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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JustinA" data-source="post: 3721146" data-attributes="member: 51618">I never claimed to be perfectly polite. And, frankly, I'm not the one who claimed that Nifft's players are incapable of handling wealth-balancing mechanics without having the DM babysit their division of loot. Nifft did that. I was disputing it.But this is not a productive discussion. Let's move on.Okay, I see where you're going here. You're using level-appropriate guidelines to make sure that bonuses from equipment never make up the majority of a characer's capabilities (or extend those abilities very far beyond what they would be capable of achieving without the equipment).There's a lot of mileage to be had there, I think. And I would agree, in general, that I would prefer to see more of a PCs' ability coming from their innate talents rather than their gear.This is all very effective at limiting the quality of the magic items a character can benefit from, but it doesn't do anything to limit the quantity of magic items they can benefit from.To take a simple example, consider the difference between a fighter who can afford a cloak of flying and a fighter who can't. This has a meaningful effect on the types of creatures that fighter can effectively face without having some sort of arcane assistance.Even if you get rid of slot-less items, there's still the utility of gear-swapping and whether the available slots will be full of items pushing the cusp of level appropriate abilities or empty. Even if you limit the number of slots and the number of items which can be owned or used in a 24 hour period, you'd still be looking at variable ranges of power (unless you limited the effective slots to 1 -- and, at that point, you've simply amped up the difference in item quality and availability).A final thought: I can certainly see my way clear to a design in which classes balanced without taking magic items into effect (and all classes benefit equally in terms of power balance from magic items, although the particular magic items will vary). It'll mean radically re-imagining the limits of the martial classes, but it's do-able and perhaps should be done. But even then, in order to have any kind of useful guideline produced by the CR system, the system will need to have a level-by-level expectation of wealth unless the system eliminates either:(a) utilitarian magic items as a source of power in the D&D tradition; or(b) allowing magic items to be boughtAnd evne in the case of (b) you'd simply be moving the mechanic from wealth guidelines to some other mechanic for controlling/expecting what the PCs will have in terms of magical equipment.Interesting direction. Basically a hyper-extension of wealth mechanics.I like having robust wealth mechanics in most a modern-era or post-modern era game. There's just not that much fun in running a session of Tony Stark and His Accountant every so often in order to track mortgages and investments and so forth. In D&D, on the other hand, the importance of loot has always made attempts to implement wealth mechanics fail with me and my groups.Glory might be a different matter entirely (particularly since it'll be part of a completely different game). Depends on how it's executed.For me, personally, I suspect it'll be one of those mechanics that's too metagamey for my tastes. When I'm roleplaying I dislike making decisions that have no clear analog to the decisions my character is facing -- it yanks me out of the role. For example, I don't mind mechanics like that in Robin Laws' PANTHEON, but that's because I play the game as a storyteller and not a roleplayer.But, OTOH, they've also said that they're going to eliminate the "christmas-tree adventurer" laden with magical ornaments.This is why I'm generally trying to avoid actual prognostication on what 4th Edition will be. It's a tabula rasa with many statements being made about it which are (at least seemingly) contradictory. And it's in WotC's best interests to keep it that way for as long as they can (both to avoid giving firm promises about a system that hasn't been finalized and may change, and also to allow people to assume that 4th Edition will be whatever it is they want iit to be.)Justin Alexander<a href="http://www.thealexandrian.net" target="_blank">http://www.thealexandrian.net</a></blockquote>

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