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Message: <blockquote data-quote="helium3" data-source="post: 3921782" data-attributes="member: 31301">Actually, there are a number of scientific disciplines that are still jokingly spoken of as being "more an art than a science." One that I'm personally familiar with is electrochemistry. It's actually more often referred to as a "black art" but that's besides the point.My point is that most of the scientific disciplines that are described in this manner have the unifying characteristic of attempting to explain incredibly complex behavior that's not easily modeled by a handful of simple governing equations. Sure there are relationships you can use to approximate behavior, but they don't work over a large range of system variables and you have to know when they can and cannot be applied.So, when a designer says that putting together the new rules for handling challenge rating, spell design, or class abilities is more of an art than a science, I believe it. D&D is an incredibly complex game and it's that complexity that makes it so nearly endlessly fun to play.Now, to get back on topic . . .After I read through the article a couple of thoughts occurred to me and I'm wondering if anyone else is interpreting it the way I am.I know the designers have said they want to get rid of the christmas tree effect, or to at least trim it down to a christmas shrub.As I understand it, the way magic items work in 3.X is that you need a number of magic items worth a total value of X gp, with the value of X being determined by the wealth per level table in the DMG. If characters have less than X, they're underpowered and if they have more than X they're overpowered.From the article, it seems like the major purpose of magic items in 4E is going to be as a way for characters to gain abilities before those same abilities would kick in from class features. After all, almost the entire text of the article appears to be about why a given magic item is going to be too good for characters far below its level and redundant for characters far above its level.If that ends up being the case, color me pleased about the revamp of magic items. Such a system would, in theory, make monty haulism less of a problem, give the DM a lot more wiggle room in placing treasure and making pricing magical items easier. Those are all good things by my estimation.</blockquote>

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