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Trouble Items

Source GameMastery Guide pg. 107
Magic items are not as rigidly tethered to the advancement system as spells, feats, and other benefits of leveling up. For this reason, it occasionally happens that a magic item unbalances your campaign. It might be an item of your own devising, or an insufficiently playtested bit of gear from a published product. Even classic items can disrupt certain campaigns, especially ones with non-standard premises. For example, unrestricted access to divination items can ruin a heavily investigative campaign.

Beware of magic items so powerful that they allow their users to consistently outperform the rest of the group. Likewise, look out for items that violate the exclusivity of a character concept out of combat. When players choose their classes, they expect to be better at the core tasks associated with those classes than other group members. If an item does a better job of healing than your group’s cleric, and it winds up in another PC’s hands, the cleric’s player might feel eclipsed. Avoid this either by adjusting or removing the trouble item or by making it an item usable only by the class whose abilities it duplicates.

When an item proves troublesome, you can handle it within the storyline, or step out of character to negotiate an adjustment with the player. In the first option, something happens to get the item out of the character’s hands entirely, or change what it can do. The character might be called on to sacrifice it to fulfill a quest or achieve some greater story objective. The item might be damaged, magically altered, stolen, or reclaimed by a previous owner. This approach allows you to maintain an illusion of fictional reality. To avoid player resentment, make sure to contrive in the other direction, too, adding in a compensating plot development or more appropriate item as a replacement for lost treasure.

It may be easier to step out of character to handle trouble items. Propose an adjustment that fixes the problem, perhaps suggesting several options. Solicit the player’s input. Some players will accept a toned-down version of the current item, while others might prefer a completely new piece of gear.