Magic items are ultimately disposable items. Even if we give them glorious histories and backstories, unless we make them uber-artifacts, the mechanics of D&D often mean that they are going to get swept to the side for the next +1 or cool ability that comes a player’s way.
When it comes to magic items, PCs are serial monogamists, leaping from weapon to weapon in short intense flings.
In my Blacktree game, I decided to change this a little bit. Many of the items are disposable, but certain items I “level up” as the game progresses.
Submitted for evidence: Cracklemaw. Our paladin got this lightning sword at about third level, and now that he’s pushing 8th, the sword has gained a +1, and now can deal radiant damage in addition to the lightning damage. The last level up occurred right after slaying a black dragon in the climactic fight of an adventure. Matt, the player, definitely is looking forward to having a holy avenger, and he’ll get it –but it will have been by his side for almost the entire campaign. Cracklemaw will grow in power and “personality” along with his deeds.
This will happen with a few other items that the characters happen upon. Judging by how pleased Matt was with Cracklemaw –which by the way, has been used more creatively than I thought was possible with the weapon — this organic handling of magic items will definitely be a staple of 4e games I run.
Have you done anything like this in your 4e campaign? What were the results?
In fact, it works like a charm. This was the core concept behind the way magic items were handled in Earthdawn – the item was part of your legend, and as your legend grew, so did it. It’s a very portable idea, and it also served me well in 3e.
Mechanically it’s trivial to implement in 4e, but weirdly it’s a bit more of a pain conceptually because of the slot system. It’s one of those ideas that’s full of poetry and power when you talk about someone’s sword but which seems outright banal when you start talking about bracers and boots.
-Rob D.
This is an interesting idea. Rather than providing new items and treasure you instead improve existing items. The idea has great potential and I’d like to hear more about how it works during the campaign and how your players respond to it. The concept reminds me of the Weapons of Legacy supplement that was released for 3.5.
Isn’t adventurer’s vault 2 was going to have something like this? Some rules on items leveling up.
I like the idea. I also like the opportunity to put a tough choice in front of my players. So, let’s say they have a sword they’ve grown fond of and it levels with them once or twice. At a certain point, I might introduce another sword at their current level with different (maybe even opposing?) enhancements/abilities. Obviously, they can take both, but they need to keep one at their side when they invariably arrive at the next encounter. Things could further be complicated by not allowing the enchantments of the two weapons to work in close proximity of each other.
It’s in the first Adventurer’s Vault, in appendix 1. I plan to use this fairly extensively, but we haven’t gotten far enough yet for it to come up.
I blogged about my own system for leveling up magic items a while back: http://rpgdump.blogspot.com/2009/01/ancestral-items.html
Morning all!
@rob that feature of Earthdawn was one of my favorite features of the system. It was definitely an influence on what I did. As regards boots/bracers, I haven’t “leveled” those up yet, but I plan to. Imagine you have boots of striding (+1 to speed), and when you use them you begin to notice that everything starts to slow down around you. This gets mentioned over the course of a few sessions. One combat, you make your move action, but the GM tells you right before the move that everything around you comes to a complete halt. Time appears to have gone home for the day, or in other words, has stopped.
Then the GM has you continue your move, and tells you that you’ve just teleported! Your boots have been increasing speed gradually until they allow you to (encounter or daily power, of course) teleport! Your boots just “leveled up”! So I think it can be done, but might require a bit more set up to leave an impression.
@Wimwick Weapons of Legacy was my other big influence. In 3e the system was bit kludgy. In 4e though, it’s so easy that I had to do it. I’ll keep you up to date with some of the stuff we try.
@Freezer welcome! I believe Lindharin is correct on this one, though I haven’t used those formalized rules myself.
Character Weapons. Assign name and description to the weapon, and give it power parameters…
Example:
Mountainfall the craghammer. This hammer was used by goliaths to defend their home. It’s powers manifest as protection and thunder/lightning powers.
The +1, +2, +3, etc. Scale automatically as a PC levels. If you’re using a magic item wish list (Scales of War) make the next “level-up” for the item as part of this list. Make the item level equal to the low-ranked powered item with that plus. A +3 item would be 13th level, for example.
When the item levels, the PC picks the power. It needs to be a power that another +3 weapon (hammer in this case) has, but the power can change.
PCs don’t want to loose these items because they are relatively inexpensive, they scale well, and the PC can customize the item to suit his build. The item doesn’t loos integrity because it retains the same flavor even when the powers change.
This idea has worked great for me in the past. One of my more recent campaigns started with the group’s paladin questing for his acenstral heritage – which turned out to include a sword that leveled up as he did.
I’ve recently taken that same sword in a second campaign with a few of the same people and let them watch as it fell into the hands of one of their powerful enemies. He has since used a powerful ritual to corrupt the item.
It’s getting its own history in game!
I made an NPC dwarf enchanter who was a valuable contact because he had the ability to transfer enchantments from one weapon to another, so you could get the dragon’s bane attached to your flaming sword. I got the idea from Adventurer’s Vault too.
I’ve seen this several ways, in different campaigns over the years.
1) If you want a new power, you’ve got to earn it. Poke out the eye of a beholder with your spear, and you might get some cool new spear power. Best when high-power magic items are really scarce; or unpredictable.
2) Make it mechanically cheaper to enhance an existing magic item than create one new. Players will spot the cheaper option right away. This can be combined with a premium on initial creation; so that magic items are tough to originally make.
3) Just announce to the players that they’ve gotten a nebulous ‘item improvement’ bonus. IF they can justify the new power in character; they can keep it.
**requires DM to monitor balance, like usual**
4) Items are -NOT- permanent, as per Elric, but created by binding spirits into them. PC’s never find magic items, just piles of component parts.
This one is a lot of fun, with creative players. THe slain black dragon can be used to make a dragonstooth bow, lightning resistant armor, a necklace of blindsight, bracers that grant natural armor and claw attacks, or you can eat its heart and become a dragon disciple.
Hello again!
Some really good stuff here.
There are as many ways (as you’ve all shown) of doing this as there are DMs, but I think we all agree: it can be extremely rewarding for the story and also your players. I know the player I’ve done this with thus far digs his weapon a whole lot more.
So, I’ll ask you all: Is there anything you’d like to see on At-Will to facilitate this, or explore it more in-depth? It seems like everyone has their own methods, but I think I have a few things to add that could be of interest.
Any interest in that?