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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 7986684" data-attributes="member: 29398">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.</blockquote>

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