Subsystems and You 8: Automatic Bonus Progression
An unfortunate fact of life about the Pathfinder system, and 3.5 before it, is that in part the survivability of your character is in part determined by the magic items you gain, providing bonuses to saves, AC, and important stats.
That may be well and good for some, but inevitably this magic item tax prevents you from going truly crazy with your magic item choices. You’re expected to devote a certain number of body slots to improving yourself, when what you really want is a cloak of arachnida, or a ring of shooting stars. Sure, you might find space for them, but they get taken by the wayside in terms of priority (not that you shouldn’t splurge to grant a character a grand new weird item). And this is to say nothing of the kooky fun items that need not fill an item slot, but still are rarely ever deliberately chosen, such as cubes of force, or immovable rods.
Rather than try to balance getting the items you really want with those more generic buff items, some might wish to mitigate this by using today’s subject, the Automatic Bonus Progression alternate rule subsystem from Pathfinder Unchained!
In essence, this alternate system progressively grants save, AC, attack, relevant stat, and other types of bonuses as you level up according to a chart, completely replacing the bonuses granted by magic items that purely exist to grant them. Cloaks of resistance? Gone. Bracers of armor? Gone. Magic weapons? The ones that only grant numerical advantages are gone, while those with special abilities only grant those, reducing the price accordingly.
Armor and weapons are attuned rather than enchanted, allowing you to increase their bonuses based on how high level you are, and even divide the bonus between the two for those of you wielding two weapons or armor and shields, while other bonuses are applied more directly to the character.
The end result is the party picking their magic items based on gimmick rather than bonuses, which sounds like it could be a neat alternative, but also remember that this subsystem also halves the wealth by level, which may not be well-liked by characters seeking truly expensive items or crafts.
This subsystem provides a neat alternative for those who are dissatisfied with the normal way of doing things, but as an alternate rule set, one is not really stronger than the other, and you lose that feeling of more common magic armaments that are enchanted to be supernaturally accurate and deadly, or protective.
That does it for today, but I hope you enjoyed it! Tune in tomorrow for the last entry of the week!