Balancing Forge Armor/Weapon
Posted: Mon Feb 24, 2020 12:36 pm
Hi,
I am coming back to GMing years and years after I have been a player, and starting a new group. One point I have questions/concerns about is regarding the balancing the game with magical items. One "argument" I used to sell the game to my players is the rich universe and how compared to a basic D&D there is so much backstory behind each of the heroic fantasy tropes. I described the thread items system and how it creates a real relationship between character and magic items, by having them research to untap the potential instead of just "consuming" items with ever increasing bonuses like in D&D... And then I realized : how does the weaponsmith with its forge weapon/armor fit into this without breaking the game balance ?
Simple example : I take the first "Warden" thread item in the companion : the blade of Almemvor. The thread of rank 8 will increase its damage to Rank 9, i.e +4 compared to the base value of the weapon. To do so a character will have to ahieve circle 8, invest significant time, money and legend point to research key knowledges and weave threads... exactly hat I described to my characters...
But in the meantime, a circle 4 weaponsmith could with forge weapon achieve a very similar result on a off-the-shelf broadsword (of course there would be a cost involved, and you could actually also forge he thread sword, but still most of its bonus would come from a simple talent, instead of being by its legendary status)
Any thoughts on how to balance that with deleting the weaponsmith altogether from the game ?
I am coming back to GMing years and years after I have been a player, and starting a new group. One point I have questions/concerns about is regarding the balancing the game with magical items. One "argument" I used to sell the game to my players is the rich universe and how compared to a basic D&D there is so much backstory behind each of the heroic fantasy tropes. I described the thread items system and how it creates a real relationship between character and magic items, by having them research to untap the potential instead of just "consuming" items with ever increasing bonuses like in D&D... And then I realized : how does the weaponsmith with its forge weapon/armor fit into this without breaking the game balance ?
Simple example : I take the first "Warden" thread item in the companion : the blade of Almemvor. The thread of rank 8 will increase its damage to Rank 9, i.e +4 compared to the base value of the weapon. To do so a character will have to ahieve circle 8, invest significant time, money and legend point to research key knowledges and weave threads... exactly hat I described to my characters...
But in the meantime, a circle 4 weaponsmith could with forge weapon achieve a very similar result on a off-the-shelf broadsword (of course there would be a cost involved, and you could actually also forge he thread sword, but still most of its bonus would come from a simple talent, instead of being by its legendary status)
Any thoughts on how to balance that with deleting the weaponsmith altogether from the game ?