The imminent release of the Magic Item Compendium has spurred some debates over at ENWorld regarding the core magic items in the DMG. Man, I never really thought much about it, but most of the core magic items are way overpriced for the benefits you receive or they are just plain boring. My dissatisfaction reached new heights last night when I was trying to equip a low-level villain with something not only appropriately thematic, but also interesting.
Dungeon does a fairly good job of incorporating some non-core elements into its adventures, especially monsters, base classes, prestige classes, and feats. However, I think new magic items and spells are under-represented in the pages of Dungeon. Over at ENWorld, James Jacobs acknowledged the need to sometimes incorporate newer spells into the adventures, but I think the same thing should apply to magic items (at least of the non-artifact variety). I looked through the last five issues, and with the exception of two AP adventures, only one adventure had a non-core, non-artifact magic item (that one was "Diplomacy").
I was recently looking over the stats I came up with for Xvim's Mother for my Forgotten Realms campaign, and I equipted her as per an 18th level character, as she was a CR 18 creature. I already knew that a CR 18 character with class levels isn't really CR 18, and I "houseruled" that she should actually be about CR 15, which was more appropriate (half demon paladin/blackguard).
But when I looked over her equipment, I realized how boring the equipment that I could actually afford for a CR 18 creature! By the time I gave her an unholy scimitar, the rest of her equipment was really pathetic . . . and this was using CR 18 equipment. Utility demanded that I just get her simple magic armor, rings of protection, and an amulet of natural armor, because anything else would be way too expensive for a character that only has a few rounds to make an impact.
The flip side of this is to look at the magic items you come up with in a random treasure, magic items and that the PCs are likely never to use, and thus are more likely to sell or trade, and then look at how much these very limited use items are worth!
I'm definately looking forward to seeing the Magic Item Compendium to see how it treats this situation.
I encourage the use the "use-activated spell effect" formula from the DMG (2000 gp x spell level x caster level x scaling factor based on spell duration) to design new magic items that PCs might actually want. This way, we need no tables and can generate items that do just about anything (especially if non-core spells are made available).
I think the worst rules in all of 3rd edition D&D concern the creation and pricing of new magic items. I absolutely hate that section of the DMG, and when I've used them, they result in magic items that are way overpriced for what they do (IMO). I can see now why artifacts are so popular in Dungeon adventures: they generally have cooler powers and backstory than the core items, you don't have to explain how to create them (just slap on a CL and magic type and you're good to go), and the best of all, you don't have to assign a price to them.
I think the worst rules in all of 3rd edition D&D concern the creation and pricing of new magic items. I absolutely hate that section of the DMG, and when I've used them, they result in magic items that are way overpriced for what they do (IMO). I can see now why artifacts are so popular in Dungeon adventures: they generally have cooler powers and backstory than the core items, you don't have to explain how to create them (just slap on a CL and magic type and you're good to go), and the best of all, you don't have to assign a price to them.
Yeah, the spell-effect items I mentioned are outrageously costly. Using those rules, a +3 sword would cost (2000*3*12=) 72,000 gp, as opposed to the 18,000 gp list price. No need to tell the players that, though, especially when they have all that gold in their hands!
Actually a few years back I converted all the Greyhawk Campaign Setting items I could find to early 3e.
Now I'm going back and editing those files and forming them into a pdf that will downloadable from either www.oerthjournal.com or my personal homepage or both.
Included in this batch are every item I can find thats been in the GH campaign setting, barring some of the newer ones Paizo has published or redone themselves. All items even have a Reference bit at the end of each entry to tell the user what source they originally came from. =)