Why only one materia slot for weapon, armor, and shield? Possible Alternative.

[MeecesPieces]

Hello, I was wondering what the design logic was behind this. I understand limiting materia to those specific types of items for easier management, but why can we only equip up to a total of specifically 3 materia? Why can weapons, armor and shields not have additional materia slots?

Perhaps, as a possible alternative, materia could be made use of through Special Materials. There could be one special material that's designed specifically for materia, lets just call it "Materia prepared metal" for now to keep things basic. And that could have an increasing cost to allow 1, 2, or 3 materia slots to the weapon, armor or shield. This way, if players wanted to focus more on materia and less on static, unchanging items for their final fantasy game, they could do so with reasonable balance because they'd be investing a lot of there gil in the special materials needed for materia slots.

And even further, unique special materials (Such as say Crystal or Mythral or Adamantite) could have their own inherent number of materia slots.

Thoughts and Feedback?

[Viladin]

Hello, I was wondering what the design logic was behind this. I understand limiting materia to those specific types of items for easier management, but why can we only equip up to a total of specifically 3 materia? Why can weapons, armor and shields not have additional materia slots?

Perhaps, as a possible alternative, materia could be made use of through Special Materials. There could be one special material that's designed specifically for materia, lets just call it "Materia prepared metal" for now to keep things basic. And that could have an increasing cost to allow 1, 2, or 3 materia slots to the weapon, armor or shield. This way, if players wanted to focus more on materia and less on static, unchanging items for their final fantasy game, they could do so with reasonable balance because they'd be investing a lot of there gil in the special materials needed for materia slots.

And even further, unique special materials (Such as say Crystal or Mythral or Adamantite) could have their own inherent number of materia slots.

Thoughts and Feedback?

Reason being because of the abuse of enchanting weapons/armor THEN applying materia (which also acts as enchantments). At the beginning, there was a time where you can slot multiple materia to weapons and armor, and that got extremely overpowered.

[AbruptDemise]

If stacking enchantments with materia got overpowered, why not have make them exclusive? "Extra materia slot" could be applied to an item as an enchancement bonus, maybe at a cost of +2 or +3, so you can't fit on as many enchantments.

[MeecesPieces]

Either that, or remove enchantments all together?

I've always found the +1, +2, +3, +4 or +5 weapon/armor to be an archaic motif of 3rd edition that didn't really work very well, especially because of things like DR 5/+2, meaning you had to have a +2 to weapon just to bypass that DR.

Then replace the weapon enchantment scheme of +1 with Materias that provide equal bonuses.

Imagine a materia that turns your weapon into a flametongue, instead of you just having to buy specifically the flametongue that's always specifically a longsword. Now, you can have a legendary materia that levels, provides enhancement bonuses, and cool, scaling effect of flametongue instead of just a static flametongue.

What if all of the basic spell materia that are affixed to weapons and provide elemental damage just inherently provide a +1 enchantment bonus? Or perhaps a +1/+2/+3 upon leveling.

No more enchanting swords, no more masterwork, no more arbitrary rules about how it somehow needs the +1 before you can apply the flaming quality. Most of the magic item creation rules in D&D 3.5/pathfinder are broken and not very great. I honestly feel like trying to blend both of them together is asking for an unbalanced/broken character or weapon or mechanic. Though, for me, there's never really been such a thing as balance in a game this complex. It's not something that I feel needs to be worried about too much.

[MeecesPieces]

In pathfinder/3.5, there are two primary methods by which you can enchant your weapon.

The first, the bread and butter way, is permanent enhancement via magic item enhancement rules. These are your +1 flaming sword and your +2 deflecting breastplates and whatnots.

The second, consumable items. These are weapon capsules from complete adventurer, silversheen from the core books, oils that you apply to weapons for temporary enhancements.

But now FFD20 has introduced a third element, something that DOES stack. Materia. And it does so without changing something that was already inherently broken.

In 3.5 and pathfinder both, it costs 16,350 gold pieces to get a +4 breastplate that provides a total of +9 to AC. But, according to those exact same rules, under spell effect, I can simply enchant a ring that grants a +4 to armor from Mage Armor, continuously, for 2000GP, and a second ring that grants a +4 to shield from the spell Shield, again, for 2000GP. 4000GP to gain a +8 to my AC. Oh, and since it is a continuous effect of shield, I would technically forever be immune to magic missiles as well.

Now, take it a step further. Those specific bonuses are to shield and armor. Not enhancement, not circumstance, not luck.

So what if I take a Masterwork padded armor, and a masterwork mithral buckler for basically the lowest armor and shield bonus. Because I am wearing the ring of mage armor, and the ring of shield, I do not receive the armor or shield bonus from either of these.

However, if I enchant them, as per the normal bread and butter rules, bumping them both up to +5. I DO gain that, because that is an enhancement bonus to my shield armor rating, not a shield bonus. 25K and 26K (for the mithral), for a total of 51K, + the cost of the rings, that's a total of 55,000GP to circumvent the rules and gain basically double an armor and shield bonus with zero cost to my mobility, zero cost to my dex cap, zero cost for basically anything. Heck, if I'm a wizard or sorcerer, the only downside to this, which I don't even have to be proficient in wearing either at this point because of how THAT works, is the 5% arcane spell failure chance each time. That's it. When I cast a spell, if I roll a 1, it fizzles, and I receive all of this.


That, in and of itself is inherently exploitable and broken. But now let's add in the current Materia rules.

Imagine a +2 Vorpal longsword of Speed. Speed specifically mentions that it is not cumulative with similar, 'magical' effects, such as haste.

In the hands of a 20th level fighter, who has 5 attacks, that is 1 extra attack at his full base attack bonus for a total of 6.

But make it a +5 vorpal longsword, instead of having speed, putting doublecut in it at level 3? Now all of the sudden, he has 8 attacks. And yes, I know that they are at a -6, but remember how vorpal works. It isn't dependent on the result of the die roll, but the die roll itself. Hitting or missing becomes irellevant with this weapon, with this build. Now, every round, he could possibly have 8 chances to roll a 20, 5% chance each time, to sever the head of nearly any enemy in the game. There's no saving throw.

This is why I believe the weapon/armor enhancement system, the +1 flaming longswords/+2 deflecting breastplates, need to be redesigned entirely for this, specific, final fantasy system.

[MeecesPieces]

A part of me wonders if having 15-20 different magic item slots is a relic of the past that needs to be simplified downward to accomodate for a more class/item build centric style game which is what this system seems to be going for. I.e. less number of item slots for singular bonuses of +2 here or +4 there, and fewer, more encompassing item slots for more interesting gear. This could even pave the way for set gear like Genji.