D&D Equipment [Rebalancing 3.5]

[RobbyPants]

A month or so back I started a thread on Rebalancing 3.5.  It's gotten huge to the point that I was asked to split it into several sub-threads in the house-rules page.

Just so we're on the same page, what I'm looking to do is help close the gap between the drastically overpowered and the underpowered.  I'm trying to remove some of the worst abuses.  If you're familiar with JaronK's Tier system, I'm aiming for roughly a tier 3 game.

I will try to update these first posts with the current versions of what we've "agreed on."  Any recent additions will be in red so they're easier to find.

That being said, we can begin the work below.


(Cross-post links:)

Rebalancing Compendium

Races 
Core Classes
Other Classes 
Skills & Feats 
Spells 
Combat & Rules 
Equipment 

[RobbyPants]

Weapons

[RobbyPants]

Armor

Several people have suggested droping specific armors and making three types (light, medium, and heavy).  How about six types?  We could have light and full versions of leather, mail, and plate.  I think this gives us a bit more to work with, but still keeps things simple.  Here's one implamentation:

Light Armors

Type               AC  Dex  ACP  ASF  Cost
_____________________________________________
Light leather      +2   +6   -0  10%  10gp
Light mail         +4   +4   -2  20%  100gp

Medium Armors*

Type            AC  Dex  ACP  ASF  Cost
_____________________________________________   
Full leather    +4   +5   -2   20%  50gp
Full mail       +5   +4   -3   25%  150gp 
Light plate     +6   +3   -4   30%  200gp

Heavy Armors**

Type            AC  Dex  ACP  ASF  Cost
_____________________________________________   
Full plate      +9   +1   -6  40%  1,500gp

*The penalty for movement in medium armor is that your run speed is x3 instead of x4
**The penalty for movement in heavy armor is both your run speed is x3 instead of x4 and your speed drops depending on your base speed (40 to 30, 30 to 20, 20 to 15).


As for special materials:

Mithril: Per the DMG.

Adamantine: Adamantine armor grants damage reduction overcome by adamantine weapons.  The amount of DR is half (the armor's AC bonus plus its enhancement bonus to AC (if any)), round down.  This bonus is further boosted by +1 for light armor, +2 for medium, and +3 for heavy.

So the numbers would look like:

Light Armors

Type                   AC    Dex  ACP  ASF  special
___________________________________________________________
Adamantine light mail  +4     +4   -2  20%  DR 3/adamantine
Mithril light mail     +4     +6   -0  10%
Mithril full mail      +5     +6   -0  15%
Mithril light plate    +6     +5   -1  20%

Medium Armors

Type                   AC   Dex  ACP  ASF  special
___________________________________________________________
Adamantine full mail   +5    +4   -3  25%  DR 4/adamantine
Adamantine light plate +6    +3   -4  30%  DR 5/adamantine
Mithril full plate     +9    +3   -3  30%

Heavy Armors

Type                   AC  Dex  ACP   ASF  special
___________________________________________________________
Adamantine full plate  +9   +1   -6   40%  DR 7/adamantine

[RobbyPants]

Magic Items




Animated Shield

- The animated shield works as listed in the DMG, except that it only provides the user a shield bonus to their AC.  It cannot be used with any shield based maneuvers, and the user cannot apply the benifits of the Shield Specialization to an animated shield while animated.


Candle of Invocation
- Instead of treating the cleric as two levels higher for purposes of spell preparation, the candle grants the cleric +1 to his caster level for the duration.
- Remove the Gate feature.
- Market price: 4,000 gp


These are the first couple I thought of.  This needs expanding!

[RobbyPants]

* Reserved Q & A *

[Risada]

As for adamantine, I'm thininking of changing the DR per category to an armor boost to AC that applies against any non-adamantine weapon.  So light gives +1, medium gives +2, and heavy gives +3. 

What giving this bonus to AC AND give DR equal to this bonus? Not too gamebreaking and it helps more...

I don't have a good answer for Mithril yet.  My first thought was to have it affect the ACP, Max Dex, and ASF% as usual, but not drop the effective category of the armor.  I would make the cost increase for mithril to be +1,000gp regardless of the armor category.  Perhaps a feat (Mithril Armor Training, or whatever) could be used to drop the category.  This seems a bit blah to me.

Well.... maybe keep the size reduction, but then reduce the armor's base AC by 1?

[Elennsar]

Or make mithral (WotC's spelling) extremely rare/expensive instead of "Sure, you can get a mithral version.".

I'd like to make that true of all "special materials". Make it so that a sword of adamantine or mithral armor are something to feel awe over, not just "variant stuff'.

[RabidPirateMan]

I'll drop by to bring up the UA rule of armor granting the wearer half its AC bonus as DR.  Originally suggested by JaronK.

[RobbyPants]

I'll drop by to bring up the UA rule of armor granting the wearer half its AC bonus as DR.  Originally suggested by JaronK.

I've always liked the idea behind that variant, but in practice, it starts to suck when you run into things that make stronger attacks.  Especially if it's one strong attack (to the DR only applies once).

I suppose we could discuss a way to add it in such a way as to make it appealing and balanced, but it's something I haven't put much thought into for a while.

[Sinfire Titan]

I'll drop by to bring up the UA rule of armor granting the wearer half its AC bonus as DR.  Originally suggested by JaronK.

I've always liked the idea behind that variant, but in practice, it starts to suck when you run into things that make stronger attacks.  Especially if it's one strong attack (to the DR only applies once).

I suppose we could discuss a way to add it in such a way as to make it appealing and balanced, but it's something I haven't put much thought into for a while.

The easiest way to fix this is to have Armor grant DR/- based on 1/2 your character level+1/2 normal armor bonus. Thus, Full Plate becomes +4 AC, DR 14/- (or better), and can be enchanted. Have enhancements apply to both sides (DR and AC bonus). Then just make it mutable DR (if you have existing DR from any source other than spells, the DR of your armor changes to match that DR's type, but the two stack. Thus a 20th character with DR 5/Cold Iron and +5 Full Plate would have DR 23/Cold Iron).

[Ubernoob]

1 AC => 1 DR means the following:
Enemy-You have one lower AC.  I'll power attack for one.
Enemy hits-Huh?  You have DR 1/- ?  Well, I hit you for a free point of damage after DR.  Lolz.  Your armor makes you squishy.
You- Awwww.  I suck...  Fucking rogues are less squishy than me...

[RobbyPants]

Yeah, Power Attack does make armor DR suck.  Still, I like Sinfire's suggestion about adding level into the mix.  It makes it more useful.

Also, I'd be fine with adding some other boost to armor based on the category (so heavy armors would get better boosts from levels or something).  I'm just brainstorming.

[Mister_Sinister]

My suggestion for armour? Honestly, why have the different divisions within the categories at all? Just have 3 kinds of armour in the game - light, medium and heavy, and let people call them elfmail, or full plate, or light plate, or whatever the hell else they wanna call it. It makes life much easier, and doesn't have the problems of the current system, where some options are just plainly worse than others.

SiFi, I REALLY like your take on armour DR. I would tie that in with adamantine allowing you to add your whole level to DR on any armour you slap it on.

@Elennsar: Making something more/less expensive does not solve the problem of it being good/bad. If mithril cost six times as much as it does now, people would still use it, just much later. You're sweeping the problems under the carpet, not solving it.

[JaronK]

There's only a few overpowered enchantments... Valorous is a big one since charging is so potent.  Aptitude needs to have an errata that says the weapon can only apply if it's possible to get a version of the feat that does so (so it's fine for Weapon Focus, but no Aptitude Kukris using Lightning Mace/Roundabout Kick to gain infinite attacks).  Lifedrinker from the DMG is also overpowered as all heck, since you can become immune to negative levels.

Other broken items:

Candle of Invocation.  Do I need to explain why?

Dust of Sneezing and Choking:  No save!

Thought Bottle... should be obvious.

And another thing... items that grant bonuses to skills are still too potent.  Why have ranks at all when you can easily pump skills to stupid levels that way?  Raise the price on these for anything but circumstance bonuses for masterwork gear. 

JaronK

[Mister_Sinister]

JaronK, you forgot the shadow-themed one from ToM, which, for +3 effective, lets you ignore all sub-epic DR.

[RobbyPants]

Candle of Invocation.  Do I need to explain why?

Actually, I alread hit that one in post 3 on this thread.  Here's my current fix:

Magic Items

...

Candle of Invocation
- Instead of treating the cleric as two levels higher for purposes of spell preparation, the candle grants the cleric +1 to his caster level for the duration.
- Remove the Gate feature.
- Market price: 4,000 gp

[Elennsar]

Sinister: I don't mind people using it as long as its costing a reasonable amount for how good it is, or maybe a bit more so than would be justified by crunching numbers.

D&D wealth is too easily obtainable, so that would need to be tweaked too as part of making that work. Part of why people wore leather is that they couldn't afford better. In D&D, that's a laugh after second level.

[Mister_Sinister]

@Elennsar: To what do you refer here? The +3 equivalent? It's not useable as such, because it defeats the entire point of variable DR, and is something literally everyone will want, despite the hefty cost.

@Ease of weath obtainance: This is true - someone needs to start an 'economy that works' thread. Let me guess, me again?

[JaronK]

JaronK, you forgot the shadow-themed one from ToM, which, for +3 effective, lets you ignore all sub-epic DR.

Actually I didn't.  Melees should have ways to get around DR, and that one is pretty expensive.  Useful, but expensive.  I think it's reasonable in utility for the price.

JaronK

[Elennsar]

Everyone will want...not everyone will be able to get. Even if you do have enough gold, there are only so many mithral-smiths around. And they don't do work for just anyone.

And probably, yes. Poor Sinister, starting all the good threads.