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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 4224234" data-attributes="member: 29398">Well, this is very much a good news-bad news batch of stuff to me.I like the general reduction in magic from 3e.  Remains to be seen, of course, how the specifics will play out, but the philosophy's going in the right direction.  More powers and less basic '+' items are nice to see also, along with more variety in said powers. (here's hoping the DMG has a brief guide on designing new powers not already mentioned)I'm not so keen on the buy-sell restrictions...and this is coming from someone who heartily disliked 3e's assumption that items could be bought and sold on a whim.  I suspect the pendulum might have swung a bit too far the other way, and I smell lots of houserules in the air around this one.  There's an inescapable logic around how these things would work in a world...ignore that at peril of believability.And I'm highly disappointed and annoyed as well about the auto-identify idiocy.  Field-testing magic items (sometimes with unfortunate consequences) is a time-honoured tradition that really didn't need to be messed with.  Sure it takes some time the first few times through, but once the party's got a test routine down pat it's simple enough to handwave.  But figuring specific plusses on any item should require either an Identify or a *long* period of use...at least an adventure's worth...and if a DM just tells me what it does as soon as I pick it up I feel cheated somehow.And can I also assume this means the end of cursed items where there's a specific trigger for the curse? (if you automatically know what it does, you'll know it's cursed and what the trigger is...where's the fun in that?)One of these days I really should post the article I wrote 20-odd years ago (in character as Lanefan, during a retirement) on the fine art of field-testing magic items.  I was going to send it in to Dragon, back in the day, but never did; and it's still languishing around here somewhere.Oh, and the excuse for auto-identify meaning a party doesn't need a spellcaster to do it doesn't fly with me for one very simple reason: a party made up of all tanks (or all casters, or all thieves, etc.) is obviously going to - and should - have some holes in its abilities.  This is...well, was...one.Lanefan</blockquote>

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