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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6292348" data-attributes="member: 42582">My reading of this is that it is up to the GM.  [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] gives one answer (treating the *implement* power the same as for a PC). If a GM chose to take the view that it is an implied prerequisite of the hobgoblin's power that a staff be wielded, I think that would be fine too. The players can learn via successful knowledge checks (perhaps History or Arcana in this particular case). The general tenor of 4e is to leave this sort of stuff in the hands of the GM - who is expected to adjudicate by reference to (i) challenge, (ii) fun pacing and (iii) fairness (eg allowing knowledge checks to work).The PCs will, except in unusual circumstances, be taking a short rest (5 minutes or so). The game rules indicate that in that time it is possible to determine whether or not a given item is magical (the precise means of identification is not specified, as best I recall; in my game we assume that it is the wizard and sorcerer analysing for magical properties, and/or the power evident in the items themselves, such as was the case for the knives the hobbits took from the barrow wight).A treasure parcel doesn't look like anything in the fiction - the question is a bit like asking "what does a random dungeon stocking table look like in the fiction?" Treasure parcels are an accounting device to guide the GM in the placement of treasure: rather than random treasure generation as per D&D tradition, there is a per-level target for treasure placement, and you (as GM) inject it into the game as seems appropriate to the fiction and as is necessary to meet the guidelines.In my game, I don't use inherent bonuses (though in any future 4e games I think that I would). But nor do I place a great deal of loot. Most of the magic item awards in my game take the form of upgrades to existing items (as per the option canvassed in Adventurer's Vault), which in the fiction are characterised as divine blessings, infusions of other-planar energy, etc. Some items are rewards from NPCs. Some are looted in the classic D&D sense, either from abandoned tombs or strongholds, or from former owners.At least in my case, the fact that the treasure parcel system is about "treasure acquired per unit of character progression" rather than "treasure acquired on the basis of particular in-game interactions" means that treasure awards are often worked out on a somewhat ad hoc basis as the game progresses. Forinstance, I may have had a conception that such-and-such an item would turn up in location X, but then it ends up that the PCs are not in X but in Y at that particular level, and so the item turns up in Y instead. In Gygaxian play that would be a type of cheating by the GM - players are expected to use their cleverness and resources (eg wands of metal and mineral detection, potions of treasure finding) to locate the pre-placed loot. But 4e dispenses with that sort of exploration-oriented divination magic, and is more oriented towards improvisational GMing world-creation along those sorts of lines.I think "blindspots" are inevitable in adventure fiction where it is expected that the same character will undergo an essentially endless series of trying adventures.Gygaxian D&D, which correlates PC level to player skill, can perhaps avoid some of these genre blindspots because it is not taken for granted that any given character will undergo an essentially endless series of adventures. Starting again at 1st level is expected to be fairly common (although the DMG canvasses starting experienced players as high as 3rd level). But I think very few D&D players play in that style any more. The popularity of adventure paths is testament to that.If the alternative to genre blindspots is (near-)fatalities at something like a real-world rate, followed by magical patching of the injuries, then I am with [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION] in preferring the genre blindspots, super-hero style.(On bloodied: I don't think that's much of a blindspot. I take it for granted, and generally narrate, "bloodied" as a drawing of blood. With psychic damage that is sometimes tricky, though there is always the old "bleeding from the ears" trope.)</blockquote>

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