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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dragonblade" data-source="post: 5830668" data-attributes="member: 2804">The notion that item experimentation contributes to sense of wonder is dead wrong, IMO.Having to experiment with items is firmly rooted in the notion of magic as physics. Where you can determine an item's discrete properties through a pseudo-scientific process. I think this is actually the antithesis to instilling items with wonder and frankly it becomes a rote exercise in mundanity.If every item has to be experimented with then it ceases to be interesting and becomes boring, routine, and frankly incredibly annoying.In my old 1e games, we got so tired of having to experiment with a hundred different things that all the players literally got together, wrote a multi-page document carefully detailing every possible thing we could try with every item we find. Then we just went through it like a checklist with every item.Sense of wonder comes from feeling that items have unique and mysterious properties that you can never fully understand or reveal through either testing or use. That no matter how often you use an item and think you know what it does, it always hints at having more secrets to unlock.For sense of wonder in magic, magic items need to be rare, but powerful and never lose utility no matter what level you are. Sure they will provide some discrete mechanical benefit that the PC can rely on, but there should always be this feeling that there is something more to discover.... <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />For example, if I was to make even something simple like Gloves of Climbing. I would never just give them a +5 to climb checks. That's boring. I would have the wearer instead roll 2d20 and take the higher roll. You know the gloves help you, but you never know how much they will help you. That is how magic should work.Likewise, if you wear the gloves and still fall, I as DM might make a secret check to see if the gloves do something unexpected to help. Like a secret d20 roll, and on a 10 or higher, I would say you begin to fall but suddenly you are able to catch yourself on a spur of rock you never noticed before. You can't help but feel the magic of the gloves has helped you out...</blockquote>

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