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

[Stalker0]

You know the player, he's got his exotic spike chain with weapon spec, focus, improved crit and all the goodies.

But thinking about it, how many people use a spiked chain, or any exotic weapon? Now how many of those spiked chains out there are enchanted? Now have of the enchanted ones are REALLY enchanted?

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?

 

[Slife]

With spiked chain uber builds, definately make them make it or search hard. It's exotic for a reason.

And if they just try attaching spikes to a normal chain, give it -1/-1. It has to be specially made.

 

[VirgilCaine]

They'd have to scour pretty hard, considering nunchaku are a recent invention of the 20th century.

As for the other exotic weapons, it's usually just easier to find someone to make it for you or make it yourself.

 

[CyberSpyder]

With spiked chain uber builds, definately make them make it or search hard. It's exotic for a reason.

And if they just try attaching spikes to a normal chain, give it -1/-1. It has to be specially made.

...you mean, if they find that +3 Holy Flaming ordinary chain, and decide to put the spikes on by themself?

 

[Hammerhead]

I look at it this way: who uses a spiked chain? Does the ordinary grunt Warrior 1 use one? No, he uses a longsword or something. But the high level deathkillers are going to love them. And only high level people get enchanted weapons. So even if the spiked chain is only like the .1% in the field of all weapons, it's much higher when it comes to enchanted weapons.

 

[WayneLigon]

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?

They'd go to one of the really large cities, find a competant artificer, and have him make one.

 

[EdL]

They'd have to scour pretty hard, considering nunchaku are a recent invention of the 20th century.

? Nunchaku are simple, one handed grain flails. Been around for a long time. (Albeit the modern weapon is a bit different, with both ends being the same length.)

 

[Graybeard]

None of my players are using exotic weapons. However, if they did, I would have them scour the land for an enchanted one or, pay someone to enchant it for them. If they had a spiked chain (not allowed in my game anyway), they would have to find an area that uses those weapons everyday just as a medieval society would use longswords, shortswords, etc. Then they could either buy an enchanted one or, have someone enchant it for normal price. Otherwise I would make them pay 1 1/2 times the price for enchanting an exotic weapon. Your campaign may vary, of course.

 

[Chimera]

An exotic weapon like that isn't just found lying around in a weapons shop in the first place.

A twinked out magic version of the same is so rare as to be completely unavailable.

If the players did a lot of searching and information gathering (and I mean A LOT, not just "ok, I'm looking for rumors of one"), I *might* have them pick up information about Gunar the Evil Chain Master in far off Zinn who has a special ultra-twinky chain. But then again, such rumors are just as likely to be baseless or less than true. They won't know until they find Gunar of Zinn that his chain is merely Mithril +1, or that the real Gunar is a master blacksmith who makes anchor chains.

Bottom line is that anything both exotic *and* twinked out is going to have to be specially made and that isn't going to be done by just anyone.

 

[lukelightning]

I give magic items out to match the characters. Yeah yeah yeah, it's not "realistic" but I'd rather just give out a magic spiked chain rather than a bunch of +1 longswords which they have to sell and then hire someone to make a chain. Every time I've seen a DM make specialized magic items such as magic exotic weapons rare, they've also made it incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to find "ye Olde Magik Shoppe" or someone to make it.

I don't understand why so many people want to punish a player for choosing a weapon other than a longsword. So what if a player is an uber-spiked-chain wielder? Do you have a grudge against him? He probably spent a bunch of feats to do this, don't make it any harder.

I'm not saying you should just give these things out for free, but treasure is a reward and if you are rewarding some players (boring old sword-and-board fighters and wizards) more than others, you are doing something wrong.

It's easy to make players happy and keep "realism" at the same time. So you're running "Revenge of the Tabernacle of Elementary Evil" and there's a player who wants a magic spiked chain, preferably shocking and holy? Well just say "you've heard legends of the magic Lash of Heavens, a mighty chain weilded by celestials against the forces of evil, last known to have been weilded by a hero who was raiding the temple" and stick the chain somewhere in there.