Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Crimson Binome" data-source="post: 7532813" data-attributes="member: 6775031">YMMV, but based purely on personal experience, 3E/Pathfinder/4E gives me a vastly different experience with magic items than either 2E or 5E does.In 2E or 5E, since enchanting is difficult/impossible, my first thought upon finding a magic item is to wonder what we can do with it. If we find a Circlet of Blasting, then we'll question whether the paladin or the rogue can make better use of it, or whether it will clash with the fighter's aesthetic. Even if I would have preferred to find a +2 sword, it's not like we're losing out on anything by finding a Circlet, since +2 swords and Circlets of Blasting are not comparable in any way. It's not like the sword was even necessarily an option, when that long-forgotten enchanter decided to make the Circlet. For all I know, they had some magic diamonds lying around, and decided to make the most of it.When playing 3E or Pathfinder, most of the times when I would find a magic item, I would just be disappointed. Remember that the vast majority of magic items were absolute garbage, from a value standpoint, which were designed to trick you into wasting money that would better go toward enhancement bonuses. If I found a Circlet of Blasting, my immediate reaction would not be to wonder how the party could best use it; but to wonder which gibbering moron would waste valuable resources to enchant it in the first place, before stuffing it into a Handy Haversack in order to sell to some other idiot in the next major city. Fourth edition offered a minor improvement to this process, by letting us convert the item directly to cash value.Residuum is great if you're running a game where magical item selling and creation were going to be major aspects anyway, but adding it to a game where magic items are rare would only turn it into an exercise in optimization.</blockquote>

Verification