Equipping High Level Characters

[cimbrog]

I'm sending another group into Rappan Athuk soon and want them all to be new 8th level characters. Its been my experience than making high level characters takes forever and a day. I'd like to be able to speed up the choosing of equipment part - going shopping with thousands of GP just takes too long, especially with a group that isn't too good with the rules. Can anyone suggest a quicker alternative to the method presented in the DMG?

 

[Pax]

Unearthed Arcana - use the Background rules, to build a "suggested shopping list" of item types.

Or, as a GM, YOU do the items - come up with a set of basic packages, like "the standard warrior package has a single +1 weapon of your choice, a suit of +2 armor, a +1 shield [...] and 4,000gp to customise stuff with". That sort of thing.

 

[Hypersmurf]

Heh. I'm going to be no help at all, because I'm going to suggest a method that actually involves more work for the DM

But one of the most interesting high-level character generations I've been involved with was for a group of 10th level characters. We submitted a 'wish list' to the DM of the magic items we'd like, of approximately the expense dictated by Wealth guidelines (though it wasn't important to be exact), with some rankings of how vital we considered them.

The DM took the lists away, and returned slightly different lists.

Some items were gone. For example, I didn't get my Bracers of Archery

Some items were different - the +1 Battleaxe I requested came back a +1 Spell-Storing Battleaxe.

Some items were the sort of thing a character might have picked up over the years, but woud probably never put on a shopping list - like Boots of the Winterlands.

And there were a couple of interesting touches we wouldn't have thought of - like an everfull quiver of masterwork arrows.

Getting the list back was a little like opening presents at Christmas... you'd dropped hints to your parents that you really wanted an Optimus Prime, so you were pretty sure that would be in your stocking... but you didn't really know what else might turn up...

It was great

-Hyp.

 

[Darklone]

Last time I did something like that, I just spend some hours rolling on the treasure tables and gave the PCs a pile of magic items to distribute them

And I added one additional edge and flaw to each weapon... but that's another story.

PCs were allowed to sell/buy some particular items (sell for half price), but nothing too special.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Heh. I'm going to be no help at all, because I'm going to suggest a method that actually involves more work for the DM

This is what I always do - it has some additional benefits

a) no twinked out combinations (not likely in your current situation I know)
b) a mix of lower and more high powered equipment to reflect the stuff they will have accumulated as they grew in level.

Plus you can give them one or two pretty useless things that might turn out to be surprisingly useful during the adventure

 

[Darklone]

Another possibility: Give all the PCs the Vow of Poverty

 

[Li Shenron]

I'm sending another group into Rappan Athuk soon and want them all to be new 8th level characters. Its been my experience than making high level characters takes forever and a day. I'd like to be able to speed up the choosing of equipment part - going shopping with thousands of GP just takes too long, especially with a group that isn't too good with the rules. Can anyone suggest a quicker alternative to the method presented in the DMG?

As a minor aid you can make small cards (on pieces of white or colored cardboard for example) of the most common magic items, using wildcards. With wildcards I mean that you will have a card for +1 weapon and you will be able to choose freely which weapon, you don't need a different card for each +1 weapon.

It takes the DM 2-3 hours to write a few dozen cards, each of which doesn't need to bear the whole explanation, just the name and a clearly visible price, plus notes if you wish.

I have done this as a player (which is much easier because you don't need to care about multiple copies) so that if I have to plan a new PC, I take out my set of cards, and pick from them a basic selection, such as one +3 weapon / one +2 armor / a +4 stat enhancing item ... After picking up the ones that form the base idea for the PC, I "spend" the remaining money by picking others.

When you pick the cards, you can arrange them in order of "body slot" so that you see which spaces you have left

 

[Bauglir]

Something else that makes things handy is that many of the standard magic items follow a fairly simple pricing formula:

Magic Weapons = bonus squared * 2000
Magic Armour = bonus squared * 1000
Stat boosting items = bonus squared * 1000
Cloaks of Resistance = bonus squared * 1000
etc..

This saves you having to look anything up when pricing these items..

A +2 sword - that's 2x2 x 2000 or 8000gp (technically a little higher due to the base cost of the weapon itself but it's unlikely to be game breaking to disregard this)

 

[dcollins]

How about this, have them use Sean K. Reynolds gear generator spreadsheet. It's for 3.0 and you'll need to fill in PC-specific gear amounts (should be all the same for you), and it will help them get started by just pushing buttons.

 

[Li Shenron]

How about this, have them use Sean K. Reynolds gear generator spreadsheet. It's for 3.0 and you'll need to fill in PC-specific gear amounts (should be all the same for you), and it will help them get started by just pushing buttons.

9400 only at 9th level?