Magic Items in Pyramid of Shadows

Merifluous · Jan 2, 2009

I am looking through Pyramid of Shadows in prep to run it for my 4e game. This is the first of the pre-published modules I have ran for 4e, and I was looking through the module to see what magic items were given out, and it seems like it is very light on the expected items.

The adventure is supposed to run through levels 7-10, so according to the treasure parcels in the DMG, I should expect to see 12-16 magic items in the adventure ranging in levels from 8 to 14. I see 8 items (1 level 8, 2 level 10s, 2 level 11s, 3 level 12s) but they do not seem to come close to matching the distribution I expect (ie, level+1, Level+2, level+3, Level+4 for each level 7-10).

I expect a couple of these would be off because I doubt the adventure goes all the way through 10 (I assume it just gets the PCs to 10), but this seems way off. I can correct it myself, but is there something I am missing here? Is the adventure intentionally shorting items? Have I misunderstood the rules for doling out items?

Obryn · Jan 2, 2009

This is actually pretty endemic for all three of the H-series modules, near as I can tell. I'm correcting it on an ad hoc basis.

-O

evilgenius8000 · Jan 2, 2009

Does anyone know if Scepter Tower of Spellgard suffers this problem? I might have to take a deeper look to make sure, as I just started running it for my group.

James McMurray · Jan 2, 2009

Is there an excess of gold to compensate? Perhaps they're expecting the party to craft more items.

Obryn · Jan 2, 2009

James McMurray said:
Is there an excess of gold to compensate? Perhaps they're expecting the party to craft more items.

Not that I've found in H1 and H2.

-O

LittleFuzzy · Jan 2, 2009

In my group, three of us are DMing, and we've been trading the task off at the end of each module. I noticed, as a player, that magic was light at the end of KotS and the DM made an adjustment to bring us closer with our quest reward from Lord Padraig. I've been running Thunderspire and redid the treasure from the beginning. The number of items was right, but they weren't high enough in level. There was more monetary treasure than standard, but I don't think it was large enough to cover the extra cost from the more powerful item-levels which had been omitted. I know the next DM has also redone the treasure distribution for Pyramid.

ForbidenMaster · Jan 3, 2009

LittleFuzzy said:
In my group, three of us are DMing, and we've been trading the task off at the end of each module. I noticed, as a player, that magic was light at the end of KotS and the DM made an adjustment to bring us closer with our quest reward from Lord Padraig. I've been running Thunderspire and redid the treasure from the beginning. The number of items was right, but they weren't high enough in level. There was more monetary treasure than standard, but I don't think it was large enough to cover the extra cost from the more powerful item-levels which had been omitted. I know the next DM has also redone the treasure distribution for Pyramid.

Im running KOTS right now, and it seems like instead of magic items of lvl+1, lvl+2, lvl+3, lvl+4, its lvl-1, lvl+0, lvl+1, lvl+2. In addition you get 1,268.70 more gold then what you should normally get from levels 1-3. I havent found it to be much of a problem so far. I had to change the treasure anyways because there are only 4 PCs in my party and the treasure doesnt fit well the the makeup of the party. As for the gold, they havent had time to spend it, and instead of just lowering how much gold they actually get, I am probably just going to make items that they buy in Winterhaven and later in the Seven Pillard Hall cost slightly more then normal until the cost ballance levels out.

chitzk0i · Jan 3, 2009

With KotS it's understandable that the items could be off; after all, it was written before the rules were fully finalized. It's conceivable that the mod made it out the door while they had a previous version of the treasure tables, or didn't get updated with the guidelines in the DMG or something. But the treasure's been weird in all of them.

It almost seems like they intended to add some notes that say, "DM: add a magic item here of level X, Y, or Z that your party can use."

Also, the Transfer Enchantment ritual really helped our party in Keep on the Shadowfell. We got to save a ton of money by switching around the enchantments on weapons we couldn't use.

Regicide · Jan 3, 2009

Maybe all the modules are right and the DMG is wrong?

Bolongo · Jan 3, 2009

Obryn said:
Not that I've found in H1 and H2.

-O

James McMurray said:
Is there an excess of gold to compensate? Perhaps they're expecting the party to craft more items.

As was noted, all of the H series, 1-3, are deficient in both magic items and cash rewards. I've been adding more items to them in the planning stages, but it was only recently that I could be bothered to calculate the amount of gold and noticed that they were short on money too.

But if you go on to the P series this will be (somewhat) rectified. P1 is pretty good about the items - there's 12 of them, exactly as there should be, though the levels are slightly low. But it more than compensates with a veritable flood of platinum pieces. I calculated the total value of the loot as 262.950 gp - to be compared with the 78.000 gp the DMG suggests.

In P2 it's back to the lean diet, though. 11 items vs. the target of 16, and 121.400 gp vs. a target of 312.000 gp.

Wizards really doesn't seem to check this stuff at all, do they?