D&D General Weapons should break left and right

[W'rkncacnter]

But, that's the problem. 3e had the wealth by level tables, as did 4e, and people did nothing but [swear] about it.

HOW DO THESE KEEP GETTING THROUGH?! ARE YOU PEOPLE MAGIC?!

 

[Lanefan]

never randomize.
while it sounds logical, it just uses your time without any payout for anyone.
especially if you spent time to create a custom, cool item.
at best it will be vendored if found as loot as a glorified platinum bar, at worse if for sale, simply ignored.

That's fine with me, as I usually never know which characters will be in a given adventure anyway there's always going to be some extra unused items even if I try to curate ahead of time.

That, and treasury is always divided to value here anyway; thus if there's (numbers conveniently set to make the math easy) a sword worth 2000, a potion worth 400, and 5600 worth of cash* in the treasury for a party of four then one character gets the sword, another gets the potion plus 1600 cash, and the other two each get 2000 cash.

* - some of which usually comes from sold items that nobody in the party wants to claim.

just save yourself time and dont bother with items that no one in the party can use in any decent capacity.

If I put a Necromancer spellbook in an adventure and the party doesn't happen to have a Necromancer at the moment, them's the breaks. They can still turn it into cash.

limiting is always a good idea to keep the reins on how much items are in circulation.

In a WotC edition, yes. In a TSR edition where items are much more easily broken there's room for a lot more turnover.

 

[Lanefan]

See, that's even more pointless to me. Endlessly frustrating the players - "Oh, sorry, you can't find that magic item today, come back later" - is not improving anything. Because players only try to buy stuff that's 100% practical. They will never buy stuff that's interesting. Making it into a random loot bag every time they roll into a town isn't resolving the problem.

In-character it makes a lot of sense that they'd go for the most practical items first. Hard to complain about that.

And IME if they've got the spare cash they often will buy interesting items. If those items turn out to be useful, that's good; and if they don't they're still much lighter to carry than all the coin they represent.

I get that this is a me problem. Totally understand. If I actually had the energy to do it, every single magic item would be completely random. There would never be a list of magic items by rarity. There would never be Bags of Holding. There might be a Box of Holding, or a Locket of Holding, or a Boot of Holding (that might actually be pretty funny),

I should do more of this also. That said, while items of Holding are common as dirt in the current game, in mine they're still very rare; and if one comes up in a treasury or on a shopping list there's usually a lineup to claim or buy it.

but, nothing would ever be for sale.

Do your PCs not sell off items they can't use or no longer need?

I ADORE things like The Griffon's Saddlebag. That's where I get all the magic items I parcel out now. I haven't opened the DMG for a magic item in months.

Not familiar with the Griffon's Saddlebag - what's that?

 

[GrimCo]

Random items remind me of Diablo. You would get tons of random magic items, some were good, some were ok, some were just crap to sell. Sure, items had durability, but once you found good stuff, you repaired it. Most anoying items in Diablo were good weapons and armors that were ethereal. You find it, it has awesome stats, even sockets, but it has reduced durability and cannot be repaired. So, you either don't use good items for sockets or you use it sparingly.

 

[Lanefan]

Whether or not something like what @Lanefan does is a waste of time depends greatly on what your goals are. If you want the effect of verisimilitude and realism in what might be available, you have to allow for the possibility that what is available at any given time isn't exactly what the players want for their PCs.

Further, the randomizer doesn't (and shouldn't) care whether a given player is playing her Nature Cleric or her Fighter or her Magic-User at the time a party going shopping; it just spits out what it spits out and there's either something(s) useful there or there isn't.

For adventure treasure, if I'm writing the adventure I'll try to put in some interesting pieces, though I'll often have no idea whether any of the characters who end up going through that adventure will want them. If I'm running a module I'll almost always just use what's there, as the whole point of a module is to save me the work.

Edit to add: the other thing the randomizer doesn't care about is party level. If it spits out "+1 plate mail", for example, a low-level Fighter might leap at it while a high-level Fighter might see such minor armour as beneath his dignity.

 

[Hussar]

Seems to have been popular enough in Skyrim!

Then go play that. To me, it's so utterly pointless.

If a player actually wanted to buy interesting magic items, or make them, I'd bend over backwards to make it happen. But, nope. It's +1 Swords with Smite charges or Flaming Weapons all day long.

It's to the point where I'm just going to stop making players try to find them. They hit 5th level, I'll just give them a magic weapon and move on. I just do not care.

 

[Hussar]

I get it, but what is alternative?
bashing someone on the head for 20 levels with same crappy sword you got in boot camp?

that sure is not fun either...

I would point you in the direction of The Griffon's Saddlebag - Reddit - The heart of the internet - there are a mountain of really interesting magic weapons there. For example, one I gave out in my Phandelver campaign was a magic axe that negates Incorporeal for 1 minute. A minor magic item - uncommon IIRC. But, so much more interesting for a character that was focused on undead hunting than a flaming sword.

/edit to add. Poke for @Lanefan. Here's one of the, IMO, best repositories of magic items out there. This is all I ever use.

And, as far as "selling magic items", sure, go ahead. But, again, if I had my druthers, that would be like someone selling a Rembrant. Sure, it happens, but, not every day.

But, it's all part of the Harry Potterification of D&D. More magic all the time. Never ending deluge of incredibly boring stuff that doesn't make any difference. That's the point. If the party ups their damage output, the DM will just adjust encounters to suit. Woohoo, bigger numbers. Do not care in the slightest.

I mean, I gave a helmet to the party that lets you pull off your own head and fly around, headless horseman style while breathing burning hands spells. To me? That's a MAGIC item. A magic sword that just does more damage? I'd rather just write +5 damage on your character sheet and not have to worry about it. You want to do more damage? Great. Ok. Here's +5 damage on your attacks. Anything else you would like?

 

[Horwath]

HOW DO THESE KEEP GETTING THROUGH?! ARE YOU PEOPLE MAGIC?!

what?

 

[GobHag]

It's a treadmill with zero actually chance of getting ahead because the DM controls the baddies. Oh, you're now doing 30% more damage per round? Ok, I'll just up the number of HP in the encounter by 30% and let's go.

This is good actually

 

[Horwath]

I would point you in the direction of The Griffon's Saddlebag - Reddit - The heart of the internet - there are a mountain of really interesting magic weapons there. For example, one I gave out in my Phandelver campaign was a magic axe that negates Incorporeal for 1 minute. A minor magic item - uncommon IIRC. But, so much more interesting for a character that was focused on undead hunting than a flaming sword.

a Ghost touch weapon, nice.
And sure useful for undead hunter, but again it's as interesting as +1 sword.

and I said, and some others here, I would not even count +X weapon as even magical, just better made, simple token of, I have more money, I want better gear to represent that we have made some progress in the world.
Now if we are back in 3.X with various special materials giving damage bonuses without being magical itself, I would also be happy with that also.

/edit to add. Poke for @Lanefan. Here's one of the, IMO, best repositories of magic items out there. This is all I ever use.

And, as far as "selling magic items", sure, go ahead. But, again, if I had my druthers, that would be like someone selling a Rembrant. Sure, it happens, but, not every day.

But, it's all part of the Harry Potterification of D&D. More magic all the time. Never ending deluge of incredibly boring stuff that doesn't make any difference. That's the point. If the party ups their damage output, the DM will just adjust encounters to suit. Woohoo, bigger numbers. Do not care in the slightest.

think of magic items as abstract "feat slots". you can have only so many of them and you can attune to only 3 of them(usually).
it's another way to customize your character to your liking. and same way as with Feats, you can maybe take something cool or you just take GWM and start bashing people with it on the head.

I mean, I gave a helmet to the party that lets you pull off your own head and fly around, headless horseman style while breathing burning hands spells. To me? That's a MAGIC item. A magic sword that just does more damage? I'd rather just write +5 damage on your character sheet and not have to worry about it. You want to do more damage? Great. Ok. Here's +5 damage on your attacks. Anything else you would like?

That is a great magic item and a very cool idea and I would like to have that instead of +1 sword any day of the week, but sometimes, someone just wants to have a better weapon.

maybe all permanent magic items should require attunement and various level of attunement requirement.

IE: your attunement power is
2×proficiency bonus+ Con bonus.

Common items: requires 1 power
Uncommon: requires 2 power
Rare: requires 3 power
Very Rare: requires 4 power
Legendary: requires 5 power
Artifact: requires 10 power