DM’s Guide to Dealing With Treasure
posted Tuesday, March 23rd 2010 by
Dungeon Mastering Advice
I’m playing in a Legend of Zelda themed D&D game where the DM is having trouble deciding what magic items to give out. It’s got me thinking on methods of handing out treasure.
In D&D third edition, it’s not so important for the DM to get the items right. Players can sell unwanted magic items for half price and buy the ones they want, so two wrongs make a right. Not everyone likes this approach: it leads to magic supermarket syndrome, vendor trash hoarding and poor realism. There are solutions to these problems, though.
You can’t hand out magic items carelessly in D&D fourth edition, since items sell for 20% of their buy price. This discourages trash item hoarding, but it means players have to sell five wrong items to make the one they want. You absolutely cannot drop items a player can’t use, even if it’s unrealistic that every major villain wields the same obscure polearm as the party’s fighter. Powergamers will also hate you when they need a certain peculiar item for their build and you pick treasure at random, because unlike an MMO you can’t grind for the item.
One approach is to hand out whatever items the players ask for, but this doesn’t sit right with me. There’s no narrative to that. It’s like writing a list to Santa and then being surprised when you get everything on the list (or disappointed when they don’t). My DM’s compromise, which I somewhat like, is to ask the players for a wish-list of items, then pick from a table of these items when it comes to placing treasure. However, that still makes it hard for powergamers to intentionally get particular items.
An alternative approach is to give out extra gold and gems, and allow the players a method to buy items. If the “magic item supermarket” doesn’t sit well with you as a DM, get creative: players can hire a magic item artificer, have a temple bless the item, seek out someone who owns the item and buy it from them.
Yet another method is to let players declare a quest for the item they want. This is a useful synergy of player and character motivation and it’s easily solved by putting their item at the end of whatever dungeon you already had planned. It also creates a convenient adventure hook, secures player motivation and generates enthusiasm.
My favourite method, however, is to allow players to craft items themselves. Price the item at the usual cost, and allow any character of the appropriate spellcasting class and level to create items. For extra flavour, hand out magic item components as treasure. Magic item components count toward a certain value when crafting a magic item and can be almost anything, so long as they’re rare and valuable: a rare mineral, the horns of a powerful creature, old broken magic items, the relics of a saint, or anything else you can think up. Don’t make players craft all their own items, however, or the players who don’t know what they want will be left bemuddled.
Comments
Anonymous
March 24th, 2010
“You absolutely cannot drop items a player can’t use”
Yes you can. Just drop more of them, and the players can break them down and use them to make/improve/buy the items they want. In fact, it is EASIER in 4e, just throw in a bunch of magic junk items nobody will want.
Noumenon
March 24th, 2010
Reposting cuz it didn’t post:
I actually went to the 20% sales price idea in 3.5 at low levels, because I want a high magic game where people might actually use something like a helm of comprehend languages. This way I can give out lots of interesting magic items and see what they keep. At higher levels, there’s too much magic so I encourage selling it at 50% and buying fewer bigger things.
You might want to consider this system for giving out random treasure in 4E. You can give random treasure and still have the players appropriately equipped if you
a) allow selling items for HALF price rather than one-fifth (enabling the players to buy equipment they need)
b) raise all item treasures by one level.
Jonathan Drain
March 24th, 2010
@Anonymous: If you’re handing out magic items as a surrogate for gold, you might as well hand out gold or other valuables, as the article suggests.
Giving out too many items is a terrible idea because the players can keep them, and then they’ll have too many items.
Stormcrowe
March 25th, 2010
The D&D game i’m running right now i’ve tried to keep it a low magic game. They find minor items along the way but most of the major stuff is either handled in quest rewards allowing me to choose what they get or they can research and quest for a particular item. Its worked well so far.
Guia do mestre para lidar com tesouros | TRAMPOLIM RPG
March 25th, 2010
[...] original: DM’s guide to dealing with treasure Postado em: 23 de março de 2010 Autor: Jonathan Drain Site: D20 [...]
Ravenous Role Playing » Blog Archive » Friday Five: 2010-03-26
March 26th, 2010
[...] DM’s Guide to Dealing With Treasure I’m in the camp of random treasure is the best kind of treasure. It can sometimes point a game in new directions or give the players abilities outside their strengths, which will make them stronger characters. Having the players give a wish list to the GM for what they want to find just seems wrong to me. I realize that with D&D 4e this is almost a requirement because of the stated book rule that an item can only be sold for 20% of its full value. Instead of tossing out items that the players want the most as “treasure”, I’d rather see the 20% rule tossed and go back to the traditional 50% market value rule. Jonathan over at d20 Source has some other alternate systems that can be put into place to replace the “wish list syndrome” that drives me batty. [...]
Jenny Snyder
March 27th, 2010
I’m playing an artificer in one campaign, and I’ve arranged it with my DM that I get to make most of the magic items. We find convenient piles of residuum, and voila, I’m off to the races. It’s one less thing he has to worry about, and I get to feel like the mad scientist inventor type for my character. Win-win!
mike
March 28th, 2010
Think about this: the more rare and powerful a magic item it will attract attention of thieves’ guilds, cults, powerful wizards, rulers of the realm, etc.
Everybody would like to have the item, great means to start new adventures, gain allies or foes.
Also, walking out of the shoppe with 100,000 gp attracts its own attention too.
You might have it where a +3 sword is rare enough for the item to have some kind of history and cause someone to expend effort to acquire it.
You just don’t pawn Stormbringer like an XBox.
mike
March 28th, 2010
Another thought, the loot you bring back will likely have symbols and engravings that may not be to popular to be displayed.
Defeat a cult of Orcus, get a nice +4 sword. It’s going to have a marking relating to Orcus on it as well as something like “I love Orcus” engraved on it.
Wearing/using such gear may not make to statement characters want.
Friday Roundup | Level 30 Yinzer
April 2nd, 2010
[...] we apparently have items on the brain, here’s a handy few ways to help pick out and distribute those magic items from D20source. Additionally, not all magic items are about adding those bonuses, and we love [...]
Steam
June 18th, 2010
What happened to good old fashioned story telling?
Let the characters have a wish list? Or dump “trash” magic items that they can sell to get what they want? That sounds like one screwy economy.
How about they find the old sword that legend says killed the big bad troll who was haunting the countryside?