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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 5403517" data-attributes="member: 82106">And so does every other project which is as large in scope as 4e is or 3.x was. The thing is in most fields you can just fix the mistake and go on, it isn't cast instantly into stone. They aren't any more prone to chronic errors than anyone else is. They are just being held to a totally unreasonable standard of perfection. No matter who you were to put in charge of D&D they're going to make pretty much the same volume of errors per unit of content put out. In fact I would venture to say that the actual error rate on 4e is LOW, they are just VERY willing to go back and fix them. I don't see any other games out there where that is true. A little appreciation for these guys would be good. I realize everyone in their fantasy believes THEY would do whatever much better, but frankly most people have very unreliable assessment of their own capabilities.  I'm the one that it annoyed, that is true enough. I kind of suspect I'm not the only one. I think you're overstating the case. ANY DM of any stripe whatsoever will be hit by unreasonable player requests. This particular kind of request doesn't seem to me to be of the type that requires amazing DM dexterity to handle. In any case it is a fairly safe decision, the DM can just say "Sure, go ahead and make that". If the player decides to be a munchkin and make 27 more of the same item then he can say "no", which was EXACTLY the case before rarity. All making more items common does is mean the DM has less guidance on when to do this. It isn't SOLVING anything.  IAoP was ALWAYS an instance of the problem of "item that is too good and thus acquired by basically every single character in the game to the exclusion of all other choices in that slot". You can call it "exciting" if you want, but it was exciting in the same way breathing air is exciting. Making it uncommon was a great solution, now maybe a player here and there will get one, but the DM can give out other arms slot items instead without knowing for certain they will be disdained and slagged to residuum at the first opportunity to make an IAoP.Sure, BoMS WAS an item that was OK as a common at one point, pre-Essentials. This is exactly why making it a common was a mistake and illustrates why only very few items really deserve to be common. There is exactly as you say no general rule for what should or shouldn't be common. I don't even believe it is really good to make that determination for a lot of items at the level of the rules, but is instead more an issue for a DM to work out in the context of their game. You are correct, there is no mechanism for 4e to deprecate old content, except to errata it into such total uselessness that it becomes forgotten. That has been the case since day one. Personally I can't come up with an acceptable mechanism by which it could be done. While ideally it would be nice the thing is there are always likely to be people that want that stuff in their games. Making items uncommon allows the DM to at least do away with them in a practical sense. Common items OTOH you're stuck with, they can never be removed aside from DM fiat, which is OK, but not as easy on the DM as just "Well, I am not giving that item out." Any way you slice it and dice it IMHO the current list of rarity categories was MOSTLY thought out well in terms of its policy. They made a mistake with BoMS. Making more items common would have just created MORE mistakes as I see it.</blockquote>

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