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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DM_Blake" data-source="post: 3922754" data-attributes="member: 57267">I agree entirely.What if magic in 4e works just like 3.5e, but prices were eliminated. Since they are giving magic items levels, they could simply say "when pregenerating a higher level character, choose 1 item appropriate to his level, and 1 item at level-2, one more at level-4, etc." This would work kind of like the Magic Item Compendium, but based on item levels and not on prices.Even more fun: insist that any player making a character at higher level than level 1 must roll for the items randomly, so there would be no picking the optimum items - they would have to make do with what they got. If this were the case, he should be allowed to reroll things not useful to his class (Boris the Fighter rolling up a magical wand he can't even use).Then we mechanically remove prices altogether, which eliminates the magic item vendors on every street corner. With no prices in the book, players (and DMs) would be more inclined to barter for items. "I will trade you my +2 flaming sword for your rope of climbing" might be the new way to acquire magic items from NPCs (and probably not a NPC vendor on a street corner hawking a cart full of magic items).Great idea.But, from a verisimilitude perspective, it seems to me that people who use magic, people who create magic items, would see a huge benefit from items like this, and would see a huge value (profit) to be gained by researching and finding ways to make these kinds of items.I find it hard to justify a "realistic" game world where a Bag of Tricks exists, but a Ring of Protection doesn't. I would have to jump through hoops to invent a concept of "well, making a bag from which various random creatures can be magically withdrawn is actually fairly easy, from a mage's point of view, but making an item that protects people from phyiscal harm is just bending he laws of the universe too far".How would you justify it?I really like the sword idea.But again, it becomes awkward to justify. Mages can make swords that are extra sharp and can burst into flame, but they can't find a way to make extra sharp swords that don't burst into flame. And what about a +1 flaming sword vs. a +5 flaming sword? Clearly one is more sharp than the other; if we include mechanical explanations for why one of those is clearly superior to the other, then those same mechanics should be applicable to swords that aren't flaming.This I totally agree with.In a "realistic" world where mages occasionally labor to make magic items, it seems totally believable that they might want a single item to do more than a single thing.Again, totally agreed. I would love nothing more than giving a new level 1 player a family heirloom and not have him replace it by 5th level for a better item.</blockquote>

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