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Message: <blockquote data-quote="eamon" data-source="post: 5583301" data-attributes="member: 51942">That was the idea, certainly.  It's just that it's not a necessary restriction even if players choose the same item 100's of times for the vast majority of items. The rushing cleats are specifically a game-changer for Polearm momentum.  A frost weapon is a game-changer for the whole wintertouched-combo-thingo.  Some of these builds you're probably not too sorry to see go, but others were just really nifty and fun to see in play.  First off: I don't think with such difference starting points our perspectives will meet on this.  Obviously you didn't like em, but they were the very antithesis of metagamey: you're "exploiting" the in-game reality that wands cost less the slower they heal; ergo it's quite cheap for a high level party to supply themselves with slowly healing wands of cure light.  Effectively, this turns healing in 3.5. into 4e's short rests.  Maybe that's not the in-game reality you wanted, but that's a different problem: I'm fine with reflecting the practice of magic in the day-to-day society; indeed, I tried to make a point of it as a DM to let the players encounter problems solved using rules they too can use; and that's a great way to get people thinking laterally.  I absolutely revel in that: it's a real world, and people in it will use whatever tools they have to do what they need.  Is it exploit that let's planes fly in ours?  How 'bout wheels - you're playing unfair, expending so much less effort dragging things from A to B using a good set of wheels <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":-)" title="Smile    :-)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":-)" />.  Wands of CLW: not an exploit, just a reflection of a different world, with different possibilities.With that perspective in mind, "optimizing" doesn't look bad: that's perfectly reasonable behavior in-game too.  There's a fine line here; it can be jarring if you look at it one way, but it can be a reflection of in-game professionalism and focus on the other hand.  That depends slightly on rules, slightly on the game your playing, and heavily on the game you're trying to run.I just look at this so completely differently.  These PC's - they are going to die if they make a mistake.  They're adventurer's, and after their first few adventures, if they're still fighting under delusions that it's all just honor and glory, they'll soon be goners (and it'll be gory <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":-)" title="Smile    :-)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":-)" />).  So while we don't take it so seriously out-of-game, I'm used to characters in-game (at least the sane ones) being obsessed with their craft and the perfection of it.I agree.  And whether you label that as a grade of especially minor artifacts or particularly rare items is just an almost irrelevant details.  Both approaches have their pros and cons. I don't mean to say that that's WotC's intent; it's a consequence, however.  You've got less items; less tools to make novel PC's: hence, less interesting PC's.  The DM still has access to those, but that doesn't help since as a player you can't rely on getting these items (i.e. can't build to use them), which is a reflection of the in-game reality that a PC can't specialize in a fighting technique relying on an item he's probably never even heard of.Obviously, you don't have to agree with me.  But consider that the game will be played by many people, and I hope I've at least helped you understand what I'm looking for.  Finally note that it's much easier to restrict the item list further than it is to open it up: the game has a fine mechanism for this, inherent bonuses.  If you don't like those, then it'd be easy enough for wotc to come up with a item-light alternative (similar to now, but more focused and better for not having to cater to everyone), but it's very hard to go the other way.  As you say, WotC publish some items that aren't OK to mass craft or aren't OK in all parties: but amonst all those thousands of uncommons, how the heck are you going to find them?  The DM's going to have to hand-check character sheets again... not having to do that was one of the nice things in 4e, pretty much everything's non game-breaking.Think of it in terms of service provided: WotC could label their items with a warning saying "may need player restrictions" on the items that need em.  But that's not what they've done: they just labeled everything "restricted" and then made a few explicit exceptions.  So now, what should I do?  Just swallow it and lose all those items - or allow em (99% are fine), and make exceptions?It's sunday evening here, and I'm signing off for the week, but I hope you see that if you like items to be part of the emergent in-game reality, the way the item rarity was introduced just sucks.</blockquote>

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