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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Doug McCrae" data-source="post: 5316018" data-attributes="member: 21169">Yeah, but the designer still has to do the best job possible. He has to make assumptions, about things like campaign length, frequency of new PC generation, what level the game is played to, average number of encounters per day, and so forth. If his assumptions are wrong then his design will be less good than it could be.You make an interesting point about whether a broken points value system (gold piece value being the points in the case of the 3e magic item system) is worse than no system at all. I've been finding with games like Champions, at least up to 4th edition, and M&M, that their balancing mechanisms are so borked as to be worse than useless. One is better off ignoring the point cost and just looking at the PC's capabilities.Otoh I feel that 1e AD&D ought to have had some sort of system for determining how many magic items the typical PC has at a given level. Gary spends a lot of time in 1e talking about how vital it is to avoid the Scylla and Charybdis of Killer DM-ing and Monty Haul-ism. Yet at no point does he give us a metric. At no point does he spell out how many PC deaths make a Killer DM (assuming average player skill) or what quantity of giveaway makes a Monty Haul DM. It seems to me rather pointless to talk about it at all if no metric is provided.</blockquote>