No Random treasure !?!?...

[RefinedBean]

Truer words

I guess some of you folks have never used a published adventure, or if you have changed a bit of treasure, "well, it says it is a Spear of BBEG slaying, too bad Bob you have put 12 feats into being an uber hand axe guy. Yes you'll do more damage with your hand axes, but this spear is designed for the BBEG..."

Yeah, this is why I'm trying not to design any BBEG's around a "Look at my WEAPON! By the gods, isn't it frickin' AWESOME?!" idea.

Of course, I'm running a modified Night Below from 2nd Ed, so if anyone has any fun ideas on making Finslayer into a 4E artifact, let me know.

Oh, and to Blustar: You might be right about 3E and DMing...but seriously, I sat down one night and read through the DMG and browsed through the Monster Manual, trying to wrap my head around what they were telling me, and gave myself a migraine. It just didn't fit me very well.

 

[rkwoodard]

since 2nd edition

Hi,
I ran a lot of 1st edition. One of the most fun things i found was writing up unique magic items. One of the least fun things was watching my player shrug at them.
In my first real 2nd edition campaign, I said fine, and requested each player to come up with the magic item they wanted to be their signature magic item. I told them the more powerful it was the longer it would take to work into the game. They all came up with relatively reasonable magic items.
This turned out to be one of my most successful campaign of all time.

They got to cherry-pick their item, I got to build it into the adventure, some were part of treasure hordes, some were part of solo-adventures, some were specific quest.

Random treasure can be fun. But using wishlist can be a great way to a) get the players invested in the campaign, and b) spark the DMs imagination in building around the magic.

Of course it may not work with every DM or group.

RK

 

[ki11erDM]

For me, a huge 4e fanboy, I really miss the random tables. And I really want someone to code up one for me.

Why? Sometimes treasure should just be random. Sometimes it should be placed. I want the flexibility to do both... and I had it before and I don’t now... and that is kind of sucky.

Now as for the party giving a wish list... how I handled this before was to get them (by force sometimes) to research some item they might want. Like ask a sage about a famous troll slaying sword that spews fire. And then I give them leads on how to find it and they go off questing for it. Or that is what I used to do in 1e and 2e. That was totally lost in 3.x because they just went and bought a flaming sword. So at least we have that back a little… maybe as long as the item creation stuff does not turn into the middle man which I am afraid it might.

 

[GoodKingJayIII]

They already cut out the middle man by having the create magic item ritual be a vending machine, and identify magic item taking 5 minutes. Adding inappropriate loot for a dungeon because your players want it is roasting the middleman and having him for lunch.

I'm not sure what you mean by inappropriate. Items that are far greater than the PC's level? Items that wouldn't "reasonably" be in the dungeon (i.e., finding a magical crossbow in melee oriented barbarian's horde)? Something else?

If the former, I don't plan on giving my players items greater than their level + 4. The system seems to be balanced under that assumption and I'm going to operate from it until it seems otherwise.

If the latter, well there are a couple things I have to say to that. First, if you stumble onto a hoard of treasure, I think it's reasonable to believe that it's in the hoard because a) knew the item was valuable but b) had no immediate use for it. Secondly, I'm playing a game and am not 100% concerned with world verisimilitude. I am concerned about making sure my PCs are appropriate equipped for upcoming challenges. Besides, I imagine real world ancient tombs were filled with all kinds of crazy crap.

If it's something else, then you'll have to explain.

My ultimate point though, is that it's hard to have it both ways. If you give your players items their characters will use, you may compromise on verisimillitude a little. On the other hand, if you give your players lots of random crap of little or no use to them, then they will want to sell it or (in 4th ed) break it down to get their own items.

As a DM, I don't like Magic Shoppes and prefer to minimize their existence. So I'd rather give my players they will find useful right off the bat, and go from there.

 

[James McMurray]

The numbers behind the system assume that the PCs have items they can use. If a party of wizards has a bunch of stuff they can't use they're going to have a hard time facing monsters that assume them to be close to the baseline for their level. It's not a big deal at low level, but the higher you go the more often you'll miss and the lower your expected damage will be when you manage to hit.

 

[SweeneyTodd]

Man, the whole separation of player vs. character knowledge issue seems like it's showing up in this thread in some really interesting ways.

I've been listening to my players' idle talk about what would be really neat to find and seeding that into adventures down the line for a while now; either they forgot they had ever thought how much they wanted the foozle and it's like Christmas, or they just kinda smile and nod. And as people have said, it's not any harder to come up with why a useful magical item is in the dungeon than it is to explain the results of a random roll on the treasure table.

Me, I like making my players happy. It's not Monty Haul to do so; just make the challenges commensurate with the rewards.

I'm reminded of a really old Dragon article that was giving examples of two games; one had a low-level fighter slicing through orcs, the other had a high-level knight replete with magic items. The Monty Haul campaign was not the high-level one. The point they were making is that there's absolutely nothing "weak" as a DM to give cool stuff; if they've worked for it, they deserve it.

 

[The Little Raven]

They already cut out the middle man by having the create magic item ritual be a vending machine, and identify magic item taking 5 minutes.

Vending machines are useless when you have no change (aka residuum). Doesn't matter how many Cokes are in the machine when you don't have the 50 cents to buy it.

Adding inappropriate loot for a dungeon because your players want it is roasting the middleman and having him for lunch.

So, useful magic items are inappropriate, but a randomly generated decanter of endless water is wholly appropriate?

It also begs the question... how is it balanced?

Because instead of randomly generating treasure that is useless, you're giving treasure that is useful? Oh noes, useful magic items breaks the game!

MUST you give the players what will benefit them most?

I dunno, must you? Sounds like a personal decision to me.

 

[Arbitrary]

I don't get the constant "I can't"s.

You like random loot? Make it random. The only thing missing from the PHB loot entries are little numbers on the left. Scribble them in. No one is stopping you.

Short rest identifies doesn't remove cursed items either. You rest and the sword appears to be a +1 Viscious Longsword. I don't have to tell you it is cursed, part of the magic is it's ability to hide from you that it is also Berzerking.

As far as loot goes I'd rather include one thing that the party will use than five things they'll disenchant to make something they'll use. It means much less items overall but little junk that no one cares about.

 

[Lucas Blackstone]

I think a good balance to satisfy people who love to randomize loot, and the game's intent of characters getting useful loot would be reduce the treasure parcel you want to give them to the raw gold value. Once youd o that, randomly generate the treasure as you see fit. If you want to do half and half, sure go for it. Want it all to be random, go for it. The important part is that on items that not useful to the party, count them as 1/5th gold value when calculating the gold value ( since you are giving them something they will convert to residuum ). In this fashion you don't screw the party, and at the same time you get to hand out random treasure.

 

[renau1g]

You can think of it this way - magic items are sufficiently rare that they're worth questing for again. You might be in the proximity of a creature with a specific item because you heard that a goblin with a flaming longsword was rumored to be haunting a stretch of road not too far out of your way while you were heading to a dungeon.

Maybe they're sufficiently rare... except for their absurdly low-value in the PHB...

Oh yeah... I found that 2e had the best magic item use in it (not that I think 2e is the best system) but the items were very rare, and when our group ended up with a decanter of endless water.... it was great. That item is still one of the most memorable items ever in any of our RL groups games. Steam...used it like fog cloud. Geyser... used it against small flying creatures to knock'em from the sky, and against a fire elemental another time....

Ah being creative with "useless" magic items....hell Daern's instant fortress was a great weapon for my rogue.

Usually the most 'effective' items for the character are the least exciting IMHO. +1 swords are great, probably the best for a fighter, but they're so stale in 3/3.5/4e. I wish the PHB had some more interesting items... ah well I can wait until splat book after splat book comes out