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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="molonel" data-source="post: 1704118" data-attributes="member: 10412">It's misleading because "low magic" in the case of Conan just means that his magic items are undispellable, can't be stolen and can't be sold. I love Robert E. Howard, but Conan translated into a D&D character would be a twinked-out munchkin from hell on steroids.Look at the representation I gave, posted here on Enworld. Conan, as a 16-year old boy, is presented with three 18s and a 17. Oh, and he's got two dump stats in Wisdom and Intelligence: as 12 and an 11. Using point buy, that's a 68-point character. A high-powered, standard magic D&D campaign is considered 32- or 36-point stat arrays for characters. Most of their wealth will be aimed over time toward - you guessed it - stat building.Who needs magic, at that point? A fighter using the elite array of stats (15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8) would need 550,000 GP worth of wishes just to get the inherent stat bumps to match a character like that. Or if you broke it down into items, he'd need a +4 Belt of Giant Strength, a set of +4 Gloves of Dexterity, a +4 item of Constitution, and a +6 Cloak of Charisma, and he'd STILL be lagging behind in two stats. That's the cheaper route, and it weighs in at the low, low price of 84K. The starting gold for a 10th level character, by the book, is 49,000 GP.That's Conan at 1st level. That's just to match his STATS, never mind his gear.And, frankly, I think the author of the stat array probably low-balled Int and Wis so that Conan wouldn't look like a total twink - even though he is.How many low magic campaigns have YOU run that started all of your characters with those kind of stats?If the problem isn't character power, then why do all of your examples concern character capabilities? Or were you worried about the monsters in your campaigns doing a scry/buff/teleport or casting dozens of spells per day or discarding magic items that were no longer useful? Never mind the fact that 3rd Edition D&D is the first version of D&D where the ability to keep items, and continue building on them, is built right into the core rules through item creation feats. If you can't do it yourself, you can pay a party member who can to do it for you. Or pay an NPC. As a high-level player, I found myself building on items more than I ever did in any previous version of the game. I didn't _need_ to trade my Belt of Strength for a better one. I just improved on it.As Elder-Basilisk already pointed out on page 5, Pippin, from the Lord of the Rings (remember him?) by the end of the adventure had a helm of the tower of the guard, mail of the tower of the guard, a blade of westernesse, a cloak of Lorien, a belt from Lorien, lasting effects of the waters of the ents (inherent stat bumps, anyone?), and a horn given to him by the king. To quote Elder-Basilisk in full, he said, "For fiction, where minor items don't merit mentioning because that would take too long and make the story read more like a character sheet or a treatise on the various components of ancient armors, that's quite a bit. On the other hand, it's not exactly unusual for a LotR character either."Thus, we see that your claims are entirely false where LotR is concerned. To _you_ they don't feel like Lord of the Rings, but to believe that, you must close your eyes or squint really hard when you compare the two. To _you_ it doesn't feel like Conan. And that's fine, because _you_ are the person running _your_ games. I won't let the facts get in your way. Go on, and believe that.How many spells could Gandalf cast in a day? What were the stats for his Staff of Power? Did the "players" in LotR happen to find high-magic, item-rich places like Rivendell, or the Barrow Downs, or Lothlorien to gear up before setting out for their adventure? Always. The only difference is that they didn't have to buy their items. They oops, stumbled across items that exactly matched their needs, or - how convenient - someone just gave them to the party for free. Powerful items like Frodo's impenetrable mithral shirt, or Sting, or the Light of Earendil, or useful items like his elven cloak, or his elven waybread, or his elven rope that burned evil creatures and untied itself on command. He was carrying one of the most powerful artifacts the whole of Middle Earth.That's your idea of a low magic campaign? You don't like scrying? Man, those scrying stones possessed by Denethor, Saruman and Sauron must have really pissed you off. Don't like loads of magical gear and powerful weapons and spells? Don't ever read the Silmarillion. Conan - oops, how convenient - just happened to get a sword in "The Phoenix on the Sword" that harmed his world's equivalent of summoned outsiders. Thoth Amon had the Ring of Set. Conan just happened to get an amulet that prevented him from being slaughtered with his army by shadows. Small, dinky magic items and treasure had a habit of disappearing between Conan stories. Just like characters dumping useless items, or items they no longer need.</blockquote>

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