Talk:Book of Gears (3.5e Sourcebook)/Magic Items

Favoring

A potential problem with this is how heavily it favors casters. Let's take a look at two sample characters, a combat rogue, and a wizard. The combat rogue buys the essentials that a twf meleer; first he gets the Big Six, that is a Cloak of Resistance, an Amulet of Natural Armor, a Ring of Protection, Gloves of Dexterity, magic armor, and a magic weapon. In fact, because he uses two-weapon fighting, he'll need to invest two slots in magical weaponry. This leaves him one slot open for any other constant (non-activated) item he wants to use.
On the other hand, the wizard picks up a Cloak of Resistance and a Headband of Intellect--he doesn't really need anything else from the Big Six, since he's playing smart enough to never be targeted in melee, and can always buff himself out the wazoo with spells that stop people from attacking him. (Greater Mirror Image (or the regular variant), Displacement, Polymorph into a tiny creature, Greater Mage Armor, Shield + Abjurant Champion--you get the idea.) This leaves him 6 slots open, as opposed to the combat rogue's one.
Thus, this variant heavily favors casters, who are already considered to be close to the top tier of power. Thoughts? --Ghostwheel 09:53, September 14, 2009 (UTC)

One minor fix would be to count multiple magic weapons that are wielded as a single slot. I really don't see a problem with that. --Andrew Arnott (talk, email) 15:29, September 14, 2009 (UTC)

Magic armor and magic weapons should really be considered free slots by themselves, as they can have special abilities attached to them too. Surgo 15:34, September 14, 2009 (UTC)

Could someone who has a line to F &/or K suggest that it might favor casters as-is, and a change might be due? Or are the Tomes strictly set in stone? --Ghostwheel 06:02, September 20, 2009 (UTC)

Major Weapons

I've been thinking of updating this to add in the sort of major weapons found here. The idea is that they're pretty much like greater qualities, but they are complete weapons by themselves -- they don't add on to mundane weapons, and they don't gain any enhancement bonus to hit or damage. Any thoughts on doing this? Surgo 00:48, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

If I remember right, I don't think those worked well in conjunction with other forms of scaling damage, like the tome Barb while raging or the Rogue's SA. I'm sure they could be adapted to stack in a reduced way, or not at all, with those abilities and be fine but a straight port looks problematic. - Tarkisflux 04:43, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

A lot of people like to say things, but they don't like doing all that much proving. Let's decide which ones really are problematic before we worry too much about it...so, let's see. Where's the problems at? Surgo 05:22, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Stacking with other forms of scaling damage, like I referred to in the previous reply. Maybe. Like I said, I'm working off memory, I haven't thought about those in a year or so, the last time being when you added a similar mirrorshard blade to your Shadowdancer revision. The rest of the abilities are fine, being largely lesser or moderate qualities, I'm just not convinced that giving those and doubling the pile of damage some people do leaves them on par with on-hit SoDs, special immunity bypassing abilities, or special on-kill abilities. Rather than waiting for me to construct a negative argument against it, do you have a positive argument that radically altering base weapon damage in this way doesn't exceed the current power level of greater weapons? - Tarkisflux 07:09, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

No, I do not have such an argument. Surgo 08:26, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

This isn't a high priority issue for me, but I'm somewhat interested in the question so I'll try to throw down a comparison from which arguments can be made and conclusions drawn if I have time later this week (it's a busy week for me, and I don't know how much I'll be around after Wed). It looks like the scaling damage would be best compared to the ruin and <random SoD> weapon properties in the hands of the Barb, Rogue, and generic non-scaling damage class to get a feel for how it murdelates compared to existing similar in terms of results properties though, just need to do numbers and odds and crap.

As an aside, did anyone ever do lesser -> moderate -> major equivalencies? Like 5 moderates are equal to a major or whatever? I ask because these weapons are more than just the portion that I (and apparently SunTzu and yourself to some degree from the end of the thread) am concerned about, and that portion needs to be worse than a single major quality by the same amount that the other abilities are adding to it for it to be roughly equivalent to a major property weapon. - Tarkisflux 18:24, 22 November 2010 (UTC)