The new Essentials rules are making massive changes to how magic items work. While I agree that a change is needed to magic items, I do not think that the new Essentials rarity classifications are going to help much. In this article, I will identify what I see as the major problems with magic items in D&D, and how I think magic items need to be redesigned.

The Problem With Magic Items

The problems I see with magic items are:

The Christmas Tree Effect. Ever since WotC introduced magic item slots, they introduced the Christmas Tree Effect. Because you could have a hands item, a waist item, a legs item, a head item, etc., and because you had enough resources to buy an item for every slot, you might as well shop (or craft) for an item for every slot, no matter how out-of-character it may