So tell me.. if it's only due to the idea of "slot limits," based on tier why can't the guidelines just say "In general, once your players reach a new tier, you should let them pick up items in another slot that previously they have not used." It makes a highly specific rule more generalized and also makes suspension of disbelief far less strained for many. Oh, and makes it sound like GMs aren't total screwups for giving players a "Ring of Minor invisibility" at level 9 instead of level 11.
If it's a "balance" issue due to item power, then why is there no apparent expectation that rings will become the de facto first "slot" item players pick up in Paragon tier because they offer a strict increase in power, as opposed to a conditional increase in power like the other slots, and are therefore likely to make the "core 3" the core "core 4" or "core 5"? Worse, this problem is simply exacerbated if rings are generally more powerful than other non-core slot items per gp. I've seen such cases in other games, so there's no reason why it wouldn't be the case here. In WoW, at certain levels, players basically gain general access to new armor slots. Occasionally, there are items which can be found/purchased below that level, but the general case is that certain item slots are expected to be filled because those items are common at that level and nearly non-existent below. In almost all cases, the auction price on those items just above that "baseline" level is somewhere close to 5x-10x the normal going rate for items about similar or one or two levels higher with better stats that fill other slots, simply because of the reality that the higher level items are assumed to be replacements for things you already have and are likely to replace in 5-10, while the lower level ones allow you to go up a significantly larger number for the same "cost."
THAT is why i think this rule is rediculous. It's bad design because it reduces meaningful choice from "one of many slots I could upgrade" to "one of the ring slots" in almost all cases around the limit point, save for the extreme low item game. In an average game where players are assumed to be able to purchase specific items (I don't know about everyone else, but in the majority of games I've seen, that assumption was true) as opposed to finding random loot that may be trash, there is likely either a focus into the "biggie" items and going for fewer, higher leveled items in a quadratic-cost system, in which case players are probably focusing on a few items that are way above the supposed baseline and abusing them to the hilt, or they're filling all slots and the item is basically worth the cost of the theoretical upgrade based on your worst slot currently filled + the item in the slot that would have been replaced, and not just the upgrade it would be in another slot. In other words, 20k gp does not always equal 20k gp.
It was just a semantical misunderstanding, I think.
