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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ainamacar" data-source="post: 5555308" data-attributes="member: 70709">(Long post ahead.  The TL;DR version is that I think we should decouple  character power from item power and use their total to determine  "level."  Doing this right would have some pretty big effects on a  system, some of which I discuss below.)The "automagic" part is critical for making it possible to balance, because if the item is missing then all the balance assumptions go out the window.  (A game where a player can have a mathematically assumed weapon or the parallel defensive item, but not both, would probably turn out very strangely even if everything were a +X item).  However, giving items an automagic bonus is also mechanically indistinguishable from just giving that bonus to the character in the first place.  If we can't tell our magic items from ourselves, aren't we missing the point?In general I think the notion of WbL is a net improvement over the case where there is no guidance at all.  But although it has some weaknesses noted in other posts (e.g. temptation to entitlement), in my opinion its largest weakness is that, at the level of the game system it assumes wealth should be coupled in any way to inherent character power.   Besides creating some unfortunate obstacles for running a variety of games (since there is a "right" amount of treasure regardless of genre, setting, DM time constraints, etc.) this encourages players to think of treasure as part of character advancement, rather than as part of the world from which it came.In my opinion the best course of action is to treat "level" as made up of the character and their equipment separately.  There are various ways one might try this, but in the end it is probably a variation on assigning an effective increase in character level due to the equipment present.  Systems like D&D where lots of things tend to change with level would probably need to flatten out a bit, because there is such a difference between a 1st level creature with a vorpal sword and a 10th level one with a normal sword that no system of separating character level and item level could do it justice.  In fact, what makes the +X items more-or-less easy to balance in 3e and 4e is that they are assumed.  Remove the assumption of their presence and the strong effect on d20 rolls, and they become quite difficult to balance.  So, in the sort of system I'm proposing, ditching the +X items in favor of those with special effects may be the better move both for balance and for flavor.Other benefits I can imagine:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The party can more easily support characters at a variety of inherent levels (a poor but diligent wizard traveling with some spoiled rich kid, replacing dead PCs)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Across campaigns, the kind of challenges you can handle isn't so strongly correlated to character level, except by choice.  Monster design and ease of changing them has a larger impact here, of course.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Giving monsters magic items could be handled more easily than in 3.5 or 4e.  Sometimes I don't want to make the monster better, I just want to give it stuff it can use.  (In 3.5 I sometimes had players roll random treasure before an adventure.  If good stuff came up, the monsters used it instead of leaving it in a chest.)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">If there isn't a schedule for finding magic items, there is less chance of entitlement issues.  And even for players that don't have the entitlement issues as such, knowing magic items are coming can kill some of the anticipation.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The DM can feel a lot more free to put magic items where they should fit in the world.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Or the DM can roll treasure randomly with less trepidation -- assuming this hypothetical system is careful not to put its equivalents of artifacts (which could be a +5 sword) on the tables. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">If the party loses all its equipment in a fire, the game goes on without needing lots of rejiggering.</li> </ul>In 3.5 I eventually got rid of all the stat enhancing magic items and went to an inherent system, and was much happier for it.  (That this was around the time the Magic Item Compendium came out, which made it easier).More recently, I've been designing and playing a homebrew system (using character points instead of levels) that treats magic items along the lines I've described above.  Unfortunately, as we're currently playtesting in a very low-magic setting, the effect of magic items on our character's power is basically ignorable.  (If it were D&D we'd be about 15th level, with about 1 magic item per character).  Nevertheless, decoupling inherent power from magic equipment power is something I want to give a lot more attention to in the future.  I don't expect it to be easy, regardless of the game, but I do expect it to be worth it.</blockquote>

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