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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Michael Tree" data-source="post: 121461" data-attributes="member: 1455">Any situation where the only choices a GM has are 1)letting the player dominate the gam, automatically succeeding because of a magic item, and 2)metagaming to keep the item in line, is a no-win situation.  The GM is no longer challenging the player - the GM is deciding between letting the item arbitrarily succeed, and making the item arbitrarily fail.  There's no more chance or randomness or fairness.  The GM is basically deciding whether or not the character succeed or fail.There's nothing wrong with a player having an advantage with Hide.  There is something wrong with a player having an unbeatable advantage with Hide.  There's an enormous difference between an item that gives a cool bonus and an item that makes the character ultimately good at what the item gives a bonus on, one which you seem to be missing.You argument about "what else are they going to do with that cash" is a straw-man argument.  No one here is arguing that players shouldn't be able to make magic items, just that they shouldn't be able to make items that are terribly unbalancing and make the GM's job a pain in the *ahem*.Out of curiosity, are you just playing devil's advocate, or do you truly see nothing wrong with items of +40 Hide, weapons of True Strike (+20 on all attacks, wahoo!), and gizmos of unlimited Cure Light Wounds?In most circumstances, the difference between a +40 Hide and a +53 Hide is purely academic.  You could counteract the difference by giving +40 spot items, but then the characters who are supposedly stealthy but don't have a +40 Hide item become useless at hiding.As for a fighter, you're wrong. It's *extremely* likely that a fighter would want it, since it would make him ultimately good at Hiding as well as a fantastic combatant, for a measely 30,000 gold.Only the cheeziest of powergamers would complain that the GM  wouldn't let him create a +40 Hide magic item.IMO a character's abilities should come primarily from their race and class, and only secondly from their magic items.  The moment when magic items start to overshadow what the character can naturally do, is the moment I stop playing.  I want to play a cool useful character who has some neat items that accentuate his abiltiies and give him a few cool tricks, not a magic-item-platform who also, incidentally, has some minor abilities of his own.</blockquote>

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