D&D 5E Awarding One Magic Weapon only to each player in a campaign

[Enevhar Aldarion]

I don't know, IMO a +1 weapon is always ordinary, always generic, always tossable, never special and never worth questing for. It doesn't matter how many special features you add to it, it will never really amaze me. If anything it becomes ten times better the moment you drop the +1. 5% extra chance to hit is something only a powergamer would salivate over. To me, it is underwhelming, dull, and a waste of time.

The +1 was important up until 5E because it signified that the weapon could injure creatures only hurt by magic weapons. But 5E changed that so that any magic weapon, whether it had any pluses or not, would hurt creatures resistant or immune to normal damage. So that opens up the creation of all sorts of wacky and different magic weapons that are still functional in battle.

As for the OP, while I tired of 3.X, Pathfinder, and Pathfinder Society play a long time ago, one thing that stuck with me is how you can upgrade magic weapons and armor in Society play. Once you have a magic weapon or armor, you could pay to have the magic in the item upgraded to a higher plus or to have the properties of other already existing magic items added to it. So a player could take his character's +1 sword and upgrade it to +2, add qualities to it like flaming or frost or keen, etc for the cost of gold. Of course, with the standard restrictions in 5E rules for buying magic items, this could be handled in other ways, such as questing for the mage/smith who will be upgrading your weapon or armor.

 

[Afrodactyl]

I have a magic trinket salesman in my games, but he only sells very minor magic items, on par with the common ones from Xanathars. He occasionally might sell something rarer if it's still low level rarity and something that a player specifically needs, at which time he will make it to order over the space of a week or two depending on what it is.

Other magic items; my players have to work for them and typically get them from bosses or treasure troves, and even then they're not hugely powerful items. If my players are getting powerful items, they come with drawbacks.

I don't really play over tenth level though, so the power levels are lower

 

[Li Shenron]

Is this how you do it? Or are weapons replaced more in your games?

I haven't gone that far yet, and currently our campaign is made of a series of older- edition adventures converted to 5e, so my way of dealing with magic items at the moment is to just give whatever items are featured in those adventures. If a 5e version of the item exists in the DMG, they get the 5e version, otherwise they get the original version with possibly some adjustments to the 5e rules.

However, I am always using the 5e versions of monsters and NPCs instead of the adventures originals, so there aren't many magic weapons to take directly from them. IMHO not having every NPC with magic weapons after a certain level is a huge liberation.

I do not like the idea of PCs getting rid of older magic weapons, and I do not generally feature a market for magic items (these are presumably part of my general dislike of "magic as technology"). So something I usually have in mind in all my campaigns is to end up having magic items develop gradually i.e. new abilities appear and old abilities improve over time, possibly with some ties to the adventures (classic trope: use your +1 sword to deliver the killing blow to a red dragon, and the sword becomes a flaming +1 sword), although I usually never get that much far into any campaign to see this idea really blossom.

 

[MerricB]

I did play a lot with Weapons of Legacy back during the late 3.5E days. Some of the magic items I created were tremendously overpowered, but a lot of fun.

Consider an intelligent ring that shoots scorching rays *itself* without need for the player to act... which also had other powers.

I don't think I need to go that far, though. The real trick is to make things relevant to the players on an ongoing basis.

Cheers!

 

[Coroc]

Hm how do i do it? For my Ravenloft campaign the fighter did get a Kind of flametongue doing 1d6 +1 andd 1d6 fire or so, and the barbarian a hammer of moradin which did 2d8+2 1d8 Radiant.
The Player of the sorcerer complained that he thinks this is to much damage Output for the Level. The Players had these weapons from Level 5 and 6 to Level 10
when the campaign did end.

For my current greyhawk campaign the (dex) fighter and the rogue have gotten +1 Rapiers so far. the Paladin does have a 2 handed 2headed flail doing 2d4+1 reach 10'. The flail was the weapon of an enemy they killed at third or fourth Level and the Rapiers were quest rewards which they could select (any given +1 weapon or armor). Nothing is going out of Balance with These weapons, in retrospect there is only one item which i regret a bit to have handed out, an elven chainmail (AC16 no Dex limiter) which boosts the rogues armor class to 21 (houserule of mine in effect the rogue uses a main gauche boosting his AC by 1)
The Group is Level 5 so far, and since i intend to get the campaign far into the double Digits these will probably not be the last Magic weapons the Group might see. I Limit things by realistic encumbrance though, meaning no one is running around with 2 heavy weapons strapped to their shoulder. It is one Long weapon one medium wepon and some daggers, and reach melee weapons must be carried in the Hand.

 

[Ancalagon]

I think it's ok if magical weapons are rare, as long as the ones without magical weapons get something else, and at higher level the reverse.

So a level 5 fighter could find a +1 sword that can shed light (always use the quirks table folks!) and his barbarian friend would get a cloak of protection. At level 15 the fighter is still using his trusty magical sword, but he's also found a ring of the shooting start. Meanwhile, the barbarian is still relying on his magical cloak, but he also has a frostbrand.

etc etc

 

[guachi]

The lack of need for magic items in general has certainly pushed me to think harder about what magic items to have as treasure/rewards.

Regarding weapons, I've also gone the route of +0 items with something interesting. Though I've found you don't have to add too much to make the players interested in an item. One old module I ran had a mace +1/+2 vs. undead that was in an old crypt to some important priest. The fact that it was +2 vs. undead (and I added that it prevented zombies from getting back up. PCs liked that one) and was bejeweled were enough for them. I even found a picture of a fancy sceptre online and printed it. Having a picture inspired them to call it the "pimp mace" and no matter that is was far more valuable as a bejeweled sceptre of an ancient civilization than it was as a weapon they never did get rid of it.