Limiting magic item use per day and "Milestones" = very bad

I think they went a bit overboard on nerfing magic items :/
I can see why, but I think it's a tad much, however, a more important pair of issues linked to that:

I don't like the mechanics for limiting daily magic item use AT ALL.
I understand there's a desire to stop "Power Gamer X" from having a golf bag of stuff, but even more importantly, it's yet MORE crap to have to worry about in game, ugh!

Linking additonal re-use it to "Milestones"...omg...no no NO!!! More stuff to track, more stuff I absolutely do not want from 4th ed, I want 4th ed for simplicity as a DM, nor should I expect PCs to have to consider it.
"Milestones"...gah! maybe it's just me but I find that concept ludicrous, very false and unceccessary complication :/

Completing a quest or goal = cool. "Milestones" = totally artificial. Two fights without rest = a "milestone", like...eh, so?
That's not good for the game, IMHO. Defeating a "leader baddie" ( a miniboss if you wish), that's somehting, or a favourite recurring villain. Two fights is just two fights!! Nothing spectacular in it.

If Joe Bob has won 10 items, you know what? Joe Bob deserves to USE 10 items in a day.
It's also less bloody stuff for a DM to keep track of, it' s bad for the game having the DM force a player to not use an item he's got, for a totally metagaming, non-immersive reason. See what I mean?

It's not that
"Hey Bob, it's only a 1/day item! you've already used it!"
Which is fine.

It's

"hey Bob! rules say you can only use a daily magic item power a total of ONCE a day at your level, so, even though you have three such items, I can't let you use the other two today!"

No way I'm telling that to my players, that will PO them off hugely. :/
Likewise saying:
"You hit a milestone, you can use one more daily power!"
is jarring and breaks the immersion cause it's so obviously dumb

Needs a major re-think, IMHO. If you've nerfed items hard AND do this to players, that's not cool for the fun and even logic of the game.
"Milestones" are yet another layer of compelxity to have to track that shouldn't be in a FRPG.

Instead, try to prevent "golf bag of items" and swapping stuff around in some other way...like: magic item daily power's won't work unless worn for more than an hour or whatever.

I preffer DM common sense to deal with limiting items:
"No, you are not pulling out your second pair of Gauntlets of Butt Scratching just so you can get Mighty Butt Stab again!"

These are the only things in 4th ed that do feel like "computer gaming" to me, BAD computer gaming. Terribly artifical things put in by bad game design to make it feel liek you've "achieved" something, when you are being given what you should have, free, anyway, and a little "ding" that's got nothing to do with anything. And the CPU can can keep track of that junk, where as it's more harrasment a real person, me, wants to avoid completely when I play D&D.

Sigh :/

Rest of 4th ed is mostly brilliant IMHO, by the way

Yeah...it seems a bit out of whack to me as well...I'm envisioning scenarios where Magic Item #4 is the perfect 'tool for the task' against Encounter #2, but in Encounter #1 the player already 'tapped' his maximum magic item cards for the day...

...so in story terms, Grondar the Great has the Wand of Burning Hot Inferno Heat Ouchouch, but because he used another item earlier, he somehow moronically 'chooses' not to pull out the WoBHIHOO in the next fight against Shinky the Supersized Snowman? Is that how it works, or is there some goofy fluff about how much magic the human body can access in a day? To me this and the 'amazing ability to use more rings by level' is just wrong.

Item usage and milestones are simple limitation mechanics that cannot be explained within the game world any better than causing damage with a missed martial attack. Welcome to gamist design theory. It your campaign, and you can always ignore it.

Re-flavour it.

You only have x-amount of personal energy to invest into powering a magic items ability, and after 2 encounters, you regain it.

Same as an Action Point.


Those items don't have their own power sources. They need PC's to powerthem.

Silverblade The Ench said:

I don't like the mechanics for limiting daily magic item use AT ALL. I understand there's a desire to stop "Power Gamer X" from having a golf bag of stuff, but even more importantly, it's yet MORE crap to have to worry about in game, ugh!

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I agree that this does seem like a needlessly complex way of preventing swapping out of items once the daily power has been used. In previous editions I prevented this by ruling that an item must be equipped for 24 hrs before it would work.

Silverblade The Ench said:

"hey Bob! rules say you can only use a daily magic item power a total of ONCE a day at your level, so, even though you have three such items, I can't let you use the other two today!"

No way I'm telling that to my players, that will PO them off hugely.

Click to expand...

Well, go ahead and let them use all their magic items every day then, if you think that makes your game better. Just don't whine when someone is carting around 20 different daily magic items.

Myself, I'm telling my players that using a magic item drains part of that person's "Ka" (it's what helps to "power" such items), and they cannot therefore use one again until they've regained "Ka" through an extended rest.

I'll have to see how it actually plays out at the table, but it seems in keeping with 4e's philosophy that your character should be more defined by their powers than their bling.

It's all very Tyler Durden.

There's nothing wrong with adopting a more narrative-oriented approach, where a milestone is exactly that: a milestone. Just make sure that, on average, there's about 2 encounters per milestone.

Contents May Vary said:

Well, go ahead and let them use all their magic items every day then, if you think that makes your game better. Just don't whine when someone is carting around 20 different daily magic items.

Myself, I'm telling my players that using a magic item drains part of that person's "Ka" (it's what helps to "power" such items), and they cannot therefore use one again until they've regained "Ka" through an extended rest.

Click to expand...

LOL!! I think my players would say that it sounds like a load of kaka. I wish you all the best and I hope your players accept it.

I agree with you that 'Milestones' seem like an unnecessary complication which rather breaks the fourth wall.

My IT developments have milestones. My fantasy novels don't!