PC loot and magic item acquisition

[darkbard]

In another thread, [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], tangentially to his main point, posits

If it's obviously inappropriate given genre and established backstory (eg Luke Crane's example of beam weapons in the Duke's toilet) then the answer is no. I would also extend this to low/no stakes distractions - "we search the bodies for loot". In my 4e game I'll often just say "They've got nothing valuable", rather than waste time on what is essentially a distraction - loot is on a "timer" (treasure parcels), and if I've got interesting ideas for how those parcels can come into play, I'm not intersted in spending time on paragon-tier PCs looting hobgoblins. (Contrast our BW game, where Resources is a vital stat constantly under pressure, and the search for loot might generate a high-stakes Scavenging check.)

There have been several threads of late seeking to establish definitions for gaming terms and parse the built-in assumptions behind said definitions, and these threads have revealed that there is very little consensus about what we mean by the basic roleplaying definitions we use. Nevertheless, let's assume that we all understand what I mean by the "standard D&D model" of loot (be it coins, gems, magic items, whathaveyou) being attached to encounters of various kinds as a reward for overcoming the encounters and that a basic loot progression as the characters advance is assumed as part of the game.

So, with that in mind, and addressing the italicized, bolded part of pemerton's post above, what "interesting ideas for how those parcels can come into play" have you actually used in your games beyond simply items to be looted from corpses, discovered in secret compartments when searching chambers, etc. (which, in fact, often is not particularly interesting, although it occasionally can be so)?

Some obvious possibilities are rewards from a benefactor when completing some task, which retains the pacing mechanism built into the game, divine boons, unleashed potential from items already in the possession of PCs (e.g. an heirloom longword that develops a magical property over gameplay rather than the PC finding a new sword), etc.

I'm curious most especially about actual examples from gameplay.

 

[Lanefan]

First off, I'll preface by saying that I don't use any sort of "treasure parcel" model such as is presented in 4e - it's a lot more random than that! Add to this that I never know how much of the potential treasure in an adventure or area they're actually going to find, further randomizing their returns. Even further randomizing things is the sometimes-fragility of magic items when hit by things like fireballs, cones-of-cold, lightning bolts, and so on...

That said, I've also used divine boons (though usually to grant levels or abilities rather than wealth-based treasure), benefactor rewards and so on - but never the unleashed item potential - interesting idea.

A few actual examples:

- party helped defuse a war between two neighbouring realms - one Elvish, one Dwarvish - by discovering and exposing that the Dwarven leadership had been deeply corrupted by Drow. In thanks the Elves - who would otherwise have lost the war very badly - gave each party member a personalized magic item (much like Galadhriel when the Fellowship leaves Lothlorien).

- while adventuring for another reason entirely a party found and returned some divine-grade forging tools that had been stolen from Haephestus; in return he made a magic weapon for each PC (in theory as divinely-made items these were unbreakable but the PCs still managed to break or lose all four of them during their ongoing careers...sigh...)

- a party investigated and (barely!) prevented a hostile overthrow of the kingdom in which most of them lived. In return the very grateful King gave the party a large plot of land and some 30,000 g.p. to be spent on building themselves a castle on it, which they did - this gave them a home base which was used for the rest of the campaign. (side note: as time went on the various PCs also poured tens of thousands of their own money into this castle such that by the time the campaign ended the place was a match for any fantasy castle anywhere)

- treasure or reward can come in ways other than wealth, often in the form of existing wealth that doesn't have to be spent. On several occasions, for example, entire parties have had their training* paid for as a reward for their actions. On other occasions the not-insignificant costs of attempting to raise or resurrect the party's dead have been covered; rarely, a free revival may come as a direct divine reward. Etc.
* - training into a new level is a thing in my game, and a rather costly thing at that

Is this the sort of thing you're looking for?

Lanefan

 

[darkbard]

Is this the sort of thing you're looking for?

Lanefan

Absolutely! These are some great examples. I'm curious as to how others in the community at large handle treasure in their games beyond the simple reward-for-conquering foes/traps system I present in the OP.

 

[pemerton]

[MENTION=1282]darkbard[/MENTION]

Most of the magic items in my main 4e game are gifts from the gods - either literally (eg when the PCs teleported into Orcus's throne room, having stolen knowledge of the location from Vecna, the Raven Queen intercepted their teleport to bestow some gifts upon them - like James Bond visiting Q's room of gadgets) or, more commonly, implicitly in the form of power-ups of exsiting items (whether by the gods, or because the PCs have been victorious in a place of power, etc).

Some items have been gifts from NPCs (eg the first neck item in the game was an amulet +1 gifted by one of the NPCs in Night's Dark Terror); some have been taken from NPCs (I think the first magic armour in the game was a coat of scale armour that the dwarf fighter took from the defeated hobgoblin chieftain in the same module).

Sometimes magic benefits have been conferred upon a PC (eg the gods return the PC to life from death; the wizard was cured of a disease by some witches), and I count the cost of the ritual as treasure earned.

After the PCs defeated beholders and a roper in the Underdark, they found a cache of items (inside the roper, I think) which were relics of an earlier member of the Order of the Bat (which is the secret drow cult of Corellon worshippers to which the drow sorcerer belongs) - these had been on the drow player's wish list!

The Sword of Kas was taken by the PCs from an other planar "shadow" of the manor of a Nerathi mage, who had been working on it trying to devise ways to stop gnolls overrunning Nerath. When the PCs then met Kas, they returned it to him. But then took it back after, many sessions and levels later, they broke their alliance with him (ironic, that!) and defeated him.

The PCs were given Whelm by Kas in exchange for the return of his sword (the paladin PC lost, so that the dwarf fighter PC might gain!); and later on the dwarf PC led a team of dwarven artificers in reforging it into Overwhelm - a dwarven thrower Mordenkrad.

Recovering the Rod of Seven Parts/Sceptre of Law has been a recurring part of the campaign, and bits of that have been found all over the place - ones I remember include a piece hidden in a chache in an old Nerathi ruin; the ruling sceptre of the (fallen) city of Entekar, given as a gift to the PC by other refugees from the city; a piece embedded in the body of an elemental hydra; a piece in a vault within a duergar stronghold, which was recovered by the PCs (from inside a purple worm that had swallowed it) as part of the process of precipitating the downfall of that stronghold (when you remove the Sceptre of Law from a place, what else is going to happen?); a piece inside a godling that was spawned from the essence of Miska the Wolf-Spider mixed with a fragment of the Rod; and the seventh piece is on Carceri, where Miska is trapped. (That's all the parts but the 3rd; I can't remember where that one was found.) One consequence of parcelling out an implement in this sort of fashion is that it tends to "level up" slower than for the other PCs, as implement can't step up until the piece is found, and the piece can't be found without some appropriate bit of story occurring.

So anyway, those ar some examples of how it's worked in my game.

 

[darkbard]

So anyway, those ar some examples of how it's worked in my game.

Excellent! Do you, as GM, pay any attention to adhering to the parcel/level system of 4E, or have you dispensed with it entirely? If the latter, do you implement the "fixed enhancement bonus" optional system, or have you found that the item-dependency of PCs wrt to leveling expectations is overstated in the basic rules system. (I've noticed that your "actual play" posts often pit the PCs against higher-than-level foes, so there must be some system in play that accounts for this.)

 

[pemerton]

[MENTION=1282]darkbard[/MENTION]

I follow the parcel system obsessively closely in terms of totals, although not in terms of actual parcels - I mix and match the actual awards to reflect the overall totals for a level, and I carry surpluses or deficits over from level to level on a (paper) record that I use for that purpose.

This means that, now the party is at 30th level, there is an upper cap on the amount of loot available, though it hasn't been reached yet.

Given how many artefacts are in my game, I also factor those into my totals. I've had to assign a value to the 7th part of the Rod of 7 Parts (I can't remember it off the top of my head). Their Thundercloud Tower also counted against the totals.

Why do I do it this way? No good reason I can think of, other than wanting to start with the rules as presented and then just sticking to it. (I use the XP rules too, on the same (lack of) princiiple.)

In my Dark Sun game, if/when it kicks off again, I will not use XP and not use parcels. For levelling, we'll use consensus (and I would plan to skip some levels rather than play all the way through again - once seems enough for that); for items, we'll use inherent bonuses, which then makes keeping traclk of parcels completely unnecessary, I think.

In the main game, we haven't used inherent bonuses - and nor do we use Expertise feats. My experience is that higher level foes don't cause big problems (admittedly I don't use a lot of soldiers, which - even if the AC issues is put to one side - seem to be a bit boring sometimes; I like controlers!). The one time we had a really big gap (26th(?) level PCs vs Torog) I used an escalation die, which corresponded to the fact that the PCs had destroyed the Soul Abattoir and so Torog's power was ebbing away. But even with an 8-sided escalation die, they finished him in (I think) round 3, so it probably wasn't needed.

And that example reminds me of one important factor the players use to deal with above-level foes - zones of autodamage. That was what helped kill Torog and Lolth.