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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="Eldragon" data-source="post: 927585" data-attributes="member: 3962">I prefer to have magic items so exceedingly rare that when the party runs into an NPC with a magic item, someone immediately suggests killing him and taking the item in question. This gives me (the DM) great control over the game.The first advantage of such a system is that it gives evil characters a purpose beyond just doing mean, "evil" things.  In these situations evil characters have a great chance to act out of greed, instead of malevolence.The second advantage is that it reduces the plot-breaking magic item problem. In high magic campaigns, I get more than a little annoyed when the PCs run into a non-combat related puzzle, and they immediately solve it by running to the nearest magic shop and buying  exactly what they need. Sure the DM could just have that particular item out of stock, but doing that more than once annoys the players to no end. e.g. Now the rogue with ranks in "use rope" and "balance" can tightrope walk across the chasm instead of using slippers of spider climb. IMHO too many magic items make puzzles too easy to solve.A third advantage is that it helps reduce munchkinism in my campaigns (and most important IMHO). I encourage players to customize their characters a lot, mixing lots of classes and feats in interesting ways to create interesting characters. The problem comes when a character can just buy a magic item to patch up any flaws in the character design. This leads to characters becoming too powerful and overly min-maxed.  e.g. Who needs buffing spells when everyone has all buffing spells conferred from magic items, or  A CHA score of 6 is no problem when you have a pendant of diplomacy +10.However the magic items that are in my campaigns tend to be rather powerful. +1 swords only exist if a player created it.  A magic weapon an NPC might have would be +2 Keen Shocking Burst Rapier of Monkeybutter.</blockquote>

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