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<blockquote data-quote="Lizard" data-source="post: 4013540" data-attributes="member: 1054">Cauliflower ice cream has a flavor, too, it doesn't mean I like it.&quot;Flavor&quot; is fluff which has no mechanical impact. &quot;All rings are made of gold and silver and topped with rubies&quot; is flavor. &quot;This item, for no adequately explained reason, cannot be used by a lower-level character when every other item of the same level can be.&quot; is not flavor. It's an arbitrary design decision which seems to be based on a perceived need for balance, except for the part where the campaign can be just as easily unbalanced by giving a level 19 sword to a level 5 character. (Unless all magic items have level limits, which means we really enter MMORPG land as well as basically saying &quot;You are not smart enough to judge magic item placement in your campaign.&quot; to DMs. Guidelines, si, rules, no!)It doesn't even have the weight of tradition (Tradition!) behind it, since low level rings have been part of the game since Day One -- and there has never been a 'You are not uber enough to use this item' mechanic in the game before, at least not that I can recall.The folks behind 4e are competent, skilled, creative, talented, designers. Their past work proves this. So decisions like this really throw me for a loop and make me wonder what's going on &quot;behind the scenes&quot; we don't know about.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Lizard, post: 4013540, member: 1054"] Cauliflower ice cream has a flavor, too, it doesn't mean I like it. "Flavor" is fluff which has no mechanical impact. "All rings are made of gold and silver and topped with rubies" is flavor. "This item, for no adequately explained reason, cannot be used by a lower-level character [i]when every other item of the same level can be[/i]." is not flavor. It's an arbitrary design decision which seems to be based on a perceived need for balance, except for the part where the campaign can be just as easily unbalanced by giving a level 19 sword to a level 5 character. (Unless all magic items have level limits, which means we [i]really[/i] enter MMORPG land as well as basically saying "You are not smart enough to judge magic item placement in your campaign." to DMs. Guidelines, si, rules, no!) It doesn't even have the weight of tradition (Tradition!) behind it, since low level rings have been part of the game since Day One -- and there has never been a 'You are not uber enough to use this item' mechanic in the game before, at least not that I can recall. The folks behind 4e are competent, skilled, creative, talented, designers. Their past work proves this. So decisions like this really throw me for a loop and make me wonder what's going on "behind the scenes" we don't know about. [/QUOTE]

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