Content Creation: Items

Development of standard ALFA palettes (ABR)

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AcadiusLost
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Post by AcadiusLost »

As I posted here last night:

http://www.alandfaraway.org/phpbbforum/ ... hp?t=33556

Just finished the workable ones from Magic of Faerun. This is only Wonderous Items, of course- anyone who wants to do magic weapons, armors, rods, staves, etc- is welcome to hop to it.

Any additional recommendations for these? I checked the Players Guide to Faerun already, and it didn't really have any workable ones.

I may go back through DMG and MoF looking for things I could simulate lower-level versions of, as well. We'll see how time allows.
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Post by ballonger »

Sounds great, though why would you want lesser versions of items? That doesn't sound as great.
On the other hand you have different fingers.
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AcadiusLost
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Post by AcadiusLost »

Many of the DMG and MoF wonderous items have 100,000 gp or greater values- by our wealth guidelines we can't really expect anyone to be able to have those for almost a year of live, so they don't see terribly high-priority.

Also, many of the items have abilities that aren't easily duplicatable by the toolset- some might be possible with complex scripting, but not currently. If we toolset minor versions of them, though, with more limited powers, they might work with available Item Properties in the toolset, as well as being available to lower-level PCs.

For example, +ability items in the DMG only come in +2, +4, +6 flavors. +2 is already 4,000 gp in value. Would people like a more manageable +1 version, for ~ 1000 gp?

Another example would be Robes of the Archmagi- a bargain by canon at 75,000 gp (AC+5, SR18, +4 universal saves, bonus feat, spell penetration), but even at that low price, it nearly hits the warning cutoff for a 9th level PC, assuming they have nothing else of value.

Lesser robes, lacking the SR and with maybe AC+3, saves+2, would make a nice midlevel award.

Similarly the Elemental-summoning devices are all unlimited uses/day, rather unbalancing and valued by canon at 100,000 gp. A low-charge version might be more in line with ALFA's usual balance.

There are also many wonderous items that grant abilities we can't simulate, like Alter Self for disguise- so a "minor" version can be tooled that still allows the item in, like the Robe of Blending- I included a minor version that still gives the +hide without the unlimited Disguise Self.

Hopefully, this makes sense? I'm curious how free a hand people want me to have with deviating from canon- the NWN2 OC items are often like this already, ex: their Ring of the Ram, which gives knock 1/day and bonus feat: Knockdown, versus the canon one, which has a charged ranged attack, and a 25/27/29 STR Open Doors check. Thematically similar, but really quite different.
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Post by Audark »

My vote is for making whatever suits us, and a wide variety at that. I fully support any 'lesser' versions of items because they will give us the flavor of canon items without vastly overpowering people. I'd also hope in cases where it can be done that the true items also exist but remain the province of high level characters and plots.

So please, make what you like, especially things like +1 ability items, its good to get canon things in where we can but creating items is something that doesn't vastly alter the scheme of the realms and would be great to see. Whatever pops into that head of yours I suggest you craft up for general use mate.
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Post by ballonger »

Um, so you're saying ALFAs wealth guidelines don't follow PnP wealth standards? If that is indeed what you're saying then that is in my opinion the first wrong that needs righting.

Secondly, lower level PCs aren't supposed to have magic items, except for a few potions and scrolls. That's what the treasure tables by average party level are there for.
On the other hand you have different fingers.
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Post by ç i p h é r »

We follow 3.5 pricing as closely as possible, deviating only if/when we adjust item properties for balance purposes. Part of the problem with pricing is that NWN2 pricing != 3.5 pricing and we cannot apply negative price modifiers to get the price we want (in the toolset). So it's probably going to take more work than it ultimately should to get items priced correctly. Rusty's putting together an item price list that will help us make these adjustments.
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AcadiusLost
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Post by AcadiusLost »

I have been pricing to 3.5 canon where possible, and using our own ALFA v.9 manual pricing guidelines for cases in which we can't match the canon version of an item (say, missing ability to simulate some of the important powers). In most cases I've doumented any disagreements between the two pricing schemes in the comment fields of the items.

I've moved on to toolsetting rings now, finished one pass of the DMG3.5- many of the canon ones boost skills that we will have in ALFA, but are not available item properties for the toolset yet (+climb, +swim, cast spell: charm animal, bonus feat: evasion)- for now I've skipped over those. One thing I've run into is that many of the ring properties are constant while equipped- simulating this with a "Cast Spell, unlimited uses per day" is nonideal, and would be difficult to price. In some cases I've applied a 3/day cast spell, and priced it down to ALFA's guidelines, called it a "minor" or "lesser" version. Thoughts on this?
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Post by HEEGZ »

No problem here. Are you doing regular and greater versions as well?
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AcadiusLost
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Post by AcadiusLost »

HEEGZ wrote:No problem here. Are you doing regular and greater versions as well?
Would you consider an "unlimited used per day" item an acceptable substitute for a "constant effect" item? (keep in mind the use, pass it on exploit). If so, would you support canon pricing on such an item, even though ALFA's pricing standards would put it's value through the roof?
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Post by Rusty »

Standards will be covering pricing, in general, this and next week.

Acadius, if you could PM me the details of the problematic items, I will feed them into the discussion. Thanks.
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AcadiusLost
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Post by AcadiusLost »

Noticed that the wonderous items were uploaded to the repository recently- if they are as they were on the FTP before from me, they're woefully outdated and missing quite a few extras I made (I didn't upload my second batch of them, nor all the fixes and improvements to the first batch).

Were any changes made to them that I should account for when I get time to upload my versions, or should I just overwrite?
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Post by ç i p h é r »

I did in fact make some changes, mostly convention issues. You can identify those by seeing which filenames changed (should be fairly easy to spot). There were also a few items that used base pricing, which I adjusted. These were only in the second batch of 9 items (Q-Z?).

Let me know if you have any questions about any of that. I was in the process of compiling them for a release.
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AcadiusLost
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Post by AcadiusLost »

I'd definitely prefer to get them updated from my versions prior to any kind of release- the initial ones I uploaded included some that don't do anything (need custom scripts to work, which Ronan was going to do before they were released originally), some need item properties that require the 2das, others all use the same generic appearance/colors- I'd revamped that whole list and expanded it a fair bit since that initial erf upload to the FTP. (which is why I hadn't moved it onto the repository yet)

The spawn system and then ACR work have dominated my toolset time recently, or I'd have gotten mine up earlier. If you've got other parts of ABR Items ready to go, might make sense to release those, and come back to Wonderous Items with the first update to them.
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Post by ç i p h é r »

I got snagged on the 2DA updates myself. Notably the v1.05 changes which broke backward compatibility. Are you attempting to merge any of the 2DAs at the moment? If not, I'd like to have Darren et al take a crack at them first so as not to bog you down with the non-technical work.

I'll exclude the wondrous items unless you're almost done. I've promised Standards the opportunity to review these prior to release.

Thanks.
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Post by HEEGZ »

Are any of the items from the new Magic Item Compendium going to be used? I just downloaded the .pdf but haven't had a chance to look through it at length. It seems to have a lot of low end stuff and is pretty well organized. I may buy it tomorrow on paper if my local shop has it in stock as well. More after I've read through it a bit more.
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