Re: (TFT) armies and healing

[ErolB1@aol.com]

My big problem with magic items - especially self-powered ones - is the way 
they outshine wizardly spellcasting. 

As for PCs latching on to items - *of course* they will. They're 
professionals. Professionals will have professional-grade gear. And in a RPG with magic 
items, those items *are* "professional-grade gear."

Also, it's an old common Stupid GMing Trick to try to solve the problem of 
players being too obsessed with something by making that something rare & hard 
to get. That trick NEVER works - it just backfires, making the players MORE 
obsessed with whatever-it-is. 

As I'm someone who hateshateshates even the idea of "ordinary" weapons 
breaking on an 18, the house rules for magic item "breakdown" leave me deeply 
unimpressed. Now I'm not concerned about magic items making characters all glittery &
 heroic, but if I did want to run a grim&gritty game, I'd absolutely abolish 
the possibility of self-powered items - make all items cost St to use, just 
like spells.

And even leaving out the aesthetics, "works great - until it breaks" 
mechanics in general tend to be problematic in terms of balance. The result is usually 
something that's been generally described as "overbalanced" or as a "fragile" 
or "unstable" balance. 

As for by-the-book XP not taking magic items into account, that's a fair cop. 
OTOH I don't think I've ever used by-the-book XP-for-killing-things awards in 
either TFT or D&D. Instead, I've always used XP awards at the end of each 
session, HERO or GURPS style, or what the current 3.5 edition of D&D calls "free 
form" experience. 


In a message dated 9/14/2006 11:06:46 PM Central Daylight Time, pvk@oz.net 
writes:


> I think the problem is that they are so powerful that they bend the
> balance of the combat system, and can be the equivalent of a whole lot of
> warrior experience. Especially self-powered items. Iron Flesh, Reverse
> Missiles, high Weapon/Armor Enchantment are just a few basic ones that can
> make a character hugely more powerful than they otherwise would be. They
> can give characters super-hero-like powers that change the nature of play
> from gritty and dangerous and unpredictable, to "you almost can't kill me,
> and I almost always kill you in one shot". The by-the-book experience
> system doesn't take the unfairness of magic items into account, and
> players naturally want to latch onto these items, or focus on trying to
> buy or have them made for them, and then never let go of them. And they
> almost never break down or wear out.
> 
> By the sunset of our satisfaction with TFT, we came up with some house
> rules that we liked a lot to address these issues.
> 
> 1. Magic Items all had a "breakdown number" that started IIRC at about the
> IQ of the creator. Every time a magic item was activated, or every so
> often for long-term-use items, a roll was required against the breakdown
> number. If the roll was higher than the enchantment's breakdown number, or
> 18, then a second roll was made, adding the amount by which the roll was
> made. For a 0-level failure, generally the result was the item didn't
> work, but there was a chance that the breakdown number would degrade by
> one, and for a high failure (generally on an item which was getting really
> worn out), there were worse effects, the highest of which would destroy
> the item. So, if you didn't really need to use your magic items, you often
> would choose not to, since eventually they would wear out.
> 
> 2. We changed the experience system so that you only got significant
> experience from doing something at least semi-challenging for you, taking
> magic items into account. For combat, this meant everyone got a point
> value (attributes plus equipment), and the EP you could get from defeating
> someone was modified by the difference between your abilities. So using
> your Iron Flesh and Flaming Sword to kill someone would mean you would get
> less experience for the kill. Makes sense, fair, and motivates restraint
> in use of magic.
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