Magic Items

The role of magic items has a lot of range. When I first started reading fantasy fiction I was struck by the power of the Sauron's One Ring and Elric's Stormbringer. But now when I play World of Warcraft with my twenty or so epic items it is different. I analyse each item drop to see if it would give me a slight boost.

Magic items in fiction and magic items in games are very different. Typically magic items in fiction are important and powerful. There are reasons for this. Authors don't want to linger over every item a hero might possess since they aren't really important to the story. The items that are important to the story tend to be powerful and mysterious since they are story elements. Also, in a story the protagonist is typically separated out by innate traits and not by a laundry list of magic items. This is a stark contrast to a game like World of Warcraft where a character is measured by the quality of his magical equipment.

Magic items in games evolved from their depiction in fiction but are now very different. As steps in this process I would say 1st and 2nd edition D&D is one step, 3rd and 3.5 are another step, 4th another step, with World of Warcraft a final step far removed from fiction. I will also mention Hero System which is kind of a sideways step that has some failings.

In the first editions of D&D magic items could be not be created. They were extremely powerful and often dwarfed the normal abilities of a character. Your character was often defined by what items they possessed and you had little control over what items these were, but you did have more of a feel that items were important and mysterious. But a character would usually have several items and they would not tend to be plot points and this begins the drift from fiction.

The third edition allowed for the creation of magic items. It also shifted power from items to the characters making characters less a list of items and more a list of abilities. But these two things removed the power and mystique of magic items. Another important factor was that the level range spread from maybe 1 to 12 to 1 to 20 and magic items became a factor in advancement and balance. A 16th level warrior with an 18 strength has +20 to hit and +4 to damage. The same warrior with a +4 weapon and a +6 belt of giant strength has +27 to hit and +11 to damage. So access to magic items became a significant balancing factor. A party with items might be able to face a certain dragon, but without them they would be slaughtered. So access to items becomes important.

Fourth edition made magic items even easier to create. It also made them less powerful and mysterious and more part of the equipment you needed in order to stay balanced with the kind of encounters you would face. In fourth edition magic item creation is so easy that characters will quickly have a magic item in every possible slot. The whole slot mechanism which actually started in 1st edition was designed to prevent characters from wielding a ridiculous number of items, notably amulets and rings.

World of Warcraft has items that have exact stats and you fill a certain number of slots with them. They can often make you powerful, but the mystique of the One Ring or Stormbringer is long gone.

Hero System has a very different take on magical items. Powers are represented by points and making a power into an item is a disadvantage on that power. Typically people don't 'acquire' power through items but rather create items with experience points. This is generally meant to model a super hero comic where Superman doesn't carry around Batman's utility belt.

So what is the right way to handle magic items? Should players have a magic item in every slot? Should they require these items in order to keep up with the challenges? How can we preserve magic items with flavor? Should every item have flavor and a story or is character with +1 armor, a +1 weapon, a +1 ring of protection, a +1 cloak of resistence, and a +1 amulet of natural armor a fine thing?

I think special magic items are cool. It is interesting if you give items neat little effects or interesting backstories. Having a +2 sword is okay, but what if one had that sword also bestow the Quick Draw feat. What would even be cooler is if you described it as a Sword of Bone that could merge with your body and would be drawn from your flesh whenever you needed it. It would go from being something that just affects your stats to a cool story point. Adding a little bit of flavor isn't too hard. For crafted items it gets more complex, but you can find ways to include flavor. Even mass produced item you can try to add flavor. For example, does every orc have a +1 magical axe, maybe the axes were fortified by the blood of an angel. If enough of the weapons are destroyed you can reclaim the angels blood and do something special with it. Or maybe each +1 ring is a wire fragment of some greater item. Or maybe just a plot point where all sorts of standard gear are marked with the mark of a famous spell forge that might come into play later.

So I am in favor of having magic items be interesting and not just standardized gear. Unfortunately in D&D the game is balanced so that you require items. Also NPC's also require items and characters frequently end up with piles of minorly enchanted junk. Fourth edition has alleviated this somewhat by balancing enemies so that they have innate bonuses that balance with the assumed magic items of the player characters, but that also means that characters and non-characters follow fundamentally different rules.

Also, crafted items are harder to customize since if you let players do it you have to worry about balance issues more. I will write another blog entry on item crafting and how you can add more flavor to it.

One possible way to change magic items is with non-positional slots. The slot mechanism descends from common sense. You can't wear more than one pair of boots. But it is more than just that since you can't wear magic boots with those magic socks. So the idea between slots is you can use a certain number of items and each item must be of a different type. But what if you had a system where you could use 3 magic items. You could have a wand and a pair of rings or a sword, shield, and armor. With this limitation magic items could be more powerful and more interesting. They could also have multiple effects. For example, when you grasp your druidic scimitar it covers your arm with bark giving you an effective +1 natural armor. Instead of having a +1 scimitar and a +1 amulet of natural armor you have something that does the same thing but is much neater and you don't have to worry about your neat item freeing up slots so the player can load up on items. A simple way to do this is to say that a character has 11 magic item slots (normally: weapon, shield, armor, gloves, belt, feet, head, neck, 2 rings, cape) and each normal item takes 1 slot. Then you can design items that take multiple slots. Or you could link it to level with access to more items as you go up. Artificer characters could have a power that simply allows them to use more items. Need a story reason behind this? Each magic item has an aura that interferes with other items so wearing to many interfering auras disable the magic item. You could have items that spefically didn't take slots. So a character wouldn't be wasting a valuable slot with a flavor item like a magic ring that keeps bugs away.

Another idea would be items that consume each other. The basic idea is that some or all items are crafted not just to have magical powers but to absorb them. Each time you have one of your items absorb another you mark down the value of the item absorbed. When the value is enough to upgrade your item you get to upgrade it. This idea has also been mentioned inside dragon with items being able to gain experience.

In a later blog post will give more ideas for non-positional magic item slot rules.