Bear Market
April 19th, 2010
Hello everyone. Today’s article was seconds away from being all about my tips, tricks, and insider insights as to how you, too, can become a game designer with his own fancy internet column. Then I realized a few things. First, I was about to write my second article in as many weeks (bear in mind I write these in advance and they don’t necessarily show up in the order I write them) that started with “today’s article is going to be a little different”. Second, at the time of this writing I’m not quite sure yet that I’ve “made it” enough to be giving people that kind of advice. And finally, while I know that my particular perspective on the “make yourself a game designer” topic gives me some unique points of insight that other columnists lack, I’m not sure that I have enough yet to justify a full article. I think I need to percolate some more. So, if you really want some tips on how to be a game designer, be patient: I’ll write that article someday. For today, I can only direct you to an excellent article on the topic written by Mark Rosewater (if you’re not interested in the rest of the article, just scroll down to the part that says “if someone wants to work in R&D…” in big letters.) Since one of my biggest secrets is listening to him, it’s almost like you’re getting two articles this week.
I mean, not really. It’s a lot MORE like I just wrote my way out of my article topic for the week, and now need to scramble to come up with something before this page gets filled with “blah blah blah blah blah” or random keystrokes, like “dfkjasdf;lkjas;dkfl”. Then again, I’ve always wanted to turn in a paper that, for the second half, was nothing but “I hate Flanders” over and over again.
Sadly, I have a job to do. And one I have to kind of pretend to take seriously. Sigh. All right, what to talk about? Design stories from Into the Armory? That doesn’t seem a little…I don’t know…easy to you? I mean, that’s what they’ll be expecting, after all. I guess it’s my own fault, writing all those design stories about Liber Vampyr. Well, if you’re sure that’s what you really want, I guess I have no choice but to oblige you.
On the other hand, let’s play a game. I’ll describe an item, and you tell me how much you’d pay for it. It’ll be like The Price is Right, assuming that I actually know how that show works. I’ve never really been a big fan of game-shows. So, without further ado, Miss White, if you would bring out the item?
“This +1 wild dragonhide breastplate grants its wearer a number of additional abilities whenever she is using her wild shape ability to take the form of an animal or magical beast. First, they gain a +2 competence bonus to Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution. They also gain superior low-light vision and telepathy to a range of 60 ft. Finally, their natural attacks deal damage as though they were a size category larger, and count as both magic and the wearer’s alignment for the purposes of overcoming damage reduction.”
How much would you pay for this druid’s-best-friend? Do I hear 50,000? I hope so, because the increased damage on its own is worth that much. 100,000 gold pieces? Do I hear 100,000 gold pieces? Keep in mind that that’s a constant +2 competence bonus to Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution we’re talking about here. 500,000 gold? Do I hear 500,000 gold? No? Well, that’s a shame because it would have been a steal. This item, which is copy-pasted from an actual rough draft of Into the Armory, was calculated to be worth over a million gold pieces. No, that’s not a typo. You can tell because I spelled it out, instead of using a lot of zeros.
Obviously this was a huge problem. For one, the most expensive item currently in the game costs a (measly, by comparison) 200,000 gold. As in, less than 1/5 the cost of this armor. This meant that the armor was simply far too expensive to realistically be purchased and/or used by a player character. I’m not opposed to breaking the 200,000 gp limit, and there are items in Into the Armory which do precisely that, but this didn’t just break it, it left its bloody, mutilated co—OK, I’m being told you get the point and I don’t need to finish that sentence. The point is, it was too expensive.
The other problem is that it was, well, too expensive. That’s not just me repeating the point in an attempt to be cute while emphasizing how ridiculously expensive that armor was. Instead, it’s me repeating the phrasing in order to be cute while pointing out that it was too expensive in more ways than one. I can’t imagine that the million-gp ticket was surprising enough to make you spit out your coffee (or soda, or whatever. I certainly HOPE it wasn’t that surprising. I’m not paying to get your monitor cleaned) but no doubt you felt yourself wondering how an item like that could possibly justify such an expensive price tag. The answer is two-fold. Firstly, it probably doesn’t. If it ever saw print in anything remotely resembling its current form it would likely have its price reduced by 25-40% to account for the fact that it only works while you’re wild-shaped. This, of course, isn’t really very fair, since the only people who buy this item are, of course, going to be using their wildshape ability more-or-less all the time, but that’s not the point. 600,000 gold is closer to a reasonable mark (if still completely ridiculous), so for once I don’t mind giving unnecessary price reductions.
The fact is, pricing magic items isn’t easy. In this case, the +4 equivalent dragonhide part of the equation is a drop in the bucket (only about 17,000gp). By playing with the way in which one uses the magic item costing system, one can get the initial price dropped to about 700,000gp (I’ll admit that a certain amount of anti-druid sentiment may have caused the development guy who priced this thing—who was definitely not me, for sure, stop looking at me like that—to do so in a less-than-the-most-advantageous-for-the-armor way), which can then, after a price reduction to account for the item’s actual value, allow the final sticker to be somewhere between 420,000-520,000 gold. That’s better. We’ve cut the value in half already. Players can almost sort of maybe afford it now.
At this point, though, I’m out of tricks to drop the price. Even the most tree-hugging druid lover, for all his three-inch golden cubes, cannot, in good conscience, drop the price further as it is without simply declaring the rules meaningless. On another day, I might decide to declare the rules meaningless. But, as a third party publisher that is very concerned about maintaining game balance and minimizing power creep while still maintaining fun, I just wouldn’t feel right about it. Besides, now that I’m almost 1,200 words into this article, I’m starting to think I may have hit on some actual design lesson, or something. Weird, I know.
So, what do we get rid of? The most expensive element, at the moment, is the size increase for damage, and we’d get the most punch out of getting rid of that. On the other hand, that’s also one of the coolest things about this armor. Bypassing DR of various sorts feels kind of weird here, especially bypassing over alignment, when druids are actively encouraged to be less aligned than most characters, but it’s also cheap, and isn’t going to make that much of a difference. Superior low-light vision and telepathy are sort of weak abilities, but they also feel like the sort of abilities a beast-lord should have. And superior low-light vision is hard to come by in Pathfinder (our staff isn’t actually 100% certain it still exists…), but definitely has a predatory, hunting kind of feel to it. As for telepathy…to make a quick aside about druids, I haven’t had many in my games. And very few that were high enough level to wildshape often. But I will never forget the session where one of my players spent most of the day pantomiming his communication because he had wildshaped into a shambling mound. And while that was definitely a memorable moment I wouldn’t trade for the world, I can also see how it might be very frustrating to spend excessive amounts of time unable to properly speak. So again, for the beast lord armor, I think telepathy fits in just fine. What does that leave us with?
The ability score bonuses. These stick out like a sore thumb to me. They’re expensive, for one. For another, competence is a really weird choice of bonus to me, since it’s atypical for magic item ability score bonuses. Finally, I just don’t think that the +2 to each of these scores is worth the whopping 165,000gp they’re using up. At the end of the day, they aren’t really making the item more fun, and they’re half the reason that it’s cost is so far up into the stratosphere. So, to me, these are the obvious ones to nix.
That brings us, after adjustments, to the realm of 300,000gp. Still a little much for the item, but not entirely outside the reach of determined, high-level players. And the item still managed to retain most of its functionality and, in my opinion, all of its flavor.
Hopefully you learned something today. Or at least had fun. Until next time, may your DM never force you to pantomime.
But wait, what’s that? I’m being told that we have more for today. In what I’m choosing to consider an open letter (because that sounds so much more exciting than “forum post”), a very kind and concerned reader pointed out some issues with two of my previous articles. In order to encourage future reader commentary (we do love to hear from you, you know), I thought I’d take a moment to address the concerns he brings up. I’ll only be quoting certain parts of his letter for this, and if you want to read it in its entirety (as well as the bits of my articles which he himself quoted) they can be found in our forum.
In my first article, Designing Draculas, I implied in passing that the vampire template in the Pathfinder Bestiary was too powerful at a +2 level adjustment. The author of the letter pointed out, however, that
“The Pathfinder system doesn't have a level adjustment at all; there's certainly not one for the vampire template. You seem to be referring to the template's +2 CR adjustment, which is the same as in 3.5. As it stands now, the Pathfinder Bestiary has absolutely nothing for players who want to play a vampire PC, in accordance with Paizo's stance on monster PCs (that is, that they're ignoring the issue, and likely will for the next several years).”
Oops! How embarrassing. I was still thinking in pre-Pathfinder terms, since they’ve done away with the term level adjustment. My reasoning was that, because the Bestiary says to treat a monster-PC’s CR as his or her level, the CR adjustment is essentially the same thing as the old level adjustment, because either way you’re out that many levels. However, on closer inspection the “Monsters as PCs section doesn’t directly mention templates, so it’s possible that I was wrong on both counts. Double embarrassing.
He went on to talk about my March 22nd article, The Darker Side of Vampires, in which I attempted to minimize concern about revenants’ theoretical ability to remain effective in combat indefinitely while other party members had to stop and rest by pointing out that swordsages and fighters can also fight all day—provided they have enough healing potions. Here, again, an excellent point is made:
“Using that comparison, you can't just say that buying "enough" potions is equivalent to a vampire refreshing blood points every so often.
The reason you can't is because the costs for potions are ultimately tied into character wealth, which acts as a limiting (that is, balancing) factor. A character can buy potions, sure, but eventually he'll run out of them because he's run out of money to buy them with”
This is entirely true, and I think it’s fair to say I didn’t use the best example here. The issue of going on indefinitely, as you pointed out, is twofold: the first is combat effectiveness and the other is health. I should have addressed them separately in the first place, and I will do so now.
Characters who can remain equally effective throughout any number of fights built right into the core rules. A fighter continues to swing his sword equally well on encounter 5 as on encounter 105. If, for whatever reason, no one ever hit him (a health concern) he could tirelessly go through fight after fight after fight. The same is true for rogues. In non-Pathfinder 3.5, it’s also (for the most part) true for warlocks and anyone from the Book of Nine Swords. There are a large number of classes that are almost as tireless as these, such as the barbarian, who primarily makes melee attacks and doesn’t expend any resources to do so, but has one or two extra features (rage, in this case) which are expended as the day goes on. With rare exceptions, the only classes that really ever HAVE to stop and rest because they’ve run out of useful things to do in combat for the day are spell-casters. In this regard, the revenants may actually be weaker than most base classes, because a lot of their power is tied directly to cruomancy, and so they can only remain effective indefinitely as long as they continue to drain blood. Of course, as long as they do so, they rarely need to worry about tiring.
Health, on the other hand, is something that is almost never an infinite resource to PCs (between rests, that is). I’m sure someone will prove me wrong, but to my knowledge there is no feat or class which grants limitless healing ability. (Nevermind, I did it already myself. Dragon Shamans from pre-Pathfinder 3.5 can constantly heal the entire party up to ½ health. Not perfect, but still functionally limitless.) Revenants (with the right feat) can, in fact, theoretically heal limitlessly. Though it may be the easiest way to gain such healing powers at the moment (especially in Pathfinder) it’s still not something entirely alien to player characters. There are a handful of admittedly fairly expensive magic items which grant regeneration in small doses. More to the point, there are a number of options for players willing to play a monster PC, which would allow them to gain fast healing. In fact, for a scant two levels, a 5th level PC could be a bestiary vampire, a bargain that’s probably a lot more cost-effective than playing a revenant.
Finally, I wanted to address this:
“My point is, while I don't think it's unbalancing (since an enterprising GM could rein such a PC in without too much effort), the fact that a revenant vampire can so easily replenish their blood point pool isn't something that's comparable to living PCs who've stocked up on healing magic. A smart vampire PC could conceivably keep himself going indefinitely, with no mechanical cost holding him back.”
This is also a fair point, though I feel that there’s an aspect to it that you may have missed. If a revenant can go door-to-door killing commoners and draining their blood (and, let’s face it, by level 7 or so the average PC has nothing to fear from commoner mobs or town guards), then a fighter can go door-to-door killing commoners for their 1d4 copper. Or, he could cut out the middle-man and just extort the 3rd-level hedgewizard potion-maker to make him all the healing potions he wants. Ultimately, both cases will probably result in a mysterious rain of rocks on a clear day, but the point is that even though wealth is supposed to be strictly balanced against other things (and thus the healing potions would count against that character’s other gear)
In any event, I’d like to thank Alzrius for writing, and to encourage everyone else to write me and tell me what you think. You can reach me at ariggs@necromancers-online.com. Write and tell me what parts of the column (or other columns, or a specific book, or what have you) you like, so I know to do more of that. Or what parts you don’t like so much, so we know not to do it again.