D&D 5E Magic Items in the campaign

[Herr der Qual]

I've got a good start, includes, rarity, type and page # in the DMG

 

[DaveDash]

At first I was very hesitant to give out magic items,especially magic weapons and armour. But now I don't think its a big deal.

Players love getting them and it's fun handing them out. Attunement basically keeps a close lid on magic item bloat.

My main beef is how hoards work. Handing out 12 hoards of items level 11-17 is an absurd amount. It equates to two hoards per level basically, which means every three encounters or so you're handing out 15,000gp.

Clearly that's way out of whack so I don't use that system at all. I don't do selling or buying of items either, but I do let players craft them.

 

[Herr der Qual]

http://www.enworld.org/forum/rpgdownloads.php?do=download&downloadid=1206

Made a PDF of all the items, no random roll charts yet, but I'll update it tomorrow when I'm done work.

 

[Li Shenron]

So, I am understanding of the reasons but unhappy about WotC's solution to magic item saturation. The lack of magic shops has been distinctly felt in my group, honestly I could care less about the +2 longsword or +1 chain mail. I miss having a Robe of Useful Items or a Handy Haversack. I am planning on starting a new campaign as DM and was wondering if you as players or DM's have similar feelings.

No, I have different feelings and will follow different ideas, but I think your setup below is just as good as mine or others.

In your case, it's clear that you find magic arms and armor uninteresting while you love items that are useful in more creative ways, so go with it! Anyway, no arms and armors means your game will guarantee bounded accuracy better.

I am planning on addressing the issue as such:
- Magical arms and armour are not made anymore the secret to their construction was lost.
- Wonderous Items that do not fall into the previous category are available in most places with scant selection the smaller the population center.
- Potions, Scrolls and Wands have a very active and competative market.
- Rings and Rods treated like Wonderous items, however the availability of rings will be slightly better than rods and available in the same shops that deal in wonderous items rods less available and in places that deal in potions, scrolls and wands.
- Prices are taken directly from PF.

For what it's worth, my own plans for tabletops campaigns are to:

- keep magic items generally scarce in number, especially permanent ones
- basically no market for magic items, only individual exceptions
- use the published items as starting points to build upon, freely design my own
- have each permanent magic item much more powerful than the standard, but reveal/develop its properties gradually
- bound the items to their owners, and their development to their owners' stories

Ideally, I would like each character to possess very few magic items (e.g. from 0 to 4) at any given time, but have the permanent ones potentially grow unbounded, so that there is essentially a continuity between magic items and artifacts.

I plan to expand on the attunement rules, in order to prevent PCs to amass items when defeating NPCs. So if a PC decides to keep all defeated NPC's magic items, it would take the PC a long time before being able to use all its properties, and in the meantime he won't unlock as many properties from her other magic items. Essentially, she would choose between less more powerful items and more less powerful items all the time, and I'll try to keep the net result the same, so that what they decide to do with defeated foe's equipment becomes more a matter of story rather than conveniency.

 

[Syntallah]

I just mentioned in another thread that I used the rules for selling magic items to create rules for finding and buying them.

snip.

Can you specify the particular thread? I would be interested in seeing these rules.

 

[Mad Zagyg]

It's so crazy to me how much people's experience with the game can vary. I guess that's one of the things that makes D&D so awesome. The game's return to a lessening of magic item abundance has been one of my favorite things about it. For me, the number one destroyer of verisimilitude in D&D was magic item shops. It was among my least favorite things about the past two editions of the game. For reasons that are difficult to explain quickly, I find the idea of magic item shops and a magic item economy built around adventurers to be exponentially more unbelievable than a fire breathing dragon.

The solution seems simple though. If your group prefers magic item shops and heroes that already know what every single magic item is ("Hello shopkeep! I would like a +3 Frostbrand longsword, a Robe of Useful Things, and an Apparatus of Kwalish please."), then just alter that conceit of the game.

 

[77IM]

Wow, this is like the third thread today where I get to pimp my awesome "buying magic items" rules that I am quite proud of:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?404489-Buying-Magic-Items

(Disclaimer: 100% un-playtested. The best kind of house rule! pure Theory unsullied by the grubby paws of Practice!)

 

[Dragonsbane]

Here are some for crafting magical items. I didn't want to change my setting, where in some parts of the world items are non-existent, and in others more common. And my players like crafting.

Untested as well. The original thread was me asking people what they thought of them and how they would affect game balance.


http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?413424-Crafting-Magical-Item-sales-in-5e

 

[Fralex]

Can you specify the particular thread? I would be interested in seeing these rules.

Oh, but the part you snipped out is the rules! It's a copy-paste of what I said in the other thread! I never really needed to wright down anything more detailed since it's just using an already-existing DMG rule with the table and roles reversed.

 

[CapnZapp]

It's so crazy to me how much people's experience with the game can vary. I guess that's one of the things that makes D&D so awesome. The game's return to a lessening of magic item abundance has been one of my favorite things about it. For me, the number one destroyer of verisimilitude in D&D was magic item shops. It was among my least favorite things about the past two editions of the game. For reasons that are difficult to explain quickly, I find the idea of magic item shops and a magic item economy built around adventurers to be exponentially more unbelievable than a fire breathing dragon.

The solution seems simple though. If your group prefers magic item shops and heroes that already know what every single magic item is ("Hello shopkeep! I would like a +3 Frostbrand longsword, a Robe of Useful Things, and an Apparatus of Kwalish please."), then just alter that conceit of the game.

Except it's much harder to add a balanced set of magic item prices, than it is to remove them.