Fun with treasure charts

[Caspian Moon Prince]

Have you ever allowed players to randomly determine any loot in an adventure? Or as a player have you been able to? Did this ever cause some fun moments?

I remember a character of mine(female paladin and was 3rd level I believe) got to roll for random magic items in the old Encyclopedia Magica series with all the magic items in D&D(at least most of them). First roll came up Excalibur and the DM wouldn't let me keep it. So I rolled again...Mjolnir, then Throne of the Gods, Excalibur again, and then came up Fragarach(sp?) the Answerer. I think I ended up with a sword +1

Anybody else?

 

[DaveStebbins]

In our more-or-less-current campaign, the PCs were about 2nd level when I joined. When they got to 3rd level, several of us wanted to play different PCs. I've always been partial to wizards and no one else in the group seemed to like playing spellcasters, so I created a 3rd level wizard.

The guy who DMing at the time said I could roll up one random magic item for my PC, and I could reroll until I got something I could use. He had just stopped by while he was out jogging, so we were standing by the door. He had me roll on the cover of the DMG while he held it with his finger in the random magic item generation page.

he tried to keep everything secret and suspenseful, but I knew the tables pretty well. So, when I rolled the first percentiles I said, "Ooh, I think that's a ring!" He tried to be non-committal, but asked me to roll again on the sub-table and I rolled very high. "Wow, did I just roll a Ring of Wizardry for my mage?" "Shut up and roll one more time." I rolled.

"Well, you just got yourself a Ring of Wizardry that doubles your 2nd level spells." "Won't that be too powerful?" "Nah, you rolled it fair and square."

So, for the remainder of that campaign (until 3E came out and we converted everything over) I had a wizard with a mess of second level spells every day.

-Dave