Rare Magical Item Preview - Holy Avenger

[MrMyth]

Honestly, I think the problem is that some players just have unreasonable expectations for what a powerful item should look like. (Largely created by things like Iron Armbands of Power or Radiant Weapons or whatever.)

The Holy Avenger, to me, seems just fine and where a rare item should be. Maybe it could use a slight boost - say, regain the Dispel power as an Encounter power, which works thematically and gives it a bit more oomph. But overall, I'm cool with it. Others disagree - fair enough. For me, it's pretty much on target... it is a bunch of other items out there that are in need of fixing.

 

[fuzzlewump]

@DracoSuave

Making it uncommon makes it out of the player's hands, so making it rare was unnecessary. I agree, I have no idea what 'new' rare items will be. But I know WotC reads these forums, and maybe there's a chance that this opinion among many will matter. Hopefully, my opinion will be unnecessary b/c Holy Avenger is a poor representative of rare items of a whole. Time will tell on that point.

I have no idea what Holy Avenger does before 4E and I didn't even know that until this thread. So I guess you could say this opinion is isolated from concrete bias. 'Uses radiant powers' is critical to the characters identity, but the item itself isn't. An item adding damage to a player's critical identity doesn't make the item critical to the character's identity. However, I agree that the character, not the items, should be most of the power of a character. That's why I'm calling for things beyond mechanical +x's to make Rare items interesting.

I'm going to need more explanation on the 'typical' versus 'always' thing, especially where Mike Mearls uses those words in the article. And I'm not sure about "Holy Avenger has a daily power in isolation." You mean, isolated from the other properties of the item? My assumptions, such as what kind of powers that rare items have (encounter and at-will) versus uncommon (daily) comes directly from Mike Mearls. So I guess it's an assumption, but it's more like a view supported by evidence that has been contradicted by the Holy Avenger as a rare item.

Like I said before about WotC reading this forum, I'm glad people talked about it, I hope they see that relabeling previous magical items, that Mearls himself says are "flat," as rare and selling it doesn't excite most of us. I'm glad you like the way it is, but I think you wouldn't be disappointed if it had other interesting things, mechanical and non-mechanical. That way everyone would be happy.