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Message: <blockquote data-quote="billd91" data-source="post: 6250761" data-attributes="member: 3400">I think that's a very contentious assumption. Easier encounters can remove frustration which will also cause disengagement with the game. Magic items also open new types of encounter and new approaches to encounters that didn't exist before. Give the melee monster boots of flying and now he can engage the manticore zinging tail spikes at the party from the air rather than rely on his too often neglected bow. The encounter will be easier, but the melee monster will actually be more engaged than if he were trying to whittle away with his bow.As far as items that just give a bonus, it has yet to be my experience that making the game easier by a few points here or there leads to disengagement. And here, we can take a lesson from sports too. Unless you're a fan of a team getting blown out, people generally seem to like games in which the offense is highly successful more than games that are defense-driven. Sports writers may have written negatively about the steroid-days of baseball in the late 1990s and the tainted home run competitions, but the fans ate it up. Homers are exciting, big scores are exciting - no score innings not so much. Successful passes and touchdowns are exciting, punts not so much. Three-point shots and dunks are exciting, zone defenses (as effective as they are) not so much. People like achieving success more than the frustration of failure and a modest application of bonuses, relatively easily managed by adhering to a modest number of magic items not directly accounted for in the encounter math, adds to the game by freely increasing the proportion of success over initial expectations. Directly accounting for them just sticks the PC on the treadmill.</blockquote>

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