Stock magic items are not special

[Darkness]

What Good Hero would use the Tools of Evil, or give them away for others to use?

They could redeem them (BoED).

It is easier if you're playing a low-magic campaign.

Certainly. It's also easier in campaigns that are more like Exalted, where many items are quite powerful but the PCs don't get that many. Of course, the fact that there aren't many standard items in Exalted (though there might have been in the past) helps.

But if you were playing a high-magic campaign, then commoditized magic items probably aren't a problem you need to correct (because they really are "just a +1 sword"

Yeah. I play in the FR, where this is very true. I like making some items more interesting than that anyway, I just can't do it all the time.

 

[Crothian]

Sometimes that works, other times not. Even if the PCs find the legendary Sword Of Heroes at the culmination of the most thrilling adventure in their lives, in a world where magic is rare and wondrous, the players may still find it anticlimactic when you reveal that it only adds +2 to the dice rolls.

You can present things however you like, but you can't control how the players feel.

then it might be time to switch to a different game ort get new players. ya, players can ruin the game by acting like this but then again it a player problem and not a game one.

 

[Stone Angel]

I've alway loved the fact that magic items have backstory, which is why I try to refrain from my players buying just any items they want.

Kind of the way that the Baldurs Gate and Spine of the World games gave whenever you found a weapon and identified it.


The Seraph of Earth and Stone

 

[Crothian]

I've alway loved the fact that magic items have backstory, which is why I try to refrain from my players buying just any items they want.

well, instead of them buying a shiled =2, sell them the Shield of Drackton, it was used to defend the famous knight Sir Drackton in his many battles...sure its a +2 shield but just because they bought it doesn't mean it doesn't have a history.

 

[shilsen]

I'm probably in the minority here, but I'm very rarely interested as a DM in making magic items special. Sure, there are certain magic items which'll be extremely important to the story and be appropriately flavorful, but on the whole they're low on my list of priorities. Plot, pacing, thrilling adventures, interesting NPCs, lots of skullduggery, battles to the death, intrigue and mystery - I have lots of other stuff to concentrate on.

 

[Numion]

You could always just tell the players to stop meta gaming. A low level character that has found his first +1 weapon is not going to be be calling it bland. Sure the player might know there are better things out there, but the character doesn't have to.

Well yeah, but it's not the PC thats supposed to enjoy the items (or life itself, for that matter), but the player.

 

[ForceUser]

I tend to tweak magic items enough such that they are different from what's in the DMG, because I find most of those items boring and overused (everyone wants a vest of endurance, for instance. They are practically standard issue in some campaigns). For example, in my current campaign the bard doesn't wield a boring old +2 whip, but The Coils of Dauntan, a +1 whip that can--once per day--initiate a grapple as a free action and, if it gets a hold, can constrict for 2d6 damage per round for 1d4 rounds. Instead of gauntlets of ogre power, the fighter has gauntlets of gripping potency, which in addtion to giving him +2 strength, add +10 to all rolls to resist being disarmed. In this way I personalize magic items in my campaigns so that I don't get bored and my players don't feel they need to fill up their "paper doll" with boring old cloaks of resistance, vests of endurance, and +1 shields.

 

[Crothian]

Well yeah, but it's not the PC thats supposed to enjoy the items (or life itself, for that matter), but the player.

Then it goes back to them playing the wrong game. Magical items are a part of the game and if they aren';t enjoying that aspect they need to figure out why and not expect the DM to alter the game for them.

 

[AuraSeer]

then it might be time to switch to a different game ort get new players. ya, players can ruin the game by acting like this but then again it a player problem and not a game one.

If there are 4+ players who "act like this" and have a good time, and one DM who acts some other way and is miserable, who's ruining what for whom?

 

[Quasqueton]

Then it goes back to them playing the wrong game. Magical items are a part of the game and if they aren';t enjoying that aspect they need to figure out why and not expect the DM to alter the game for them.

But the Players are enjoying the magic items. The problem is when the DM wants the Players to be awed and impressed by a stock magic item.

It's like wanting the Players to be worried and cautious by a barbarian in a rage. Or unnerved and scared entering an underground dungeon. Or awed and impressed by a cleric casting heal.

This is the same reason that many DMs want/need new monsters to throw at their Players' characters. Experienced Players aren't terrified by an ogre. Been there, done that. But a fiendish ogre with a different description is as exciting for the Players as they should be pretending a normal ogre is to characters that haven't seen one before.

Tales of "the Beast of Borgonia" that stands 10' tall, wields a tree for a club, and demands a toll from all who pass along its road kind of falls flat when the PCs kill it like any other ogre. But when that ogre shrugs off the fireball they tossed at it, the *Players* are as impressed and worried as their characters are.

Quasqueton