D&D 3E/3.5 3.0-->3.5 module, magic items resizing

[Duncan Haldane]

Hi,

Just after some suggestions.
I'm running a group through Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil (RttToEE).
When we started we were in 3.0.

Now I'm running using the 3.5 rules.

One player (his character a goblin after re-incarnation) has complained that magic armour and weapons are not marked as to their size, since previously they could resize and now they can't.

I take his point, and I see why it seems unfair. So I'm just wondering about suggestions of how to handle this.

Firstly, I would think that if the item is in someone's equipment then their size determines the item's size. But that doesn't help with found items.

Should I roll randomly for the size of items? If so, what percentages should I use? 20% is small, for instance?

A suggestion made by my players was to have the wizard of the group create a spell to resize items. We looked at Polymorph any object, but that didn't really seem to do it, because it was too broad.

What would you do in your game?

Thanks,

Duncan

 

[Seravin]

Hi,

Just after some suggestions.
I'm running a group through Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil (RttToEE).
When we started we were in 3.0.

Now I'm running using the 3.5 rules.

One player (his character a goblin after re-incarnation) has complained that magic armour and weapons are not marked as to their size, since previously they could resize and now they can't.

I take his point, and I see why it seems unfair. So I'm just wondering about suggestions of how to handle this.

Firstly, I would think that if the item is in someone's equipment then their size determines the item's size. But that doesn't help with found items.

Should I roll randomly for the size of items? If so, what percentages should I use? 20% is small, for instance?

A suggestion made by my players was to have the wizard of the group create a spell to resize items. We looked at Polymorph any object, but that didn't really seem to do it, because it was too broad.

What would you do in your game?

Thanks,

Duncan

As you say, if someone is already using/wearing the equipment that automatically determines the size.

If the item was found I'd check the write-up for clues (like it was in someone's foot locker or hidden by a dwarf before he died) and take my cue from there.

If there was still some ambiguity I'd just assume a default of medium size. If my group included some small characters who could use armor I'd probably use a flat 50-50 to see if the item in question was small or medium.

As for the conversion treating characters unfairly, I can't say that I agree. If I were a player I'd agree that I wouldn't like it, but not every dungeon caters to every player.

As a DM who has run at least part of the module I'd make sure that the players had some downtime to trade for more useful items. Verbobonc isn't that far away and should provide for most of their needs if they plan ahead a bit.

 

[the Jester]

I believe the DMG has guidelines for determining the size of magical treasure when it matters- iirc it's 20% small, 75% large, 5% other (or maybe I made up that 'other' bit, but it should really be there somewhere).

 

[Whisper72]

DMG 3.5, p213, bottom right of page:

'Armor and weapons that are found at random have a 30% chance of being small, 60% chance of being medium and a 10% chance of being any size of DM's choice'

Key phrase here is 'found at random', elsewise, the suggestion to take clues from where you found it and descriptive texts as to who it belonged to and their sizes should be looked at first.

 

[Duncan Haldane]

thanks all.

I'll check the relevant section of the DMG.

Seravin, you are right that Verbobonc isn't far away - especially since the mage reached 9th level and got Teleport

I'm not quite sure why this was moved to rules, as I asked for suggestions on how DMs here would handle it, rather than a rule from the DMG.

Thanks,

Duncan