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KingCrazyGenius wrote:It would be one of the most pricy items, yes, but I think its a viable option.

KingCrazyGenius wrote:Well, both a 5th level and 20th level character get the same benefit from a belt of strength as well.

Sides, the way I'm thinking the price for spell resistance would be beyond the reach of a 5th level character. High level stuff, sir.

bluemage55 wrote:

KingCrazyGenius wrote:It would be one of the most pricy items, yes, but I think its a viable option.

I think you're missing the point. Which is that if such an item scales to a character, then a 20th-level character is paying 5% of their gold for just as useful protection as a 5th-level character paying 50% of their gold.

Kain Darkwind wrote:Not a real game issue in the slightest.

Kain Darkwind wrote:Not a real game issue in the slightest.

Kain Darkwind wrote:Your little math formulas don't equal in game inequalities. Has nothing to do with your red herring accusations of pricing not mattering. Try to stay focused here. Just because things don't work out to nice equations for you isn't a national emergency for the rest of us who play the game. It is Dungeons and Dragons, not Division and Denominators.

A flaming weapon represents the same damage increase no matter if you are small, large, 20th level, 1st level, etc. And yet it always costs the same enchantment rate of +1.

A cloak of displacement provides the same 20% miss chance to a 3rd level character that it does to a 33rd level character, yet it costs a higher percentage of the 3rd level character's wealth. A handy haversack is just as useful to a 2nd level bard as it is to a 27th level monk. Gasp! Shock! Dismay!

All of which is still more balanced than allowing someone to purchase a cloak of SR 100 for 880,000 gp. So no matter how many tears flow from your bitter accusations of allowing an item useful for 4th and 40th level characters at the same price, it still beats having 30th level characters spend a quarter of their wealth on effective magic immunity for the next 70 levels. While the 21st level characters cough up a third of their wealth to tide them over with SR 50 until they reach 30th level.

And SR 200 costs 1,880,000 gp. Hmm. That seems to be less than a seventh of a 40th level character's wealth. But no doubt my system is far more broken, because it allows a 2nd level and a 20th level character to benefit equally from something that costs one more percentage wise than the other.

Andtalath wrote:

Kain Darkwind wrote:Your little math formulas don't equal in game inequalities. Has nothing to do with your red herring accusations of pricing not mattering. Try to stay focused here. Just because things don't work out to nice equations for you isn't a national emergency for the rest of us who play the game. It is Dungeons and Dragons, not Division and Denominators.

Now, now, there are people in the thread who have actually tried to ask just when these bonuses should start to be present on every character, not much more, not much less.

A flaming weapon represents the same damage increase no matter if you are small, large, 20th level, 1st level, etc. And yet it always costs the same enchantment rate of +1.

Nope, it doesn't, iterative attacks.

Also, the +1 bonus is in itself a type of bonus which isn't a fixed cost but apart of a greater cost.

A cloak of displacement provides the same 20% miss chance to a 3rd level character that it does to a 33rd level character, yet it costs a higher percentage of the 3rd level character's wealth. A handy haversack is just as useful to a 2nd level bard as it is to a 27th level monk. Gasp! Shock! Dismay!

True, and these are items pretty much everyone always get, which is exactly what I'm talking about.

Which could well be fixed by placing an appropriate base-price to them as well as your solution as well, both work, one will make everyone have SR, one will make many shy it since it's too costly to get a useful defence.
Let's say that we place a 200k for a HD+10 SR cloak (another problem there, what happens when it's on a monster with large amounts of HD? Should it be based on CR, ECL or level, a combination of the three or what?), then pretty much no-one will buy it until epic play, but in epic play it will be peanuts for having a 50% to avoid most spells.
Therefore, your solution is making it so that all epic characters will have SR (or that no non-epic have it from magic items), that might be good, I'm not making judgements on epic, just pointing out facts.

But a formulaic approach would work better in some ways, provided the formulas work well enough in concordance with wealth-per level (which might not be possible with pre-generation).

Kain Darkwind wrote:You should know I ignore you pretty much always, Andtalath. But lest I get accused of just picking on crazies, let's look at your concerns.

That's nice. And yet those cap out, but the +1 still is a +1 price modifier. It doesn't change price for a 1st level character or a 5th level character. It doesn't change price for a 1st level fighter and a 11th level wizard.

Also, the +1 bonus is in itself a type of bonus which isn't a fixed cost but apart of a greater cost.

But always modifies that formula by +1, never anything different.

Ok. My system caps the level of SR effectiveness, similar to the cloak of displacement. Yes, 'everyone' will eventually be able to get it, but they can all get the displacement cloak, haversack, ability to fly, etc as well. If a little tighter enforcement of item slot abilities was made, and the entire concept of customizable rather than specific slottless items was done away with, the 3e magic system wouldn't be quite so out of control. Because you can combine items for a price, you will eventually see a character with enough wealth to put all of his desired special abilities on a single item. That's an in-built flaw of the system, not my SR suggestion. SR the way it stands is an 'automatic' choice that 'everybody' gets. My suggestion simply caps the amount of spell immunity one is going to gain from that choice.

Right. And those facts are a reality of pretty much the entire 3e magic item system. Pre-epic, you may have had hard choices to make with your items, post-epic you just buy everything and pack it onto an ioun stone or cockring or inject it into your bloodstream. The magic items of 3e were not designed with epic levels of wealth in mind, nor were they designed with epic benefits in the slightest. Many of them provide permanent and absolute effects. The only way to improve them in epic is to grant larger effects.

As for monsters with the item, please keep in mind that DMs determine what items a monster has. An item that quickens SLAs isn't as big a deal when given to a dryad with entangle as it is when given to a marilith with greater teleport at will. A DM that gives a marilith such a magical item is making a conscious choice to create a combat that allows a six armed creature to make a full attack against the players every round. Likewise, a DM that provides a 48HD tarrasque with a HD + 10 cloak is making a conscious choice to give the tarrasque SR 58. It isn't something that just 'happens'. I'm sure some people think that the metagaming dragons would then go around buying up all of the cloaks of SR + 10 to render themselves immune to adventurers, but I don't really care about that. Creatures don't need to understand the game rules and loopholes. The DM is in control of those facets of gameplay, and MUST be allowed to act on them as she sees fit.

Well, you could also implement a cap on the item in addition to the formula. So SR HD+10 (max 30) costs more than SR HD+10 (max 25)

So, my suggestion is probably adding a clause with "the lower of your HD/level or CR" instead of just HD.

KingCrazyGenius wrote:

So, my suggestion is probably adding a clause with "the lower of your HD/level or CR" instead of just HD.

Outside of templated creatures, there are very few creatures with a CR even equal to their HD, let alone greater.

KingCrazyGenius wrote:Assigning CR to PCs is meaningless, since they are the PCs, rather than the challenge the PCs face.

Andtalath wrote:

That's nice. And yet those cap out, but the +1 still is a +1 price modifier. It doesn't change price for a 1st level character or a 5th level character. It doesn't change price for a 1st level fighter and a 11th level wizard.

Um, yeah it does, since they have to pay for the surrounding benefits as well.

True, and if you where proposing this to be tied to armor as +1 to +5 enhancements, you wouldn't hear this complaint.

Oh, you actually meant displacement, as a side-point, those have been gimped in 3.5, by quite a huge margin (10 rounds/day I believe).

Also, yes, this is a problem with 3e, but you have to account for this problem when designing new rules if they are to remain balanced.

True, I see no reason not to try and balance it when you introduce stuff though.

Actually, my problem is that a giant suddenly can't be equipped with the item without ad-hoc enhancements or by turning pretty much immune to magic.
So, my suggestion is probably adding a clause with "the lower of your HD/level or CR" instead of just HD.

Well, you could also implement a cap on the item in addition to the formula. So SR HD+10 (max 30) costs more than SR HD+10 (max 25)

True, but that's pretty much the ugly third cousin to the other two options if you ask me.

Kain Darkwind wrote:No, you're just wrong here. I realize you are imagining that because the gp value of the enhancement fluctuates depending on whether you are making a +1 flaming longsword or a +13 flaming keen vorpal longsword of holy power and speed, that it changes the value of the flaming. You would be wrong and you'll just have to accept that if you want to move on with life. Flaming is a +1 value, and that doesn't matter if +1 costs 6,000 gp or 1.22 M gp. Flaming only contributes +1 to the value of the weapon.

Last I checked, armor was one of the basic ways to achieve SR, wondrous items being the other one. What possibly makes you think that I'm not talking about tying it to armor?

You believe wrongly again. Not only is it 15 rounds a day, that is for a major cloak. I said 20%, quite clearly, which means I'm speaking of a minor cloak, which provides permanent benefits. Is it really too much to ask that you give the SRD a glance through when citing things? Imagine how much further we could have advanced this discussion if I didn't have to keep correcting factual errors and we could just spit on each others' opinions.

I did. I accounted for the fact that the current flat rate system allows SR far in excess of the caster levels one can expect to face at a given level. I eliminated that fact. Given that you are attacking the very concept of my idea without even seeing any price for it suggests that you have beef with the concept itself, not how it might be applied. That the idea has no merit whatsoever.

And what am I balancing it against? There was a dream that was 'Balance'. You could only whisper it. Anything more than a whisper and it would vanish, it was so fragile.

Am I to balance against this dream, Andaltath? Or am I to balance it against the hordes of printed material that is reality? Where lies the imbalance in capping one's SR at +14 rather than +150?

Looking at the SRD (you remember that, right? Looking up things to make sure what we are talking about is accurate, based in reality?) I see a hill giant at CR 7 and 12 HD.

Assuming I give it a +10 SR item, that is SR 22. A 7th level caster would have to roll a 15 or better to defeat the SR. A little steep, I agree. So I give it a +8. Now we have SR 20. Now the caster needs a 13. Roughly the same as attacking a devil's SR, less hard than defeating an angel's.

Most giants have HD and CR within 5-6 of each other. Give them +8 or hell, +6 SR. If you don't want them to have SR so high, give them a weaker item. It is really that simple.

No, that actually preserves the common sense of my method with the pricing game of the standard method, where you continually have to upgrade your items as you progress through the game. It prevents you from simply buying a SR +14 as soon as you can affording it and having it be useful everafter, but it also prevents you from spending peanuts on SR 3000 and never even remotely approaching a being that can threaten it.

mercucio wrote:

As a side note, there are other ways to protect against spells than just straight spell resistance. PC (power-compression) Mavors can block on spell around of his choice, while PC Aluroon can absorb one spell of his choice per round. Neither has spell resistance.

mercucio wrote:

The same thing a shield of great reflection does. Last I checked the title of this thread was "Can Spell Resistance be Removed" not "How to Determine a Balanced Method of Obtaining SR". As such the previous two examples I provided, as well the one provided in this post, are perfectly relevant to the question at hand, since all three methods can replace/act as viable alternatives to SR.

Kain Darkwind wrote:So if you were responding to the OP rather than commenting on the current conversation, your mention still doesn't address the issue. Unless all epic creatures without SR are going to be given Shields of Deflection, which I doubt you are suggesting.