Use Magic Device: Keep or Kill?

[Hella_Tellah]

Use Magic Device : widely considered the most powerful skill around, this one lets anyone who takes it do most anything they want. On the one hand, it helps to balance skill monkeys with casters, albeit at the cost of turning skill monkeys into casters. On the other hand, it gives characters with the skill access to another the core shtick of another class, something 4th edition will ostensibly avoid.

You're Mike Mearls for a day. Do you keep Use Magic Device, or do you kill it?

 

[Counterspin]

Kill it. I don't think any of the things that made UMD such a powerful skill are likely to return in their current form. Given the importance of control of powers per combat to the balance of the new system, I expect to see staves, scrolls, and wands all neutered or changed into something else altogether. With it's most powerful targets removed, UMD is vestigal at best. Give it the axe, or roll it in together with the arcane skill if you must keep it.

 

[Hella_Tellah]

For my part, I voted "keep it", mainly because I like the image of a rogue shaking a wand until the magic comes out. I also like the possibility of humorous failure, and I'd be sad to see that go. Whether it's done with a skill or not doesn't much matter to me, but I do want some mechanism by which a character who hasn't had magical training can attempt to use a magical item, and I want it to have a possibility of funny failure.

 

[MaelStorm]

It should be nixed for 4E. With all the merging of skills, either it will be graphed on to another one or you'll just need to have the required class/proficiencies to use the items or not.

 

[delericho]

In my hypothetical D&D replacement system, the UMD skills gets a rename, and is used for a bunch of things to do with manipulating and gathering Mana.

However, for D&D, I kill the skill and take its stuff.

 

[TwinBahamut]

Would the UMD skill even have a purpose in 4E? Wands and staves are implements now, not items that store spells, so UMD wouldn't help a rogue with those anymore. I don't think we have heard a single mention of scrolls. The difference between martial powers and arcane powers is no longer so absolute as it once was, either.

I think UMD doesn't need to be killed directly. The rest of the system changes already starved it to death.

 

[Fallen Seraph]

I say kill it in the normal sense.

But instead for magic-items if your a non-magic user, you role your arcana (or if the item is divine) your divine knowledge check instead. Cuts down on a skill that is only useful in one instance and puts it into a category that makes sense with it (the more you know about magic, the more you be able to understand how to use magic items).

I think we could do the same for non-magic user rituals too.

 

[Slander]

Kill it, for reasons similar to TwinBahamut. The system needs to change in such a way that UMD simply isn't needed.

 

[Kurotowa]

UMD is dead. Both the new skill setup and the (presumed) reduction in charged use-items render it unsuitable for the game. Now, I wouldn't be at all surprised to see a Rogue class power that carries on the spirit of finagling magic items into working when they shouldn't. But we won't have UMD as a skill anymore.

 

[WyzardWhately]

Kill it. Give it to rogues as an at-will power they can select (that involves a roll and the possibility of humorous disaster) IF this kind of item is still a part of the game.