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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ifurita'sFan" data-source="post: 3924325" data-attributes="member: 57656">This is one of my beefs with 3.x and now 4.x edition. Under 1st and 2nd edition...forcing the extra special neato powers that the characters acquire into having to be from magic items serves as a pressure valve for rebalancing a campaign if it's needed. PCs getting too powerful for your world? Have those items get confiscated, stolen, outlawed, or flat out destroyed in some way that takes them from the character. Viola... character has had those powers trimmed away, taken away , or whatever without maiming the character. Case in point, I was involved in a campaign world where our characters visited a citystate we'd heard so much about. There was a posted set of laws and restrictions for arms and armor. One of those restrictions was that hand weapons would get a peace bond put on them (a ribbon with a wax seal ) If that seal was broken it was a crime (unless there was just cause shown) Magical armor was allowed up to chain, but all plate and the like were reserved to nobility or required a special permit and drew attention. But the one that pulled everyone up short was the outright banning of vorpal and sharpness weapons under penalty of death.It seemed the king of that city state had nearly met his end at the hands of an assassin who used a vorpal weapon. (This was back when it wasn't a DC resistance... you hit a number on the roll... you took a head or limb end of story) This created vast consternation for one of the fighters of the group because he was 10th level and had one.  The thing is... it made logical sense for the ban, but it stripped a power in a way that didn't violate reason or the rules. Taking someone's power attack, or whirlwind attack in the same manner isn't possible or reasonable.With feats and such WotC just introduced what's called a "layer of obfuscation" to that ability of the DM. Meaning that the powers are now a mystical magical aura of nebulous origin that once acquired cannot be removed, short of maiming the character physically so that they can no longer be performed, or taking levels... So you can't really take them away because the characters now have XYZ power... and it's in the rules, and they can always reacquire it. 1st and 2nd edition didn't have this problem. You could prune back characters as needed, now feats give so many freaking bonuses that it reduces the value of magical items to more or less unimportant trinkets in many cases. With the direction that the game is taking... that soon won't be an issue. As magic items serve to be less and less a necessity or as other new feats offer options to replace the powers of magic items,  they will likely fade away as a feature of the game</blockquote>

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