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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Balesir" data-source="post: 5582940" data-attributes="member: 27160">OK, well, I went back and re-read your posts in this thread, and the only section I found that I had not addressed was one post with these three points in a discussion you had with eamon:This is a bit of a generalisation with no specific items to work on, but I am convinced that, for every "problem" item, there was/is a good solution - many of WotC's "fixes" struck me as heavy-handed and rushed. Items that are a problem if spammed were generally controlled by the daily item uses (which I'll come back to later), other items just needed to be more expensive but at the same (or a corrected) level.If I actually found this to be a genuine problem in practise I would just define some item daily powers as "Daily but does not consume a daily item use". Easy, elegant and a minimal change.Just cut down the monetary treasure (and item treasure). Money is the resource used to control player-acquired magic items; cut it down and you have a low-magic campaign. High level PCs spamming low-level items in such a setting will have even lower magic themselves; probably not a great plan.It's now my turn to say "read what I wrote".  It seems to me that, for every flaw in the original system, there is a better way to address it than booting it all to a mass of DM judgement calls.Only in the same sense as characters are an element of the story and setting - but I hope we are still in agreement that the players should have some role in their development and activities? <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />Not what I was saying; please read it again. I think it's pretty clear that item rarity could be used to allow designers to skip balancing items or considering their effect on a game they are introduced to - the "lax and lazy" element I refer to.  But I was asking what other advantages the rarity system gave - I honestly see none that don't have larger negatives than positives. But maybe you can point out a specific bit of design space that isn't just producing an abusable or unbalanced item?A setting to portray, sure - but story has to be an emergent property in any roleplaying game, as far as I can see. If the story (as opposed to the plot, which is the setup that makes a story likely to happen) "belongs" entirely to the DM then they would be better served writing a book, script or screenplay. Story in RPGs comes from the alchemy of DM and players.All rules create constraints on players - constraints that give the game activity form and meaning. Designers also need to be constrained to produce designs that perform the function desired for the design. This, of course, is the rub; those designing and using the product do not entirely agree on its purpose.My own experience with the daily item limits is that they are far from bad. They add relevance to milestones, allow at least as many item daily powers to be used each adventuring "day" as the characters themselves have daily attack powers and they control the abuse of such powers when used repeatedly from multiple items. My players have not been bothered by them, and if I find neat items that I would like to see more of that have daily powers that are "too weak to spend an item use on" I will houserule their daily power to not use a daily item use (even though it is usable only daily).In a "typical adventuring day" of 4-5 encounters a heroic level character will have 2-3 daily item uses (compared to 1-3 daily attack powers), a Paragon character will have 3-4 daily item uses (compared to 3 daily attack powers until level 20, when they get 4) and an Epic level character will get 4-5 daily item uses (compared to 4 daily attack powers). I would hardly characterise this as a "trivial" number, when placed in context.I just did. It was/is a restriction - all rules are - but I wouldn't call it even close to a "huge straightjacket" and I think all it does to items is mean they aren't more common and relevant in play than the character's own daily powers.I'm glad DM control is working for you. I have felt no requirement for it, have had no complaints from players claiming that they feel "limited" and have not noticed any unreasonable constricition on the items I include in treasure.I think this may well be true. We seem to have very different expectations of what players and DM should be focussed on and doing during play. Exploration of what the DM has made seems to be a far more prominent element of what you want your players to be concentrating on than it is for me; I want my players to be concentrating on playing the game - overcoming the obstacles to them achieving their objectives. My players seem happy with that - if yours aren't, obviously you will have to run your game differently.</blockquote>

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