In the rules for extraordinary items, items can have their own attributes, which the player can use to perform specific actions connected to that item.
I’ve converted my players over from Fantasy Age to Open Legend, so we’re starting at level 4 at WL 4, and I told my players that they could start off with 3-4 extraordinary items of their choosing. This was an incentive for margin them convert, but in hindsight, might not have been the best idea…
I’m worried about players wanting to use extraordinary items to take the “cheap way out” of buying attributes.
For example, if you’re at WL 4 and are a squishy wizard with no points in agility, then you could buy “boots of agility” for WL 3 that would have an agility score of 5. That seems a bit insane to me. At WL 3, that’s essentially a free item that gives you something that would usually cost 15 attribute points.
Now, I’m guessing the idea here is that the boots would only give you agility for “boot-involved” things (i.e. not attacks), so it’s a bit more specific. But what about a “Ring of Persuasion” for WL3? You could have a ring that has a Persuasion 5. Not sure how you can restrict the actions of a ring on a mental attribute, so I’m a bit of a loss on how to curtail the power of some of these items.
Perhaps the answer is “GM says you can’t do that” - but I’m trying to understand also why the rules allow for such powerful items at such low wealth levels. Am I misunderstanding the rules?
I would say that since you are converting over to open legend if the players are keeping their characters from the current campaign, you need to help create the items to balance them.
If they are making new characters, the wealth level will balance the magic items that they can buy, At wealth level 4, they can only buy magic items of wealth level 3 at will, an item of wealth level 4 can be bought once every two weeks (i think that is the time frame), so your players could not unbalance the game by buying ridiculous magic items. Plus, they can only buy items you as the DM allow, so if they want something but you think it would break the game, just say that it is not available to buy.
Everything within a campaign is under the GM’s control, but Extraordinary items don’t even exist unless the GM creates them. This is exactly why there isn’t an “armory” for Extraordinary items, just a list of examples. If you don’t think your wizard should be able to buy boots of agility for WL3, don’t put them in your shops for WL3. Make them WL5, or just don’t put them in the shop at all.
I’d also avoid creating such boring items if I were you. Don’t have boots of agility that just give you Agility 5: have boots of sneaking that give you Agility 5 for stealth rolls; or boots of kicking that give you agility 5 for melee attacks with your feet.
You could also give them a curse, for example someone persuaded by the ring is only charmed for so long, and then becomes hostile to the user, similar to DnDs friend spell, or give them a level of fatigue after using the boots of agility.
My answer to this is: Because the WL of the characters is also controlled by the GM. WL for PC level is suggested in the rules, but it’s not mandatory. Also, the PCs’ items can be powerful, but so can NPCs’ items to the GM’s discretion. It may help to include the strategic value of your PCs equipment when you’re determining /calculating the NPC levels.
Thanks to everyone for all the suggestions and explanations. This was super helpful! We had our first full OL play session last night and it went amazingly! Everyone loved it and had a great time (and their items were’t OP!).