Balancing Custom Items

[Saagael]

If any of my players frequent these forums (At World's End campaign), please turn back now or ruin the fun. ;-)

I'm working on creating some pseudo-artifacts for my group and would like a little criticism on how the items look so far. These are meant to be rewards for the players having reached paragon tier and are meant to stay with them the entire campaign. As such, the items' level scales with the player.

I would like to receive feedback in 3 primary areas:

Overall balance - are any of the items exploitable or game-breaking? They're meant to be powerful, and will become less so in upper paragon and epic tier.

Item Balance - does each item seem balanced with the other items? Does one stand out as "uber" while some others seem lackluster?

Uniqueness - if you were a player, would you find these items interesting and dynamic to use. The items should help define the character and their goals/beliefs and I want them to be distinct.

You can see stat blocks for all the items here (it's a big picture, so please be patient if it has to load). Thank you.

 

[Paul Strack]

They all seem pretty good to me. They are definitely better than most magic items, but not in a game-breaking way.

It's difficult to judge how well they balance against each other and whether they will pique player interest without knowing more about your players and their characters. Absent that information, though, they look good to me (interesting and reasonably well balanced against each other).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

They certainly don't seem overpowered to me. In fact less powerful than some of the most popular standard items. I agree with Paul, its pretty hard to say how balanced they are vs each other, but none stands out as being radically better than the others. I think if you gave each party member one of these none of them would be disappointed.

 

[Saagael]

Thanks for the feedback. I wanted each item to fit a theme (loosely tied to a deity) for the character and be very diverse, so I tried to give each power one ability that increased stats in combat (like a buff) or one that debuffed the enemy. Another power that was mostly a damage dealing power, and a third power that was more or less non-combat utility.

I'm also toying with the idea to add a third power (or a second property) to the items at 21st level because at that point most of the weapons in AV make a big jump to "epic" status. Haven't figured out those powers, but does that seem legit?