A Land Far Away

And I know it's not canon..and doesn't represent the Forgotten Realms, but has ALFA ever considered doing away with Magic Items..save for potions etc..

It's my opinon, that when you remove the really powerful magic items from the game, that what you have left, is a reliance on Story, RP and exploration and not on the compilation of wealth and power through the acquisition of powerful items...okay, flame away.

Let's do away with ThinkTank first, and then magic items.

ALFA started as a low magic, low wealth build of Faerun and in many cases has remained that way. +3 & +4 items are very few and far between; oh, they're out there but many folks haven't seen them and have a hard enough time getting low level enchanted items over the years. *shrugs* Has someone opened up the Chest of Monty Haul while I wasn't looking?

-Bill

You do realize that at higher levels you /need/ magic weapons to beat some monsters? Any removal of magic items will simply make clerics even more powerful in comparison to other classes.

FFS, having magic items is not the issue.

The trick with doing away with magic items is the way it shifts game balance. The D&D system was assembled with the expectation that certain kinds of gear would be floating around, and tweaking the levels of it (de)values certain classes.

i.e. when there's no gear, monks and sorcerers win.
When there's only mundane gear and/or potions, clerics win.
When there's very little magical gear, clerics and wizards win
When there's a balanced quantity of gear, no class wins.
(and, coincidentally, the quantity of gear that is "balanced" is defined by the quantity of gear that makes no class win)
When there's a bit more gear than balanced, barbarians win.
When there's a lot more gear than balanced, fighters and rogues win.
When there's stupid quantities of gear, monks and paladins win.

Personally, I lurve a diveristy in character types and concepts in my roleplaying games, and the presence/absence of wealth works as a (dis)incentive toward specific character classes/concepts. Getting it as close to the "everyone does alright" amount of wealth as possible seems to encourage more variety.

I realize the bit about high acr monsters, but I think it can be worked around through the use of wizard/sorc/cleric spells and teamwork..

as to the balance of classes, not sure that i've ever seen a real balance on alfa..seem to me, it's always been combat heavy..fighters, clerics ect...I've met precious few straight up spell casters. so something must be out of whack, or players simply aren't choosing spellcaster types.

Just a thought anyway..a means to get people playing, instead of arguing, and making things a bit easier on DMs.

More restriction is just what the doctor ordered.

Part of D&D is magic items, no need to take it away, as it will simply bring us less players.

As it is, there is hardly anything to do but rp, and hardly any gold for magic items, so it doesn't really matter.

Vendrin wrote:Part of D&D is magic items, no need to take it away, as it will simply bring us less players.

As it is, there is hardly anything to do but rp, and hardly any gold for magic items, so it doesn't really matter.

hehe.... sounds familiar

Racerblue wrote:I realize the bit about high acr monsters, but I think it can be worked around through the use of wizard/sorc/cleric spells and teamwork..

as to the balance of classes, not sure that i've ever seen a real balance on alfa..seem to me, it's always been combat heavy..fighters, clerics ect...I've met precious few straight up spell casters. so something must be out of whack, or players simply aren't choosing spellcaster types.

Just a thought anyway..a means to get people playing, instead of arguing, and making things a bit easier on DMs.

I played a straight caster on DD/SD, with two straight casters on DD and three other straight casters on SD. (unless I can count bards as straight casters, then make that 3 and 4, and thus the majority of non-piddily-leveled characters I've played with.)

Of course, those are also two servers where I've heard a veritable chorus of "oh noes, I has no lewt!" for the whole time, and my own observations put DD at just barely above the "no magic" marker, and SD at just below the "very little marker."

That said, I'm sure that something is quite "out of whack" if you're not bumping into casters - by the ol' DMG/PHB's suggestions on parties and groups and whatnot, wizards/sorcerers should make up about a quarter of characters, clerics/druids at another quarter, rogues/monks/bards at another quarter, and barbs/rangers/fighters/pallies as that last chunk. This isn't to say that a perfect ALFA would conform to that of course. My point is more that people respond to incentives, and I think the "no magic gear" one would be one that I really wouldn't like.

During my first three years in ALFA I saw only a handful of mages survive the first few levels. The crowds I hung with were perenially short-handed when it came to arcane spellcasters. It's different now, but then classes come and go.

*chuckles*
You can even find elven clerics who follow the Seldarine nowadays. Those were a rare thing five years ago.

-Bill

The ultimate goal was to recreate Faerun, the Forgotten Realms. Ed Greenwood previously called this place, "A Land Far Away," thus the name of this project. That said, Faerun has a good amount of magic and magic items. Not a flood of them, but a good amount, and thus it makes little sense to remove said items if the goal is to recreate the theme of this project.

I too think the focus should be on RP but there is no reason magical items need to be eliminated to do it. I live in the Real World of mundane items. I like to play in a far away land of wonder and magic.

I honestly don't understand the obsession with balance and "winning or losing." IMO an RP server should never be a competition between players. It has always been about roleplaying the story of my character's life to me, "win or lose." Indeed, I have usually found the RP of a character dealing with loss much more intense and rewarding than pwning every monster you meet with a +4 flaming sword. That said, flaming swords and the like are really cool, and just eliminating them and all magical items would destroy the immersion of a magical setting for me.

Phineus wrote:Honk!

SUMMARY:

If you want new rules, play another setting that already has them.

ThinkTank is a magic item.