Custom Items in Backstories

[BigBro359]

So one of my players is making this back story to his character, and the backstory involves his father being a blackguard, and hiding away some dragonbone armor. He intends to make his character's goal to find this dragonbone armor. Now, because this armor is magical, I can find a way to put it in the story, but the issue is, how do you make sure that it isn't OP. Obviously, I am reviewing it before it is put in the campaign, but I am also worried about the idea spreading. What do you do about characters with backstories involving artifacts and other magical objects? How do you manage them?

 

[Deimvune]

Hi,

As a DM, I always include custom content to my adventures. Custom magic items that will end up in the hands of the players, custom spell that they will discover, custom feat for warriors of a particular region, etc... In this way, I tend to give my world the game-content needed. And I would invite you to do the same, as long as the roleplay needs it, don't hesitate to implement new stuff (sparingly). It's a part of the DM's work. However, some knowledge about how to write stuff is necessary, there is some sort of nomenclature about how is written a feat, a spell, etc...

Don't worry about having all your players asking you for their special artifact, you don't have to always say yes. If they are wise enough, they'll understand that it would be non-sense. Otherwise, you'll have to be creative.

In your situation, your should write by yourself the dragonbone armor. Decide if it needs to be an artifact or an ordinary magical armor, but even in the second option, don't hesitate to write custom magical proprierties to fit with what your player wrote about (custom special material ?). The item hasn't to be exaclty what expected, because there's always that legend facts distortion.

I'll moderate my argument if the backstory of that character has absolutely nothing to do with the adventure. If it goes out of nowhere, you could ask your player to tone his background to better integrate the group and the adventure (most of the time it won't need much effort, and minor changes). Alternatively, you could integrate his item in your adventure's storyline. Secondary quest, or secondary goal. That NPC could know about the armor localisation, but he won't tell the character before they do this of that.

I would conclude by saying that characters with backstories are extra work, but it could be a source of inspiration (if sufficiently written).

I hope my point of view can be useful to you in any way.

Deimvune

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

What I do is benchmark any homemade/custom magic items against the ones in the books, to see where it sits in power level.

Is the player designing the magic armor's stats, or is that in your hands? If they ask for the moon, another thing you could do is have the additional abilities require more quests to unlock, so it grows with the PC in power.

 

[BigBro359]

Hi,

As a DM, I always include custom content to my adventures. Custom magic items that will end up in the hands of the players, custom spell that they will discover, custom feat for warriors of a particular region, etc... In this way, I tend to give my world the game-content needed. And I would invite you to do the same, as long as the roleplay needs it, don't hesitate to implement new stuff (sparingly). It's a part of the DM's work. However, some knowledge about how to write stuff is necessary, there is some sort of nomenclature about how is written a feat, a spell, etc...

Don't worry about having all your players asking you for their special artifact, you don't have to always say yes. If they are wise enough, they'll understand that it would be non-sense. Otherwise, you'll have to be creative.

In your situation, your should write by yourself the dragonbone armor. Decide if it needs to be an artifact or an ordinary magical armor, but even in the second option, don't hesitate to write custom magical proprierties to fit with what your player wrote about (custom special material ?). The item hasn't to be exaclty what expected, because there's always that legend facts distortion.

I'll moderate my argument if the backstory of that character has absolutely nothing to do with the adventure. If it goes out of nowhere, you could ask your player to tone his background to better integrate the group and the adventure (most of the time it won't need much effort, and minor changes). Alternatively, you could integrate his item in your adventure's storyline. Secondary quest, or secondary goal. That NPC could know about the armor localisation, but he won't tell the character before they do this of that.

I would conclude by saying that characters with backstories are extra work, but it could be a source of inspiration (if sufficiently written).

I hope my point of view can be useful to you in any way.

Deimvune

Thank you so much. What I plan to do now is let him write up his own depiction of this armor, but he has to give me the complete load out of the armor before the game starts, at which time I am going to go through and decide what stays and what goes.

His backstory actually did not take much to factor in to the plot of the story. I already told him that it is going to be very hard for him to find this armor.

As far as the armor goes, though, since I am making the goal of this campaign to gather various artifacts in order to end the war going on, It isn't hard at all to just factor in another Artifact.

 

[BigBro359]

What I do is benchmark any homemade/custom magic items against the ones in the books, to see where it sits in power level.

Is the player designing the magic armor's stats, or is that in your hands? If they ask for the moon, another thing you could do is have the additional abilities require more quests to unlock, so it grows with the PC in power.

He is designing the stats, but I told him that he has to give it to me to make edits.

 

[Celebrim]

So one of my players is making this back story to his character, and the backstory involves his father being a blackguard, and hiding away some dragonbone armor. He intends to make his character's goal to find this dragonbone armor. Now, because this armor is magical, I can find a way to put it in the story, but the issue is, how do you make sure that it isn't OP. Obviously, I am reviewing it before it is put in the campaign, but I am also worried about the idea spreading. What do you do about characters with backstories involving artifacts and other magical objects? How do you manage them?

I'm ok with having in your backstory that you are seeking to restore some lost heritage.

Characters are going to need equipment; it might as well be equipment that they care about and serves the story.

In the case of something like dragonbone armor, just arrange that they can't find it before they are appropriate level to have it. If the object is not a true artifact, one good way to handle an item of this sort is have abilities that are unlocked by various accomplishments or by gaining levels. For example, the armor might be +1 if you wear it before 7th level, then +2 from 7th to 13th level, then +3 at 14th level and +4 at 15th level. Or the armor might not be magical at all until you slay a mature dragon while wearing it.

In the case of an actual artifact, its very easy to devise drawbacks to the armor that make it a double edged sword. For example, in my current game one player has a minor artifact intelligent sword, that is vastly too powerful for a character of his level, but it loses its power unless he continually kills things with it, it causes him to go berserk whenever he's attacked (if he ever is threatened by another party member, it's will save or he'll attack the party), it refuses to let him use any other weapon (including his crossbow, even though he's a ranged focused character), and it generally makes a nuisance of itself.

In the case of a character wanting to start with an heirloom item, I make them spend a feat ('Heirloom') and usually treat it like a legacy weapon that powers up as they increase in level. In 'Order of the Stick', Rich Burlew does this to good effect with Roy's sword.

 

[Celebrim]

He is designing the stats, but I told him that he has to give it to me to make edits.

Nope. Not okay with that. You can imply you have an heirloom in your past, but its up to the DM to determine its exact nature. Make sure he understands that the armor may be nothing like he expects. This is particularly true if he is spending no character building resources on the item - no 'Heirloom' feat, etc.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Yeah, as much as I like player involvement, in my experience players choosing magic items rarely goes well in the long run. And for a custom magic item, that goes doubly. Suddenly you get things like a ring that lets them dual-wield two-handed weapons, or gives them the ability to hide in shadows automatically. Stuff that sounds powerful, but not too bad, but then ends up totally fun-destroying when combined with whatever build they came up with to support that exact set of powers.

On the other hand, I think it's perfectly fine for the player to say something like "The ancient dragonbone armor channels the frost power of the white dragon it was made from," and then as a DM decide what that means.

Nope. Not okay with that. You can imply you have an heirloom in your past, but its up to the DM to determine its exact nature. Make sure he understands that the armor may be nothing like he expects.

 

[BigBro359]

Yeah, as much as I like player involvement, in my experience players choosing magic items rarely goes well in the long run. And for a custom magic item, that goes doubly. Suddenly you get things like a ring that lets them dual-wield two-handed weapons, or gives them the ability to hide in shadows automatically. Stuff that sounds powerful, but not too bad, but then ends up totally fun-destroying when combined with whatever build they came up with to support that exact set of powers.

On the other hand, I think it's perfectly fine for the player to say something like "The ancient dragonbone armor channels the frost power of the white dragon it was made from," and then as a DM decide what that means.

Ok. That makes sense to me. Thank you for that advice. That shouldn't be too hard.

 

[BigBro359]

So what should I make the dragon bone armor do? The backstory I gave for his father is that his father was a blackguard, and the leader of an uprising. However, he was eventually fatally wounded in battle against the King, and limped off. His armor was legendary, but he disappeared after that battle with the armor. I already know where it is going to be hidden, but what do you think I should make it do?