Standards for "off-the-shelf" magic items?

Lord Kilburn · Post by **Lord Kilburn** » Mon Dec 04, 2006 6:47 pm

How useful is the appraise skill, btw?

dergon darkhelm · Post by **dergon darkhelm** » Mon Dec 04, 2006 7:53 pm

Appraise skill is quite useful. It allows for determining merchant pricing and buyback rates..... i think the variability from a really poor appraise to a really good appraise in ALFA is about +/-20% (my guy has 6 ranks

)

HEEGZ · Post by **HEEGZ** » Mon Dec 04, 2006 8:01 pm

I know my plan is to not allow any items over 1000gp available via static merchants. This includes most magic, full plate, etc. These types of items will be available as they would be in canon, but must be obtained in an RP session with a DM in my opinion.

- HEEGZ

dergon darkhelm · Post by **dergon darkhelm** » Mon Dec 04, 2006 8:11 pm

Well....since you are my boss I probably should be deferential.

But what if your proposal was Waterdeep? Would your opinion still be the same? even if the guy building Rassalantar (just 4 ATs up the road) thought there should be easy access?

Should it be simply HDM discretion as to what is available canon or no?

I do have some concerns with magic items by DM only in that it is prone to disproportiate and biased giving ( in the same way DM time and other rewards are prone to bias).

Again, I would prefer a set of standards or guidelines based on city size, area wealth, intrinsic magic, other canon to help determine what is available where as opposed to leaving it to each builing team's reward philosophy.

Mayhem · Post by **Mayhem** » Mon Dec 04, 2006 8:17 pm

HEEGZ wrote:I know my plan is to not allow any items over 1000gp available via static merchants. This includes most magic, full plate, etc. These types of items will be available as they would be in canon, but must be obtained in an RP session with a DM in my opinion.

- HEEGZ

How does that compare to what the wealth guidelines will be for NWN2?

If (eg) by L3 every PC ought to be able to own a +1000gp item, you might be making a rod for your own back if you have to deal with each one seperately.

After all, when you are on, presumably you want to be telling your story, not dealing wih a short queue of PCs wanting their gear.

HEEGZ · Post by **HEEGZ** » Mon Dec 04, 2006 8:19 pm

I believe that it is currently up to the build team, and see how this thread could lead to more standardization across ALFA. In my opinion, ALFA should be able to be mid-high magic for higher level PCs. However the way things have occured in NWN1 leads me to my stance that all magic should be controlled by the server teams. 1000gp is simply an arbitrary figure, minor magics are not much of an issue, though full plate should be fitted by a NPC smith and not available to anyone with coin.

Oh, and don't feel like you have to defer to me just cause you are an OAS DM, hehe. I passed my will save to remove you from the team fortunately.

- Nate

Rotku · Post by **Rotku** » Mon Dec 04, 2006 9:59 pm

Getting a magic item should be a story in itself. I sitting around the camp fire in DD back in the days before magic was everywhere and hearing stories about how someone got a long sword +1 or something like that. And what's more, is that I can remember been amazed at the event.

Yes, I'm exaggerating slightly, but that's how magic items should be. It should be a huge event when a PC gains a magic item. Something that circulates around the whole server, from one PC to the next. There should be a long story involved. Not just "oh, let's pop down to the local corner store and get that glowing sword that we saw in the window display yesturday".

Anyway, I'm probably way off topic - it's sometimes what happens when you just read the last post in the thread - but there we go anyway.

Fionn · Post by **Fionn** » Tue Dec 05, 2006 12:11 am

dergon darkhelm - yes, you can check the merchant's max gold pretty easy, and base the % on that. The system I have already has a greater chance of nuking high GP gear, , so this would then lower that % based upon the wealth of the store.

Alternately, you could just hard code a local INT on the merchant &/or area to indicate what wealth level you want him to have. Given that, you could simply nuke *all* gear over X GP, then randomize everthing belowe that. This would allow you to have a single [Armorsmith] that you place in every city/town you have, but he'd only have gear appropriate to the spawn location.

fluffmonster - manually populating inventories doesn't scale well. I like it for boss loot, as I don't want the same Orc Chief to drop the same +1 Axe every time you kill him. Merchants, OTOH, don't have a CR. If you can reasonably expect a shop to sell +1 gear, they should have some. They may not have the *type* of gear you happen to have your Feats in, or they may. I've found most TPI players seem to really like the randomized shops (even if it's just hunting for a plain Longsword with the right look).

Ronan · Post by **Ronan** » Tue Dec 05, 2006 6:54 am

White Warlock wrote:Repeating some of what we discussed in chat, the approach i'm recommending is not perceiving the crafting system as something that could destabilize the game, as i am perceiving it as something that could BE the stabilizer. If it is in place, it could provide an ingame sink, with some components purchaseable in stores. Great magic items could be obtained that need fixing before they work, and again... costly components need to be purchased in order to fix said items. I suppose i could get more into this discussion in the other thread. I think i covered it enough here.

The problem with this is that crafting and adventuring PCs could be totally seperate. Some DMs and PCs don't want to have anything to do with crafting, and vise-versa. So any system which relies on it is going to break in the absence of it, and we need systems of wealth which work for adventuring-only PCs.

White Warlock · Post by **White Warlock** » Tue Dec 05, 2006 7:21 am

Ronan wrote:
White Warlock wrote:Repeating some of what we discussed in chat, the approach i'm recommending is not perceiving the crafting system as something that could destabilize the game, as i am perceiving it as something that could BE the stabilizer. If it is in place, it could provide an ingame sink, with some components purchaseable in stores. Great magic items could be obtained that need fixing before they work, and again... costly components need to be purchased in order to fix said items. I suppose i could get more into this discussion in the other thread. I think i covered it enough here.
The problem with this is that crafting and adventuring PCs could be totally seperate. Some DMs and PCs don't want to have anything to do with crafting, and vise-versa. So any system which relies on it is going to break in the absence of it, and we need systems of wealth which work for adventuring-only PCs.

Ronan, you and i discussed this earlier in chat. We discussed that while there may be some crafting items found during adventuring, these items can be sold to other characters that are into crafting... or if an item requires crafting to repair, a character that is into crafting could be hired to repair it.

Ronan · Post by **Ronan** » Tue Dec 05, 2006 7:26 am

White Warlock wrote:Ronan, we discussed this in chat, so i really don't know what the purpose of this is. In chat, we discussed that while there may be some crafting items found during adventuring, these items can be sold to other characters that are into crafting... or if an item requires crafting to repair, a character that is into crafting could be hired to repair it.

We did, but none of that details with the problem that some DMs and players will not interact with or use the crafting system at all. They won't hand out materials, nor broken swords in need of repair, etc. Its just not going to happen for a lot of people, its just the nature of the game.

White Warlock · Post by **White Warlock** » Tue Dec 05, 2006 7:29 am

You're right Ronan, let's just toss in the towel, because no what we do, someone's going to mess it all up.

Ronan · Post by **Ronan** » Tue Dec 05, 2006 7:35 am

White Warlock wrote:You're right Ronan, let's just toss in the towel, because no what we do, someone's going to mess it all up.

It has nothing to do with tossing in the towel, its just the way the game is played. Dungeons and Dragons. Yes there are crafting rules, but they clearly take a backseat to other things. The current wealth guidelines can work if implenented from the start, as will be done in NWN2, with far less work than the creation of a crafting system. They could actually work if implemented retroactively as well, though it would piss off a lot of people.

White Warlock · Post by **White Warlock** » Tue Dec 05, 2006 7:47 am

But Ronan, the crafting system doesn't need to be created, it's already in NWN2. Even the components don't need to be created. Just modify some of the dependent components. If sale of items to NPCs is exceedingly low, crafted items don't even need to be modified.

Ronan · Post by **Ronan** » Tue Dec 05, 2006 8:23 am

Well, some of the easy work is done for us, but nearly none of the items are suitable, I'd imagine a lot of the components aren't either. I haven't looked at it too closely, but I don't think much is salvagable.