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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manabarbs" data-source="post: 6194616" data-attributes="member: 6717251">Does the extra complexity that comes with making magic items work differently for different groups of classes really buy us enough that it's worth it? Imagine that we have two characters in a party. One is a rogue with +6 to stealth, and one is a paladin with +0 to stealth. (The exact numbers aren't important, of course.) This two-person party finds a cloak of +3 stealth. Either the party can have the rogue wear it for a total of +9 to stealth, or the party can have the paladin wear it, so he'll have +3 to stealth and the rogue will have +6. The first setup makes the rogue super awesome at solo stealth - using a magic item to augment what you're already good at - and the second is better if the group needs to sneak around together - using a magic item to (sort of) patch up a weakness a little. Is that a bad state of affairs? Does the game benefit in any way from the item being made more complicated? In a lot of cases, magic items that "should" be for a certain type of character naturally work out that way anyway. Do you want the +5 Awesome Longsword to be better for fighty-types than for wizards? It already is! You don't need to forbid non-warriors from using it; it's already correct for the fighter to take the sword because he or she is the best at using a sword. The item is naturally worse for a wizard because wizards are bad at using swords. (If a wizard is as good as a fighter at using a sword, that's a class design issue.) Making the item more complicated by making it give +5 to warriors and only +2 to everyone else is a pointless complication.There's almost no such thing as a totally useless game element, but I think that this classification system comes preeeeety close. I actually don't mind the labeling as a purely aesthetic thing; that's basically harmless. I'm still profoundly unconvinced that it has even the slightest mechanical benefits, though.</blockquote>

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