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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7189138" data-attributes="member: 4937">So, I'd like to think you could assume as a reasonable assumption that I've played 1e largely according to how it was written, and that how I play 3e is heavily informed by that.  So sure, finding items in normal D&D where you are not sure how they work is a thing, and experimenting with them to figure out how they work is a part of the game, as is burning pearls to ID items, and cursed and dangerous treasure.   Likewise, it is also a thing that in D&D, players typically have more than one magic item.  Now the problem with that is that the D&D system tends to provide for magic as a very regular, understandable, predictable technology.  But, before I get into that, consider the consequences of a player having say 5 magic items on their person that they have not identified.  They just, niavely or otherwise, put them on and hope to figure out how they work and what they do in play.  On every single die throw, the DM has remember what the 5 items that the player is wearing are, and how they might potentially effect the rolls that the player is reporting.  If the player has a sword +2, +6 versus giants, then the DM has to remember to adjust the reported attack rolls and damage mentally and remember, "Oh yes, that sword has an advantage versus giants.", or else the DM has to just reveal these features to the player so that the player can track them.   It's not so bad for one item, but when you have six players with 5 or 6 items each, it's burdensome to leave the mechanics unrevealed.  In the case of something as trivially simple as a sword +2, +6 versus giants, revealing the mechanics isn't really a problem, but it does show how even in this simple case, it's hard to make a magic item be mysterious, numinous, eclectic, quirky and downright risky.For that to happen, full understanding of the item can't be given to the player, but must inherently be the province of the DM for as long as possible.   And these items, being quirky and mysterious and perhaps downright risky are inherently mechanically complex.  As a trivial off the top of my head example, you might have a sword +2 that is a sword -5 on nights of the new moon, that does +2d6 damage versus ki-rin and causes the wielder to go berserk unless they pass a saving throw when in the presence of same, which lowers the temperature by 10 degrees in a 30' radius during the night, and which plagues the owner with strange nightmares after the first month of possession that make the DC of getting a restful nights sleep +2.   Now that's a risky numinous dangerous quirky item, but good luck keeping all that straight when you have 30 items in the party possession that are just as mysterious, quirky, and dangerous or more so.This is straight up 1e era advice.  Yes, the party does have a party treasurer.  That's completely unrelated to the problem I'm talking about with magic that isn't strictly command word activated.And yes, our parties do map the dungeons they explore, and I do try to play Gygaxian tricks of making it difficult for the party mapper to figure out what level of the dungeon they are on.</blockquote>

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