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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Balesir" data-source="post: 5580738" data-attributes="member: 27160">In OD&D/AD&D the whole system philosophy was different; magic items and gold were player rewards, because gold gave xps and magic items gave character power by means other than level.  It was a problematic mechanism because there was no set pacing (that anyone used) and it was easy (and usual) to play favourites.In 4E magic items serve a different purpose; they are part of character design with a definite resource cost (money).  Take that away and you create knock-on issues; money becomes useless if it can't buy magic items.  A little of the old "special treat" aspect survived because of the limit on item manufacture at character level; receiving higher level items is cool because you can't make them (yet).True - but by level 8 or 10 you would have one, if you desperately wanted one, because you would badger the DM into at least creating a quest or other means by which you might get one.  If you ever played until level 16 or so the flametongue was pretty meaningless, because by then all melee weapons were meaningless.This same mechanism applies in 4E.  At level 1-4 a flaming weapon is cool because you can't make it or buy it.  At level 5+ it's nice, but fairly commonplace.  Thanks to the weapon bonus scaling and the fact that it works on weapon powers it never really becomes obsolete, in the way it did in AD&D.And in 4E there are some items that are only available at Paragon tier, or with bonuses or 2+/3+/whatever.  And there are artifacts.The problem I have with this is that it always amounted to the DM dictating your character, in part.  I can see why some DMs might like this - and how some might even make good creative use of it - but for the type of game I want to play with D&D, I prefer my players to have control of their own characters.  I am content to control the setting that surrounds them and the challenges that setting provides.Which is exactly what happens in 4E - except that players are not arbitrarily restricted to the "bland" items.  Seriously, by Paragon levels, with only the capability to make common items, what the heck are the PCs going to do with all the money the standard treasure system gives them?  The only function has in the system is as resource to control the acquisition of magic items.  Anything else they might do with it - buying "strongholds", for example - is just colour; it has no effect on the adventuring game at all.Now, this use of the "uncommon" item category I can relate to.  I certainly see the weakness of having an Enchant Item ritual that gets better with every item book published, and having special ingredients and rituals specified in the rulebooks for these items seems a promising idea.  The items remain under the players' control (with specified restrictions, so they know what they need to do to get them) and the requirements serve as drivers for adventures - usefulness all round!Flaming swords are common in fantasy stories - to turn them into ultra-rare myths would be unneccessary, IMO, but whatever.Having them as artifacts if they are unbalanced is exactly what I'm suggesting.Why "minor" artifacts?  In 4E artifacts can be Heroic Tier as well as any other tier.  The idea of Artifacts as being, like 10th level spells or a volume knob with a setting of eleven, "magic items that are really, really powerful" is a hang-over from earlier editions - and not a useful one, IMO.  In 4E, Artifacts are not "very powerful items", they have a specific role.  They are items that may very well shortcut an encounter, or render a hard encounter easy (or even just "possible").  They have plot significance; there is little point in including a "Sword of Dragon Slaying" in the campaign if there are no powerful dragons that need slaying.In 4E, an "uber-powerful item" is a 30th level magic item.  An item that is generally wielded by low-heroic tier characters but relates to a low-level quest or campaign arc is an artifact, albeit a "minor" (i.e. low level) one.Story reasons to be there and an agenda of their own - sure.  Great power, though, is relative.  A 30th level Ring of Greater Spell Storing is powerful - but it isn't an artifact. An Amulet of Passage, on the other hand, is not so obviously powerful - but is an artifact.So, it's OK for a character to be themed around a magic item, as long as the DM, and not the player, gets to decide what item it is???  What is wrong with players having some control over the character they play?  Sure, the "bad player" arguments can be wheeled out, but they are no more persuasive than the "bad DM" ones are, in the end.Yes, all "item" class objects need to be balanced - but I don't agree that making them "restricted" really changes that.  As for "artifact level" - as I keep saying, artifacts were very deliberately changed in 4E to have a specific function, not to have a specific power level.  This was one of the best hidden, but most brilliant innovations in the system, IMO.If an item does not have some link to the setting/the story, then the DM has no business monopolising them, as I see it.  Any item belongs either to the setting or to a character; if it belongs to the former it's the DM's business, but if it belongs to the latter it's the players' business.Having said that, I can see the value of having restrictions laid down in the rules for certain items - specific ingredients or rituals, for example, that are needed to make them.Any item that will break the game if "given away casually" is a broken item; any amount of DM fudge, designer warning or arbitrary restriction is not going to fix that.  The item needs to be redesigned, period.You are comparing apples with coconuts.  Players can't decide that their characters have twice the number of powers as normal - but neither can the DM pick their powers for them (which is much more comparable to the magic item case).  A reasonable parallel to the "twice the number of powers" would be players deciding that their gold should buy twice the normal number of magic items - and they never could do that (within the rules), either.Of course not - because artifacts are (by their 4E definition) not aspects of the character design.  They are aspects of the world and/or scenario design.  If the game designers have wandered away from this (brilliant, IMO) initial conception, it is not a flaw in the original conception - merely a flaw in it's execution.Apart from "what is the function of money in the system, if it is not currency for controlling player resources in the form of magic items?"  This is the only meaning that money has in the game; without it you will need to justify money treasure in some other way.True - but, as I said above, the "any bad player" is equally bogus as an argument.The only flaw with the old system in this regard was that it conflated "power level" and "power breadth" into one value.  In other words, both the strength of an item's powers and the number or breadth of use of an an item's powers were subsumed under a single variable - "level".  Add in "minor" and "major" (or even "uncommon" and "rare", if you must) items that stay at the same level but have multipliers on cost and the problem is fixed.It's a bit like the monsters; an Elite Level 3 monster is not equivalent to a Standard Level 7 monster, even though the experience value of the two are the same.  The reason is that the level 3 elite has worse defences and ToHit modifiers, so that it suits opponents of around 3rd level rather than opponents of around 7th level.  The same can be true of a magic item; an item well suited to use by level 3 characters may have much more breadth of use and number of powers than another, but neither will be really comparable with an item best suited for use by 7th level characters."Taking away access to game elements that the players normally had access to" is exactly what you are doing with "rarity" - you're just not announcing it up front.Not that I see declaring that some game elements simply don't exist in a specific campaign world as a problem, provided it's done up front as part of the campaign design.Now, this is a much better solution to the IAOP problem.  And maybe make it +1/+2/+3 by tier.And this is a(nother) reason for item restrictions that actually makes sense.  And it would be excellently remedied by having specific ingredients and so forth required to make these "problematic" items.  Hunting monsters for their (magical) organs is a time-honoured tradition in D&D, because it promotes adventure and controls item production.  Let's see that, rather than some lazy "let the DM fix it" kludge.And marking them "artifact" is even better - even though they won't be the full contents of the artifact class - IMO.  And, if it isn't, the item is simply set at too low a level.</blockquote>

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