Item daily usage house rule

[eriktheguy]

Hello.
I found that the Daily item restriction was far too limiting and more importantly, far too un-fun. My players want to be able to use ALL of their cool things, not sit around wondering "Well, yeah, item X's power would be handy right now, but then I won't be able to use item Y's power and I love item Y"! So...
I went with the "You can use any item's Daily power once a day". I understand there is potential abuse here, (Well, maybe... It's not like any of the Dailys shake up the world or anything) but I DM'd for a mature group that were only in it for the fun of it, and wouldn't resort to cheese of any kind.
That worked just fine for us. No problems of any kind, easy to track: Toss the Item Daily card into the used Daily's pile when you use it! After a Milestone, get one back. This is a lot more fun then the ultra-limiting default method.
Later!
Gruns

Not to mention that the houserule is easier to track than the default.

 

[BobTheNob]

Wait, does this mean that the items recharge every encounter and that the players can use as many daily (changed to encounter) powers as they want from different items in a single combat?

Yes, Yes it does. It did require a tweak here and there, mainly the three points documented and a few other mechanical tweaks, but Im telling ya, it really does work.

It doesnt really upset the balance that much (as before, I did need to up encounter difficulty somewhat), the players have a ball (really, they just love it), its less to keep track of for all concerned, and players put (formerly)daily item usage items in the same value bracket as passive and encounter items (where before they groaned in dismay when they found a daily usage item).

Just give it go. We changed a little while back and havent looked back!

p.s. If you have the type of power players who insist items should work as documented, this wont fly....imageine being able to use robes of displacement every encounter!

 

[mattdm]

We ditched the character-based item-daily/milestone limit a long time ago. The house rule I use is:

Daily Item Powers

We're doing away with the per-character limit on daily magic item power use. There's good mechanical reasons for this limit, but it feels stilted. Instead, we'll just agree to make those potential mechanical issues not be problems in our game. Therefore, the house rule is: if a magic item has a daily power, that power can be used once per day. If you have more than one daily magic item, you may use each of them once per day. But this comes with the following caveats:

1. The party continues to plan for an adventuring day which may include four to five (or more!) resource-using encounters, even without this particular rules incentive,
2. Going crazy with daily item powers all in one encounter (either the first of the day or the last) doesn't become commonplace,
3. Party members don't accumulate "golf bags" of magic items of the same type to swap as the daily powers are used up, and
4. There's not some horrible consequence I hadn't thought of.

 

[eamon]

How about this:

Magic Item Daily Powers: A magic item daily power is a daily power granted by a magic item. You may use any magic item daily power only once a day, even if you have multiple items with the same power, and an item can provide only one usage of a power even if it changes hands. However, if you can recharge a daily item power, you may reuse it. Using a magic item's daily powers is tiring; you may use only a limited number each encounter: 1 in heroic tier, 2 in paragon tier, and 3 in epic tier.​

This makes golf bags unlikely (even out of combat), and slightly reduces a PC's peak power (since you can't save up dailies over encounters and since you cannot use two identical powers) but you can use more item powers overall.

Gameplay-wise, it's easier to track too.

Edit: For completeness, I included the basic rules about daily powers in the text (namely that an item's power can only be used once); I wouldn't want anyone misinterpreting the house-rule to mean it replaces that limitation too...

 

[eriktheguy]

p.s. If you have the type of power players who insist items should work as documented, this wont fly....imageine being able to use robes of displacement every encounter!

All good ideas, and I will give it a shot. Obviously with 'until end of encounter' powers I will limit to once a day. Some other items might also get ruled out on a case-by-case basis (ankh of reincarnation).