I am VERY pleased with the direction that WOTC is headed with magic items in the latest DNDnext playest document. I don't think I can legally post excerpts but it includes neat tidbits like what happens when a PC takes a sip of a particular potion and actual descriptions (shock! horror!) of particular magic items.

The jury is out for me on other new additions like the concept of 'attunement' but I like what I see so far!

The magic items are very much 1st (or 2nd) edition AD&D.  The potion miscibility table is lifted right out of the 1st Edition DMG!  I am liking it so far.

But for the love of all that is holy, stop with the "As you draw the sword..."  and "You get a +1 bonus..."  I don't get a single goddamn thing, and I'm not the one drawing the fucking sword!  My character is, so please stop writing descriptions like I actually have the item in front of me.  Let's go back to "The sword provides a +1 bonus..." and "When the sword is drawn..."; sometimes it's not the players using the item, it's an NPC or monster.  And that's when the third person informal crap sounds really goddamn retarded, like the instruction manual for Sony's My First Magic Item.

Overall I'm pretty happy with them- they feel like magic items again. I had a few issues, though, all in my opinion only:

The miscibility table has no entry for getting a new effect unrelated to the two potions. I'd have liked to see one chance of a new effect, possibly with a second table. I can fix that easily, though.

The portable hole seems pretty useless. It should allow passage through walls. Now it's just another type of bag of holding. Lame.

Necklace of fireballs should allow you to do full damage if you use more than one bead at a time, and not just improve by 1d6 per extra bead. Since magic items can;t be bought or sold easily anymore, it wouldn't be abusive over the long term, more of a one shot option to waste the whole necklace for a sure thing. Doing it the way they did seems too much like a decision based on game balance and not in-world logic.

Quote from: Monster Manuel;590454Overall I'm pretty happy with them- they feel like magic items again. I had a few issues, though, all in my opinion only:

The miscibility table has no entry for getting a new effect unrelated to the two potions. I'd have liked to see one chance of a new effect, possibly with a second table. I can fix that easily, though.

The portable hole seems pretty useless. It should allow passage through walls. Now it's just another type of bag of holding. Lame.

Necklace of fireballs should allow you to do full damage if you use more than one bead at a time, and not just improve by 1d6 per extra bead. Since magic items can;t be bought or sold easily anymore, it wouldn't be abusive over the long term, more of a one shot option to waste the whole necklace for a sure thing. Doing it the way they did seems too much like a decision based on game balance and not in-world logic.

I don't know about that, seemed pretty real world logic to me.  If someone is wet, you can make them a bit wetter, but the net effect isn't much more than just being wet.  Similar to fire - if someone is already on fire, you can make them even more on fire, but it's more an incremental thing at that point rather than a doubling effect.  They're already on fire, there is only so much fuel and oxygen available to make even more fire.  You can make the existing fire hotter - but that's not what the beads do, they do not actually change an existing fire to be hotter, they just make more fire at the same temperature as the last fire.  So for me, it seemed plenty real-world logical.

Overall I like a lot of the stuff.  I think the spell shield is a bit overpowered, especially at higher levels when you're pretty much assured making your save if using advantage.  The paladin sword sounding a horn in the distance every time it's drawn would get a bit old too

But I like the flavor, and I really like the statement that intelligent monsters will use the items just like a PC would.  That all too often gets lost.  If the kobold chief knows the party is invading, why is he keeping the potion of healing in his chest.  That sucker would be on him, and he'd use it.

Other comments I made in the thread here.

Quote from: Monster Manuel;590454Overall I'm pretty happy with them- they feel like magic items again. I had a few issues, though, all in my opinion only:

The miscibility table has no entry for getting a new effect unrelated to the two potions. I'd have liked to see one chance of a new effect, possibly with a second table. I can fix that easily, though.

The portable hole seems pretty useless. It should allow passage through walls. Now it's just another type of bag of holding. Lame.

Necklace of fireballs should allow you to do full damage if you use more than one bead at a time, and not just improve by 1d6 per extra bead. Since magic items can;t be bought or sold easily anymore, it wouldn't be abusive over the long term, more of a one shot option to waste the whole necklace for a sure thing. Doing it the way they did seems too much like a decision based on game balance and not in-world logic.

The portable hole was always like that right fom when Jack Vance invented it in 1950.

I could have sworn there was an edition where it made a tunnel up to 10 feet deep. If not, we must have used it wrong. I still think the tunnel is cooler.