Loot 4 Less: Pretty, Pretty, Rings, but Not Too Pretty
Our influx of Pathfinder (and, specifically, Super Genius Games) material continues today with Billy Gibbs’ review of the second Loot 4 Less volume, Pretty, Pretty, Rings. How’s that for a perfect example of the difference between 3.5 and 4E — magic rings for 1st level characters!
Ok, those of you who DM low level games have no doubt run into the problem of loot. That is, what loot can you give low level PCs that they might actually use, but won’t force you to up the CR of the next encounter by an arbitrarily large number? I have run into this problem in my Pathfinder campaign. There are only so many masterwork items you can toss out there until the whole party has them, or they just get bored of another masterwork long sword.
If you’re like me, you probably scoured the back of the book for magic items and found a lot of things that could slaughter your party without even a creature to wield it. You may or may not want to give that million gold piece hyperdeath blade to the level one fighter, but I went with, “No,” and started looking for house rules to make cool items. Most of these ended up a bit broken, and I had to wing it for the loot that session. I want reasonably balanced low level magic!
I don’t know if any of you guys have seen these around, but the guys at Super Genius Games have a series they call Loot 4 Less – cheap, low level magical stuff to give those first level guys something other than potions to play with. It’s a great deal and something that should be covered more in the core book (I hope there’s more in the Advanced Player’s Guide).
I’d like to talk specifically about the Ring edition of Loot 4 Less, Rings and Things. This contains those most iconic of magical items, rings and little info about the lords thereof. I give these little rings my fullest approval. There’s a ring that grants one additional hitpoint per level and another that gives a bonus to DEX based skill checks, but not DEX itself. Thes are great little easy fixes for making something usable, but not too strong. +2 to acrobatics and other DEX checks is great, but it doesn’t have the AC bonuses tied to the usual Ring of Dexterity, making it a bit more reasonable for a low level player who likes to dodge and tumble.
On the less numerical side of things there’s a ring that autostablizes the wearer, and another that lets you charm dogs and doglike creatures, with the option to refluff it into any species you want [I vote sharks and shark-like creatures, Ed.]. The Ring of Dowsing would be a beautiful thing to have in Dark Sun. It finds the best source of water in 500 feet. When it points at your canteen you know things are getting bad. The Ring of Harmony is a hands free bardic instrument [So, it’s a Bluetooth lute? Ed.], and is awesome. There’s some great stuff in here that I don’t really want to ruin for those who are actually going to purchase this (hint: rings that imitate alchemical items), but I heartily endorse this line of products on the basis that even if it seems broken you can test it out against your PCs by slipping one onto the finger of a goblin.
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July 15th, 2010 1:32 PM
I can’t really speak on Pathfinder specifically, but I like the concept of creating weaker magic items for lower levels without decreasing the power of the cooler later level stuff. Give me a lightbringer staff that can shed light in a 5 square radius at level 2, but leave his big brother the Lightbringer staff that does additional positive energy damage with every attack alone!
It seems Wizards of the Coast went about creating magic items in 4e with fear about breaking the game since some item/feat/spell combos could seriously cause DMs fits in 3.5 (I’m talking to you Divine Metamagic + Persistent Spell + Nightsticks).
For example, the whole “Only one Daily magic item power per day until paragon when you can use 2 different Daily magic item powers per day” comes very close to trivializing items. So much so, that our group has pretty much taken to ignoring that rule. Therefore, if you have 3 magic items that each have a daily power, you can use each power once per day at heroic instead of just one of the 3 powers once per day. Does this make the items more powerful? Sure. Does it break the game? I don’t think so.
July 15th, 2010 7:42 PM
Umm. . . Wow, I’m not telling my DM about that rule because he still thinks it works like 3.5 in 4e. As to Pathfinder, the only ones I’m worried about being broken are the thunderstone and Tanglefoot rings simply because they don’t have a limit built into them. I feel I might need to houserule a limit on them. I’m a big fan of cheap small loot because there is nothing to give a level 1-2 pathfinder character that isn’t vendor trash or Cure Light Wounds potions.