Q u o t e: a SHARED inventory among all your characters much like guild wars so we don't have to keep dropping stuff in other peoples games for easy trading between your characters.
This was in Torchlight, and it felt like a good idea when I started playing. In practice, though, it just butt-%@@@s the (already messed up) difficulty curve when your level 1 dudes have godly weapons and unlimited gems from your other characters.