How will the designers (or the players) deal with magic item influx due to PC death?

[Eyada]

It can be difficult to pull off in certain adventures without your players noticing, but I always just lower the amount of treasure they receive from future encounters until I have "cheated" them out of an amount of gold equal to the amount they looted from Dead Fred. If I am irked at them for looting Dead Fred because it was a metagaming decision that violated their characters' personalities, I actually penalize them gold over the long run. The heroes are stronger than they should be for a brief period, but it evens out over time.

I've never explicitly stated that I do it, and my players have yet to notice. However, our handling of treasure makes this easy to do; it may not work well for certain low treasure/extremely high treasure campaigns.

 

[KarinsDad]

Property and inheritance is a major, major aspect of the laws and customs of every human society that has ever existed, and reasonably realistic versions of such are unlikely to include clauses like "your fellow adventurers can loot your corpse and sell the stuff".

Which means characters who divvy up the dead PC's stuff for their own enrichment are thieves, looting assets that legally belong to the PC's heirs, and the law will treat them as such.

I have to chuckle at this.

All PCs are thieves anyway. And murderers. What do you think entering the evil temple and killing it's guards and taking it's stuff is all about? The game is designed that way (and yes, there will be a boatload of people protesting that this does not happen in their games, ...).

 

[WyzardWhately]

Property and inheritance is a major, major aspect of the laws and customs of every human society that has ever existed, and reasonably realistic versions of such are unlikely to include clauses like "your fellow adventurers can loot your corpse and sell the stuff".

Which means characters who divvy up the dead PC's stuff for their own enrichment are thieves, looting assets that legally belong to the PC's heirs, and the law will treat them as such. Using the stuff while still on the adventure to keep themselves alive is one thing; when they get back to somewhere civilized enough they could sell the gear, they'll be somewhere civilized enough that they'll be expected to (arrange to) transfer the goods to the next-of-kin.

Unless they're not in the home country of the dead PC. Or the dead PC is an orphan, or simply never bothered to talk about his background with the other characters so that they don't know where to send it. Or nobody is around who cares enough to pursue the matter. Or nobody is actually keeping track of who all these dirty vagabonds are, much less their lineages. Or they all made each other mutual beneficiaries (the "gentleman adventurer" contract) in which case the property specifically DOES go to the surviving party members. Or the PCs have sufficient clout that the local authorities are unable/unwilling to try and put the screws to them. Or they're known to be busy saving the world/kingdom/etc. from a major threat, and no one could realistically interfere with that without being terminally Lawful Stupid. Or the local codes of law are more like historical codes of law, and are thus more interested in lands and incomes than with chattels.

 

[Doug McCrae]

The OP covers the issue pretty thoroughly. A paragraph more or less repeating what he said in the DMG would be a perfectly sane idea unless everything they already have is even more useful.

In my group I don't like the surviving PCs to get the dead PC's gear as it provides a strong disincentive to teamwork and encourages allowing other PCs to die through inaction or deliberately poor choice of action. The death of another PC becomes the biggest payday possible, much better than killing a BBEG.

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

Unless they're not in the home country of the dead PC. Or the dead PC is an orphan, or simply never bothered to talk about his background with the other characters so that they don't know where to send it. Or nobody is around who cares enough to pursue the matter. Or nobody is actually keeping track of who all these dirty vagabonds are, much less their lineages. Or they all made each other mutual beneficiaries (the "gentleman adventurer" contract) in which case the property specifically DOES go to the surviving party members. Or the PCs have sufficient clout that the local authorities are unable/unwilling to try and put the screws to them. Or they're known to be busy saving the world/kingdom/etc. from a major threat, and no one could realistically interfere with that without being terminally Lawful Stupid. Or the local codes of law are more like historical codes of law, and are thus more interested in lands and incomes than with chattels.

Or even "Well, I'll give Bob's +5 Keen Holy Collision sword to his kid when I see him next, but I'm sure he'd want me to use it in the meantime."

Or "Wait, I'm supposed to go give Bob's gold and magic items to Mary Sue, his EX-wife, because he hadn't updated his will? When she's on the other side of the continent, we don't have teleport, *and* we've got 2 days to the end of the world? I'll worry about it later."

Brad

 

[iskurthi]

Loot, loot, loot the party

Unless they're not in the home country of the dead PC. Or the dead PC is an orphan, or simply never bothered to talk about his background with the other characters so that they don't know where to send it. Or nobody is around who cares enough to pursue the matter. Or nobody is actually keeping track of who all these dirty vagabonds are, much less their lineages. Or they all made each other mutual beneficiaries (the "gentleman adventurer" contract) in which case the property specifically DOES go to the surviving party members. Or the PCs have sufficient clout that the local authorities are unable/unwilling to try and put the screws to them. Or they're known to be busy saving the world/kingdom/etc. from a major threat, and no one could realistically interfere with that without being terminally Lawful Stupid. Or the local codes of law are more like historical codes of law, and are thus more interested in lands and incomes than with chattels.

Or there's really no way for anyone to tell any given +x primary slot item from any other +x primary slot item, and it's not like anyone can appraise them easily what with there being no magic shops and all, so if nobody saw you do it...

 

[Clawhound]

I've never seen a game truly immune to the "grind through PC's until you get rich" scenario.

Getting spare gear is possible. After a few levels, it won't matter much.

 

[Mistwell]

All magic items have a very low level of intelligence. To control a magic item, you need to meet one of these criteria:

1) Have it attuned to you at the time it is first sold,
2) Have it re-tuned to you, which costs money and a month of time (normally represented in the cost of buying used magic items - which actually cost less than new magic items because they are used, but that savings is eliminated by the cost of re-tuning),
3) Be an active member of the group that defeats the prior owner and "wins" the magic item over.

Hence, when a player dies, his items were not won over by the new player or party, and go inert. You can pay to re-tune them, and wait a month, but odds are you will prefer to just buy new items and have them tuned to you right away, and the party will sell the old items for 1/2 their value (causing the new owners to spend time an resources to get them refreshed to the point where they can be resold in a month).

 

[iskurthi]

Wait, what?

All magic items have a very low level of intelligence. To control a magic item, you need to meet one of these criteria:

1) Have it attuned to you at the time it is first sold,
2) Have it re-tuned to you, which costs money and a month of time (normally represented in the cost of buying used magic items - which actually cost less than new magic items because they are used, but that savings is eliminated by the cost of re-tuning),
3) Be an active member of the group that defeats the prior owner and "wins" the magic item over.

Items can't be used by your allies but they can be used by the guy who just finished killing you? Mind-blowing.

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

Items can't be used by your allies but they can be used by the guy who just finished killing you? Mind-blowing.

Shades of the Elder Wand.

Could work. It seems kind of rude, though, that I can't pick up my fallen friend's sword and avenge his death.

Brad