No they dont, quite the opposite, and the following discussion deals with passive type items....
I was having this argument with my players only the other night. They insisted that item powers are always ON and dont need to be activated, such as Bladesharp making your weapon sharper all the time. One player had a Blinding Shield power on his shield and I insisted it wasnt on all the time (or everyone would be getting flashed randomly). The logic then proceeds that if Blinding Shield isnt on all the time then nor is Bladesharp. Most of these powers can be activated as part of an attack however (no need for an unrelated action), so I didnt see it as too big an issue... but back to your point...
In my game most of the item powers are passive, like bladesharp. It manifests as an augment, and has little application as a direct power, YGMV, so it is not a fair statement just because your game works that way. Mine doesnt, I have a problem, looking for an answer...
Do your players buy up their magic weapon ratings? Including the ones that are passive?
>Also, if you have 2 HP to spend, you can increase your combat
> skill and your magical item.
>
> >In my game magic items have upper ratings limits
>
> Why? (Especially since in your game nobody increases them...)
Because it is my game and thats how I decided it :-) The problem was not known at the time the decision was made. (for academic purposes, my logic was that all items are made by someone who has a specific rating that they imbue into the item. I assume they cannot imbue more then their skill rating. When someone else picks up that item they have to attune the power and start at a base value and work it up until they reach the full imbued power.)
What I am trying to avoid is the standard escalation problem, players have a skill of 20, so magic is scaled around that to avoid giving them too big a boost. Later their magic goes to 40 and they start getting items matched to that... where were all these items before? What happened to all the lower items all of a sudden?
HQ has the capacity to integrate this problem by allowing players to improve their items with HPs as they go along. But they wont do it if they dont get a valid return for their dollar. A 1/10th return, plus the item can be lost, is not attractive.
Was it the intent of the designers to make magic bonuses less significant than the individuals skill (fair enough), and a magic weapon is simply a bonus because it can hit creatures that require it?
There is more to say, but I will leave it for now and wait for other comments.
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