Talk:MBSI House Rules

From Shadowfell Geographic Society

Masterwork Equipment

Proposed Ruling: As far as I can tell the "masterwork" equipment described provides a large benefit without any correspondng cost, and thus breaks any notion of balance in the item economy of the game. Masterwork equipment will thus not appear in my game, unless I decide to use it as a unique plot reward.

AE: The point of the Masterworks is to balance out that monster tohits increase by +1/level, while PC defenses don't match: that 5 points per tier for level, and 1.5 (if you are Dex/Int lucky) for ability. Even with the odd feat, you're still behind; the masterworks help maintain that balance.

AT: I've discussed that possibility with Eddy before. It doesn't really make sense to me given that there's no equivalent for the other defenses (no masterwork amulets). Why should AC scale in a way which your other defenses don't? The non-magic part of armor (or armor plus stat) is meant to be balanced by proficiency bonuses, which don't increase. As I understand it, monsters get a fixed (not scaling with level) "proficiency bonus" which manifests in the fixed average difference between their AC and non-AC attacks.

I wrote a whole bunch here about the cycle of dependency between monster AC, non-discriminating blasts, player AC, slam and touch attacks vs Fort and Ref, player to-hit... and am throwing it out. Absence of understanding should not be taken as an understanding of absence. It's a mistake to make house-rules affecting Paragon-tier equipment without first playing a Paragon-tier game. Acknowledging that AV-style supplements are often written by raccoons weary of tipping garbage cans and hired as undocumented workers by Hasbro, who themselves have no experience as GM or player and hope to parlay that no experience into a lucrative Customer Service slot, the only reasonable positions are "This content is in game until we find problems" and "This content is not in game until we reach that level, when we'll be better able to judge what's a problem." BrianSniffen

AT: If AV is in-game, then we've already reached levels where this becomes relevant, which is as soon as +2 armor enters the mix, for Medium/Heavy armor wearers, which is why I felt the need for a ruling. A ruling of "you can never find it" or "you can always find it" would be perfectly fine and consistent. What I wanted to avoid was the uncertainty which leaves the availability of a particular suit on a particular day to nothing but DM fiat.

AE: Not that I am in the designers' heads, but only 4.4% of MM monsters do not have an AC attack. 48.9% of monsters ONLY have an AC attack. AC is special. Additionaly, the monster attack for proficiency increases slightly with tier; it decreases slightly for Fort and Ref attacks, and jumps up for Will in paragon, and then drops further down for Epic. And while there are no masterwork amulets, there are other ways of boosting your non-AC defenses (+2 feat bonuses vs +1 for AC), non-neck items that boost defenses. RFW are boosted for every character with your level ability boosts (so two defenses ought to get +1.5/tier, and the third +0.5/tier), while AC is only boosted for lightly-armored Int/Dex monkeys. And, finally, since masterworks armor is in the CORE phb, as zero cost items, it argues that the core designers had some clear (to them) reason for including them, unemployed raccoons notwithstanding.

AT: Having re-read the PHB definition of masterwork, I understand the interpretation that it's simply the assumed default for high-level magic armors. I honestly didn't understand it that way before. I think it's because I'd forgotten that brief paragraph by the time my understanding was clouded by the AV description which makes a lot of vague statements about masterwork which "might" be available, and suggestions that PCs shop for masterwork "when they can".

Isn't Masterwork Armor just Paragon/Epic armor? That is, you can't get +6 Plate. You have to get +6 Godplate. Is there some other Masterwork section I'm missing? If not, there is no "balance," since you can't choose between Masterwork and normal armor. BrianSniffen 21:38, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

AT: There are lots of new masterwork armors in Adventurer's Vault. I'm pretty sure there are multiple choices (with distinct AC bonuses) for each given magic bonus level with no cost difference between them. Need to confirm when I'm at home, though.

AE:there are new armors, which often let you opt to, instead of taking an additional +1 to AC at the relevant armore level, have that +1 hit another defense instead (I think one of the plates lets you have DR). See your earlier comment about lack of availability of pluses for other defenses.

AT: I see that now - I hadn't looked carefully enough to see the trade-offs involved. And as I say above, I hadn't yet realized the "this is the default" argument. I'm still not entirely convinced AC needs a special boost which none of the other defenses get (or if it does, that it makes sense to trade it off for other defenses in the AV style), but I can see how these items are no more broken than anything else in AV, so I'm going to allow it now.