ZEITGEIST Zeitgeist in 5e: dealing with magic items

[eamon]

I'm considering running ZEITGEIST in 5e, and one specific thing that seems quite different in 5e as opposed to 4e+pathfinder, is that magic items are presumably quite rare.

In particular, Zeitgeist includes the concept of requisitioning magic items from the RHC and "donating" any found items as well.

This feels like it's not going to jive very naturally with 5e.

Does anyone have any suggestions/other tips on how to deal with this?

 

[skotothalamos]

Does anyone have any suggestions/other tips on how to deal with this?

I'm running in 4e, and I feel like the requisition system is just there to keep the DM from having to manage wishlists and seed the adventures with wishlisted items. It's much easier to just give the players a budget and set them loose in Character Builder. That works great for 4e, where magic item selection is often just another layer of character building.

For 5e, I would probably eliminate it altogether.

 

[Samuel Cole]

I'd do the same. I'm playing in 4E and using the inherent bonuses option a) because I don't want to have to keep track of who needs an item upgrade and when, and b) because I want magic items to be rare, interesting, and relevant to the story. In other words, I want people thinking "Wow, we have this coin with a picture of Avilona on it, and it lets us fly. I wonder where it comes from and what it means?" rather than "Geez, I really need to upgrade my +1 longsword to a +2 longsword.

The fact that I've been able to run 4E Zeitgeist successfully with astonishingly few magic items suggests to me that it'd run just fine that way in 5e, too.

 

[eamon]

When they do find a magic item, you let them keep it?

 

[Samuel Cole]

When they do find a magic item, you let them keep it?

Yup - I'm using all the magic items listed in the "rewards" sections of the adventures, although the PCs actually have to lay their hands on an item in order to keep it. It means that the magic items they have are firmly established in the narrative, such as Wolfgang's malice-wrought rapier.

I'm also giving them 1/4 of the base level gold and allowing them to purchase magic items, but thus far the only thing they've chosen to buy are healing potions.

 

[eamon]

Hmm, nifty - it sounds like I'll do that too.

I think I may tie this into the whole audit scene too; I'll have it "officially" be necessary to register found items, and see if they do . That's also a nice loopwhole to retract broken items and/or given them stuff they kind of need. After all, I'm likely to hand out the wrong stuff now and then given that I'm going to improvise a conversion with so little experience and no DMG out for some time yet.