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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Shardstone" data-source="post: 8640758" data-attributes="member: 6807784">I run numerous high magic item campaigns, and am currently writing a product due for release this year that really examines the idea of magic items, how to use them, notes I've made from my playtesting, and what a magic item could really be if you tried to get the most design mileage out of them.My wildest experiment was giving one particular player a legendary magic item at level 3, while the rest had only one uncommon item to see what kind of warping effects it would have. It was a modified Blackrazor combined with a Vorpal Sword, just to really see how far it could push the system.The answer was, the system wasn't pushed as hard as I thought. There was a definite impact, but that impact was only because I specificially set up an unbalanced situation, and none of the players complained or had issue with it. So I tried this with another group that were all noobies to see what would happen, and it was the same thing. They didn't perceive this legendary magic item as a problem because not only did it come in handy in many clutch situations that could have been really nasty, but also because the power it presented interestingly just wasn't the game warping thing I had expected. My first group I did this for, btw, are all vets and other designers, and there's other groups beyond these two where I experiment a lot.All this to say, if you give your players relatively comparable magical items, the challenges don't get dwarfed by that much. A 3rd level character with a flametongue, or with one or two arrows of slaying they found, or even a powerful Nine Lives Stealer isn't as much insanity as both Crawford and many people online have suggested for these last ten years.And this doesn't mean there isn't an impact. There is. But the impact is within the bounds of reason, and the joy my players get when they can use their magic items for various insane things in high stakes scenarios has made this my prefer method of play.</blockquote>

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