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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="oxybe" data-source="post: 6288873" data-attributes="member: 80033">the problem i find with the random "this is a sword made by... fire dwarves and it.... glows yellow when you pick your nose" is that for the most part a +1 sword its still just the same old sword, only marginally better.we've had more then a few magic items with histories and backgrounds. i remember a campaign where after saving a noble's family, one we interacted with quite often, they gave us their magic trident that was passed down from generation to generation. we kept it safe and still had it when the campaign ended, but it might have been used once or twice and then permanently put in a bag of holding as the weapons we had were either on-par or we quickly got better ones and just didn't feel like it would be right to part with the trident... it had some sentimental meaning for the party and we respected the guys who gave it to us.we just didn't have any use for it. so it was bagged until we got a base, where we put it on display and kept it clean.part of the problem is that D&D just doesn't treat magic weapons in interesting ways or that they often become obsolete quickly enough. a 12 page backstory doesn't make me want to use the +1 sword, it just makes me want to keep it around because it's a curious thing. weapons are tools and D&D doesn't really do much to show familiarity with a given weapon over it's usefulness (IE: if i'm working with 2 tools, the first of which is technically a better tool then the second, but i'm far more used to the second, i'll probably use the second since i can better use it, while experimenting with the first until i become familiar with it). mechanically speaking, you have no reason to use a +1 longsword over a +2 longsword, even if you've used the former for years and the latter was found 2 minutes ago.the other is that +1 swords that occasionally glow or scream obscenities aren't really something that are useful outside of the limited scope of helping to detect what makes it glow and offending people. a magic item that changes how the player interacts with situations is far more interesting in play and should be the goal of the system. you can give a flowery description and backstory to virtually anything. you can't really make addition interesting though.</blockquote>

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