Do you give your players the exotic treasure or force them to make it?

[Driddle]

Force. Always force.
They've got to remember who's boss at the table.

 

[Crothian]

Neither, they find what should be there. For instance for a long time the half giant found nothing that was of use to him. But now they are fighting actually giants they are finding things he can make use of, but there is really nothing there for anyone else. I don't place special treasure in places for character but at the same time I don't make it so it isn'th there. If the party hunts down Jim the famous Spiked Chain fighter, he's probably going to have a magical spiked chain.

 

[amethal]

If the party hunts down Jim the famous Spiked Chain fighter, he's probably going to have a magical spiked chain.

If it was me, he'd have 2 (one's his backup).

The party will have had the fun of spending months tracking down the only guy on the continent who has magical spiked chains, only to find nobody wants to buy the spare chain they took from him so its effectively valueless.

I guess I'm just mean.

 

[Shadowslayer]

My question, do you make treasure for players with exotic weapons rarer? Do you make the +3 frost nunchaku as common as its longsword brother...or would your players have to scower the land itself to find one?

Well, I wouldn't FORCE him to make it himself. That depends on how patient the player is to get it. The way I see it, if a player really, really wants it, he's just provided me an adventure hook, free of charge.

Then I'll go and design a quest or an adventure where the magic chain figures prominently. Then I'll tell the player OOC that it'll happen at a somewhat appropriate level.

What I wouldn't do is say "a +3 flaming spiked chain? You must be a munchkin!" (Munchkin being defined as "someone who's using the rules to push the boundaries of this little make believe world I have rolling around in my head.")

But thinking about it, how many people use a spiked chain, or any exotic weapon?

Bout the same number of people who fight Kobolds and Dragons on a regular basis. If one is plausible, the other certainly is. (I know some guys hate that argument, but its true.)

Trev

 

[genshou]

Why has no one touched on the fact that the DMG has a table for common melee weapons and a table for uncommon melee weapons? The odds of randomly rolling a spiked chain as treasure are not good.

 

[Ibram]

So why is doing it himself the hardest, when usually that's the easiest route to go if you can convince someone to spend almost all their feats on the item creation things? Is there a house rule involved?

by "make it himself" I ment to imply that the weapon would be made in party... and such feats have never been taken in the games i've run (Indeed, I reworked the charged items creation feats just to make them more appealing).

If I'm playing bob the fighter, and I cant talk the party wiz/cler into taking the feats (why would anyone take a feat that would be used once in a blue moon), then I have to splash into a caster class to do so... which detracts from my fighter progression.

 

[HeapThaumaturgist]

Oh my word. You had to make charged items BETTER to get people to use them?

I get misty eyed just thinking about item creation feats. For a handful of cash and less XP than I'd get punking an Orc and I've got a wand of True Strike? Yes please.

--fje

 

[genshou]

Oh my word. You had to make charged items BETTER to get people to use them?

I get misty eyed just thinking about item creation feats. For a handful of cash and less XP than I'd get punking an Orc and I've got a wand of True Strike? Yes please.

--fje

I agree with HeapThaumaturgist here. The item creation feats ARE good and useful; if your players aren't making good use of them then they're either stupid or just crunched for feats. Every full-progression spellcaster (even clerics) should pick up at least one item creation feat. Think a wizard is the only one who can make good use of a wand? Wait until your cleric makes a wand of bull's strength. Or worse yet, a wand of hold person...

 

[Finley DaDum]

In my current campaign, I have one player with a Hobgoblin Ranger who uses a 2-Bladed Sword, for the 1st five levels he had a magical Bastard Sword (Which he sometimes used 2 handed). Around that time they found an ancient door in the bowels of Sharn that spoke of a hobgoblin hero who had been entombed below 1000s of years ago. He researched the history and found he wielded a Two-Bladed sword, then convinced the rest of the party to help him in his quest and retreived the Blade after quite a few sessions.

So the answer is I probably would not have exotic weapons placed as treasure, but they would exist as major quest items. Frontline fighters who are the only ones who usually end up taking exotic weapons, end up with pretty unique and interesting magical weapons in my campaigns anyway though so this is pretty much par for the course.

 

[Staffan]

Or worse yet, a wand of hold person...

Wands tend to be pretty bad for offensive spells, since the save DC is the lowest possible. The wand of hold person would have a save DC of only 13.