D&D 1E Magic items in AD&D, making them and getting them.

[Nil-Ith]

Yeah my 1e group has been playing off and on for almost a decade now and each character within our group that did manage to survive from level 1 characters have made it to the 15th-20th level range that they are at now. Our DM always had us play through premade modules due to lack of free time to create his own mods, so we've done things like The Slaver's Stockade (eventually claiming the fort as our home and giving it city status after yrs of development), Against the Giants, White Plume Mtn, Tomb of Horrors, parts of Undermountain (which was mainly used to fill in and expand the map of the Underdark encounters my group is finishing up next) and Greyhawk Ruins. With plenty of mini modules in between.

My group has gone through countless characters over the years that after a certain point some of them weren't even given names and each surviving character has lost plenty of magic items to get where they are now. My party's philosophies and general approach to encounters has shifted greatly from when we started yrs ago and now our high level characters are dealing with the avatars of multiple deities, trapping the demonic servants of Lolth, and doing things like befriending Liches and inheriting powerful centers of magic from deities such as Boccob to protect on a more regular basis. Typical high level character stuff.

Our campaign is mainly set in Greyhawk but our DM has used mods from Forgotten Realms as filler for other modules given that setting was practically abandoned and left a lot of things unfinished, but Greyhawk is most familiar to my group's DM.

I could spend countless hours talking about the adventures these characters have gone through and the absurdities they've experienced but I wanted to see if anyone was familiar at all with the Greyhawk Ruins module. Whether anyone has personally DM'ed it before or played through it as a player character.

The "facilities" I mentioned that were in the bottom level of the Tower of Power is a magic item forge made by the powerful wizard turned demigod Zagyg when he trapped nine demigods within his tower. The forge itself is a massive Gold Dragon and living structure and requires 5 magic-users (minimum of 9th lvl) working in unison to make permanent magic items using the facilities within the dragon's body. Using the dragonforge (as my group has taken to calling it) Is supposedly a more stream-lined way to create magic items and only requires the object to be "magicked" and spell energy to do so. My party, since our only way of getting magic items for ever has been from modules, is in great need of the forge in an effort to help balance our party and to put magic in the hands of members of that party who need it.

I was curious if anyone had ever discovered the Dragon's purpose and has experience using it to create magic items in their campaigns. If so what sort of limitations were put in place regarding its use in your campaign? Especially when the goal is to try to maintain some semblance of balance with high level characters and magic items

 

[Almaric119x]

Something I've been thinking about regarding magic items in AD&D.

I sometimes wonder if the groups I played with were "doing it wrong". . .because while I had a pretty consistent experience between all the various groups I played with. . .I sometimes see people talk about AD&D with a totally different concept of creating and obtaining magic items.

So, with that in mind, this is how I always saw it played. . .

Making Magic Items: It's so hard to do, that almost all PC's don't bother to try. For example, making any kind of permanent magic item like a +1 Sword ect. requires not just casting the Enchanted Weapon, Enchant an Item and Permanency spells. . .but since the Permanency spell is 8th level, unless you can somehow get a scroll of it (which I never saw done, see the next paragraph about obtaining magic items), being at least 16th level (which, in my experience, games almost never got to, and NPC's that high level were insanely rare).

. . .then you had to deal with the permanent loss of a point of Constitution for casting Permanency, meaning no Wizard wanted to lose Constitution permanently just to make a magic sword for his party member. Also, losing a point of Constitution, because of Permanency, to make expendable magic items like a Necklace of Missiles ect. meant nobody in their right mind would make those items.

. . .and even if you did have Enchant an Item and any other spells that were needed, then you had to somehow do all the other stuff to make a magic item, that you couldn't just cast those spells on any sword and make a magic item, that you needed it to be a special sword of some kind (with all kinds of requirements laid out by the DM, for example, a +1 sword might have to be forged by a Dwarven Master Smith using metal taken from a mundane sword that killed a magical creature of some kind, with the hilt having small chamber in it housing a portion of the dust of a slain vampire or lich, the hilt wrappings being made of leather made from some specific magical creature, and the sword being quenched after being forged in Holy Water blessed by a priest of a God of War or Smithing with at least one tear of a Valkyrie mixed in.

Making even one "routine" magic item would require 3 or 4 high-level adventures, at least. . .and your "reward" would be losing a point of CON to get a +1 sword. Those requirements would start going up rapidly to make things with more plusses. . .I remember being told that making a +5 item would require virtually an entire campaign worth of adventures to assemble it as it would require a couple dozen special treasures.

Potions and Scrolls were similarly insane to make, but at least you didn't have to lose the point of CON.

Finding Magic Items: I don't know where the idea of so-called "Monty Haul" games came from, because I never saw anything like it. . .magic items were doled out with an eyedropper, it felt like. DM's used the treasure tables in the DMG, rigorously and strictly. . .and it always felt like that meant we got jack squat, especially for magical treasure. Most of the magic items were in lair treasure. . .and you never could find a lair.

We'd play campaigns that would last a year or two, get up to somewhere between 10th and 15th level. . .and typically you could count every magic item in the entire party on one hand, the party fighter would have a magic weapon of some kind they found (and if it wasn't a weapon they had spent a weapon proficiency slot on beforehand, they learned that weapon later, so the Fighter might have his +1 Guisarme or +1 Khopesh instead of a longsword or broadsword). There would be a nice little supply list of potions/oils and scrolls. . .but very few weapons and armor or other permanent items.

Bracers of Defense were never, ever found. More than one group I met called AC 10 "Armor Class Mage" or "Armor Class Magic User" ect. to refer to the fact that even high-level Wizards/Magic Users had a bog-standard 10 AC because AC boosting items were so super-rare (and in AD&D, Dex bonuses to AC were hard to get).

. . .and of course, in AD&D it was strictly forbidden to sell magic items. The DMG and other books went at length denouncing the concept. I remember the very condescending artwork in High Level Campaigns of a Wizard shopping at a "magic mart" complete with a bargain bin of wands. . .to illustrate that if you allow any selling of magic items by NPC's in a campaign, that it meant there was no difference between that and letting NPC's open up magic stores indistinguishable from modern "big box" stores complete with bargain bins, closeout sales, coupons, and customer loyalty cards. . .every DM I knew took those instructions seriously, so you could have parties with 100,000+ GP. . .but they couldn't buy a +1 Dagger for all that money, it just plain was NOT on the market for any price.

. . .yet, in talking with others, they talk about going into dungeons and coming out with cartloads of magic items, of low level parties where everyone has a magic weapon and most have magic armor or bracers, of games where it was easy to make potions and scrolls and DM's didn't enforce the CON loss requirement for Permanency in making magic items.

The changes to magic items with 3.0. . .not requiring permanent CON loss, just predictable amounts of XP and gold costs, and assuming that magic items can be bought or commissioned in big cities if you have enough money were player friendly enough, and much more like the prevalence of magic items in D&D fiction and video games that it helped speed acceptance of the transition to 3e, in my experience.

Were those things more common, did I just play with particularly hardcore/tough DM's and gaming groups? What was everyone elses experience about magic item creation and obtaining in AD&D?

I agree that the 1st Edition method is essentially impossible as is, but think there are several reasonable changes that make it workable:
1) magic items (even a +1 dagger) are generational heirlooms so there is a reasonable amount of magic items that have built up over time,
2) I changed the permanence to be a 7th level spell while not lessening the requirements of continuous duration (a permanance to make an "enchanted weapon" spell effect continuous plus another permanence to lock the magic to the device at minimum),
3) In 1e I have specialist mages that are able to cast specialty spells as if they were 2x higher caster level (in terms of what level spells they can cast only, spell power is at the caster's actual level) up to 7th level spells max (since higher level spells in a discipline require knowledge of other branches that they just don't have) and at half their level for spells from ANY other branch
4) Evil wizards can forcefully drain constitution from a victim (similar to the energy drain spell, there is a 5% chance that they will suffer a con point drain too) while good wizards can either give up their own con points or get them from willing participants (look at how Sauron poured some of his essence into the One Ring), a mage-psionicist can use empower to give the item sentience,
and,
5) an early issue of Dragon Magazine (I forget which one) had the Alchemist class that I use for creating potions (the cost to "buy" a potion is 50% for materials and 50% for the expertise of the alchemist) while the risks of making a potion permanently affect a character have the very real possibility of killing that character (I don't generally allow character resurrections - I think that cheapens the risk/sacrifice of a character that is willing to die for the sake of another).

 

[David Howery]

I don't know where the idea of so-called "Monty Haul" games came from, because I never saw anything like it.

ever play any of the early 1E modules? They were stuffed to the gills with treasure, both magical and mundane. This carried over into the first adventures in Dungeon Adventures too.

. . .and of course, in AD&D it was strictly forbidden to sell magic items.

Yeah, I think that rule got ignored a lot. Otherwise, our parties (especially after going through those early 1E modules) would have littered the road behind them with unwanted magic items...

 

[Lanefan]

ever play any of the early 1E modules? They were stuffed to the gills with treasure, both magical and mundane. This carried over into the first adventures in Dungeon Adventures too.

Yeah, I think that rule got ignored a lot. Otherwise, our parties (especially after going through those early 1E modules) would have littered the road behind them with unwanted magic items...

Except all of those items had a value, and a bit of that value translated into xp if those items were brought back to town; so it would have been the town dump rather than the roadsides where all those extra magic items would accrete.

This is one thing dear ol' Mr Gygax just didn't think through to its logical conclusion. The PC party finds items they can't use, other parties* find other items they can't use, and it's only natural to expect that sooner or later some trade between said parties (with or without a broker or middleman involved) is going to occur. Once that happens - boom, you have the beginnings of a magic item economy.

* - unless the PCs are the only adventurers in the setting, but 1e was quite clearly not written based on that concept.