I was a bit surprised by the requirement for a certain experience point value of monster parts. I was expecting a Hit die requirement.
Is there any insight as to why this was done this way. It’s just, if you require something like giant crab shells for your hypothetical +3 plate mail, you would need 700 of them. That just doesn’t seem like a realistic goal for a wizard to achieve - much less worth all the effort.
Even using the most powerful hell hound, you need to murder 66 7 hit die hell hounds in order to create a wand of fireball (in addition to 75000gp)
I was just wondering, why the decision was made to go with xp=gp cost. Ease of use? I’m just having trouble seeing where any wizard anywhere ever accumulates enough money or items to craft even a single crappy item.
The alternative being, you need creature type, hit dice, in order to create this item. (A skull of a 4+ HD beastman, A tooth from a 7+ HD fire creature,
Or, if you want to keep it tied into gp, require 1 HD for every 1000 gp of cost. You need 75 HD of monsters for the wand of fire. 10 maximum strength hell hounds is an achievable target.
Is the intent they keep a running tally of generic parts and just spend that accumulated xp to make items? Or do they need (as the examples indicate) to collect xp from a specific type of monster? If they just end up using ‘mercantile body parts’ should this not just be subsumed into the (already exorbitant) cost to create?
Since this is a game where people actually are getting to spend monies to do cool high level things, why is the choice between a huge ass fort and one suit of armor that makes it 15% less likely you are going to be hit.
Also: since you don’t prepare spells, having 50 free fireball spells is not worth 75000 gp in any universe.
Also: since you don’t prepare spells, having 50 free fireball spells is not worth 75000 gp in any universe.
You still prepare spells, it’s just an expensive process that takes weeks rather than something you do for free every morning.
The value of casting 50 fireballs in one day might increase when you’re dealing with mass combat.
Maybe, but ACKS is pretty explicit in that you don’t prepare spells in the morning. You may cast any spell you know, and since you (obviously) need the spell to make the fireball wand. . .
VALIS: I was just wondering, why the decision was made to go with xp=gp cost. Ease of use? I’m just having trouble seeing where any wizard anywhere ever accumulates enough money or items to craft even a single crappy item.
The reason is precisely for the reason you don’t like it! That is, because it requires a lot of monster parts that way, which makes magic items rare and hard to make.
So, in ACKS, for instance, a suit of +3 plate armor should be be rarer than a keep. Wales has something like one castle every 6-12 miles. ACKS assumes that there might be a keep every 12 miles, but it does not assume that there is one suit of +3 plate armor every 6-12 miles. The local baron has a castle, but only the scions of kings and the commanders of empires wear +3 plate armor.
Likewise, a wand of fireballs with 50 charges is 75,000gp because a wand of fireballs with 50 charges can be used by a 1st level mage to annihilate an army of 5,000 men. Equipping an army of 5,000 men with just leather armor and shields will cost (20+10 x 5,000) = 150,000gp, so the wand is a bargain.
ACKS has implicit assumptions that the game world is functionally similar to the ancient and medieval one, so it is designed to produce worlds that are relatively low on magic. It’s not as magic-light as, e.g., the worlds of Game of Thrones, Middle Earth, or Conan, but it produces far less magical worlds than contemporary 4e/Eberron style fantasy. If you want a game where magic is as prevalent as in 4e or Eberron 3.5e, it will require some house ruling to achieve.
I have to admit that the monster part requirements don’t sit quite right with me. Not because I don’t like the idea of having to go fight monsters in order to create magic items, but because I don’t like the lack of variety of said monsters. Killing 66 hell hounds or 25 ogres doesn’t strike me as particularly interesting, either from a conceptual (flavor) or a gameplay (crunch) standpoint.
“What are we doing this week, Biggus?”
“The same thing we do every week, Dickus - killing hellhounds so we can make a magic wand.”
I understand that part of the idea is to support the world backdrop of mages building dungeons to breed monsters and harvest their organs, and that’s pretty cool. But as a player (or a DM) I’d be a lot happier with a more varied ingredient list: instead of 66 hell hounds, how about the tongue of a hell hound, the wing of a cocktatrice, the pincers of a skittering maw, the bile of a carnivorous ape, and the tears of a virgin with green eyes (or what have you)?
I would also echo this sentiment. Fangs of 66 Hellhounds, skull of 25 orgres - I just don’t see us every using this. As mentioned above it is not flavorful or mechanically interesting in any way.
I would suggest listing a dozen or so ideas along the lines that blizack suggested in the book and leave the rest of the ideas to ACKS DM’s.
This is all IMHO of course. 
Yes, bit of a backhanded comment there. ;-p I run a Hackmaster game, and it’s explicitly more magic light then your standard 3e/4e game. There are no magic item slot trees, there is no magic item shop, crafting is rare and difficult etc.
That said, my complaint isn’t that it seems difficult - it’s that if the option isn’t avaialbe to players, why waste the text in the rulebook about it. Either you expect your players to be able to create scrolls and potions (as in 3e and 0D&D) or you don’t (as in 1e). And creating a situation where you have to kill 70+ monsters or more might as well be saying ‘this ain’t ever going to happen’.
Not that this is a problem - you address it in your post. They don’t ever accumulate enough to create any of the items. Which is fine - but it shouldn’t appear as if it’s a valid option.
I would point out, that some of the issues in play work out quite differently. Even if you make it reasonable to create a fireball wand, no 1st level mage is going to get his hands on it.
I see you’ve changed the treasure generation tables. It does appear to be a lower magic default setting then 1e. I should point out that I’m house ruling my game to have domain rules from ACKS, not ACKS to be high magic. So, there’s that.
My interpretation is that you’re expected to buy components until you get to the point where you can farm them in a dungeon. The idea isn’t that you would (necessarily) personally kill 25 ogres to make a +1 sword; instead, you might kill 5 and then buy 20 more ogre skulls on the monster part market.
There are some questions of supply and demand here–doesn’t everyone want the troll blood for potions of healing and the ogre skulls for magic swords, bidding those prices above their expected values? But if we assume that different wizards develop different magic item formulae, and that all of the monster parts are useful for some good items, then hand-waiving that away doesn’t damage disbelief too much.
Re fireball wands and 1st level mages: sure they will. If I can make a fireball wand cheap, then I’m going to equip an artillery company with fireball wands, because that will allow my army to crush any army that doesn’t have a similar artillery detachment. (Of course, then I’ll have to separate them and provide them with surrounding groups of defensive troops, to prevent an opposing artillery detachment from killing them all with a single fireball or a single volley of arrows, but then it becomes part of the standard model of warfare.) I have some affection for the model of warfare where wands are routinely issued to low-level casters, but it would absolutely not match the expected norms from history. That means that we can’t have (1) reasonably common characters capable of wielding wands, (2) cheap wands, and (3) warfare remotely like history. We can have any two, but not all three. ACKS seems to go with 1 and 3. I might consider 1 and 2, but there are real costs to introducing modern artillery to the medieval/classical battlefield. Figuring out what the battlefield ends up looking like might be quite challenging.
To be clear, I don’t want an ultra-high-magic world where every mage has a wand of fireballs. Far from it: I like magic items to be rare and powerful. I just want the necessary components to be more interesting than a mountain of dead monsters, all of the same species.
Yes, that was my intent too…
VALIS: Not that this is a problem - you address it in your post. They don’t ever accumulate enough to create any of the items. Which is fine - but it shouldn’t appear as if it’s a valid option.
I’m obviously failing to communicate my actual intent. It’s meant to be hard, but it’s not meant to be impossible for dedicated PCs. In our playtest experience, players can and do accumulate plenty of materials to create items. At mid-levels, the Auran Empire campaign playtesters kept three alchemists working full time on potions using components they found! At higher levels, some of the items they made included +3 plate armor, dozens of scrolls of fireball, magical horseshoes for a centaur henchman, and a flying ship permanently illusioned as a gold dragon. So I don’t think the requirements suggested are impossible at all. It does mean players need to keep an eye on what they kill and they end up carrying lots of carcasses back to town.
AHSTRONGHORSE: There are some questions of supply and demand here–doesn’t everyone want the troll blood for potions of healing and the ogre skulls for magic swords, bidding those prices above their expected values? But if we assume that different wizards develop different magic item formulae, and that all of the monster parts are useful for some good items, then hand-waiving that away doesn’t damage disbelief too much.
It is absolutely the intent that different mages have different formulas. The listed formulas are just samples. They are not meant to be exclusive or all-defining. One mage might make a wand of fireballs with hellhound fangs, another mage might use fire giant brains, a third might use fire elemental ichor, a fourth salamander scales, etc. It could also be a mix.
In my own campaign, for example, different potions of the same sort get different visual/olfactory descriptions based on the components used. A Potion of Growth made from hill giant brains has a meaty flavor with pulpy texture, while a Potion of Growth made from giant beetle resin has an oily taste with a dark color. Etc.
One of the reasons I have left the actual components undefined is to create substantial variance in what’s possible. Some GMs have a greater or lower tolerance for different magic items - i.e. if they’re doing a mystery-focused game, a Crystal Ball with ESP might be too powerful. So they can make the components required exceptionally rare and hard to find. If they want wands of fireballs to be more common, make them use common components.
AHSTRONGHORSE: we can’t have (1) reasonably common characters capable of wielding wands, (2) cheap wands, and (3) warfare remotely like history. We can have any two, but not all three. ACKS seems to go with 1 and 3. I might consider 1 and 2, but there are real costs to introducing modern artillery to the medieval/classical battlefield. Figuring out what the battlefield ends up looking like might be quite challenging
Exactly. ACKS went with #1 and #3. I have played in campaigns that went with #1 and #2, and the fantasy combat that resulted was armies of griffin riders with fireball wands clashing against golem-tanks while special forces in elven cloaks teleported behind enemy lines.
The problem from a design point of view is that the ancient and medieval worlds’ social organization was rooted in its military organization, and vice versa. Change the military needs and you change the social organization. Feudalism, for instance, assumes an agrarian economy, small “knightly” caste that is expensive to support, an inability to project power quickly across long distances, and an inability to quickly take fortresses. Change any of those assumptions and you won’t get feudalism as we know it. So in order to have a world that can be rooted in ancient and medieval history, we have to have combat that’s semi-historical.
DUSKREIGN: Fangs of 66 Hellhounds, skull of 25 orgres - I just don’t see us every using this. As mentioned above it is not flavorful or mechanically interesting in any way.
Flavor is a matter of taste, but it certainly leads to interesting elements in play IMO. For instance, when the players know that a particular rare monster is something they need components for, they sometimes choose to fight when under normal circumstances, given the risk they’d flee. To find rare monsters, they choose to go to areas they otherwise wouldn’t, sometimes even taking long trips. They explore further to seek out wilderness lairs and wander “off the grid”. They confront monsters that don’t normally have treasure because they need their hides. At higher levels, they hire legions of low level henchmen to go out and “bring me the head of 25 ogres”. All of this creates interesting gameplay dynamics. It contrasts sharply to, e.g., D&D 3.5, where making a magic item is a matter of spending some XP, and it’s created far more interesting gameplay for us.
BLIZACK: I just want the necessary components to be more interesting than a mountain of dead monsters, all of the same species.
If that’s to your taste, we’ve left the exact make-up of the components up to you to determine. I will have to re-write some rules text to make it more clear that the samples are just samples, and that formula can vary.
My personal experience with complex components was not well received. The players found it overwhelming. “Skulls of 25 ogres” is easy to grok. “Skulls of 5 ogres, hair of 2 trolls, blood of 1 dire wolf, and some pixie dust” seems cool but when you multiply it for 20 items, it gets overwhelming. It’s also a lot harder on the GM.
Someone (and I’m sorry I don’t remember who it was) wrote an awesome blog post on this about how there could be other sources to fulfill the requirements of dungeon building and magic item making. The gist was a way of explaining the ‘fun house’ dungeon concept…i.e. the old school weird ones where little seems to make sense. But in this idea, the strange geographies and odd inclusions were actually ways of focusing magical energy. The game effect being that periodically you could go to the ‘nexus of worlds’ on level seven of your dungeon and harness that power it’s accumulated over the last year for X thousand gp worth of item creation.
Also, riffing on that idea, perhaps there are places in the world (dungeons) that can also reward the explorer. A rift, nexus point, ley line, sacred grove, etc. Once you find it, you can tap it (or destroy it?) and gain X amount of GP worth of creation power. This helps keep players exploring and provides alternatives to fetch quests to provide body parts. These places might be hard to reach or guarded by local inhabitants you either have to destroy or bargain with.
All good fodder for game play!
Midnight had something similar to these, in the form of power nexuses that provided spell points for the crafting of magic items. They varied in the number of points, what types of items they could be used for, and how rapidly they refilled / recharged (for example, you might have a magma flow that was good for forging flaming weapons, or a magic pool whose waters were good for healing potions). Mid-level play in Midnight tended to turn into a nexus-hunt, which was a lot of fun (low level was avoiding capture, high-level was blowing up black mirrors, destroying orcish hordes, and otherwise causing grand mayhem). I could definitely see porting these to ACKS; points → XP / GP worth of monster bits, recharge varies easily (some recharge, some don’t), and capacity, item type, and affinity (discount for certain types of effects) convert well. May have to place a few around…