How do You Handle the Big 6?

[Agannazar]

Man, playing a Fighter must be fun in your games.

Random magic items can be sold for gold and then spent on appropriate magic items.

 

[Dandu]

Random magic items can be sold for gold and then spent on appropriate magic items.

think of your players like a child in a super market

they see what they want (candy, +5 vorpal longsword, a puppy, staff of fire, ect. ect.) and they whine about it until you give it to them right?

if you give it to them, it means THAT works and theyll continue to do just than and then you have low level characters with high powered items


so, what do you do?
random magic items, USE THEM CHARTS BOY!

 

[kitcik]

You generally need some balance between ability to buy/sell and the complete Magic Mart.

If you have the complete Mart, that is fine for some campaigns, although I personally don't like it for RP reasons.

If you have NO Mart, that is probably bad. Here's why:
1) In your game, who cares about gold? OK, you need a horse and whatnot, but wealth is useless b/c nobody sill sell you good stuff for it.
2) What do you do with your +1 Longsword when a +2 drops? You will have a caravan of low-level magic items, but no ability to sell them b/c they are "more valuable than any amount of gold." Except that they are useles...
3) You better be darn good at somehow having the enemies drop items fairly based on the party composition, otherwise you will have a grumpy player or 2.

 

[Dandu]

The fighter who takes Weapon Focus and Specialization in the Bastard Sword is going to be miffed when a +2 Viscious Handaxe is the only weapon that comes his way after defeating the head cultist.

 

[Alexander123]

An economics lesson:

The equilibrium price of a good is the price at which any buyer willing to pay that price can get this good and any seller willing to sell at this price can find a buyer.

The solution to this is to say that the prices in the DMG are the equilibrium price of the good and allow the market to work. Of course since these goods and services have to be made by someone, a custom order is required for the goods for which there is very little demand (the higher level goods) and some waiting time is required. Otherwise I see nothing wrong with having a market for magical items.

 

[Alexander123]

The issue with random magic items is that the D&D system was not designed for such a thing.

There have been games who have successfuly pulled off such a system such as Diablo 2 but a system of random magic items in D&D would be a colossal failure.

 

[Gilladian]

I guess I fall in the middle somewhere...

I hate the idea of pre-selected loot tailored exactly to what each PC needs; however, since I'll be running e6 next campaign, so PCs will never get "godly" powerful, they won't need tons and tons of magic items, either.

I'm planning to be fairly generous with potions, scrolls, wands and minor wondrous items; even minor magic weapons and armor will not be too hard to come by, via swapping with traveling merchants, commissioning items, making requests from the local merchant, etc...

More powerful items (ie +2 weapons and armor, rings and moderate powered wondrous items) will either be unique items found in the hands of NPCs and have to be won/purchased/stolen, or will be crafted for PCs as rewards for specific quests. For example, there's a crafter-wizard in the campaign who has stated that she desires to establish herself in business in this town, but lacks capitol to do so. If the PCs bankroll her, she can become their own source of many custom items. Then again, she does have this strange snake tattoo on her wrist...

It'll be fun to see what happens.

I've NEVER thought PCs HAD to have the "big six". It's up to you as DM to balance the challenges the PCs face to what they have as items. If they lack +3 weapons, then be judicious in the monsters they face. It really is your campaign to run the way you want to run it.

 

[Dandu]

I've NEVER thought PCs HAD to have the "big six". It's up to you as DM to balance the challenges the PCs face to what they have as items. If they lack +3 weapons, then be judicious in the monsters they face. It really is your campaign to run the way you want to run it.

A fighter at level 10 with a +1 weapon will probably have to fight CR 8 or lower enemies (who do not fly) for them to be appropriately challenging. A wizard at level 10 could conceivably cast Black Tentacles and cripple the same encounter.

This is going to be a problem in terms of balance in low wealth games.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

An economics lesson:

The equilibrium price of a good is the price at which any buyer willing to pay that price can get this good and any seller willing to sell at this price can find a buyer.

The solution to this is to say that the prices in the DMG are the equilibrium price of the good and allow the market to work. Of course since these goods and services have to be made by someone, a custom order is required for the goods for which there is very little demand (the higher level goods) and some waiting time is required. Otherwise I see nothing wrong with having a market for magical items.

Agreed 100%.

And the other thing is, just because its available on some list in a book at X price, doesn't mean its available at this store at this time for X price.

I've been in towns where I can't even get stuff off of mundane equipment lists without spending extra cash to have it imported especially for me or having the local craftsmen do one for me custom.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

A fighter at level 10 with a +1 weapon will probably have to fight CR 8 or lower enemies (who do not fly) for them to be appropriately challenging. A wizard at level 10 could conceivably cast Black Tentacles and cripple the same encounter.

This is going to be a problem in terms of balance in low wealth games.

If you want to, the same kind of scarcity applied to material goods can be applied to spells as well.

In earlier editions of D&D, the contents of a Wizard's first spellbook were determined randomly from a short list of spells. And even though they learned a certain number of spells automatically, those, too, were determined somewhat randomly* by the player having to roll to see if his PC had successfully learned it or not. The only spells a Wizard could choose from freely were those he found over the course of his career as an adventurer, on scrolls and in books.

What this does is it reduces the probability that every spellcaster knows the exact same spells...including the "game-breakers."

As for a non-Meta reason to do so, I've always thought of it thus: the automatically learned spells represent the bits & pieces of study the caster has been toting around while living his life as an adventurer. Even though he may be studying more fervently his research notes on Black Tentacles, it may be that he had an epiphany studying Charm Monster instead- he just "got it."






* Whether this was a HR or not, I don't recall at the moment.