Loot availability/distribution in adventures

The more this started to develop, the less I felt it was something beneficial to the campaign. I agree with Mary Bamford that this is a slippery slope and may turn this campaign into a D&D one where magic items are commonplace.

I don’t follow that logic. Most people are talking about something that would allow one item approximately once per tier and/or arc.

In D&D, you get a new item at least once per level (eg 3-4 adventures) – if you include potions, I think my main LFR character has had something like 25-30 items by level 15 (probably about 20 non-potion).

If going by Paul’s proposed system in Arcanis, I would have been able to probably “buy” 2 tier 1 items in that time (45ish modules at 1 point per for 20 per item/tier) plus items given out by the adventures (still far less than D&D).

I apologize if I made you do work for nothing, but I’m getting a gut feeling that this is going to just make Arcanis into another generic, run of the mill fantasy game.

No worries. It was a fun exercise. Part of the reason I’ve wanted to make sure the scope and the principles are laid out first is that it helps avoid scope creep and keeps any solution focused on what the real problem is. Narrowly focused with the right controls I think it could still work. It’s defining those boundaries or allowing them to be pushed too much that is often where the problem is. I see that doing systems work and I do governance here. It’s amazing at times how much is applicable both in terms of type of work that can be applied and the interests of the various stakeholders.

With a sweep of his hat,

Paul

I agree with Henry/ Mary on the idea of New points just being used to create the same old magic items.

However “This is ARCANIS!!!!” (rawr sound) and I think we as a group might be making a fundamental flaw, we are tying “magical” directly to ” mechanical bonus ” what would a system look like if we decoupled those things, and why would it still be useful to do….

(as an aside, there is a argument about the possibility of needing bonii at higher levels, but this isn’t the place for it from my POV)

So lets take a Page from Hats book ( and HOLY cow man, i cant thank you enough for this) lets define the problem we are trying to solve: We want to make cool interesting magic items, AND we don’t want to turn it into a 3.5 style magic item shop.

“The world is not made up of atoms; it’s made up of stories.” – Muriel Rukeyser

The core of what makes an item cool is the story behind it, the croatalus gauntlet (FIM 1) the Awesome anti ssethric hammer from the 3.5 FiM ( somone remind me the name?) all have great stories.

Here is an example of a story to a piece of armor. Just plain jane

Næfre Eft “Never Again” Exceptional Milandisian Gothic Cuirass
This Armor is made of Blued Steel and sea snake skin with a cresting wave emblazoned on the front. This armor has been in Delbert’s family for longer than anyone can remember, being passed from father to the eldest son on his 18th birthday. Delbert’s father was not a warrior so it remained unused in a place of honor above the mantle.
Inscribed on the inside are the names of all of the previous owners of the armor, but his list is incomplete due to repairs made to the shield over the years. Many remnants that are unusable for repairs are kept in a chest and passed along to preserve the history of the family.

Now it would be awesome for magic tricks to be part of this armor. Some examples:
walk on water for 4 ticks (or run really)
never rusts
easier to don
you can sleep in it
it weighs less
ability once per day to produce a strong blue light for 12 ticks
it customizes itself for the wearer
… and so on

things like that may or may not change the story of the item, that all depends on the player, but it would certainly make the item cooler without bumping the “power level” of the item.

on the other hand it might be that Ive earned enough “New Points” to totally get something new to my character, ie i can get rid of this old steel whip and use this new steel whip that I’ve paid for in some fashion (money and points) and then I’m creating all new story with my character and the item

To be clear – I’m not saying “no” just yet. As I said, I’ll discuss with the Staff, but I was merely stating that I was having second/third/fourth thoughts n the wisdom of such a dramatic change.

Fair enough. it would be cool to build items of meaning in one form or fashion that go beyond what can be purchased today. I still think one of my favorite magic items from the original story arc was the old Defender of the Empire’s armor called Night’s Watch made out of magically hardened obsidian. Even if it provided no mechanical benefits past whatever was normal for the quality, that would be sweet.

With a sweep of his hat,

Paul

The most expensive weapon with the exception of a Kio sword and flintlocks is the Steel Whip at 75 Sc base. While expensive, an exceptional version of that could be purchased by existing characters if they saved.
Paul

Can I pick a weapon or can I pick a weapon? I don’t know if folks are running around with 37.5 gp or not. I know even if I’d not spent anything through my Tier 2.5 character, I would only have around 30gp total.

John

I am not convinced there has to be a slippery slope argument. To my knowledge no one here is/arguing in favor of more magical items being released into the game. What I hear, or maybe the parts I am listening too, are concerns about how stuff (magical items) gets released into the game.

By my reckoning there are 5 modules in the campaign where you can walk away with a permanent magic item. In two of them you explore/loot an unknown ancient place … and in the other three you kill “people” and take their stuff. Two of these mods basically make sure everyone gets something. There was also the Vault special event which had a handful of magical items and access to limited runes.

The opportunities, as intended, are rare. And people can miss stuff (by playing the wrong character, losing a roll off, not being able to make it to a special event … whatever). And its possible you’re playing an unusual concept and you’ll never see the cool item that would be your “signature item.”

So for me the question is: are there other ways to distribute magic items through out the campaign?

I don’t know that we need a Marketplace. Or Signature points. But I also don’t want rest on any laurels thinking that things are perfect as is. As far as stories go, “I found some ruins no one has ever heard of” or “I killed some people and took their stuff” is not necessarily great theater. Maybe we do want to consider

It seems to me that there should be other models. One possibility is the “Elebac” model where over several encounters in mods the NPC makes you something. A varrient of this is what I call the “deep pockets” model where and organization (country, mother church, emerald society) ultimately reward’s you with something from their vaults.
Both of these are maybe part of a bigger story. And maybe give some control of what gets produced to the player.

Surely a bunch of creative people like us can think of other story driven ideas as well.

I like favors that are used, I never enjoyed in the old campaign the ones that state “It may have future use” because it creates pages and pages of favors that people don’t use, and don’t cash in, because “just in case in comes back”. I like the new ones, you can use this favor for this or that. And besides everyone gets one.

YES. This!

Favors without use is precisely why, in the previous campaign, Sean and I put in the system that gave *every* favor a use. If players chose to hoard obscure favors… well, that is likely to continue regardless.

The concept of stacking favors is also likely to continue.