I've been wanting to bring this up for a while now and it seems better to do it now rather than wait any longer. It was brought up in Brent's game and I thought pretty much everyone but Brent was in agreement that due to needing feats for superior weapons and higher armors that was the balance for them. I understand that Awlidan is a unique world and superior items are rare but it is getting kinda redundant to not find items appropriate for our levels. There has been one superior weapon given out and zero plate armors.
I know with the raising of the minimum levels that magic items have to be given out to make it balanced, but is it really balanced when MANY new characters are starting out with weapons (even superior) that are better than the current characters? Now that the minimum level is 6 characters will be able to come in with +2 items, and these can be superior to my knowledge… how is this fair to existing people that don't have such items?
The feat is supposed to be the drawback for superior items, not a huge hit on to when the items are handed out. I know when the game started it was said to be ran by the book. To my knowledge there is nothing saying that superior weapons are so rare that characters won't see them throughout almost a whole tier of play. There are several characters that are still waiting for a superior weapon (or plate armor) equivalent to their level.
I'm sorry if this may feel like an attack. It is not meant to be. It is just meant to share my opinions with the group and hopefully get a discussion going. This has been building up for a while and I know its not just me who has concerns with this.