Dolfan: Thanks for your honest response. I'd just like to point out that - like Firelance said - bloodclaw weapons only work on melee attacks, so you can't do burst damage with them; but your point is still valid, because of things like Hurricane of Blows, where you do hurt yourself each time.
It does sound like some of our groups are similar. And yes, in one of the games in which I am a player, the DM -has- limited Enchant Item fairly severely, although not even for things like bloodclaw, interestingly enough. Personally, I'm just getting tired of the idea that you have to change one MORE thing to get the game to work correctly. If it were just a little tweak here and there, that's fine: I'm cool with house rules, and I have my fair share. But after a while, I get tired of fixing their poor product. After a while, I feel like a beta tester.
malraux: I didn't really think your post was a personal attack (unlike some of the others here and there) but for you - and everyone else - who has tried to give a defense of bloodclaw or "prove" that it's not that good: I'm sorry, but I just don't buy it. You just have to see this thing in action to realize it, I guess, but all the arguments that are based on assumptions and theory completely break down when you see it in play and realize that any melee character not using a bloodclaw weapon should switch. It's that good.
I'm not really sure how this thread got sidetracked onto solitaires, but yes: they are pretty powerful, as well. The reason is because they - along with several other game items, yes - give extremely powerful bonuses on the premise that a critical hit is something that only comes along 5%-10% of the time. If that were true, then they'd just be ok. The problem is that when you have an encounter power that attacks 8 times that you can recharge with a free action and use to attack 8 times again, all while critting on a 19-20 chance... Well, your odds go up. Then, add to this the number of powers that allow auto-crits and the whole avenger class and the tricks they can do - this throws these powers out of whack because suddenly something that was supposed to be "rare" happens "often." It's just a case of the left hand not knowing what the right is doing: the left hand balances a powerful item on a precious resource and then the right hand doles out the resource in huge lumps. Honestly, I am less worried about solitaires but then again I've not seen any in play so I don't really know how bad they are.