Bill Dunn wrote:
Darksol the Painbringer wrote:
In my opinion, having the game require the Big Six in order to simply succeed is just bad design. That isn't to say that specific classes requiring specific items isn't in itself bad, but when you take specific requirements, make them universal, and then apply it as a universal requirement, regardless of player/character choice, it transforms the game into a "Numbers Game or Die" scenario, which I can assure you, not everybody finds to be fun.
This was, I believe, less of an initial intent as it was a byproduct of allowing magic items to be so easily constructed or bought. PCs were expected to pick up some of the Big 6 here and there, not necessarily advance all of them as soon as they could. Players often do that but that's an effect of the bonuses being so constantly effective coupled with the ability to buy virtually any magic item they want when they have the cash to do it. That, in turn, drives the perception that GMs need to keep pushing at the limits as well to keep PCs challenged.
Contrast with D&D games before 3e. We wanted to get magic weapons, armor, rings/cloaks of protection, girdles of giant strength, gauntlets of ogre power, gloves of dexterity, bracers of armor, and so on. But without a reliable way to make them (item construction before 3e was... a bit unstructured and quirky), we had to rely on treasure we gained. Eventually, we might eventually get much of that stuff, but we couldn't count on it and we certainly couldn't plan for it. It meant a lot more making do with what we got rather than deciding to sell just because it was a situational magic item and a more consistent one would be better.
The root cause lies in the system trying to build magic item acquisition into the systems progression (and therefore balanced with CR) at all. While the intent was to try and remove the unbalancing effect that giving magic items out randomly tended to have in older systems (similar to how the CR system was created to better inform about what threats are reasonable for the party) the result was removing the openness and mystery of many magic items (since they had to all be quantified into values/costs).
The trade offs for such user friendliness is a system that does have expectations of what items a character needs to be functional, and creating methods to allow players to customize the items needed to be viable for their characters. To try and not remove the potential for random treasure, magic item creation and costs become necessary (as do wealth limits/minimums). Which ultimately leads players to seek to get those out of the way quickly (and to do so in the manner they perceive to be most advantageous to them).
This is why the only real way to bring the wonder back to magic items is some form of built in level system to remove the expected items from being used/required. Unfortunately, this is likely to make most players just move on to the next tier of the best min/max items unless additional effort is made to restrict the easy access channels that were also required by the expectation of magic items (now that player's don't have to have any to be viable, they don't honestly need to have such ready access to the purchase and creation of any non-consumable item). Once players get used to not thinking about magic items as necessary for the viability of their character overall (as the system unintentionally encourages that view by having such required items), most of them will likely begin seeing magic items the way that most of us did back in prior editions (where the best table to find out rolls were being made on was always the Misc Magic Item table....at least imo).
If you don't like the idea of the level systems, the next best option is to swing more toward common minor magic items (as others have already suggested) that have no true effect on wealth while still providing flavor (I might even suggest ignoring the cost of some of the existing items that fit this description but are priced ridiculously high for providing no real benefit to the character's overall viability in the CR system). I would also suggest adding such traits to the "standard" magic items you provide them to make them feel more novel and unique without requiring more items to be given to the players (perhaps that cloak of resistance always makes the character feel like they are wrapped in a warm blanket by the hearth on a cold evening, or the weapon they had made always hums slightly when out of its sheath, etc).
