +2 DX and another granting +1, only the more powerful one would work. And you may get only a total of +5 to attributes from magic items.

I second this limitation and the system will still be balanced with 45p characters combat wise. We might actually be able to see a Great sword master use Shrewd sucessfully. :-)

As Rich has pointed out, the example could be a little more defining. Something like:

"...if you had a ring granting +1 DX and +1 ST, and another ring granting +3 IQ, only the more powerful one would work, so you would get +3 IQ. And you may only enchant an item with a total of five +1 to attributes enchantments."

And then you change the wording in the enchantment list so that each point cost twice as much as the one before like almost every enchantment on the same item. So a ring can not have +3 attributes and four other enchantments. It can have a +1 ST and a +2 IQ and two other enchantments.

That would limit it to one item with a maximum of +5 bonuses in total and at a huge cost compared to buying several +1 items.

With the repeated doubling a +5 item with the right attribute mix for your character would be both rare and costly enough to limit it to high level play. And 45p characters can still work pretty well.

If you want to limit it even further, add up to maximum for the race but no more. Points above the maximum are not active or "lost".

You might want to consider doing the same with armor and damage enchantments. If a sword does +5 damage, that might be enough to full fill the rule of five enchantments on one item. And possibly Conceals and limitations on top of that as usual.

And while we are at it, maybe we should take a look at the Aid spell. A maximum of +5 points to the real attributes and possibly a max of 20. The exception would be temporary fatigue that can be hold for the usual two turns. One could even say that they don't stack and call the Aid spell the same bonus as the "permanent" aid spell of an attribute item. That would get rid of most of the shenanigans.

Just at thought.
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Old 08-19-2018, 02:33 PM   #80
stefanj
 
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Default Re: Attribute Adding Magic Items

Trying to think of enhancements to magic weapons other than plusses-to-hit:


Mighty: Adds to damage.


Severing: Increases the chance of a critical hit.


Life-Saver: Reduces the chance of a critical hit against the wielder.


Never-Fail: Reduces the chance of a fumble.


Blazing: When drawn, sheds light as bright as a torch; in the heat of battle, it sheds light almost as bright as the *sun*. Creatures who fear or are damaged by sunlight strike at the wielder get AdjDX -1.
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