Ok Goku, Alice is trying to avoid Super Saiyan as the baseline for normal though.
It would be easier to have this conversation if you kept to D&D terminology instead of bringing in anime stuff, because I have no idea what you're saying here.
That's fine for Andy's game but is very problematic in Alice's. An item that can take an 8 or even a 3 to 19 is indeed powerful.
Not really. You seem to be stuck in the 3e mindset, where such items give you a +2/4/6. This isn't that. This sets a stat at a specific value, much like gauntlets of ogre power/girdles of giant strength did in 1e and 2e. It was never a problem then, and it hasn't been a problem yet in my 5e games. Which, yes, have seen at least one of these items enter play.
Think about it- who is taking this item and how much are they getting from it? Almost certainly, it's not going to the front line fighter whose strength is already 20. It goes to a secondary fighter, or maybe the rogue or cleric- but almost certainly to someone who won't get a massive power boost from it. It doesn't matter if you get +12 to your strength score if you hardly ever use Str for anything that is important to your character.
The same holds true for an item that permanently grants 1d6 castings of a spell every day to a character until they find a better one. If those kinds of things were not the case, we wouldn't be here in a thread from someone asking about handling item churn in 5e.
Is that the source of the question, or are you just assuming?
Anyhow, I disagree that this is a super duper powerful item. I have pcs in my campaign with wands of fireball, and not only do I very rarely see 6 charges spent in one day- even those with many encounters- when I do, it's not a problem. Not at all. Have you actually played with these items, or are you just theory crafting? Because you really seem to be applying 3e logic to this whole discussion, and
5e simply isn't 3e.
No, 5e has Boolean values, The key difference between all of those things you note in 5e & all of those things in 3.5/4e that I mentioned is that the 5e ones are either true or false while the earlier ones had subjective numerical values that allowed difficult choices not possible with 4e's Boolean values.
You're splitting hairs here, I think- kind of yearning for the sort of complexity that, sure, you can inject into 5e if you want it, but that nobody should have forced on them as a baseline if they don't want it. Honestly, the payoff for all those "dials" you are talking about is pretty minimal, with the possible exception of critical values.
Your assertion didn't stop them from publishing half a rule in xge...
Yes, 5e has a lot of options for those who want to emulate previous editions. But magic item creation is not a central piece of the system and it's obviously intended as an add-on for those who want it. It's not exactly part of the core rules, is it?
Nor did it stop them from giving rules for players to randomly award themselves magic items that Alice needs to work with Bob on.
What? Are you talking about buying items as downtime? That's not how it works at all. Look at what XGtE says under "Example Downtime Activities"-
Xanathar's Guide to Everything said:
As DM, you have the final say on what downtime activities are available to the characters.
That's pretty far removed from "rules for players to randomly awared themselves magic items" of any kind.
The bottom line is, if you want to include those things in your game, go ahead, but you can't assume that every other game (or even any other game) is going to do the same. Hell, I treat the formula that allows you to make a magic item as equivalent to a magic item itself when handing out treasure.
But I don't expect a DM I am playing under to do the same thing.