Hi everyone, I'm not sure where to post this, so I figured I'd post it here because of the 'tips' part of tips and tactics. So, for some context my DM gave me these gloves called "thermogloves"  which I will post a link to here https://imgur.com/a/znYaiNU. The item in theory is very versatile, and I'm a monk so it can come in handy when I'm not using my astral arms (I'm playing a way of astral self monk.), but in our last session I finally used the gloves utility to burn down a door because it had no way to open it and we needed to get through. After doing this three times she said that my hand was starting to hurt. Now, this in and of itself is understandable I suppose, it limits me and makes sure I'm not some sort of pyromaniac. However, this is the first time I did this, and they had said before that they reward creative uses of our items. Oh, and also I should mention that this item cost me 10k gold so I figure it should be top of the line no strings attached it just does what the shopkeep says it does. (my DM screwed up and gave us over 100k gold.) Now, I should mention that another feedback thing happened to me when I used my characters other item which just caused a person to be pushed back 10 feet and the item I had on constricted on my arms. This sort of thing has only happened when me and a friend of mine used magical items. (his was a crossbow that had a hidden stipulation that it cost 100 gold to work for one hour before usage which really upset him.) the other people in our group who are friends with her have never had this happen. Our paladin has some magical armor that they got the same time I got the thermogloves. Nothing has ever happened to them in regards to magical feedback or anything. In the DM's words to me "all magic comes at a price.", but that price seems to be focused on me now (my friend with the crossbow quit.) I don't know how to address this. Should I just let this slide and continue to play and just not use the items I paid for or should I confront them about this? I'm leaning toward confronting, but I'm not sure as I am new to dnd as a whole (this is my first character.)

TLDR; I think my DM is treating my using magical items unfairly and would like some advice on how to approach them or if I should at all.

I would speak to your DM but try not to be confrontationa.  Was the burning of the door the only time the DM has limited the use? While a DM might encourage creative uses of items in principle he does not want an item to become so powerful that it prevents other player shining. Having said that I would not think allowing a door to be burned down with them ios overpowered any more than a wizard casting fire bolt at the door would be. Ask if he thinks the way you are using the gloves makes them over powered and tell him that his approach is ruining your fun.  See if you can agree a way foirward that is mutually acceptable.

It doesn't have a limited time use. the thermo gloves burn anything flammable from what it said. I have had the gloves for about 8+ sessions and I have never abused them as I felt that as you said, it would cause me to outshine others. However, my party consists of me, a monk, a paladin, a rogue, and a cleric. No one else has access to anything fire related so it came up that I was the only one that could do something about the door other than just breaking it down. I do appreciate your input though truly. If we had a wizard that could do firebolt or anything of the like i would have absolutely deferred to them.

Edit: I would also say that a cool down on that sort of ability makes sense if it was just that, but when the DM begins to say that my gloves begin to hurt just when I add the +2 damage to a hit like I've been doing every session prior with no ill effect that is where I get a bit annoyed, but maybe I'm just not understanding something.

I did say I didn't think using them to burn down a door was abuse. However the main point I was making was duiscuss it with your DM but try not to be confrontational about it. Being confrontational is likely to put him on the defensive just ask him the reasons for piutting rtestrictions on your gloves and tell him how it makes you feel. 

Your DM should want to make the game fun for all the players, and if that is the case you should be able to work something out together. If he refuses to listen to your concerns then you will have ti decide whether to stay in the group.

I didn't mean to imply that you did say it was abuse, my bad on that one. Thank you for helping me to come up with an idea of how to approach this though I really appreciate it :).  I try not to be confrontational in a setting like this at all unless it becomes absolutely necessary as other people are also waiting for whatever the issue is to pass to continue on with the game. 

1) The biggest issue with adding homebrew items is balanced. Sure offical content may be broken but generally its all playtested and reviewed by designers so its expected to fit into a game. Many DMs get excited when they make/see something and just throw it at players without considering. Only realizing afterwards and trying to pull it back in a non awkward way but only making it worse (as a general rule its always easier n less annoying to the player to add things instead of taking away)

2) rule of cool. A DM may allow something completely outrageous or 'breaking' the first time a player suggests it only cuz it was cool. But generally won't allow the ultra-epic-one-shot-headshot to work every round.

You may not be abusing it but from what I read you did it 3x before your DM said they started warming up. You could not have intended to do this move ever again but your DM doesn't know that so he put that warning out.

it could also be that your DM may actually have an intended bias towards other players for one reason or another. At times Ive felt like that with a DM I play with. If its becoming too much talk to him with examples (otherwise you appear whiny about things not going perfectly your way even if that's not the case)

This has me wondering... you say that your DM has told you that your hands hurt when using it... do you take any damage? Get disadvantage on specific checks? Do you need to make any kind of saving throw to continue using them? If not then this is basically just flavor... weird flavor that I don't quite get the point of, but flavor nonetheless.

Well, I just found out from my DM that they intend to make all their magical items in the game come at a cost. I wish they had told me this when I started the campaign. This must also be a new rule as I joined the game mid session and this never was a thing before to my knowledge. 

Yeah they gave the distinct impression that if I used it one more time for the +2 damage I would start taking my own damage.

As it turns out they are saying all magic items come at a cost. This has not always been the case so it's a new development as far as I can tell, if they had been upfront about this I likely would not have bought any magic items and just bought potions as I do not like knowing that every item is essentially cursed in someway as it costs money or hurts the wielder.

I understand that and I have no qualms with it having limited use for the secondary functions. I said this to them in my message to them. It just bothered me when it began to affect the flat +2 damage it gave me to unarmed strikes, which I use rarely as it is due to me using astral fists and what not as well as it never gave me any trouble before when they were used them incorrectly with my astral arms (this has since been fixed and I no longer add the damage to the astral fists.). This heated up the hot hand, so I used the cold hand instead and after using it about 2 times they gave me a warning that it was starting to go numb or cold or something, I can't remember the exact wording. I also wouldn't have as much of a problem or even have made this post in all honesty if they hadn't done the same thing with my other magic item which I only used once and it began to hurt. I spoke to them about this and they told me all their magic items have a cost, but other peoples don't seem to have one or the DM has not announced it as they have with me.

I'm a firm believer in the idea that the DM should publicly declare any standing rule changes before the start of a campaign or to any later additions before they join. Improvising in a odd situation that the rules don't really cover is one thing, but pre-set house rules are another. By and large, players expect the game to work as it says in the books unless told otherwise. 

Honestly, if my character's magic items starting causing problems to those degree he'd likely say "it's not worth it" and ditch them. And that's not fun for me. You've got to decide what's fun for you.

It's not uncommon for a DM to introduce a homebrew item, realize that they didn't balance it correctly, then inform the players that it will be functioning differently going forward. That said, a flat +2 elemental damage is a fairly mundane magical item. Let's compare it to Flame Tongue weapons, which are activated by a bonus action and deal and additional 2d6 fire damage to attacks. The "Cost" of doing so is that it requires attunement to equip and a bonus action to activate. Magic item prices vary wildly depending on who you ask, but Flame Tongue weapons are considered Rare and usually considered in the 5,000 GP range. I know your prices were probably a bit skewed because your DM realized they had given you all too much money and upped the prices on some fun items to make sure you could spend some of it, but these gloves just aren't powerful enough to seriously unbalance the game or to justify taking damage just to to use them. If your DM is going to change them to start dealing damage to you as well, they should make them more powerful in exchange.

I am likely going to ditch the few magical items I have at this point, I was thinking the same thing because I don't want something negative to happen with an item that I attuned to and do not want to deal with the negative consequences of using it or any other magical item as that may have some kind of cost which is not mentioned up front (unless of course the item is cursed, but I don't know much about those other than well, they're cursed and they're not super common.)

I wasn't really aware of how common/uncommon a +2 was to damage rolls, but considering another party member bought a +1 bow and that was fairly cheap I assumed that it couldn't be that expensive. That said, the thing that did draw me to it initially was all the utility it could do since we do not have a player who can use fire or ice. As you said changing how an item works if it is too powerful makes sense to me to put some new limitations on it if it broke the game, but I will say that utility wise so far my character has probably been the least useful of everyone even with the gloves, so I don't see how it unbalances the game either. I wouldn't even consider asking them to power up the gloves because at one point they asked if we had a back up character in place in case we died (it was a dire situation.) so the character I made was a rogue and we are level 9, so I asked if I could get the boots of elvenkind for advantage to stealth checks. They told me no, and that advantage is a very powerful thing. So, that's why I think powering the gloves up would be a no go.

Ask if you can trade the gloves for a +1 dagger. You lose the steam blast ability, but a +1 to damage and to-hit is statistically much more useful than +2 of the most commonly resisted damage types that also damages you if you use it too frequently. A dagger is a simple weapon so it would gain the benefits of your martial arts die.

Quote from TransmorpherDDS >>

It's not uncommon for a DM to introduce a homebrew item, realize that they didn't balance it correctly, then inform the players that it will be functioning differently going forward. That said, a flat +2 elemental damage is a fairly mundane magical item. Let's compare it to Flame Tongue weapons, which are activated by a bonus action and deal and additional 2d6 fire damage to attacks. The "Cost" of doing so is that it requires attunement to equip and a bonus action to activate. Magic item prices vary wildly depending on who you ask, but Flame Tongue weapons are considered Rare and usually considered in the 5,000 GP range. I know your prices were probably a bit skewed because your DM realized they had given you all too much money and upped the prices on some fun items to make sure you could spend some of it, but these gloves just aren't powerful enough to seriously unbalance the game or to justify taking damage just to to use them. If your DM is going to change them to start dealing damage to you as well, they should make them more powerful in exchange.

 I would put the hot and cold gloves more in line with the bracers of archery. Uncommon. Attunement. Prof in short bows and long bows and +2 flat damage.

The no attunement and other fluff would probably up it to Rare but its not gamebreaking in any way

Quote from Noxx89 >>

Quote from TransmorpherDDS >>

It's not uncommon for a DM to introduce a homebrew item, realize that they didn't balance it correctly, then inform the players that it will be functioning differently going forward. That said, a flat +2 elemental damage is a fairly mundane magical item. Let's compare it to Flame Tongue weapons, which are activated by a bonus action and deal and additional 2d6 fire damage to attacks. The "Cost" of doing so is that it requires attunement to equip and a bonus action to activate. Magic item prices vary wildly depending on who you ask, but Flame Tongue weapons are considered Rare and usually considered in the 5,000 GP range. I know your prices were probably a bit skewed because your DM realized they had given you all too much money and upped the prices on some fun items to make sure you could spend some of it, but these gloves just aren't powerful enough to seriously unbalance the game or to justify taking damage just to to use them. If your DM is going to change them to start dealing damage to you as well, they should make them more powerful in exchange.

 I would put the hot and cold gloves more in line with the bracers of archery. Uncommon. Attunement. Prof in short bows and long bows and +2 flat damage.

The no attunement and other fluff would probably up it to Rare but its not gamebreaking in any way

 I agree, but I wanted to compare it to FlameTongue weapons because that's another magical item that adds elemental damage to an attack and could reasonably be purchased for 10,000 GP, but it also doesn't deal damage to the player just for using it, despite adding substantially more damage to every hit when it's in use.

Quote from Noxx89 >>

Quote from TransmorpherDDS >>

It's not uncommon for a DM to introduce a homebrew item, realize that they didn't balance it correctly, then inform the players that it will be functioning differently going forward. That said, a flat +2 elemental damage is a fairly mundane magical item. Let's compare it to Flame Tongue weapons, which are activated by a bonus action and deal and additional 2d6 fire damage to attacks. The "Cost" of doing so is that it requires attunement to equip and a bonus action to activate. Magic item prices vary wildly depending on who you ask, but Flame Tongue weapons are considered Rare and usually considered in the 5,000 GP range. I know your prices were probably a bit skewed because your DM realized they had given you all too much money and upped the prices on some fun items to make sure you could spend some of it, but these gloves just aren't powerful enough to seriously unbalance the game or to justify taking damage just to to use them. If your DM is going to change them to start dealing damage to you as well, they should make them more powerful in exchange.

 I would put the hot and cold gloves more in line with the bracers of archery. Uncommon. Attunement. Prof in short bows and long bows and +2 flat damage.

The no attunement and other fluff would probably up it to Rare but its not gamebreaking in any way

 I didn't realize they initially didn't require attunement. I thought they did and I believe I asked the DM when I got them if they did and they said yes, so they are certainly attuned to me.