D&D General Experience Points & Leveling: A Brief Primer on XP in the 1e DMG, and Why It Still Matters

[Alzrius]

So if a PC is carrying a party-owned item and wanders off with it the party loses it?

Yeah, that'd never fly round here - they'd move heaven and earth to track that character down and get the item back (and depending on how things shook down in the process, they may or may not pay the character his-her share for it).

Which is, in fact, an offshoot of the Dungeon Master's Secret Weapon (NSFW for language):

 

[Lanefan]

There is a vast ocean of fiction in which the objects of desire, or pinnacle or incredibly serendipitous tools find their way into the hero's hands over the course of their hero's journey.

Rey found a conveniently placed lightsaber at just the time she needed one. Funnily enough the same as Luke did. Multiple hobbits ended up with magical weapons that conveniently were sized for them.

It's a common trope, to find the relics that fit your story,

And in almost every case where this trope is used, I quickly see through it and find it very artificial.

In a more crunchy vein, if a character devotes resources to be good at some weapon in particular then you are going to have to pick between....

A: Everyone specializes in longswords, which is a statistical choice ending in sameyness.

B: Some character specializes in a kukri and they retire at 20th level never having found a kukri (because it's not native to Fantasy Europe) so they use a longsword anyway because a +3 longsword is better than a plain old kukri.

C: You let the players buy customized weapons.

D: You make an adventure where the bad guy might have a Holy Avenging Kukri I the fiction to throw a bone to the kukri choosing player.

Or E: having weapons other than longsword come up reasonably often in the randomized item tables. Sure some weapons should be more common than others; but any of longsword, shortsword, mace, dagger, battleaxe, spear, and maybe war hammer and-or crossbow should be reasonably easy to find relative to less-common weapons.

But yes, IMO if someone's going to have their PC specialize in a weapon nobody else in this part of the setting world has ever heard of there's no cause for complaint if magic versions of said weapon are about as common as rooster's eggs.

I'm not sure why a GM wouldn't want to include player character stated goals into their story arcs.

EDIT to add: I never assume any one character is going to last long enough to build a story around it; and by the time it has lasted long enough it's probably too late to build that story anyway.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

And in almost every case where this trope is used, I quickly see through it and find it very artificial.

Or E: having weapons other than longsword come up reasonably often in the randomized item tables. Sure some weapons should be more common than others; but any of longsword, shortsword, mace, dagger, battleaxe, spear, and maybe war hammer and-or crossbow should be reasonably easy to find relative to less-common weapons.

But yes, IMO if someone's going to have their PC specialize in a weapon nobody else in this part of the setting world has ever heard of there's no cause for complaint if magic versions of said weapon are about as common as rooster's eggs.

EDIT to add: I never assume any one character is going to last long enough to build a story around it; and by the time it has lasted long enough it's probably too late to build that story anyway.

Once again we arrive at the idea that different campaigns work in different ways with different assumptions. You view your campaign as a preset diorama that the PCs can explore and interact with, but in which wasn't developed reactive to the players developmental input.

I run my game as a bare bones of a world history (with details made up as needed), a collection of different groups with their own motivations, and with vast blank spaces on the canvas that reacts to what the players are interested in exploring. The only reason my world would have a major villain who owned a Holy Avenging Kukri would be that I had a player with a character who focused on kukri for whatever reason.

If in Universe Y that same player has a character focused on a lance....well then there is going to be a bad guy show up that uses a lance. My world warps around the choices and desires of the players.

 

[Hussar]

The problem with relying on random is that you get cookie cutter characters. In adnd I would not dream of playing a fighter that didn’t focus on either bows or long swords.

Because that’s the most common treasure found. So of course every character uses the same weapons.

 

[Lanefan]

The problem with relying on random is that you get cookie cutter characters. In adnd I would not dream of playing a fighter that didn’t focus on either bows or long swords.

Because that’s the most common treasure found. So of course every character uses the same weapons.

Until-unless you tweak up the random tables a bit...

 

[Hussar]

Until-unless you tweak up the random tables a bit...

But then there is no point in specializing. everyone becomes a generic generalist. Same result. There is a very good reason WotC D&D allows players to choose their magic items to some degree. It allows players to have some input into what their character will look like in the future instead of being 100% dependent on the DM.

Perfect example. In a recent Dragonlance campaign, my character, a fighter, was a mason by trade and and a peasant hero by background. I gave him a warhammer since that was the closest thing to a sledgehammer which I figured that a peasant mason would likely know how to use.

Few levels in, I get a magic dragonslayer longsword (it IS a Dragonlance campaign after all). So, away goes the warhammer, and I use the longsword for the rest of this character's career. Because, well, I'm not about to toss away the most effective weapon I could possibly have just to keep using the warhammer.

But, my point is, I had to choose between my character concept and the reality of the campaign which was that I would have never had a magic weapon at all if I stayed true to concept.

 

[Lanefan]

But then there is no point in specializing. everyone becomes a generic generalist. Same result. There is a very good reason WotC D&D allows players to choose their magic items to some degree. It allows players to have some input into what their character will look like in the future instead of being 100% dependent on the DM.

Perfect example. In a recent Dragonlance campaign, my character, a fighter, was a mason by trade and and a peasant hero by background. I gave him a warhammer since that was the closest thing to a sledgehammer which I figured that a peasant mason would likely know how to use.

Few levels in, I get a magic dragonslayer longsword (it IS a Dragonlance campaign after all). So, away goes the warhammer, and I use the longsword for the rest of this character's career. Because, well, I'm not about to toss away the most effective weapon I could possibly have just to keep using the warhammer.

But, my point is, I had to choose between my character concept and the reality of the campaign which was that I would have never had a magic weapon at all if I stayed true to concept.

Was the DM generating weapons using a random table, do you know?

War hammer is - or should be - a common enough weapon that magic ones would be, if not thick on the ground, certainly not unheard of. (says he, currently running a homebrew module a key element of which is finding a very powerful war hammer )

Specializing is great but it does come with a known risk, that being that what you specialize in either doesn't fit with what the party's doing or doesn't fit with what you later find.

 

[Hussar]

Was the DM generating weapons using a random table, do you know?

War hammer is - or should be - a common enough weapon that magic ones would be, if not thick on the ground, certainly not unheard of. (says he, currently running a homebrew module a key element of which is finding a very powerful war hammer )

Specializing is great but it does come with a known risk, that being that what you specialize in either doesn't fit with what the party's doing or doesn't fit with what you later find.

Sure, and certainly you can specialize yourself into a corner. Fair enough. But, I mean, a warhammer? Doesn't seem like too specialized. Of course, 5e doesn't let you dive down the niche hole quite as deep as other versions of D&D. Yes, I wanted a warhammer, and that was my choice, but, my character didn't suffer any negatives for not using a warhammer.

At worst, you might be out a feat - something like Great Weapon Fighting or Sharpshooter - but, other than that, you can't actually specialize too much in 5e. So, mechanically, it doesn't really matter if you use random tables or not.

But, it does feel ... off to have a character concept get flushed down the toilet simply because we found a better widget.

Funnily enough, in the next campaign - Ravenloft - I played a bow focused ranger. Not a single magic bow or arrow to be found in the whole bloody module and we practically stripmined that thing. Then, I played a cleric in Storm Kings Thunder. Not a single mace or warhammer to be found. Three straight campaigns without a single magic weapon. It is nice that 5e doesn't really need magic weapons.

 

[Voadam]

3e/d20 had a bunch of methods for going with a single nonstandard weapon through your whole career. First there was adding magic onto the same item so it got more powerful over time. There were Weapons of Legacy that got more powerful over time. There were a lot of 3rd party options to have magic weapons that grew in power with you as you leveled.

Even 1e had the Kensai whose class gave them the equivalent of magic weapon properties that grew with level for their chosen specialist weapon, so no dependence on finding a weapon at all.

 

[Lanefan]

Sure, and certainly you can specialize yourself into a corner. Fair enough. But, I mean, a warhammer? Doesn't seem like too specialized. Of course, 5e doesn't let you dive down the niche hole quite as deep as other versions of D&D. Yes, I wanted a warhammer, and that was my choice, but, my character didn't suffer any negatives for not using a warhammer.

At worst, you might be out a feat - something like Great Weapon Fighting or Sharpshooter - but, other than that, you can't actually specialize too much in 5e. So, mechanically, it doesn't really matter if you use random tables or not.

But, it does feel ... off to have a character concept get flushed down the toilet simply because we found a better widget.

Funnily enough, in the next campaign - Ravenloft - I played a bow focused ranger. Not a single magic bow or arrow to be found in the whole bloody module and we practically stripmined that thing. Then, I played a cleric in Storm Kings Thunder. Not a single mace or warhammer to be found. Three straight campaigns without a single magic weapon. It is nice that 5e doesn't really need magic weapons.

Maybe next time try a Monk - they don't need weapons.

Reminds me of a major now-retired PC in my current game who went bow-spec. Took him forever to find a magic bow (combination of bad luck on the random tables and more than once just being in the wrong party at the wrong time), then when he did get one it lasted half an adventure before he broke it (I forget how). So he found another one, that one lasted a bit longer then a fireball took it out. So on to magic-bow-the-third, which melted under black dragon breath before he ever got to fire it! The fourth magic bow did a bit better, it lasted for two or three adventures until a friendly-fire fireball got him and - you guessed it - the bow as well.

Amazingly, through all this the character himself never died; which - given the length of his career - is a rather noteworthy achievement. Clearly that's where all his luck was going.