Catharz wrote:As a semi-relevant question, has anyone managed to figure out how they (I don't know. Skip? Monte?) came up with the current 'appropriate wealth by level system,' and why it should be considered balanced? As far as I can tell, it is a series of semi-random numbers that somebody pulled out of his ass.
Yes. No Idea.
It's not random, but it has been completely pulled out of an ass. Here's the reasoning:
1> Total bonuses should progress quasi-linearly as wealth increases.
2> People should diversify their holdings and have various magical doo-dads hanging off of every part of their body at all times.
OK, whatever. It kind of follows from how Gygax apparently ran things, and can be considered a legacy concession. The natural result of course, is that they wanted it to be a larger jump between +3 and +2 than it was between +2 and +1 - as that way a relatively slight variation in wealth would still "ballpark" you into the same bonuses.
So the quadratic system was introduced for bonuses, as it provides for a cost per plus of 2N-1, where N is the current plus. So a +1 has a cost of 1, the second +1 has a cost of 3 (because N is 2), and the 12th +1 has a cost of 23 (because N is 12). Etcetera etcetera. This way, you have to have qualitatively more money to get each new plus than the one before it - as the money you scrape together to get each plus is 2 times the cost multiplier more than the previous plus.
And that, to an extent, makes sense. At least, provided that it is your intention that people move through a +3 bonus before getting a +4 bonus and after first having a +2 bonus.
Of course, then there's the whole thing with the Ring of Protection and the Amulet of Natural Armor, and all the other variously named bonuses available. They really change things considerably. Because with their inclusion, it is cheaper to get another object that adds +1 than it is to upgrade your first object to +2. It's cheaper to upgrade that second object to +2 than it is to upgrade a first object to +3, and so on and so on.
Which, by itself does make that happen. Now here's where it gets crazy: They decided to have the cost multiple be based on the "desirability" of the bonus. And then it falls apart big time.
It doesn't seem like it would, which is probably why it went to print, but it does. It sounds to a first aproximation like having a higher cost multiplier on desirable bonuses would cause people to diversify more, but that's not what happens at all. See, when the cost multiple is different, then it isn't always to your advantage to raise each bonus before you raise any particular bonus twice. And therefore you are looking at a situation where it is
not a qualitative jump in cost between one bonus and the next sometimes. Take the Shield Enhancement Bonus and the Deflection bonus, for example: because the cost multiplier on the deflection bonus is double that of the shield enhancement bonus, it is cost effective to raise your deflection bonus by +1 for every 1.41 you raise your shield enhancement bonus. And that breaks up the pattern quite a bit, as the cost jump for +2 often ends up being quite comparable in qualitative terms to the cost jump for +1.
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That's all secondary of course. Some of the assumptions made in there are just plain wrong. The thing where you only get half a magic item's value in trade-in really kicks the system in the nuts, because the cost of upgrading ends up being crazy-go-nuts expensive relative to saving up for a larger upgrade - which undermines the whole system.
The thing where spell-based items are also quadratic makes no sense at all on close examination because most utility spells don't actually replace anything previous. You don't "upgrade" your wand of Knock to a wand of Fly - you just keep the wand of Knock and eventually hope to get a wand of Fly as well. This lack of "trade-up" in spell items means that people are always attempting to get into spell-items "from the ground" - which is ironically exactly the thing that the system was designed to
prevent you from doing. Which is why you've probably never seen anyone purchase a staff ever in your whole life.
And finally, but of course most obviously of all, bonus name inflation totally makes this concept explode. As soon as you introduce things which provide Insight Bonuses to AC, or Divine Bonuses to Saves, or whatever, there's just no hard guidelines on how much any particular bonus to AC is actually going to cost. If the 5th bonus to AC is coming from raising your shield bonus to +2 it costs 3k, but it only costs 2k to add an insight bonus to AC. And if the
costs of each increase aren't knowable ahead of time, the wealth by level system is likewise unbalanceable.
Regarding your idea, it seems like a decent balancing solution, but it would require massive overhaul of the current pricing system for EQ (which of course isn't balanced as it is, but I digress...).
Oh sure. For example, you'd have to acknowledge the fact that "permanent items" aren't really permanent, but are each going to have a finite number of uses per adventure. You'd have to abandon the entire concept of the fifty-charge wand that can be used fifty times in one day because that's insane and always has been.
What you'd really have to get rid of, of course, is the entire thing where you can get 6 1st level effects for the cost of a 2nd level effect (or for +1 items for the cost of a +2 item). That's retarded. The cost scripting should encourage you to get the biggest items you can, which means that the cost of items should be based on logs instead of quadratics. For those of you at home, that means that the difference in cost between a +2 thing and a +1 thing should be
more than the difference between a +3 thing and a +2 thing, not less.
You can avoid the "Giant Helmet of Real Ultimate Power" problem by simply putting a level based limit on how much can be spent on each item. By changing the limit of spending per item and the amount in total that people have to spend, you could set the number of items characters were running around with as well as the power of each item.
This price structure would also neatly sidestep most of the problems of bonus name inflation, since it would actually be more efficient to just have a more magical shield than it would be to introduce some item that gives Insight Bonuses. I say "most", and not "all", because you still have the problem that the more bonuses you introduce the more a specialized build can (and therefore should) give its magic items over to a single thing. If you allow Competence Bonuses to attacks, for example, an Archer Build is going to be retarded if one of its maxxed out items isn't a bow and another is a set of Bracers of Archery. And so on. As you add more bonuses, a specialized build is going to have more and more of its starting magic item slots given over to redundant functions - which is going to make characters basically less interesting. But it doesn't actually make the price structure collapse.
Note also, and this is extremely important, the price structure doesn't have to be in "gold". In fact, there's no reason for it to reference gold at any stage of the process - it can be in "points" or something similarly abstract. The only thing that's being quantified is how many magical bonuses the character walks into an adventure with and how relatively big those bonuses are. There's
no reason why that needs to be expressed in terms of wealth in any meaningful fashion.
After all, specific abilities (Bane qualities, single-use items, etc) can be taken and thrown away to suit the current adventure. It basically makes every adventure into a one-shot.
To an extent, that's intentional. Characters in stories often go bear hunting with
bear traps, for instance. And not all-purpose traps. Characters are expected, in such a circumstance, to wander around with tools they think they will need based on what they think they are doing. The special effect, of course, could be that you live in a ginormous mansion like Lara Croft and take one of the many tiki idols off the wall based on perceived need for the adventure, or that you trade your sword in on one that seems like it'll kill werewolves. Whatever, it's not important.
The idea of "signature items' also seems a balance issue.
Yes it is. A severe one.
A signature item differs from a normal item in that:
1> It probably isn't selected by the player.
2> It doesn't count against your level equipment at all.
3> It's
better than your level equipment, whatever level you are.
4> It's going to continue to improve in its function for you as your level rises.
5> It's going to follow you from adventure to adventure and thus
it actually matters if it breaks.
Is that a balance issue? Fvck yeah! Signature items are by their very nature
unbalanced and subject to DM whim. But they are also a relatively small concession to the perceived need for people to be able to "accomplish acquisition" in a meaningful game manner. It also allows people to have really unique stuff, the fact that you have the Thunder Cloak makes your equipment different in a fundamental way from the equipment that one of the other Fighters could have no matter how closely they mimic your style.
Will it break the game? Possibly. The signature item is like the Artifact - it's in the DM's control and it has the power to break the rules. So obviously enough, a DM could quite easily allow it to slip through his fingers and go doggy-style on justice. But a DM always has the power to wreck the game with the simple inclusion of an encounter with a Girallon in an enclosed space - so I don't think I plan to lose sleep over the fact that the DM
could also screw up the campaign with the inclusion of too many or too powerful signature items.
Oh, and not to beat my own drum (which means to beat my own drum), but I posted an EQ-system revision idea
The similarities between your system and mine are, of course obvious. The difference here is that in your system there is no reason to ever use any magic item you ever find except signature items - while as in this system people are encouraged to use any and all found props for the remainder of the current episode. That is, I think, a more satisfying approach. Having people wear Alantine Serpent Armor until the end of the story and then probably never mention it again except in passing in later stories is one thing, but having everybody actively avoid found magic items as having cooties seems a bit extreme.
I just wish the DMG's gp by level guidlines were a bit more balanced...
I really don't think the concept is salvageable. I mean, an all elven party can just decide to farm for a hundred years between adventures. Money just can't be a meaningful upper bound on power at all - it just can't work as long as players aren't locked in to a linear course of action. As long as players can have their characters perform a reasonably open-ended set of actions, methods of gaining wealth outside the adventure structure or stealing magical goods outside the level structure are unvoidable. And if that's allowed to significantly alter a character's place in the power structure then the battle for game balance is already lost.
-Username17
