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Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MerricB" data-source="post: 6721959" data-attributes="member: 3586">Originally posted by Huscarl:Yes. The power level attached to the name "Guard" fluctuated more than once. Wow, you're absolutely right. Here's what was written for that chest: "Pharblex retires to this chamber to study two spellbooks that he stole from Dalmarror Borngray's library (area 2N). These are valuable arcane resources, and Borngray and Rezmir would be furious if they learned the books were missing. One belonged to a 7th-level wizard and contains spells up to level 4. The other was written by a 9th-level wizard and contains spells up to level 5. Being arcane spells, the magic is beyond Pharblex's ability to learn or cast; his lust for power is great enough to keep him puzzling over the text and hoping for a breakthrough." I don't know whether that text was cut accidentally or on purpose, or whether it happened during our editing process or during Wizards'. It's a bit of both, plus a large dose of a third element. The rules for magical items were set well enough but the rules for treasure in general were unsettled. The "game world economy" was still unaddressed -- just how much treasure should characters receive, ever? As a measure of how open that question was, according to the treasure tables in the draft version of the DMG as it existed at that time, characters would need to loot the lairs of two ancient red dragons to scoop up enough gold to buy one suit of plate armor in town. Obviously, that treasure table is not to be trusted. Fine-tuning the game's economy and finalizing those treasure tables was a low priority for the Wizards crew at that time, and I can't fault them for that. They had much bigger fish to fry during those months. With the question unresolved, every indication at that time was that we should err on the side of stinginess rather than generosity, especially since 5E's foundation of bounded accuracy doesn't rely on magical bonuses for characters to keep pace with foes. So we went stingy on treasure. I'm more to blame in that regard than Wolf is, because he's naturally more generous than I am. I might neglect to include treasure at all if I wasn't forced to occasionally. (Like many people who played in the bad old days of AD&D, I saw more campaigns ruined by characters accumulating too much magical treasure than by cars, girlfriends, and religious fundamentalists combined.) The philosophy was, it's easier for DMs to add more treasure to suit their campaigns than it is for them to take treasure away. That probably should have been stated explicitly somewhere. I believe 20 lizardfolk was meant to be the final number. The tower chamber as originally written contained three specters, but unless you're crafty with them, PCs might destroy three very quickly. I recommend using as many as you think will make a good fight for your characters, and describe that number of dead bodies in the room. Remember, however, that this fight can be considerably more difficult than straight numbers imply. Characters are confined to a small tower chamber and a very treacherous set of narrow stairs above an offal pit with an otyugh in it, while the specters can phase up and down through the floor and roof and in and out through the walls. If they chose to, the specters could simply hover outside the tower, waiting for characters to pick their way back down the stairs, with the specters clawing at them through the walls all the way down. If I were running it, the specters would wait in their corpses until everyone is preoccupied in the upper room, then they'd drift unnoticed down through the floor and attack with surprise by clawing up at PCs through the floorboards. There's plenty in that situation for the DM to have fun with. Steve </blockquote>

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