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Message: <blockquote data-quote="mattcolville" data-source="post: 5460053" data-attributes="member: 1300">I haven't paid attention to how WotC treat magic items, so forgive me if this is a solved problem.I really hated how 4E did magic items on release. I completely understand the design goals behind it, I even agree with them, I just felt the execution was terrible and damaging to the game.By "damaging to the game" I mean they changed one of the core motivations of the players. By requiring items to dole out regular, predictable, small, benefits and bonuses, removing the chance of finding some ridiculously overpowered item, or even just something really *weird* and not obviously useful until pressed by imminent death to start thinking outside the box, treasure stopped being a reason for going into the dungeon.The DMG actually ADVISES you to just ask your players what they want!Anyway, I don't want to dwell on my objections, I just wanted to give my suggestion context.So I was thinking about this and I noticed how awesome Dark Sun Themes are. At least, the idea is awesome. Not all the themes are awesome, but that's not the idea's fault.I loved the Templar theme for instance. It was a Controller theme that made my Striker a passable Controller. That was cool. My Warlock was a great striker and a passable controller and a passable leader. A+ Why does that work? I know why. It works because the theme is class and stat-agnostic. Theme powers say "use your primary stat" whatever that is. So they can be grafted on to any character.The powers, and therefore the themes, are--in other words--purely based on your *role*.Well, why can't the magic items work that way? Make items grant benefits based on wide classes of character like Roles or even Power Sources so many more possible characters can benefit from any given item.Now we can have random items again! No striker in your party? That's ok, someone in the party will enjoy a power that makes them feel like a striker once per encounter or whatever. You give someone an Encounter power or a Daily power with only 1 use, or three uses, and now you can have really wildly weird and powerful items again and random generation.So, yes, I recognize this would break one of their goals. Character portability. The current rules make it possible, actually easy, to take any character from any campaign and stick him in any other level-appropriate game. Because unless the GM went crazy, the PC doesn't have an Infernal Machine of Lum The Mad or Apparatus of Kwalish. That's why the new Encounters program allows you to bring your own dude. Because there's no way he could normally get the kind of magic items the real, official adventures used to hand out.But surely we could just flag those wildly imbalancing, 1- or 3-use items and disallow them when moving campaigns. It's just one little restriction!I dunno, maybe it wouldn't solve the problem. As it stands, the players I've run for find the magic items in 4E really uninspiring. And there's no real incentive to use an item that's not *exactly* what you would have picked.</blockquote>

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