Minus the Plusses

I have a feeling that magic items may be more interesting sans modifier. Take away the plusses and minuses, and you get away a large part from the "magic item store" problem that many people have run into, and the stinginess inherent in the thought that multiple magic items will "ruin" campaign balance.

For example, imagine a Holy Avenger without its plusses; a sword that "merely" penetrates the defenses of magical evil creatures and is able to dispel magic. Or, one of my personal favorites, the Frost Brand. Minus its bonus to attack and damage, it would merely shine when freezing cold, possess the power to put out fires, and deal extra damage against hot creatures.

Of course, magic items are still sharper and more deadly than nonmagical ones, and they have a certain property that allows them to strike more often by virtue of being of superior balance or enchantment. It perhaps isn't too much to allow magical items to grant a blanket +1 to attack and damage, or maybe +2. Maybe even +1 to attack and +2 to damage?

The net effect should be to roughly equalize all the magical items, and to make properties more important than bonuses, such that situation and player preference is more important than superior bonus, and to make the game incapable of providing magical items that characters discard at the first opportunity upon finding a brand new magical item and the problems that brings to any sort of self-consistent gameworld.

Game-Building 1: Stats

My stat system is probably going to be simple. When it comes down to it, I'd rather have a few stats that do a lot than a lot of stats that simply don't do much. I'd also like for there to be stat bonuses based on classes. For example, a warrior type could get extra strength, whereas a wizardly type could get extra intelligence or some such. There's sort of a chicken-and-egg situation with classes, really.

Warriors are warriors because they were strong, healthy children who learned that the best way to get ahead in life was through physical means. They weren't necessarily aggressive, but they knew that if you weren't at least strong enough to put up a fight, then somebody could kill you or worse. Since they spend so much of their time fighting, training, or practicing, they've become stronger and tougher. Alternately, they could just have natural strength and practice being large and in charge the same way a moose practises having antlers.

Wizards, on the other hand, may have come from more educated families. They could have always been more intellectual, more cerebral than their more brutish counterparts. They had learned from an early age that outsmarting your foes is easier and more useful than bludgeoning them to death. Since they spend their days using, practicing and learning magic, they're a little more intelligent than their sword-swinging cohorts.

But I digress.

My ideal system would be, basically, similar to the GURPS system, in that there would be only a couple of stats and then a couple more "derived" stats related to them. For example, Strength would have Fatigue as a derived stat, and Intelligence would have mana.

And here, I would like to digress again. As much as I love Vancian magic, and as much as I enjoy the writings, settings, and ideas of the man, I dislike the way D&D has dealt with Vancian magic. The magic, as far as I recall, was basically that magic was advanced mathematics and that the spell itself was torn from your head after you cast it. You would have to sit down and re-study the magic formulae after each casting, so alien was magic.

I don't want to get into some sort of wierd debate, so I'll just let it be said that it doesn't fit the flavour of the setting I have in mind. In this world, magic isn't a bizarre mathematical formula, and it isn't available to everybody. I'm thinking more of a Moorcockian magic, where magic is bought from otherworldly beings, with pacts and bargains and bloodlines figuring in more than one's ability to wave carved sticks.

Anyways, I'm thinking maybe a couple of stats.

One for your character's toughness; this one isn't debatable. Although I like systems where your health is more or less the human average, I like the idea of there being Herculean demi-gods alongside pale, sickly, and wretched peons or what-have-you. I'm thinking of just calling it Toughness.

There should be one for your character's strength. Again, this isn't really an option. I'll probably just call it Strength, although I like the poetry of calling it Might. There's something poetic about the stat being an examplar instead of a mere description, if that makes any sense. This is obviously more useful for the brutish warriors.

For an example, Brilliance. It's not called IQ, for Pete's sake. It's not a measured calculation of whatever, exactly, IQ tests are supposed to measure. It's a measure of how Brilliant you are. How much of an incredible genius. This would be useful for wizardly types.

Not really an example, but Dexterity. You should know what this one is.

The last stat would be Cunning. It's a measure of your character's deviousness, his responsiveness, and such. It's also a measure of his perception. It's more useful for wizards than warriors, but like all stats, should have a little something for everybody.

That gives us, in all, five stats: Toughness, Might, Brilliance, Dexterity, and Cunning. One for everybody, two for warriors, and two for wizards.

Introduction

Allow me to introduce myself. My name, or alias, rather, is Nick. I am heavily into geeky things, and have been for years. I started playing D&D with my brother when we stumbled upon my dad's old AD&D guide, a blue book with a man riding a horse, slashing at a dragon on the cover.

I think it was just the right time for me to have found the book- I was bright enough to puzzle out the rules on my own, more or less, and we'd play as best we understood. We didn't have dice or character sheets or anything, but we would play diceless and, basically, rely on our understanding of both fairness and the capability of our characters. Oh, and drama. We would both work on creating the most interesting story we could.

Once bitten, I could never turn my back. I still look fondly back at AD&D, warts and all, as the foundation for my passion for gaming. These days, I play a little bit of MMOs, a little bit of regular old console gaming, some RTSes, some Warhammer Fantasy. A little bit of everything. I'm a hobby gamer by blood, and it's just who I am.