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Message: <blockquote data-quote="robertliguori" data-source="post: 4011981" data-attributes="member: 47776">There are many universes that do involve epic, obscenely powerful mostly-self-willed magical rings.  There are also many settings in which there are entire arrays of magical items, from hats to boots to goggles, of which rings are simply another type of magic item.  Stories that include few, epic, and powerful items are likely to have special magic item rings.However, as was clearly shown by the example character, D&D 4.0 is not this kind of universe. In 4.0, you can be slathered in magic items; extrapolating from the granted bonuses and the character level, it is clear that moderately-leveled adventurers will have magic items plural.  There is not the One Ring in universes like these; at best there is Sauron's One Ring, Aule's hammer, Orome's spear, the Song of Eru, and so forth.To me, the simplest solution is a limited number of misc. item slots.  You want to wear a cape, or goggles, or boots, or a ring or other magic jewelry item?  Great!  You want to wear all of them? Not so great.Heck, go whole hog; if you want to include special magic items that don't follow the normal rules for magic items, include a 'special magic item' slot.  You can have an uber-ring, or an uber-sword, or an uber-suit-of-armor, and this takes up your designated special slot (or one of your two designated slots at epic levels).  There is no need to tie 'special magical item' to 'ring' in a universe that includes low-level gimmicky magic items, and even less to do so in the rules themselves.The software engineer in me is gnashing my teeth at lots of things I've been seeing in the 4.0 previews.  A default setting in which rings and only rings are special magic items is fine and dandy, but there is no reason to encode this design decision in the rules themselves; you can simply make every existing special magic item a ring.I also like the idea of variable-effect magic items, but I'd go whole-hog and make them percentage-based (possibly via trickiness with dice) rather than strictly tiered.  Say, an undead-slaying sword lets you reroll your attack, damage roll, or a saving throw versus undead creatures twice an encounter.  A wielder of this weapon would be noticeably better versus undead of any power level, but it would be their own effectiveness (as opposed to the weapon) that would be being leveraged.</blockquote>

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