Fascination with MIC?

[drengnikrafe]

The "Favorite Book" thread had several people state that their favorite book was, in fact, the Magic Items Compendium. Now, I personally own a copy of the MIC, but am not particularly fond of it. I know this is a sort of loaded question, but can someone please explain to me why the book is held in such high regard?

[Draz74]

Magic Items are a major source of a character's power if the game follows the standard loot rules. But without MIC, most characters end up having very similar magic items, which gets boring.

This is especially true in the middle-levels range (where, coincidentally, a LOT of campaigns get played), Levels 4 through 9 or so; the DMG really does not contain many items at all that are affordable and worthwhile in this level range. The MIC contains dozens.

As I said in that other thread: What other splatbook helps out every PC character?

[AslanCross]

It really depends whether you like magic items. Since I'm a DM, it gives me the advantage of giving my players loot that isn't just another flaming longsword.
There are a lot of really "cute" magic items in it---their uses are rather situational and esoteric, but they're cheap and you don't lose anything by having them.

[Grumman]

If I had to guess, it might be because it's a lot easier to import new magic items into an existing build or game than to do the same for feats or classes. Nobody ever has 2-3 levels of XP sitting around in case you find a cool new feat or PrC, but many people do keep enough of their wealth as liquid assets to be able to go straight to Ye Olde Magic Shoppe and buy a cool new magic item.

[Chrono22]

As said above, overall very useful book with lots of interesting new magic item additions.
The vast majority of which are not broken beyond relief.

[Ravens_cry]

Because it has pretty much every magic item officially in the game.
I recently got, for my character in a desert campaign, an armour gem that made it so that armour didn't count for swim checks. Sure, it's unlikely to come up, but if it does, I am not going to be the one drowning at the bottom of the lake while failing swim checks. There, for the cost of 250 gold, I can now take ten on swim checks and not fail.
And without the MIC, I wouldn't have even heard of it.

[drengnikrafe]

So what you're saying is...

Better balance,
more fun,
more versitile,
and fills in gaps made by other books?
...
Yeah, that's pretty much the definition of a good book. I doubt I'll ever read it all the way through, in order (which is probably the reason I didn't like it in the first place; too disconnected from itself), but I will start using it.

[AslanCross]

I read it like a reference book, which is pretty much how I read any other D&D book. Instead of going through everything as I would a novel, I just go to the chapter that I need to look at.

If I have a rough idea of what I'm looking for, I can just browse one of the indices in the appendix section. When I'm looking for a treasure that costs X GP, I just look in the section that lists the items by price and then go to the page it refers to. If I don't like it, I look for another.

[Foryn Gilnith]

It helps out every PC, as was stated earlier. It's practically the only book I can think of that does that. I'm not terribly fond of it, for no particular reason, but it's a valuable resource whenever allowed.

[Vizzerdrix]

but can someone please explain to me why the book is held in such high regard?

Simple: Cool pictures.

[Gnaeus]

Because if I didn't have MiC, I would need to drag every book with a magic item that my character had to games. MiC and SpC help my back.

[mostlyharmful]

because as has been said at the levels people actually play 3.5 (or at least 99.9% of games) happen in the gap that has characters with enough money to buy magic items but not enough to splurge AT ALL on things that are fun or interesting if they want to keep on the power curve.

For virtually the whole of the virtually every game it seems each character has a base of necessary boring boring boring boring items that every character has/needs and some that every character built in that manner has/needs.

Everyone needs a cloak of resistance and a ring of protection and a stat booster or two and almost everyone needs a magic weapon and armour, everyone picks up a handy haversack and an emergency potion of healing or two, everyone wants to be sure they have a wand of Cure Light Wounds around and the only way to be sure of that is to carry one yourself, etc etc etc.... chances are your tenth level lock down fighter will have spent 65% of his wealth on the same stuff as your last 9 characters and 90% on the same stuff as your last martial character.... wooooo....

If you want to have combined effects, interesting loot, kooky but useful stuff, varied character load outs, surprising and valued doohickies and all the rest of that fantasy edge to magic items this is the one.

[RandomNPC]

at first i would say set items, but then i got the "hey look what they stole from Diablo2!" out of my system, and actually looked at the items.

now its versatility.

[Zeta Kai]

My love for MIC is the fact that it saves me a lot of time when I'm DMing. I used to homebrew a lot of custom items, but now I can just tool through the book for something interesting & fun. This leaves me free to focus on other things. Populating an adventure with treasure that the party won't sell off at the first opportunity has never been easier. And unlike the Spell Compendium, every PC needs items (except those VoP-freaks, but they're not allowed in my games), & I get to choose what they end up with.

[Tyndmyr]

The "Favorite Book" thread had several people state that their favorite book was, in fact, the Magic Items Compendium. Now, I personally own a copy of the MIC, but am not particularly fond of it. I know this is a sort of loaded question, but can someone please explain to me why the book is held in such high regard?

MiC is awesome...it's loved by many because it has multiple good options for essentially every class, too. I mean, lets be honest, extremely specialized books will never win popularity contests.

Also, having one book to look in when browsing for magic items is far superior to delving through a wide assortment, each of which only has a few. For this reason, SpC is also widely loved.

[CockroachTeaParty]

Oddly, I'm more in the 'meh' camp concerning the MIC, even perhaps approaching 'bleh.' I suppose it's because items have never been very central to my games. Especially in a caster-heavy party, magic items haven't seemed to matter much in my games. Often times some of the better optimized or higher level parties I've DMed for have been significantly under-equipped, and still survived any challenges I've sent towards them easily.

Oddly, as a DM, the MIC doesn't help me much. I'm more familiar with the core or splat book specific items in the game, and when it comes time to deal out treasure, I often don't wish to pour through the MIC to find an item I'm unfamiliar with.

I suppose a great deal of this could be remedied if I simply sat down and read the thing, but like the Spell Compendium I probably never will. I like some fluff and context in my books (Lords of Madness is one of my favorites, and is almost 80% fluff).

When I've allowed it, my players love it, though. It's like Christmas to them or something.

I will admit, I like Healing Belts a lot.

[AstralFire]

Chalk another one up for "MIC is meh because I don't like to use magic items."

I regularly ran campaigns where it'd be unusual for the PCs to have 2+ magic items apiece.

[Doc Roc]

I will be repeating what a bunch of people said:

When I build characters, which I do very often, I find that the MiC is always the first book I open and the last book I close, barring maybe the spell compendium.

[arguskos]

I find the MiC "bleh" because I make my own items. Most items in my games are custom created, not taken from a book. Almost the only thing I like the MiC for are the armor/weapon enhancements (for being a nice compendium of them) and the Healing Belt (cause they're awesome). Beyond that, I don't really use it.

[MichielHagen]

I will be repeating what a bunch of people said:

When I build characters, which I do very often, I find that the MiC is always the first book I open and the last book I close, barring maybe the spell compendium.

You build characters based on items?

I usually start building a character based on a PrC or Feat.

<edit> well ok, maybe a specific weapon.

[Eldariel]

I find MiC awesome simply because it's fair and fixes some previously busted item (though I can't stand what it did to Torc of Power Preservation) and just adds some versatility to the magic item circus of D&D.

Not all DMs want to make all items on their own and even the ones that do have a huge depository of items they can just toss into the mix that are interesting and different and quite cheap, available early on fitting different concepts and characters.


It's just...it allows further customization of what the party gets and further customization of many character builds and concepts.

[Quirinus_Obsidian]

I am a part of the "MiC is awesomesauce" demographic.

1: fixes balance issues with other books and certain items. new items like the Armor and weapon crystals are fantastic. Also that creates rules and guidelines for creating your own.

2: no need to endlessly search thru dozens of books, Dragon and Dungeon mags for that one item that did that one thing that one time. now they are all in one place.

3: Gives new rules for stacking magic effects and creating item sets.
Yah, I know, the item sets are very Diablo2 but, that does not stop one from creating your own sets and items; which I have found to be fantastic.

[Eldariel]

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention so seconding Quirinus here: The new item types (Weapon Crystals, Runestaves, Eternal Wands, etc.) are awesome.

[DragoonWraith]

I tend to find the items the least interesting part of a character, so I really appreciate the ease of just going through the Items by Price index and picking out stuff, rather than having to comb all the books I have.

[ZeroNumerous]

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention so seconding Quirinus here: The new item types (Weapon Crystals, Runestaves, Eternal Wands, etc.) are awesome.

Eternal Wands and Runestaves were in Eberron and Faerun respectively, I believe.

[mabriss lethe]

MIC isn't my "favorite read" book. However, it's on my short list of both player and DM resources. (others on the list are spell compendium, ToM/ToB, dungeonscape and cityscape.)

[Eldariel]

Eternal Wands and Runestaves were in Eberron and Faerun respectively, I believe.

Oh, that's true. Well, it's handy to have them in one place for general rules without setting-specific baggage, anyways.

[John Campbell]

It's full of useful, or at least interesting, items. A lot of the items in it are not things that I'd ever go out and hunt down to buy, but many of those are things that I'd use rather than immediately selling if they happened to turn up in a treasure pile. Lots of stuff that's not really all that powerful, but provides a use or three per day of some fun option.

And it's not 75% useless non-specific fluff by volume, like most 3.5 books.