No Random treasure !?!?...

[theNater]

I've figured out why there are no random magic item tables. I'd like to thank pr1 for providing the major hint, quoted here:

Because if there's no consequence to player choices, those choices don't mean a whole lot. What does it say about my fighter who specializes in a glaive? It's not a common weapon, and that means sometimes he has to make tough decisions, like whether to use a mundane glaive or a +1 longsword. If there's a factory making my weapons and placing them in dungeons especially for me, that's not realistic or a particularly challenging (or fun) choice.

After I had that rattling around in my brain for a while, I was reminded of the following statement:

A DM must make a conscious decision to shut down a PC or close off a set of options.

It is a general design principle being cited as to the reason that sneak attack now works against undead, constructs, and the like. If we apply the same principle to the current discussion, we get the following:

A character who specializes in a certain weapon group should always have a level-appropriate weapon from that group unless the DM consciously decides they should not.

Randomly generated treasure puts the presence or absence of such items into the hands of the dice, rather than the DM. So the random treasure tables had to go.

 

[pemerton]

I have a group. Players play in it. That in and of itself isn't your business. I listen to them when I want to, but take responsibility for my game. Part of that responsibility is not giving them what they want just because they want it without an in-game action that they take to find the thing they want.

But this is surely just a matter of degree.

Consider the following scenario: the players turn up, hoping to play a fantasy RPG. You hand out character sheets for Traveller. One player says, "I wanted to play fantasy, not sci-fi." You reply, "You need to take an in-game action to find the thing that you want - perhaps you should try and find a spacewarp into a fantasy realm."

Sometime the players just want to play fantasy without having to take a punitive, unfun ingame action (like playing a sci-fi game instead) to get there. So you play D&D instead of Traveller. And sometime, when they're playing fantasy, they want to play a vorpal-sword wielding fighter without having to take any punitive, unfun ingame action to get there. So you make sure that the Death Knight's tomb contains the vorpal sword with which he was buried. What's the difference? None that I can see.

By the way, when it comes to non-punitive ingame actions, 4e certainly requires ingame actions to be taken to acquire treasure - monsters must be defeated, quests completed and so on in order to find or earn magic items.

 

[hong]

I listen to them when I want to, but take responsibility for my game. Part of that responsibility is not giving them what they want just because they want it without an in-game action that they take to find the thing they want.

Correct. This is why you still have to KILL THE MONSTER before you can TAKE ITS STUFF. This applies regardless of what process you and your players used to decide what that stuff is.

 

[Lanefan]

Correct. This is why you still have to KILL THE MONSTER before you can TAKE ITS STUFF.

Haven't played many successful Thieves lately, have you?

Lanefan

 

[Henry]

First of all, Mourn, let's dial back on the masturbation references.

Second, pr1, your point in your post was that the Players only play in the world, which implies they don't have any creative input into it. I submit that a DM needs players just as much as the players need the DM, and that intentionally or not, they DO have creative input into the game, even if it's only flooding the local economy with the loot they just took from a monster hoard.

If their actions ultimately have no effect in the world, then many gamers (myself included) would find that a pretty boring game. I've always championed a DM as final arbiter on what happens in a game, but I find players who do have creative input to offer are a godsend, whether I use it or not. I try to be one of those players myself when I play, if nothing else to give the DM ideas in inspire his own.

One of those areas is magic items. If I see Bob favoring daggers for his Warlock, then when they party plants the killing blow in Felistides the Evil Warlock, and they scavenge Fellforge, his grey and bloodstone-flecked Pact Blade from the body, then Bob's warlock is going to say, "POWER IS MINE!" and Bob is immediately going to say, "oh, YEAH, baby..." Bob is a happier camper, and looking even more forward to putting that wicked steel to good use next session, and he's having a blast.

Now, randomly rolling, if The party gets a +1 Orb, and there's not even a single wizard in the group, what's the group gonna do?
It's going to turn around, try to sell the orb, get a fraction of it's value, and buy a +1 Pact Blade. Generic. I could make up names, histories, etc. of the magic item for sale in town, but why make up an orb's history if all it turns out to be is portable cash? That orb could have the most interesting history this side of The One Ring, but they players will call it (1) portable cash, or (2) macguffin, if all they can do with it is carry it around so someone else bad can't get their hands on it.

Which leads to my other point: fantasy genre precedents. Conan didn't buy the Phoenix Sword. He found it. (or was given it, I forgot which.) Elric didn't sell something else to get Stormbringer. King Arthur didn't trade his +4 Dagger for Excalibur. In most cases, the heroes found, robbed, or killed for the weapon, and it was EXACTLY what they needed at that point in their careers.

I know, one school of thought is, "Your characters aren't Conan, Elric, or Arthur; they're the other guys." It's certainly valid, but it's not the only way; It would be easy enough to assign a random table for
1-2 Armor
3-6 Weapon
7-11 Headgear
12-14 Footgear
15-18 Hands
19 Miscellaneous
20 Necklaces

Or some such, roll 1d4 for number of levels above the party level for what the item's level would be, and you'd have a very workable random system - just as workable as picking your own out of the tables.

 

[Delta]

Not a 4E player, but I agree with the OP. Yet another reason for me to avoid this version of the game.

I've had players in the past say "We wish we had a staff of healing", but my response would be to have them in-game research legends about a staff of healing, and then create a particular dungeon/quest they could pursue if that's specifically what they wanted to track down. Not just have one pop up in the next monster's treasure trove.

As a player I've had a DM go around and award everyone the exact item for their character, and it honestly aggravated me when it happened. It was just too much for my suspension of disbelief.

Thanks to the OP for pointing this out.

 

[Orius]

Not a 4E player, but I agree with the OP. Yet another reason for me to avoid this version of the game.

I've had players in the past say "We wish we had a staff of healing", but my response would be to have them in-game research legends about a staff of healing, and then create a particular dungeon/quest they could pursue if that's specifically what they wanted to track down. Not just have one pop up in the next monster's treasure trove.

As a player I've had a DM go around and award everyone the exact item for their character, and it honestly aggravated me when it happened. It was just too much for my suspension of disbelief.

Thanks to the OP for pointing this out.

I don't see any reason why the DM couldn't use wistlists to set up dungeons and quests so the players can earn the things they want. Make them do the groundwork, let them learn where such an item might be located (and hey, throw in a few false leads), and then go through the dungeon to find the items.

Yeah, just throwing the stuff out there Monty Haul-style sucks too, but that doesn't mean a DM can't use wishlists as a campaign tool. I probably wouldn't do more than 5 such items per character in a single campaign though. And a DM could also slip unexpected items here and there in with the items the PCs ar questing for, presuming they earn the items.

 

[Tao]

Not a 4E player, but I agree with the OP. Yet another reason for me to avoid this version of the game.

Umm....


Except that this...

I've had players in the past say "We wish we had a staff of healing", but my response would be to have them in-game research legends about a staff of healing, and then create a particular dungeon/quest they could pursue if that's specifically what they wanted to track down.

...is pretty much what they are suggesting.


Nowhere does it say that you should just give them whats on the list. It says ask for a list of character goals. Keep it in mind. It will help you as you craft an adventure. The fact that the list idea is preceded by "A great way to make sure you give your players magic items they'll be excited about is..." would lead one to believe that it is clearly a suggestion, not a rule. Apparently, the OP either a) suffers from inadequate reading comprehension skills or b) had a preconceived bias that he felt the need to back up with his own (mis)interpretations of the rules.




Personally, I think its a good piece of advice, and I can't even imagine a decent DM still using a random treasure table in this day and age. That's lazy DMing. Lazy, uncreative DMing. Bad, Lazy, Uncreative DMing. Even people who tried to use them ended up re-rolling enough times that they may as well have picked anyways. In my opinion, to rely on random charts shows a complete disinterest in your players and their characters and their goals, and it hurts the narrative of the story. Why should they care about your story, if you clearly don't give a damn about theirs? Heck, I am not even saying give them EXACTLY what they want... but at least give them things that make sense with the environment and the story. Random treasure tables are the worst of both worlds: completely illogical and utterly useless.

"Oh, a magical greataxe? Lovely. I'm sure the swashbuckler, rogue, ranger, and wizard are totally stoked to find another greataxe.... Identify. Oh yay. Plus three. Huzzah. We're stoked. Alright, where's the nearest town, so we can pawn it for something worthwhile? And why the heck would an evil sorcerer have a greataxe anyway?" Way to forge a momentous and epic climax to your adventure. You might as well just give them a big bag with a dollar sign on it. It ends up being the same, and equally creative.

I would walk away from the table of any DM who threw piles of unusable crap at us under the guise of "being clever and in control of his campaign" and never look back.

Sorry.

But I would.

I'm not trying to be offensive here, really I am not, it's just late and I'm grumpy, and all these elitist DMs with their my way (treasure tables???) or the highway attitudes are really annoying. Have you ever even BEEN on the other side of the DM screen? Or is the local RPG scene that starved for DMs that they'll just take whatever you throw at them.

 

[JRRNeiklot]

I use it all the time. If the players beat a random encounter and manage to track it to its lair, and I have no idea what treasure is there, I just roll randomly, or even have them do it. Yeah, it's out of character and breaks the 4th wall, but rolling dice for random effects is FUN. 4e seems to forget that, I'm surprised you even roll to hit anymore, because it's "not fun" to miss.

 

[redcard]

You know, when I was a young lad, I would dutifully make my list out every christmas to Santa for the things I wished for. I'd send this off in the mail (or so my parents said), and then on Christmas day, I'd open the presents. Sometimes I would get what I want. Sometimes I got more of what I needed than what I wanted. Sometimes, I got neither.

A wishlist is not a shopping list. It's just a wishlist. If a player gives me a +2 Flaming Sword on the list, that doesn't mean he's getting it. All it means is he wants one.

I don't see why people bristle at this so much. No, it's not your random loot tables from AD&D , where I get a bunch of worthless crap and pawn it off on the market, to get the money, to buy what I want anyway. No, I don't take 50 weeks of downtime to roll 50 times for my profession (underwear modelling) to get the gold to buy what I wanted anyway. I might be scouring a dungeon and randomly trip across it. I might have to pry it from the cold dead hands of my mortal enemy. I might have to quest across the lands of darkness, venturing to the brink of the dead and prying it from Charon himself.. but all of these are FAR more interesting than playing "Buy Low, Sell High" between ten different cities and walking into the Magic'R'Us store in Ultrabigtowne and buying it outright.

Wish list. Not shopping list.