D&D 5E Would you let your player choose their magic items they get?

[billd91]

Having run a lot of 3e/PF and a fair amount of 4e I had a lot of experience with crafting and players picking their own magic items. With every magic item being chosen by exhaustively searching the rules and either purchased at a magic store, made to order, or crafted by a PC. Especially in 4e/PF, every minute of downtime was spent crafting artisanal magic items specifically for each character.
Which was boring AF and made magic just item-based-feats.

I purposely shifted away from that with 5e and gave out magic items randomly. I let the item define the character, with players getting and falling in love with some random item that they never knew they wanted. Like the swashbuckler who randomly got slippers of spiderclimb and suddenly happily realized they were Nightcrawler or the rogue who got a ring of telekenesis.

I'm going to quote this because the full control of magic items as budgeted power-ups in 3e was probably the most significantly transformative change to the way D&D was played in the wild. In previous editions, people wanted certain goodies like rings/cloaks of protection, better AC, magic weapons, girdles of strength/glove of dexterity, etc. But with random or at least non-PC oriented hoards of treasure, pursuing the strategy of getting those items was difficult to achieve. People made do with things like rings of shooting stars. Once the magic item economy got into full swing in 3e, that ring was just fodder for cash and the Big 6 items. And that kind of sucked. I'm glad 5e has moved well away from that.

But like GlassJaw said, it's worth tailoring things occasionally with certain signature items. You can do that and still have players make do with the other thing they get and discovering things they might not have otherwise thought up.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Same, I didn't like how that was handled at all in 4e. The placing of magic items in the PHB was an interesting design choice, but I felt like the whole thing took away much of the magical feel of magic items.

That being said, if a player says something like "my character's goal is to recover the vorpal sword that was stolen from my family," sure, I'll probably use that hook, albeit when it's level-appropriate. If the player just tells me "hey, give me a bag of holding," chances are that's not going to happen.

Normally as a DM, I prefer to give out magic items and you get what you get. Sure, I'm not going to be a jerk about it and give the dex-based fighter a two-handed sword, and will try to put magic items out that fit with everyone's characters.

I find the 4e Wish Lists 'I want X/Look, it's in the loot drop!' concept quite offensive, OTOH

 

[Giltonio_Santos]

Which doesn't apply to Umbran's example, because in a game with no downtime that was never an opportunity on the first place.

And that’s part of the problem, I think.

 

[Jester David]

But like GlassJaw said, it's worth tailoring things occasionally with certain signature items. You can do that and still have players make do with the other thing they get and discovering things they might not have otherwise thought up.

Yeah, looking for specific items can easily be handled through personal quests. The occasional requested or perfect item is nice treat. But that shouldn't be expected.

 

[Lanefan]

Voted "maybe", as items can come to the PCs in a variety of ways with varying amounts of player control involved.

The most common is 'found in the field' during an adventure. Field items are whatever the module tells me they are, or - if a homebrew module - whatever I dreamed up at the time when I wrote it. They are never tailored for specific characters, in part because I rarely know ahead of time which specific characters will be along for the trip! And if you find a +2 ogre-slaying glaive-guisarme and nobody in the party knows a polearm from a polecat... >shrug< ...so be it.

The next most common is 'from a shopping list'. In any significant town there's liable to be a random amount of random items for sale at any given time (and the PCs are just as liable to put their own items on the market, that don't suit what they need or want, whenever they divide a treasury), but other than holy water and sometimes potions of healing what's available is out of the players' control: it's random. And once in a very rare while they'll be sold something cursed, usually to immobilize the PC so it can then be robbed.

A less common means is 'direct reward' from a mentor or sponsor or rescuee(s), usually on completion of a mission. In this case the rewards sometimes are tailored specifically to either the character or its class (think Galadhriel's gifts when the Fellowship leaves Lothlorien).

And another uncommon means is 'by commission'. Here the player/PC has pretty much full control over what item is produced. I don't generally allow PCs to make their own items (unless they want to retire from adventuring; it takes a lot of time), but they can commission an artificer to make something for them, within reason. The problem here is that getting anything made beyond a simple potion or scroll takes, in campaign terms, a rather large amount of time; as in someone saying this May afternoon "Pay for it now and you'll most likely have it by Midwinter's Day". By that time the party might have done several more adventures.

A very rare means is 'item quest', where one or more PCs hear of the existence of an item and specifically go out searching for it. The reason it's rare is that while searching or retrieving items is a very common reason for adventuring, it's rare the party get to keep what they've recovered as they're usually getting it for someone else.

 

[akr71]

Like everything - Yes & No. I try to choose magic items that my players would be interested in, but not 100% of the time. I mean, I'm not gonna hand out too many scrolls & wands when there aren't any casters in the group. Or greatswords to a bunch of Dex martial characters. Sometimes they have to deal with whats given - otherwise it seems a little too good to be true.

If they let it be known what their character would like, I will make it possible to find one. Make a quest out of it.

My son has an Arcane Archer, but then found a Belt of Giant Strength, so now he primarily wields a maul... but I let them find a bow that uses Strength instead of Dexterity and he thinks its really cool.

 

[Ace]

If the item increases fun for the group and fits the game, why not?

Also D&D in most versions assumes quite a lot of magic out in the world. Enough in say AD&D for a player and gifts for henchmen

If there are surplus items there are going to be items for sale, trade or as rewards . Heck you can buy purported magic items in real life. No reason a world where there is no question magic is real won't have some you can get hands on.

That said some items require quests and a some don't fit certain games so I voted maybe.

 

[Retreater]

Recently, I've used the magic item purchasing chart from XGE to allow the purchase of a +1 shortbow and +1 battle axe. This has been necessary due to the characters' not having the right weapons to overcome resistances and the very quick nature of leveling in the adventure we're playing (which has been converted from 3.5).
It seems to work pretty well.

 

[Asisreo]

I am very interested in the whole "quest for the item" bit. My problem is that this would either cause me to have to either bring the whole team along just for one person to get their one thing. Or use up everyone else's time going through the whole epic quest solo.

I guess I should mention out-of-session play also isn't practical in my specific situation.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

I am very interested in the whole "quest for the item" bit. My problem is that this would either cause me to have to either bring the whole team along just for one person to get their one thing. Or use up everyone else's time going through the whole epic quest solo.

I guess I should mention out-of-session play also isn't practical in my specific situation.

I have always wondered about the "quest for the item" thing too, because when I'm planning out campaigns I usually don't have advanced knowledge of which character(s) will want which item(s) at which point(s) throughout so I'm not baking-in any opportunities for these item quests to fill.

Which means my perspective on them is one of suspicion that perhaps they aren't actually happening all that often because players feel like they'd be choosing between achieving their actual goals in the campaign or getting an item they might like to have, or they aren't actually "side" quests at all because the campaign plan is so loose or not-yet-made that it's either these quests happen or the party has even more downtime on their hands before the next campaign event.