Yes. Larian can do whatever they want. Of course they CAN.
I just wanted to see you say it. :3
It honestly quite surprise me that you dont understand them ...
I mean you are writing fanfiction, dont you?
You could easily just copy whole passages from other stories and save lot of work ... instead you are creating your own plots and solutions (im guessing here, didnt read a single line honestly) ... why would you do that when you dont have to?
Maaaaaybe bcs you wanted to create your own story?
Maaaaaaybe bcs you wanted to have your own mark on it?
Maaaaaaaybe those things fits better your vision for the story?
Why is that so hard to imagine they simply feel the same about the game THEY are making?

It's the new mechanics and conditions I'm not that happy about. Why make the game more complicated?
But conditions make magic items more situational and less generic, that is what many (and i admit, that i dont know how many) modern games concider fun.
Create the right opourtunity and release the hell ...
In my opinion, much better feeling than being 5% more effective all the time without any effort. :-/
There are plenty of other aspects they need to fine tune first.
It doesnt really matter if you do A before B ... as long as one will be finished before release.

How often are enemies on fire?
That is the neat part ...
With right artefacts, almost all the time.

Without them, almost never.

You can think about it as puzzle ... if you pick right parts, they fit together perfectly and you can create something really good in the end.
Sure, you can also try to force wrong pieces together and create HUUUUUUGE mess.

Flat damage boost, or passive effects would be as entertaining as puzzle with straight edges and no picture on them.

Yup ...
For example it tells us you are suffering huge effect of memory optimism. :-/
But on the other hand, it also tells us that you really liked the game a lot ... and kinda cant swallow the fact that this isnt the same. :-/
being at half your hit points for your items to work. That's not fun.
Disagree ...
I had a lot of fun trying to ballance my Warlock on patch 5 so i keep myself half dead, and outside the constant danger of dying ...
The trick lays within temporary hit point (wich if my observation is right, finaly stack in Patch 7 ... and wich if im not misstaken should not count to the 50% hp formula

)
Really, I'm mostly upset about the Adamantine Forge. What a mistake. Those items look great, but the effect is terrible. Someone really needs to get a better sense of what kind of items work well in DnD.
Agreed ...
But this was unavoidable problem.
Since day one we were told that Adamantine Forge will be part of Act 1 ...
I said that those items will either be incredibly powerfull for low level adventurers ... like so powerfull so there will be little to none reason to wear anything else. :-/ Wich would be really bad design in my eyes.
Or those items will be incredibly weak for an "adamantine" ... since that is so legendary and epic material, so anything but COMPLETELY FUCKING OP would be disapointing.
I wonder if that would be received better if they would rename the armor to be from some other material ...
You know what i mean right? Like fool's gold.