Magic items could use some attention from WotC

[Otterscrubber]

I know they wanted to shift some of the focus away from items in 4e and more onto the PC, but I still think getting nifty items of power help define D&D. As such I was a little disappointed with the items you get in the PHB and was even more disappointed that there were none in the DMG to help enhance the selection. Most items seem to add a bonus of some type to either your attack or defense and then perhaps give you one daily power related to the item. Would have been nice to see them break from that forumula a bit more, perhaps have some items with encounter powers in them or even a slightly useful at-will something or another. Or even 2 powers?! Nothing on intelligent items at all, and the wondrous item category seemed paltry and slapped together at the last minute with some very basic old standby's of the D&D genre like a bag of holding. Thoughts?

 

[Ashran]

My thoughts are they only wanted to wet our appetite with the magic items section. After all, a whole book of 'em is coming out down the road. Or it was because of space limitation (you can only put so much in a 320 pages long book after all).

 

[Otterscrubber]

When is this magical (pun intended) book going to come out? Guess it was naive/optimistic to think they'd have it all out with the core books. Is it going to be WotC or is this a splatbook?

 

[Zsig]

I guess it's a matter of "first things first". Firstly they give you the essentials, then with upcoming splatbooks they give you the rest (hint: Tome of Treasures)

 

[ForbidenMaster]

When is this magical (pun intended) book going to come out? Guess it was naive/optimistic to think they'd have it all out with the core books. Is it going to be WotC or is this a splatbook?

September

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=products/dndacc/217837200

 

[Ipissimus]

Or it was because of space limitation (you can only put so much in a 320 pages long book after all).

320? That's pretty big step up, 3e PHB and DMG are about 250 each and for that we got intelligent items, cursed items and spells galore. Sounds like the new readability cost a lot of space.

 

[Ardulac]

320? That's pretty big step up, 3e PHB and DMG are about 250 each and for that we got intelligent items, cursed items and spells galore. Sounds like the new readability cost a lot of space.

Don't forget that the 4E PHB includes paragon paths, epic destinies, and magic items. That equates to the 84 pages used in the DMG for prestige classes, magic items, and other item related goodies like special materials. So it is more like 334 pages of 3.5 turned into 320 pages of 4E, plus a huge gain in useful DMing info in the DMG.

 

[Destil]

320? That's pretty big step up, 3e PHB and DMG are about 250 each and for that we got intelligent items, cursed items and spells galore. Sounds like the new readability cost a lot of space.

Everything costs a lot of space. Powers may be shorter than spells, and there may be fewer powers per class, but we're talking adding mabye 1/3 to 1/2 a wizard in complexity to every class write up...

The PH needed another 100 pages, I think...