Only thing I can think of is, they feel like limiting it.

In Might&Magic VI a character can wear 6 rings, (they are still limited to 1 amulet though) but that's all I can come up with.

I think in one game (might even have been D&D, might even have been the pen and paper version) I played it was explained (fairly weakly! ;) ) that the "magic interferes when two rings are too close." LOL

But this is a really funny topic about one of those conventions I've never thought much about, until you brought it up. And now I realize that yes, in pretty much every RPG I can think of it's always 2 rings 1 amulet :)

Except... hmm was it Two Worlds 2? Skyrim? One game I played let me "spam" rings. Not quite sure which one though.

Likely D&D yes, although I think the explanation was more along the line of "If you wear more than two rings, the magic will interfere with each other and cancel out." Something like that. Regardless, it was obviously a mechanic to limit the amount fo magic a character could have active at once. In Two Worlds, you can stack items to create a more powerful item. Can't recall for certain right now, but I think you could wear two rings in the game. But yeah, if you stacked the same kind of ring on top of each other in your inventory, you'd end up with a more powerful version.

I thought Oblivion had more than two ring slots. Maybe I'm thinking of something else.

BTW this is why they only let you have one amulet:

In Unepic you can wear 8 rings.

The rule exists for good gameplay reasons. "Magical interference" is as good an in-universe explanation as any.

Especially in D&D games, where magical equipment comes in vast gradients of power (ring of protection +1 versus ring of protection +5) this leads to the situation where you can have dozens of inexpensive magical rings for the price of a single expensive one, which would mean just about anyone with half an equipment budget would be walking around looking like a rapper if not for this rule :-P

Oh, that would be one more reason to play that game.
Is there any explanation why it is 6? 8 would make more sense (10 fingers - 2 thumbs, but that is assuming that the creatures in that fantasy world have 5 fingers on each hand).
Are individual rings comparatively weak in comparison to other games in order to make up for the increased amount of rings you can equip? That is an interesting argument. Do the effects of the rings also stop to work once you wield a two-handed sword (and thus having both hands/rings close to each other)? Ha, that is a great picture for this thread.
I would not mess with that guy. Who knows what kind of magical bonuses he amasses on his character screen...


Maybe a game could allow you to wear more than two rings but give a malus for doing so. Like minus dexterity because your hands are too clunky with all those rings. Or an increased hostility of enemies/NPCs because you are openly displaying a lot of jewelry which might be taken as bragging.

Well, there's always Arcanum, where techno items and magic items don't play well together. :) Get too magical and you can't use tech items at all, and vice-versa.

Until you wonder why you can't wear two more rings on your toes.

The Heroes in Eador: Genesis are allowed to wear 4 rings (but only one amulet). I think that would be true also for Eador: Masters of the Broken World since the hero screens are basically the same.

Is there any game where you can a ring on your dick ?

With the caveat that we are discussing a fictional interaction, I believe the explanation is not so much about proximity as how the item is worn. Because a weapon is held in the hand rather than placed upon a finger, it interacts with its wearer differently and thus doesn't interfere with a ring. So a magic belt worn over a suit of armor works just fine (even though it's literally attached to the armor) but trying to wear multiple magic belts (even if you managed to get them physically separated) is not. I believe this is also the explanation for why there isn't any "pants" magical item slot in D&D. Sure, it might be physically possible to attach a magical item to your leggings, but there's no way to get the benefit of doing so.

TL;DR: it's magic, and you can benefit from one (and only one) magical item from each of these categories.

Sure, rings are designed to interact with fingers, not toes. And whenever you design a magical item that works with a foot, it ends up looking like a boot.

on the other side, Skyrim lets you only wear one ring, which made me angrier than I'd like to admit.

It would be pretty fun to go running around looking like Mr T :)