Publication:Complete Gear

This material is published under the OGL

Complete Gear

System: Dungeons and Dragons 3.5e  Abbreviation: CG  Author: John Fraser  Publisher: Dreamscarred Press  Item Code: DSPMD0003  Publication Date: 2009  Format: PDF  Page Count: 13  ISBN-10: None  Price: $2.95

Product Blurb Are your players tired of having to set aside that family heirloom in favor of a random bit of treasure with better abilities? Do you want your character to define his equipment, rather than letting the equipment define the character? Do you desire maximum flexibility in the gear your players use? Do you prefer customization over predefinition? If you answered yes to any of the above, then you need Complete Gear, the new book on customization from the author who brought you Complete Control: Character Design for the Uninhibited. Within its 13 pages, Complete Gear gives you everything you need to stop making your characters define their abilities by the luck of random treasure or the availability of item creation feats and puts the control firmly in your hands! With illustrations by Dave Peterson and V. Shane, Complete Gear is written by John Fraser, the author of Complete Control: Character Design for the Uninhibited. This text is quoted from promotion material. Text and images are copyrighted by the original publisher.

Preface

Complete Control took character design out of the hands of game designers and put it back into the hands of the individual players where it belongs. However, with as much freedom as Complete Control does give with respect to the character design process there is still a certain amount of reality to the complaint that a character is largely defned by their items. From the player’s perspective, when so much thought is put into designing precisely the desired character why shouldn’t that character defne the items rather than the items defining the character?

From the perspective of the Game Master, treasure and NPC equipment are often on the top of the list of elements that suck the fun out of games. Many Game Masters complain about the fact that magic-marts destroy the believability of the game. Yet, without places to buy magic items the players complain that they are reliant upon the mercy of the Game Master in handing out treasure. Wouldn’t it be nice to eliminate the time needed to prepare balanced treasure as well as remove the necessity of having a magic-mart in every city the characters might visit?

That is precisely the premise of this work. By using the rules presented here, players can take control of the items that their character uses. Game Masters can stop worrying about coming up with a meaningful yet balanced list of items and treasure. NPCs can use whatever items make sense to the character or monster without the Game Master worrying about unbalancing the game when the items fall into the hands of the characters. This work strives to take even more control out of the hands of the game designers and put it into the hands of the people who will enjoy wielding that very power the most!

As a note before the text of Complete Gear begins, I hope that this work is seen as an obvious supplement to the work done in Complete Control: Character Design for the Uninhibited. Yet, this work in no way assumes that Complete Control is being used in a game. Complete Gear is a stand-alone system of magic items and treasure that does not rely upon Complete Control in any way. It can be used in any game that uses gold pieces to defne both character wealth and item purchases regardless of how character design occurs.

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