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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 4678650" data-attributes="member: 82106">There was a good reason for that. Magic items were arbitrarily powerful. If PCs could just cook one up whenever they wanted to in a day or two then the GM looses control of what the characters have for stuff. You can always say "no, no, you can't make that" or "you'll need the blood of Orcus to make that item", but it then becomes a matter of denying the players what the rules say that they can have, which is always a tough line for a GM to hold. So the rules made it exorbitantly hard to build magic items, then the GM at least could back off and say "well, OK, I'll be nice and bend the rules a bit and let you make that +3 sword" and not be mister bad guy.4e takes a different tack. Magic items are just part and parcel of character design and assumed from the start, but all of them are pretty limited. Thus they can provide a fairly easy and quick enchantment process since no matter what the PCs make it isn't overpowered. On top of that items all have a level, which (at least in 1e/2d which is all I've played before) wasn't true with the old rules. So even if an item would be 'too good' for the PCs to make, they just can't make it at all.In any case, like I said in my last post, it really isn't all that great from a narrative perspective to have the PCs being able to make oodles of items. 4e sort of shoots you in the foot on that score, but there are at least some ways out of it (like just not giving away a lot of treasure). Still I think in the style of play of my group at least I wouldn't just let them use generic components to make powerful items at any level. It means going back to being the big bad GM to a certain extent, but such is life... hehe.</blockquote>

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