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Message: <blockquote data-quote="airwalkrr" data-source="post: 6110699" data-attributes="member: 12460">(Emphasis mine) That is the point, though. It is not arbitrary. It is a carefully weighed decision after the DM feels an appropriate amount of time has gone by. I rarely take things away from players. But on the rare occasion that I do, it is always after much thought and experience on the matter. If something appears unbalancing at first, I do not immediately snatch it away. I let it ride for a while. I take note of whether the player is using it all the time or if it is something that only comes up occasionally and whether or not it is giving the player an unfair advantage over other players and the player's opponents. Even if I do find it unbalancing, I try to see if there is a way to mitigate the effect somehow either (first) on my side of the screen then (after) on the player's side. I only take something away if I feel I have no other resort. It is anything but arbitrary.I empathize with your situation on the loss of the unicorn. Perhaps the DM made a rookie mistake and allowed something before realizing how unbalancing it might be and fudged the death without recognizing the consequences. But perhaps the death wasn't as fishy as you believed. I wasn't there, so I cannot say. It is unfortunate that the two of your could not come to some compromise, but would you have done anything different you knew for a fact that the unicorn's death was legitimate? Sometimes paladin mounts do die, and the paladin has to go on without it. It seems you understood the rules of the game and did not want to play by them because you defined them differently for your character. Unless the DM agreed to that at the start of the game, I cannot agree that your actions were appropriate; it seems to me you didn't make the case until the unicorn died, and IMHO, that is too late to be making the case. Maybe I misunderstand the situation, but from what you have said, it doesn't seem like the DM did anything wrong.But besides all that, I am not talking about taking away a part of a character's concept. The reason I cited the Gygax story is because that is usually the situation that requires addressing. The rules of all versions of D&D get heavily play-tested and re-tested as the system evolves. The rules for building characters are usually the most robust parts of the rules. But sometimes a DM lets an item (or two, as was the case with Erac's Cousin) slip into the game which he later realizes is unbalancing, and has little recourse but to somehow remove the item from play. In any event, at least the player gets to have the item(s) for a while and enjoy the awesome power while the DM evaluates whether or not it was appropriate.</blockquote>

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