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Message: <blockquote data-quote="KarinsDad" data-source="post: 5854802" data-attributes="member: 2011">But, so do a lot of miscellaneous magical items.I remember several times years ago where the group came to a grinding halt when a +2 sword (or similar item) was found and they had massive negotiations in order to figure out who got it. It was a part of the game to do this and it wasn't just blown off because the DM had a PC name label on every item he handed out. It felt more like the player was actually there when s/he had to try to convince others that the +2 sword should go to the Bard instead of the Fighter for xyz reason. These types of negotiations didn't always happen and even if they did, they were sometimes quick, but it wasn't always just a matter of checking the name tag on the item for the PC that was supposed to get it.In fact, I remember our groups coming up with party agreements for magic item distribution, and/or chit systems (i.e. tokens that could be used to auction items) and such. It added flavor to the game. The PCs seemed more like living breathing creatures with their own agendas and there was none of this "you are a party of PCs, you can not have contention in the party, you must use your abilities to help the other PCs at all times, the DM will enforce this by handing out magic items specifically keyed to one PC at a time" mindset. Good PCs helped out others in the group when appropriate. Neutral and Evil PCs sometimes tried to screw the other PCs. It felt real and not artificially forced.Late in the 2E days, I bought the Encyclopedia Magica four volume set. It was so cool. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f60e.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":cool:" title="Cool    :cool:"  data-smilie="6"data-shortname=":cool:" /> It had all of these cool items listed. It went WAY beyond the Book of Marvelous Magic or other sources of magic items (because it was every item every published by TSR and then some).And, I hardly ever used it. There were just so MANY magic items in it, that I only used a very tiny fraction of them in my game.There was such a flood of magic items available that I would have myself made the players jaded if I had handed a lot of it out. Even the cool flaming sword that you commented on as having more emotional staying power would have seemed mundane and quickly forgotten.I feel this way about 4E magic items as well. There are 3581 items, 3111 of which are magical items, in the Compendium at the moment. 3111. That's a huge number. At 15 seconds to read each one, it would take almost 13 hours to read them all (and I would probably conk out after 5 minutes). And PCS are expected to get 24 or so of these items each over the 30 levels of play. zzzzzI hope 5E creates fewer items, but more memorable items and doesn't flood the gaming community with so many magic items that +1 weapons aren't even considered magical anymore. I would hope that special magic swords would be the exception instead of the rule and that special magic would be found more in miscellaneous magical items and in wands and such, not in swords. Excaliber should be one of a few dozen super special magical swords, there shouldn't be 432 special weapons out of 438 like there is in 4E.When every magic weapon has powers, then no magic weapon is special.</blockquote>

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