mearls said:The key is that, in most cases, magic items give more options, rather than improvements to existing options.
Strictly speaking, the fighter with no items is less powerful than the fighter with a ton of items, yet if the campaign tends toward few or no items, the game still functions fine. For instance, the math behind monsters looks to magic items only for the static bonuses that they grant.
Primarily, the benefits conferred by magic items are useful in specific situations or they cater to specific tactics. Many also are limited in scope, such as providing a benefit for the length of one encounter per day.
Thanks for the reply. However... this all still sounds like a problem to me. Options are powerful. Option are often amazingly powerful, particularly tactical options. Fly, for example negates all sorts of monsters, from giant scorpions, to melee specialists and even ranged attackers with short ranged effects. Fly, used properly, means you can kill entire types of enemies without being at risk at all.
Second, the system's math needs to look at temporary bonuses as well as static bonuses, because thats where the system explodes. A giant pile of temporary bonuses allows a character to completely obliterate an encounter.
Once per day items are simply flat-out bad design, unless something prevents you from taking the item off and slipping another once per day item on in its place. Again, with this approach, the system is discounting the ability to just stockpile bonuses and go Gojira at people. It isn't safe (or good for the system) just to ignore bonuses because they aren't static.
The important thing to remember is that, in monster and math design, only the static benefits had an effect on the math. If you change how items work, everything works out fine as long as you are consistent wtih that change. We've shifted away from making some classes, like the fighter, heavily gear dependent, while others, like the wizard, don't need it as much.
Shifting away from unequal dependency is a good thing. But you do seem to be missing the explosive mathematical potential that remains in the magic item system.