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Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="shurai" data-source="post: 1837642">Tomhawk, the Custom SettingEssentially, for my campaigns, I leave the character creation rules untouched, in that any player may play any class or race.  I do tweak the magic item rules quite a bit, however.I reduce the magic item acquisition rates but I actually increase the power of whatever items they do find; I like players to have few magic items, but I want those magic items to matter.  For example, a +1 longsword isn't much better than a regular longsword, statistically speaking, so I usually give out a +2 longsword instead.  This is the key thing:  I don't give the characters  any way of knowing what the sword's bonus is.  That way, the only way to gauge the value of their new sword is by its effects, which I like to describe over time using subtle hints.It's amazing how much emotive power is instilled in an item like that when you take away the number and provide the players with subtle evidence instead.  This does require me to hamstring certain spells, like Identify for instance; such a spell makes little sense in a world with few magical items anyway.I also like to keep the general quantity of permanent magic items smaller than the number of party members.  The Fighter, for instance, may have a magic sword, and the Cleric may have a magic shield, but the rogue may not have anything magical and the Wizard may have only some rare, but minor, trinket.  This may generate some unrest among the players, but I think the added realism of uneven distribution is well worth the risk of someone feeling left out.  Englightened players tend to worry about fairness less than character and plot anyway, as long as they trust the DM.  Truly, I think D&D spends too much time mandating 'fairness'; we lose a lot of our verisimilitude that way.If anything gripes me about default D&D culture, it is the obvious materialism.  Essentially, PCs usually end up walking around with piles and piles of various magic items.  As others have said, it ruins the atmosphere to have game events handled as questions of who has which situation-defeating magical item.So, I don't particularly care for potions and scrolls; they feel too generic.  Instead I like the one-shot items to be food-like or herbal, to make the campaign feel more earthy.  Think lembas.  The important thing is to build a rich culture, and that requires a rich barley-flavored halfling drink that restores vitality, not a potionofcurelightwounds, 3rd caster level.I get the impression that most of the time when people say they want low-magic, what they're really after is richer culture.  I think default D&D feels too much like the modern world:  The magic items are like cel phones, nutritional supplements, explosives, or shots of morphine.  You can just imagine some of the Wondrous Items to be made of Plastic and stamped with "Made in Taiwan".Speaking of culture, that's where the lowness of the magic in my campaigns really comes out.  I think medeival cultures are nothing without superstition and rumor, charlatan and ritual.  Most citizens of most societies, therefore, have never seen a single magical object or spell.  They believe in the stuff, of course, and everyone knows some Grandmother or other who knows dozens of charms and curses and whatnot.  Some of these may even produce actual minor magical effects, but the trick is to never tell the players which they are.It's surprising how you can produce a superstitious player-character that way, and it makes the roleplaying so much more interesting.Speaking of roleplaying, I like to alter the cultural perceptions of spellcasters.  I like the citizenry to fear them or be in awe of them.  This way some spellcasters can be hated and persecuted, but also obeyed out of amazement.  So it's a tad balanced.There's basically no way to buy a magic item in my world; having a market for the unbelievable is just absurd.  I've yet to have a spellcaster character want to use the Item Creation rules, so I don't yet know how to resolve that.Also, in my world, good is good and evil is evil, and although the primary advantage of evil is its ability to deceive, it's clear which is which much of the time.  All magic items carry some sort of alignment and related effects.  This prevents the players from collecting magic items from the various bad people they kill.Anyway, I've gone on more than long enough; that's how I do it.</blockquote>

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