Why don't they do magic items like themes?

[Haltherrion]

Also, I miss weird flaming thundering vicious dancing swords with three minor magical powers that get recharged whenever you eat poultry.

Had to laugh at that. Nothing says you can't put in a few uber items in the game. It will break the SW tools but I wouldn't think a campaign would have more than a few so handling it as a manual exception should be fine.

I think there is a place for memorable magic items. It's one of the "gut level" fantasy RPGs elements I love myself.

 

[Jhaelen]

But my point is; the players were motivated to go into dungeons. Go on adventures. Not because they wanted to be Heroes, they wanted the loot. Actual published adventures had some fantastic loot in them, unique stuff you couldn't find in the DMG (though much of it would end up in the UA).

Yeah, well. But those times are _long_ gone. I have a hard time remembering the last time when 'looting' was the motivation to go on an adventure.

In 3e my group would sell (almost) all of their loot at the first opportunity. Then the party's magic user used the money to craft stuff for the party.

This was one of the reasons I introduced 'Weapons of Legacy' (houseruled, of course). This meant there was at least one item they cared for.

In 4e artifacts have a similar place as the WoL in 3e. The only difference is that artifacts aren't meant to be kept forever.

 

[Balesir]

This seems to me a serious problem. Content SHOULD matter, Content should be king! Adventures should provide lots of choices, branches, opportunities to negotiate, make choices. The players actions should matter, not just the choices they make when they level up.

The players should think "I want to go in there because there's some awesome loot." As opposed to "I want to go in there because it's D&D night and that's what we do on D&D night."

So, we get CharOp on which modules you just have to play through (an "adventure tax"??) to get the uber-character with the broken combos? No, thanks.

The choices players IME mostly focus on in 4E are tactical, challenge based choices - as well as level up and shopping, of course. I certainly think that some more structured mechanisms for player selection of the next challenge/scenario path to take would be beneficial, but for the "really cool item" drive I think Jhaelen has it right - Artifacts are the answer.