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Message: <blockquote data-quote="kigmatzomat" data-source="post: 9497771" data-attributes="member: 9254">The DM in my current campaign made a custom item I am sure he intended for my bard. Except one of the core abilities was "spend charges to add (charges)d6 bonus thunder damage on a successful attack".  Bards have zero spells with attack rolls and I have only used a weapon once over 9 levels of adventuring.  So....utterly useless to my character.I immediately handed it to the Warlock12/Bard1.  He uses it when his Eldritch Blast crits, which we call "Bardlock Smite".  It is awesome....for him.Running 3e I learned everything is vendor trash to someone.Giving players the ability to make/commison items they find useful means there isn't someone just totally outside the power curve limping along.  A shield that casts shield may seem cheesy but for someone who wants a version of the d&d cartoon's Cavalier Shield, it's fantabulous.  Yes, there's some aspect of "Oh no, my players have extra abilities!"But it also means "Heeyyyyyy....my BBEG can have those too!" Items with a few charges are almost always more useful for BBEGs than players because they have zero incentive to conserve resources.  These yabbos just cut through all the minions so now it's time to take out the trash!  And if the PCs clearly have magical items, the bbeg has even less reason to refrain from exhausting cheap items as they can loot the heroes' corpses. And if the PCs already have a shield-shield why do they want another?  It's only worth a few hundred gold so it doesn't even break the economy. Realistically, for most guards, a shield-shield is more useful than a shield+1.  They likely aren't in many fights and that +5 is so much more impactful when it happens.  That means you can have more NPCs with (relatively) inexpensive gear that actually challenges PCs.  Conversely, a PC can exhaust their shield-shield in the first fight of the day where a shield +1 shows it utility.</blockquote>

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