What I want to know is: if I play OotA, how close to (or far from) the distribution suggested by the DMG will it be?
There has been a lot of threads analyzing the DMG tables and associated guidelines.
If they suggests you find, say, three permanent items each up until level 15 (just pulling random numbers out of thin air here), but Out of Abyss gives you only one, or seven, or even exactly the three, I want to know about it.
Cheers!
I'll be checking when I get home, and I'll edit this to show you. In order to try and keep it orderly I'll be going by 1 chapter / level and assuming it's a 4 person party. It appears like there are definitely a lot of consumables, more so then Princes of the Apocalypse though the permanents are in question and I believe there are more permanent magic items as well, though I have to check.
Ok, so there are obviously some
spoilers in what I'm about to say and I'm not really sure how many magic items the PCs should get/level but here's my list:
Note: I'm not including any random encounters
Chapter 1: Prisoners of the Drow:
This one is kinda confusing as you don't really get that many stuff in general, however, there is the chance that you can obtain without being brutally slaughtered by super OP monsters:
2 Potions of Healing (Table A)
Chapter 2: Into Darkness:
2 Potion of Greater Healing (Table B)
+1 Dagger (Table F)
Oil of Slipperiness (Table B)
Sun Blade (Dawnbringer) (Table G)
Necklace of Fireballs (Table C)
Philter of Love (Table B)
Chapter 3: The Darklake:
All of the treasure for this involves stealing so that's kinda iffy
2 Potions of Healing (Table A)
Potion of Water Breathing (Table B)
Spell Scroll of
Light (Table A)
Chapter 4: Gracklstugh:
Some of this treasure involves getting it from a
Adult Red Dragon so... Uhhhh... Yeah! Another possibility is that the characters try to take down a fortress, that's also interesting.
Stonespeaker Crystal (Doesn't have a table but is rare so putting it on table G)
Oil of Sharpness (Table D) (Dragon)
Potion of Flying (Table D) (Dragon)
Potion of Longevity (Table D) (Dragon)
Potion of Supreme Healing (Table D) (Dragon)
Boots of Speed (Table G)
Spell Scroll of See Invisibility (Table B)
4 Potions of Healing (Table A)
Potion of Invisibility (Table D)
Potion of Greater Healing (Table B)
Potion of Fire Breath (Table B)
Potion of Psychic Resistance (Table B)
Keoghtom's Ointment (Table B)
Dwarven Plate (Table H) (Duergar Lord)
+2 Warhammer (Table G) (Duergar Lord)
Guantlets of Ogre Power (Table F) (Duergar Lord)
If you compile all of this you get (excluding the ones that are very hard to get like from the dragon or the duergar lord):
9 Magic Items from table A
10 Magic Items from table B
1 Magic Item from table C
1 Magic Item from table D
Nothing from table E
1 Magic Item from table F
3 Magic Items from table G
This is kind of close under the assumption that you're getting
max rolls as you only have a 9/10000 chance to get the two table G magic items. However, on average, this is an insane amount of good magic items. Also, something that's interesting is the fact that there are 3 magic items from Table G but only one from Table F and nothing from table E. It's like a weird positive porabola.