The extra bookkeeping it presents shouldn't exist, period; notions/implementations of scarcity and (inordinate?) empowerment are for the DM and the DM alone to decide.
It's really no book-keeping at all... and compared to the book-keeping of working our which bonuses from which items stacked or did not stack with various bonuses from other items, that was the staple of 3.5, it's laughable that anyone would actually complain about it in good faith ^.^
"It" should not exist; "it" should not be something we are discussing
at all.
By the way, if you wish to discuss 3e/3.5e, I'll gladly point out how videogame-y
that edition got compared to its predecessors; as an example, a
Cloak of Elvenkind - previously a powerful magical item that ANY Class could benefit from - became a straightforward plus to Skill that was a boon to certain Classes
and was quickly rendered obsolete. However, the math part of the d20 system was far from laborious (this is coming from someone who is arithmetic averse, mind you) and there certainly wasn't an arbitrary limit on magical item ownership/active use.
