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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6291275" data-attributes="member: 42582">In that case it needn't be a magic item. It could be a compliment from the king.I think it was always regarded as important that it makes a mechanical difference - that it changes, however modestly, the way the player is able, via his/her PC, to engage the situations/challenges that the game throws up. It is the only way to do this besides gaining XP and levels. (Hence, in the original game, magic items did not grant XP because they boosted mechanical capabilities along a different axis of development.)In this way, I think the designers always had in mind [MENTION=27160]Balesir[/MENTION]'s point that the game is intended to be fun and challenging for the (real) players, not the (imaginary) characters.What the original designers seem not to have fully thought through is that improvements in mechanical capability are a benefit to the player only under a very narrow subset of approaches to GMing and adventure design - namely, something like modern computer game design, where are whole lot of material is pre-prepared but is only feasible for players with minimum mechanical resources - hence, improving your numbers opens up new opportunities for play in the gameworld the GM has created. (I think [MENTION=386]LostSoul[/MENTION] is one poster on these boards who has thought a lot about this approach to play.)But as soon as the approach of gameplay shifts to "tailored" modules or adventure paths or whatever, such that the players have access to whatever content the GM prepares for them, then this particular rationale for magic items as a reward bascially fades away. I think the 4e desginers realised this, and it is obvious - despite the chapter heading "rewards" - that in 4e gaining XP and finding magic items doesn't "strengthen" the character, or open up new vistas of play other than in the sense that, over time, play moves from the heroic to the epic tier. (The designers showed that they understand this when they wrote a mini-campaign that compressed all the story elements into a shorter mechanical arc, namely, Neverwinter.)I personally very much like this feature of 4e, but many people criticise it as a "treadmill" or as magic items being "complulsory" rather than genuine rewards.Bounded accuracy is an attempt to make magic items into genuine rewards. The risk that this poses, and that I've already seen plenty of commentary on, is that the effect of the "reward" is in fact to make the game more boring, Monty Haul-style, as the player is unable to be meaningfully challenged by the sorts of situations the GM is able to come up with by deploying the game's resources in the apparenlty intended manner. (For instance, once even Asmodeus needs a natural 20 to hit you, there doesn't seem to be much mechanical challenge left, at least within the standard parameters of D&D.)</blockquote>

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