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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Someone" data-source="post: 3923849" data-attributes="member: 5656">Maybe relevant to the discussion, maybe not, but here are some musings I had today while reading the thread. I've been a rabid Story Hour reader once. Today I sit down and tried to remember the magic items the characters in two of these stories had (Sepulchave's and Piratecat's). It's been some time since I read them, but in addition to reading them I had a look at the character sheets and read the discussion and threads about the characters' builds.It happens that I can name only a few of these magic items. Im sure they were loaded with +6 amulets and +5 cloaks and whatnot, but I just could remember that Velendo (sp? It's been a time...) had a stone shield he could lift as if it were made of balsa wood, that Mostin had his Looking Glass, Eadric had his intelligent Holy Avenger... All of those were quite potent stuff, and at least one of them (the mirror of mental prowess) shaped the way the game was played, effectively neutralizing the concept of distance. The point is, only a handful of the items the characters had in the story hours were memorable enough for the reader. I presume it's true for the player too: revising some of my old characters or PCs played in my campaings, I can only name a handful of the most significant items those PCs had.Almost always those items have several things in common; they are quite potent and they very rarely (or never) have a pure mechanical benefit (a plus or bonus): either they have a conditional benefit that activates on certain circumstances, or need to be actively invoked, or else are homebrew and stick out precisely because they are unheard of. I'll add another cathegory: those with powers that are difficult to use because they are very specific but saved the party in some ocasion, and/or those who are used in creative ways. But even those don't offer pluses, but do things on their own. So, if those special and memorable items are the ones that add to the game's wonder and magical feeling and increase the character's identity, is there a real need for the other ones? Do +1 swords or Gloves of dexterity +2 add atmosphere to the game? I don't think so. Repeating what I've already said in this thread, the game could benefit by removing them, so it could accommodate more styles of play (no magic items) without breaking the game's basic math, simplifying it (less magic items mean simpler high level play) and making room for the meaningful, cool magic items that are lost because of it's reduced efficiency compared to those that add pure mechanical benefits.</blockquote>

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