Magic Items are rare

[Abbess Allessandra]

As usual M'lord you have figured me out. I cannot fool you!

[Chioran]

It seems to me that very often we press on without scooping up or ferretnig out every bit of treasure to be had. When I was younger and a less mature player, treasure was a large part of what I was all about, but even before I had heard of Birthright I had longed for more and the group I was in began to strive fo more political underpinings. For me this is the part that makes the game as much fun as it still is. That and having a good group of people to play with. I think it is only natural for a less mature player to be focused on treasure and magic items, but on e would hope that as the players mature their longing do so as well.

[Lord Shaene]

Hey Chioron, I can read between the lines too.
Its only natural for the worlds greatest thief to seek out all the treasure and magic that can be found. this doesnt mean im immature, just a good roleplayer :P

But seriously, I like the being able to split our session time between adventure and good role playing politics

[Chioran]

I have seen you pass up mounds of treasure yourself. I was not referring to you when I commented on immature roleplaying.

Hmmm as a matter of fact you are more philanthropist than thief.

[Stalker]

hi, I’m new around here, and planning a new campaign in the continent of Cerilia although I have never played Birthright and don’t own any of the official publications.

Do you think that doubling the market cost, and with it base cost and base price in xp, produce the right “feel” for the birthright world?

I have no previous experience with Birthright and basically Birthright.net has everything I know about the world (I’m using Travis Doom conversion) so any advise would be helpful.

English is not my native language so this may contain errors; please don’t kill me for them.

[Lord Eldred]

Stalker if you are suggesting increasing the cost of making magic items to make the right feel for birthright I would have to say no. (If you are asking something else I have no clue) Even doubling the cost would still make it too easy to create and thus possess a magic item. They should be rare.

[Lord Eldred]

Stalker, within the text of your post there is a bunch of gibberish that makes it hard to understand. The gibberish was not because of your knowledge of english.

I suggest eliminating the 3e rules on creating magic items and using the 2e rules. Only for Birthright! However, you should include the amount of magic that you are comfortable with in your Birthright campaign. All of your ideas will reduce the number of items in the world. It is just how much you want to reduce them by that is importent.

[Leland]

I agree that magic items should be rare. But a DM I play under in Forgotten Realms has done something really interesting that I think has merit. He has a system (I don't know if its in the 3E DMG because I don't have one yet) that permits players to increase the abilities of magic items through the expenditure of experience points. So lets say you find the legendary Bow of Gylvain. Although in Gylvain's hands it may have been a great item, due to his expenditure and link to the item those powers only worked for him. The magic faded and you have to expend experience points in order to increase it. So you could basically have the DM assign powers of the bow and have the players only be able to use them after spending so many experience points. Or if you just find and +1 dagger that may have been an item of some unknown who didn't expend XP. You could make it more powerful by expending your own X.P. So eventually you could get it up to +5 and give it the ablity to detect evil (or some other more powerful effect). It kind of comes from the whole Earthdawn mechanic of weaving threads of your "legend" to an item. I think its a pretty cool idea and would also serve to prevent the "Oh God! Not another +1 sword!" situation from occuring. Because of course a +1 sword, with special attention paid to it, could become an even more potent weapon. Of course the XP cost would have to be almost horrendous to go from +1 to +5, but after enough levels it wouldn't hurt that much. Or as an alternative, perhaps a scion could expend a LOT of RP to boost a magic item's potential. This would go with the whole "the land and the king are one" theme if "the land and the king and his sword are one". Like King Arthur and Excalibur. Only Arthur could pull the sword from the stone. Why? Because it took someone of his DIRECT bloodline. Anyway just some thoughts.

Leland

[Temujin]

I don't see quite the point in raising the cost of magical item creations for characters exponentially. Perhaps doubling cost expenditure, but I wouldn't overdo it. +1 weapons may be somewhat easy to create, but that's it, and truly valuable items require sacrifice. One thing that bothers me somewhat is the time requirement though. I would agree to the 1 week creation process per normal day spent on an item rule. Except maybe for potions; I'm a bit undecided on them. Might have them take 1 week for the potion brewing time, but allow for more than 1 potion of the same type to be brewed in the same batch. I'm rather undecided for the moment.

[Lord Eldred]

I would think potions would be more readily available than other magic items. They are one time deals that are gone after you drink them. They don't seem to through off the balance as much as a +5 vorpal weapon does in a game when everyone else has plain old weapons.