Sunday, June 26, 2011

The Magic Item Reset (XVII): Update 1.1

Edit (27/07/11): Clarified text for Winged Weapon

I have implemented a round of revisions on these items, based on reader feedback and my first play experiences with the system. Broadly speaking, the changes can be classified in:

  1. Power balance adjustments. A few items have been weakened, including the Vorpal Weapons (which was found excessive in combination with auto-crit effects) and the Belt of Regeneration (which was too good with regeneration-boosting feats, and now grants a higher regeneration value, but only while bloodied). Many items have been improved, including most options at the Hands slot.
  2. Level adjustments. The original list had a shortage of uncommon items at levels 1,6,11,16,21 and 26. Many items have been shifted in level to address this, including most rings.
  3. Skill support. Skill bonuses have been added to many items where it felt appropriate. These are all of the form “replace your ability modifier with +4/+7/+10”, in order to prevent skill bonuses stacking to ridiculous values.
  4. Ranged weapon support. Weapon enchantments were a bit skewed towards melee characters. Two new items for ranged characters have been added.

The change list is shown below. These will be incorporated to the corresponding blog entries as soon as possible. The article index is here.

The following items have been added:

Winged Weapon - Level 2+ Common Weapon
Lvl 2 (+1); Lvl 7 (+2); Lvl 12 (+3); Lvl 17 (+4); Lvl 22 (+5); Lvl 27 (+6)
Requires: Ranged or thrown weapon
Enhancement: Attack rolls and damage rolls
Critical: +1d6 damage per plus, and the target is knocked prone if it is flying
Property: When you make a ranged or area weapon attack with this weapon, if the target is flying you gain a power bonus to the damage roll equal to the weapon’s enhancement bonus.

Snap Shot Weapon - Level 3+ Uncommon Weapon
Lvl 3 (+1); Lvl 8 (+2); Lvl 13 (+3); Lvl 18 (+4); Lvl 23 (+5); Lvl 28 (+6)
Requires: Ranged weapon
Enhancement: Attack rolls and damage rolls
Critical: +1d6 damage per plus.
Power (Encounter). Opportunity Action. Trigger: An adjacent enemy provokes an opportunity attack from you. Effect: Make a ranged basic attack with this weapon against the triggering enemy.

 

The following items have been modified:

Extending Weapon (Level 3+ Uncommon Weapon)

  • Power changed to “Until the end of your next turn [was “this turn”], the reach of this weapon increases by 1, and the normal range and long range of this weapon increase by 5.”

Vorpal Weapon (Level 5 Rare Weapon).

  • Critical  changed to “+1d12 damage per plus. If you rolled a natural 18, 19 or 20 on the attack roll, you deal +2d12 damage per plus instead, and roll a d20. On a roll of 18-20, the enemy takes double damage from the attack.”
  • Property changed to –7 penalty at level 15 [was –8] and –10 penalty at level 25 [was –12].

Nimble Armor

  • Added Property: “You can use this armor’s enhancement bonus instead of your Strength, Constitution or Dexterity modifier when making Acrobatics, Athletics, Endurance, Stealth, or Thievery checks.”
  • Removed Requirement (Hide or higher armor).

Juggernaut Armor

  • Reduced level to 4+ [was 5+]

Bramble Armor

  • Daily power changed to “…enemies that hit you take damage equal to 2+ the enhancement bonus of this armor” [was damage equal to the enhancement bonus]

Dwarven Armor

  • Added bonus to Endurance skill.

Invulnerable Armor

  • Daily power changed to add “Until the start of your next turn, you take half damage from attacks”.

Amulet of Shared Suffering

  • Encounter power changed to “… and has a –5 penalty to saves made against the ongoing damage this turn”. [was –4 penalty]

Trekking Boots

  • Level 2 Encounter power changed to add “You gain a +1 power bonus to speed”.

Acrobat Boots

  • Level changed to 6/16/26 [was 8/18/28].
  • Added bonus to Acrobatics skill.

Belt of Regeneration

  • Property changed to “You gain regeneration 3/5/7 while bloodied” [was regeneration 1/2/3 at all times]

Crown of Victory

  • Added bonus to Diplomacy skill

Glasses of True Sight

  • Added bonus to Perception skill

Mask of Terror

  • Added bonus to Intimidate skill

Covering Shield

  • Redesigned item. It is now as follows:

Covering Shield – Level 2+ Common Arms
Lvl 2 (Heroic); Lvl 12 (Paragon); Lvl 22 (Epic)
Requires: Shield.
Power(At-Will) Opportunity Action. Trigger: You are targeted by an area or close attack. Effect: One ally targeted by the attack gains partial cover against the attack.
    Level 12: One or two allies targeted by the attack.
    Level 22: All allies targeted by the attack. You can use this power as a free action.

Gloves of Sleight of Hand

  • Added bonus to Thievery skill

Gauntlets of Glancing Blows

  • Changed At-Will power to “and deals 3/6/9 damage on a miss” [was 2/4/6 damage]

Gloves of Piercing

  • Changed property to add “When you hit an enemy, if the enemy has resistance against any damage types of your attack, you reduce its resistance against those damage types by 5/10/15 until the end of your next turn.”

Gloves of Mercy

  • Added bonus to Heal skill
  • Change At-Will power to “…the ally regains 1d6/2d6/3d6 additional hit points” [was 3/6/9 hit points]

Gloves of the Wind

  • Change At-Will power to add “At the end of this movement, the target grants combat advantage to all adjacent characters until the end of your next turn.”

Gloves of Fearsome Abandon

  • Changed At-Will power to “…takes a –3/6/9 penalty to damage rolls until the end of your next turn…” [was –2/4/6 penalty]

Bloodclaws

  • Changed level to 6/16/26 [was 9/19/29]
  • Changed Encounter power to “deals an extra d10/2d10/3d10 damage on a hit” [was an extra 1d12/2d12/3d12]

Ring of Terror

  • Changed level to 11/21 [was 12/22]

Ring of the Sentinel

  • Changed level to 11/21 [was 13/23]

Ring of the Frenzied Berserker

  • Changed level to 11/21 [was 14/24]

Ring of Shared Hope

  • Changed level to 16/26 [was 17/27]

Ring of Covetousness

  • Changed level to 16/26 [was 18/28]

Ring of Death

  • Changed level to 11/21 [was 15/25]

Ring of Life

  • Changed level to 16/26 [was 20/30]

7 comments:

  1. Vorpal Weapon typo? "Property changed to –7 penalty at level 15 [was –8] and –10 penalty at level 25 [was –10]." -10 changed to -10?

    Too bad about Bloodclaws changing level--I was about to give one of those out, but now it doesn't fit my parcels. I guess I could uplevel some other stuff and go ahead with it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks, the Vorpal was previously -12, it's fixed now.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Rings only exist at levels 11, 16, 21, 26 now? That feels really strange.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I may have gone a bit overboard, there, but this was made to answer two genuine concerns. The first one was the huge shortage of uncommon items for level 16/26 and, particularly, for levels 11/21. The 16 could have been addressed through other means, but the level 11 slot pretty much HAD to be filled with rings - with every other item scaling at all tiers, a hypothetical level 1/11/21 item for other slot would be impossible to acquire for heroic PCs because you never get to take level 1 uncommons. This seemed so much cleaner than turning those items into 2/11/21, or something awkward like that.

    The second reason is that a late heroic / early paragon party really wants to start filling ring slots as early as possible. This doesn't mesh well with the even level distribution and the very role-specific enchantments I had designed, and resulted in some types of PCs getting rings much earlier than others. This encouraged me to have 3-4 rings of the lowest possible level, and once I was there, I decided to try out the current solution.

    ReplyDelete
  5. The playtest for the Arcanist has been out for hours. HOURS! And still no blog post on it? Slacker!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Any word on the elusive Table T5 or the compiled PDF release of the Reset? ^.^

    ReplyDelete
  7. I'm not having much time for updates lately, so these are taking much longer than I expected. There should be news about the PDF sometime this week, and I will add the table at a later point.

    ReplyDelete