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<blockquote data-quote="Lizard" data-source="post: 4010287" data-attributes="member: 1054">Not *giving* it to him, or giving it to him and having it somehow not work? One method trusts the DM to scale his campaign as he sees fit; the other makes the game that much more mechanistic and banal. It is a poor DM that gives a high level magic item to a low level character. It is a poor game designer that feels the only way to stop this is to import 'leveled' magic items from MMORPGs. The people designing D&amp;D 4e are *not* poor game designers. Therefore, something else is going on.It seems pretty bizarre to me that rings just can't work if the wearer is below 11th level. There are more elegant solutions -- rings require a Use Magic Device check (to 'master' the ring), and most characters below 11th level won't make the roll reliably, for example. This has a much higher level of verisimilitude than rings having built-in level detectors, but serves the same design purpose. I'm sure a dozen other posters could come up with a dozen other methods to control the power of high level items without resorting to something as arbitrarily stupid as &quot;Well, they just don't work! Deal!&quot;&nbsp; I can't believe the designers couldn't, so it makes me wonder why they didn't.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Lizard, post: 4010287, member: 1054"] Not *giving* it to him, or giving it to him and having it somehow not work? One method trusts the DM to scale his campaign as he sees fit; the other makes the game that much more mechanistic and banal. It is a poor DM that gives a high level magic item to a low level character. It is a poor game designer that feels the only way to stop this is to import 'leveled' magic items from MMORPGs. The people designing D&D 4e are *not* poor game designers. Therefore, something else is going on. It seems pretty bizarre to me that rings just can't work if the wearer is below 11th level. There are more elegant solutions -- rings require a Use Magic Device check (to 'master' the ring), and most characters below 11th level won't make the roll reliably, for example. This has a much higher level of verisimilitude than rings having built-in level detectors, but serves the same design purpose. I'm sure a dozen other posters could come up with a dozen other methods to control the power of high level items without resorting to something as arbitrarily stupid as "Well, they just don't work! Deal!" I can't believe the designers couldn't, so it makes me wonder why they didn't. [/QUOTE]

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