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It seems like it stifles people doing things in game, meeting people they otherwise wouldn't have in a sort of metagaming way. Being skillfully persuasive or deceptive would apply as you said about the powerful helmet.  This was part of my issue that I didn't articulate in the first post. Character A would likely never visit the shop of Character B because Character A has OOC knowledge of the exact OOC stats of every item for sale.

Not my intent to be critical of anyone in specific, you are all interesting and good players, I do wonder if it's better without it. As I said, the knowledge system is convulted already due to NWN item idenfication.

I would mention that it seemed like factions get a lot of benefits, including free potions and gold and extra roleplay xp, from back in EFUM, not sure about now. If this is so like SC alludes to, i think it's unnecessary. The benefits of patrolling for criminals is a bounty on it's own, besides the wage. Up to you IC i'd say what to do, then again I wouldn't be against more content, just saying I don't feel factions should get much more powerful perks. I also understand likable concepts tend to get recruited by others or find their way to something interesting, not bearing a grudge against them, just saying. It might be a cause of towards a pattern of "potion drinking contests" that often happens, as a side note, just my thoughts. Not trying to deviate too far off topic.

It would be more interesting if people would explain items or just handle this all IC. I don't see the reason for the OOC descriptions when IC descriptions would be more interesting to read.

Seems like it could be kind of metagaming around the Lore, Spellcraft and Appraise skills as well, should your character not know any of these things. I've seen lots of people do this. I'd wonder if people would rather all together forbid this because of that. Hypothetically I imagine my character with low knowledge skills not really knowing what certain things do without having it explained to him by someone else that does.

Maybe I'm wrong about this second paragraph, perhaps we just assume after something is identified it would imply that the identifier explained it, though this happens infrequently, so overall it's best to just ignore it due to the limitations in game.