I was reading through my PHB and DMG last night when I came to the conclusion that 4E is basically Diablo 2 in paper form. I noticed that most magic items don't grant new abilities but instead improve upon abilities that the PCs already have.
This reminded me of Diablo 2 in that the magic items all increase abilities that you already have in your skill tree.
Really? This seems only to apply to the 4 "core" slot items - weapon, implement, neck item and armor. The rest typically has very different effects.
The comparison seems closer to D&D 3E - you've got 6 items for enhancing your stats (one for each) that can improve your attacks and defenses, you've got magical weapons that improve attacks, you've got magical armor and shield, you've got items that grant deflection and natural armor to improve your defense (AC), and you've got items that improve your saves.
(Aside from the fact that there is randomly rolled treasure for items, which seems pretty like Diablo II - of course, this only applied to a monsters treasure which it might have accrued - its real equipment still makes sense, usually.)
Personally I kind of like that since I never liked that a character was more defined by their magic items than their own abilities in the earlier editions.
It's neat to have some character-defining items, like, say a Cloak of the Bat or Boots of Flying. What I like less are items that are just increasing some ability - they are pretty boring, but tend to be required to play effectively.
Of course, if magical items is the only thing that makes your character interesting, that's weak, too.
Has anybody else come to this conclusion?
Possibly, but not me.
I think the general idea of the "power tree"from Diablo II might resemble 4E powers - though in D&D 4, you don't have to improve existing powers - you just get additional/extra ones and at some point retrain weaker powers for stronger. So the similarity is still pretty slim.
