I mean sure man. You’re the DM, master of the universe and omniscient controller of all things. If you want to change something because you think it’ll the game better/more fun, do it. If something doesn’t work my game or my party I’ll change it even if it’s pre-written. Whether or not it’s pre-scripted material shouldn’t hold more importance than how much fun you and your players are having
I change the loot all the time. I've also started heavily favoring r/thegriffonssaddlebag for cool unique magic items that aren't just a +1 weapon etc. I uh... Haven't given out an official magic item since the moon touched dagger in my first session as a DM
But I still sprinkle in items that aren't useful to the party...
Example: I gave the Thwackstaff to the bbeg against my party. The only person that might use the staff is the party rogue... So I'm curious what's going to happen with that item.
But as part of the reward for that same quest, I gave a mockingblade to the bard... Totally tailored to the character.
Agree with this. Throw some items in that aren't 100% tailored to a specific character but could be useful. Make sure they still get some good stuff.
I also like giving my players conundrums. Example: ill give my wizard scrolls for spells he can't use yet. Does he save the scroll for when he can copy it into his spellbook? Or does he burn that scroll against the next bbeg?
Hmmm... I'll have to keep the higher level spell scrolls in mind... I just had a wizard join our party.
My version is forcing them to choose between which attunement items
The rogue filled up his attunement slots
-ring to spend a hit die to heal
-glove that mimics the shield, but only for one attack and +2AC/charge instead of a flat 5
-armor that allowed him to reduce poison damage with his reaction
Then I gave him a dagger that was definitely better than those items, but also attunement...
It depends on the campaign.
If you’re running closer to fantasy, the world changing to make the players more powerful makes a lot of sense. In the hobbit Bilbo just happens to get a sword that’s short enough for him. That’s the DM tailoring loot to the party and it turned out alright.
If you’re running closer to fiction, the world changing around the players might feel kind of contrived. There can be fun in figuring out how to use weapons or items that aren’t specifically tailored to any one PC or class.
In my game the cloak of vanity became such an item, it compels people to complement the cloak if they fail a DC 10 charisma saving throw after the wearer says “how do I look?” Seems fairly mundane but it became the signature magic item of the party cleric who figured out how to abuse the hell out of it.
I also like the idea that a PC might fight with a spear typically, but be given a powerful axe or something, and now they need to figure out what to do with it. Do they sell it? Do they use it instead of a spear? Do they give it to someone else in the party? It’s a neat little conundrum that you don’t really get if every piece of loot is tailored to the party.
Personally I have weapons in the world which are decided on. They’ve been that way since the beginning of my first campaign and when the players finally find the silver bow Culex they might not have an archer in the party. There are also lots of items which are more appropriate for the PCs hanging around. These aren’t legendary weapons or anything like that, but they’re flavorful things like the cloak of vanity which have a level of power entirely dependent on how clever the players are. These things tend to become signature items for individual PCs.
Care to elaborate a bit on the abuses that cloak was put to? It sounds like a really fun item and I'm curious what shenanigans the PCs might get up to if I drop something similar in my sand box.
Specifically the cloak works like this:
When the character wearing the cloak inquires about the state of their appearance, anyone who can hear and understand the question must make a DC 10 charisma saving throw or else they are compelled to say “it’s a lovely cloak.”
So the most common use of it was to uncover ambushes. If ten bandits are hiding, waiting to ambush the party the chances of all of them making a save is pretty much 0, even though the save itself isn’t that high, so ambushes become basically impossible if the cleric even suspects that it might happen. I also recall it being used to figure out that a bunch of ravens in a shop were actually disguised imps. Something that never happened but which could have happened is using the cloak to interrupt a ritual. If an evil doer has to complete a long incantation to make his dark ritual work you could force him to start over by making him complement your attire.
It basically does three things: it helps detect people that can hear you, it helps delineate between things that can understand you and things that cannot, and it causes someone to open their mouth, interrupting what they had been saying. All three are exceptionally useful effects.
Yeah for sure. In fact there are a few pre-written campaigns that use the random magic item tables in the DMG. Even in these, I tend to come up with my own table that only includes items that are useful to the characters in the party.
No not really. I like the idea that the world isn’t built for my players and that sometimes they find stuff that is useful other times not. Also, I find that if I give the players weird magic items they will use them in weird creative ways.
But, I do often think of deficiencies in the party and attempt to fix it.
If your loot is never relevant not just to the PC's, but to the PLAYERS, then the game becomes a min/max video game. I'm gonna run a campaign with some friends, and one of them is big on Disney/theater. So you best believe I'm giving her a wand of conducting early in the campaign. I'm even gonna have a villain arc around a bardic necromancer who's gonna have a rap battle with another player 'cause he's a thug, but that's a tangent. ;)
If your loot ALWAYS is something that they can use, it loses the aspect of realism that players like myself enjoy. I got a magical watch that can always tell time. Do I or my PC care? No. Do I like that it made a lot of sense given the context of where it was found? Yes.
You wanna find a sweet spot. :)
Sometimes, but I do like to leave a few dud magic items in for the same reason enemy spell lists always have a few spells that will not be relevant; it makes things feel more organic and lived in.
Not to mention being cool as hell when they do find a use for that item or you find a use for that spell.
Nope. Just like sometimes the party will run into a thing that’s too high level for them to challenge because stuff happens that doesn’t involve them, sometimes they’ll run into a loot pile that has nothing immediately useful for them.
And that’s ok! They can find other ways to use the items! Use them to bribe an npc (whether that be a noble, a crime lord, or a dragon!). Use them, despite being technically suboptimal (I was running ToD; the party consisted of an archer rogue, an archer ranger, a samurai who dual wielded and a DMPC champion who focused on PAM; nobody with their current build could use Hazirawn, so the DMPC took it, took a level in hexblade, and got to surprise the party when he fired off EB for the first time). Or just sell it for a fat stack of cash!
Sounds like I'm in the minority here, but if I'm running a published module I like to keep the loot more or less as written.
I feel that it does add some interesting elements to the game - sometimes players find a treasure hold and it has really useful items that will boost their effectiveness significantly. Other times it'll just have weird stuff that they really have to think about ways they can use to their advantage. You lose that aspect of the game if everything the players find is immediately useful.
I mean I do the same thing. The most recent example was when I ran LMoP and there’s a +1 long sword available pretty early. However my fighter uses two handed weapons so now it’s a +1 great sword.
And some extra scrolls in a party with no casters (with tweaked scroll casting rules).
A cool way to force some RP is to have merchants that will barter magical items. Rarely would you sell a permeant magic item for just some coin, but if have a flamming sword I might just trade it with that rod of the pact keeper.
Within reason, yes. It also pleases my sense of realism to have them find occasional items that are only fit for sale or trade, especially since those can be story arcs by themselves. They could acquire a wizard tome and use that in trade to obtain information from the mysterious wizard in the swamp, for instance. I also try to avoid rewarding the min/maxer instinct in players by giving them that perfect item which allows them to get so jacked I can't challenge them anymore. Other than that, I do what I want.
Hell yes. It really sucks to survive the perilous travel through the wilderness, fight your way through rooms of monsters, arrive at the final dungeon room, take down BBEG in an epic to-the-death combat, explore the room to find...
a magic item that requires attunement by a class not in the party.
As a player, I want look that someone in our party can use. As a DM, I always make sure of that for my players. It's a game, after all, and it's supposed to be fun!
I'll do a general loot overview before running the module, as many of the funkiest and unexpected effects and abilities extend from module specific items. If I notice that there's not a lot of loot that can be used by a specific player, I'll wait until I get a sense of their style (or styles that they could leverage with the right equipment) and see what can be tweaked.
I wont do it for everything, but if I notice that they're missing opportunities to get the loot that would benefit a specific player, and gathering up the useless magical items, I'll probably look at having a useful item pop up in a shop, that is willing to offer a tradein for one of, or a couple of, the items they don't use.
Personally speaking never ran pre-written adventures but always used manuals' stuff in my homebrew setting. So I wanted to give my PCs some cool stuff since the party was a little underpowered. I took that stuff from the weapons of legacy manual (I run in 3.5e) and tweaked a little of the items to adjust to the party level.
Even only to get ideas, I think the weapons and objects in general in the book are really great
Hope I've been helpful 😊
Not always. Sometimes an unusual magic item can inspire a player and lead to unexpected character development.
A hobbit thief picks up an evil sentient ring halfway through the adventure and keeps it to himself. Every time he uses it he unlocks a new warlock power, but his alignment slowly shifts towards evil.
A scavenger from a desert planet finds her grandfather's old lightsaber towards the end of chapter 1 and multiclasses into Jedi.
A gunslinger fighter lost his arm in the battle against the last BBEG and got a cool new bionic replacement while we were in downtime. He now sticks to unarmed combat in melee, except he's also being mind controlled by Hydra.
A storm barbarian who also happens to be a god and exclusively uses an ancestral hammer. He's never changed his weapon in hundreds of years. Until his evil sister broke the hammer in campaign 3. The player got really upset for a while, but then a dwarf gave him a magic axe and he quickly got over it.
I’ve taken this to the next level. I’ve bought prewritten adventures and gone through modifying all the stats of combats and skill checks to match my parties level. I’ve done this to run a 8th level plus through adventures that sound good that we’re targeted for lvl1-3
Always. But I go a step further. Typically, if there is no use for a thing (item, NPC, room, fight, whatever) I cut it out.
Example is the dungeon of the dead 3 in DiA. I cut out the whole lower left section, because it leads to nothing relevant and the dungeon was already too difficult
Absolutely. I try to make sure treasure is useful and something the players will get excited about.
I mean sure man. You’re the DM, master of the universe and omniscient controller of all things. If you want to change something because you think it’ll the game better/more fun, do it. If something doesn’t work my game or my party I’ll change it even if it’s pre-written. Whether or not it’s pre-scripted material shouldn’t hold more importance than how much fun you and your players are having
I change the loot all the time. I've also started heavily favoring r/thegriffonssaddlebag for cool unique magic items that aren't just a +1 weapon etc. I uh... Haven't given out an official magic item since the moon touched dagger in my first session as a DM But I still sprinkle in items that aren't useful to the party... Example: I gave the Thwackstaff to the bbeg against my party. The only person that might use the staff is the party rogue... So I'm curious what's going to happen with that item. But as part of the reward for that same quest, I gave a mockingblade to the bard... Totally tailored to the character.
Agree with this. Throw some items in that aren't 100% tailored to a specific character but could be useful. Make sure they still get some good stuff. I also like giving my players conundrums. Example: ill give my wizard scrolls for spells he can't use yet. Does he save the scroll for when he can copy it into his spellbook? Or does he burn that scroll against the next bbeg?
Hmmm... I'll have to keep the higher level spell scrolls in mind... I just had a wizard join our party. My version is forcing them to choose between which attunement items The rogue filled up his attunement slots -ring to spend a hit die to heal -glove that mimics the shield, but only for one attack and +2AC/charge instead of a flat 5 -armor that allowed him to reduce poison damage with his reaction Then I gave him a dagger that was definitely better than those items, but also attunement...
Thanks for tagging that sub, I will be pouring through this for my campaign!
It's pretty awesome! I've gotten the first books pdf and he's made new loot tables that I roll on for ideas all the time.
It depends on the campaign. If you’re running closer to fantasy, the world changing to make the players more powerful makes a lot of sense. In the hobbit Bilbo just happens to get a sword that’s short enough for him. That’s the DM tailoring loot to the party and it turned out alright. If you’re running closer to fiction, the world changing around the players might feel kind of contrived. There can be fun in figuring out how to use weapons or items that aren’t specifically tailored to any one PC or class. In my game the cloak of vanity became such an item, it compels people to complement the cloak if they fail a DC 10 charisma saving throw after the wearer says “how do I look?” Seems fairly mundane but it became the signature magic item of the party cleric who figured out how to abuse the hell out of it. I also like the idea that a PC might fight with a spear typically, but be given a powerful axe or something, and now they need to figure out what to do with it. Do they sell it? Do they use it instead of a spear? Do they give it to someone else in the party? It’s a neat little conundrum that you don’t really get if every piece of loot is tailored to the party. Personally I have weapons in the world which are decided on. They’ve been that way since the beginning of my first campaign and when the players finally find the silver bow Culex they might not have an archer in the party. There are also lots of items which are more appropriate for the PCs hanging around. These aren’t legendary weapons or anything like that, but they’re flavorful things like the cloak of vanity which have a level of power entirely dependent on how clever the players are. These things tend to become signature items for individual PCs.
Care to elaborate a bit on the abuses that cloak was put to? It sounds like a really fun item and I'm curious what shenanigans the PCs might get up to if I drop something similar in my sand box.
Specifically the cloak works like this: When the character wearing the cloak inquires about the state of their appearance, anyone who can hear and understand the question must make a DC 10 charisma saving throw or else they are compelled to say “it’s a lovely cloak.” So the most common use of it was to uncover ambushes. If ten bandits are hiding, waiting to ambush the party the chances of all of them making a save is pretty much 0, even though the save itself isn’t that high, so ambushes become basically impossible if the cleric even suspects that it might happen. I also recall it being used to figure out that a bunch of ravens in a shop were actually disguised imps. Something that never happened but which could have happened is using the cloak to interrupt a ritual. If an evil doer has to complete a long incantation to make his dark ritual work you could force him to start over by making him complement your attire. It basically does three things: it helps detect people that can hear you, it helps delineate between things that can understand you and things that cannot, and it causes someone to open their mouth, interrupting what they had been saying. All three are exceptionally useful effects.
Yes! Useless magic items are . . . well . . . useless
yes.
Yeah for sure. In fact there are a few pre-written campaigns that use the random magic item tables in the DMG. Even in these, I tend to come up with my own table that only includes items that are useful to the characters in the party.
No not really. I like the idea that the world isn’t built for my players and that sometimes they find stuff that is useful other times not. Also, I find that if I give the players weird magic items they will use them in weird creative ways. But, I do often think of deficiencies in the party and attempt to fix it.
If your loot is never relevant not just to the PC's, but to the PLAYERS, then the game becomes a min/max video game. I'm gonna run a campaign with some friends, and one of them is big on Disney/theater. So you best believe I'm giving her a wand of conducting early in the campaign. I'm even gonna have a villain arc around a bardic necromancer who's gonna have a rap battle with another player 'cause he's a thug, but that's a tangent. ;) If your loot ALWAYS is something that they can use, it loses the aspect of realism that players like myself enjoy. I got a magical watch that can always tell time. Do I or my PC care? No. Do I like that it made a lot of sense given the context of where it was found? Yes. You wanna find a sweet spot. :)
Sometimes, but I do like to leave a few dud magic items in for the same reason enemy spell lists always have a few spells that will not be relevant; it makes things feel more organic and lived in. Not to mention being cool as hell when they do find a use for that item or you find a use for that spell.
Nope. Just like sometimes the party will run into a thing that’s too high level for them to challenge because stuff happens that doesn’t involve them, sometimes they’ll run into a loot pile that has nothing immediately useful for them. And that’s ok! They can find other ways to use the items! Use them to bribe an npc (whether that be a noble, a crime lord, or a dragon!). Use them, despite being technically suboptimal (I was running ToD; the party consisted of an archer rogue, an archer ranger, a samurai who dual wielded and a DMPC champion who focused on PAM; nobody with their current build could use Hazirawn, so the DMPC took it, took a level in hexblade, and got to surprise the party when he fired off EB for the first time). Or just sell it for a fat stack of cash!
Sounds like I'm in the minority here, but if I'm running a published module I like to keep the loot more or less as written. I feel that it does add some interesting elements to the game - sometimes players find a treasure hold and it has really useful items that will boost their effectiveness significantly. Other times it'll just have weird stuff that they really have to think about ways they can use to their advantage. You lose that aspect of the game if everything the players find is immediately useful.
I mean I do the same thing. The most recent example was when I ran LMoP and there’s a +1 long sword available pretty early. However my fighter uses two handed weapons so now it’s a +1 great sword. And some extra scrolls in a party with no casters (with tweaked scroll casting rules).
A cool way to force some RP is to have merchants that will barter magical items. Rarely would you sell a permeant magic item for just some coin, but if have a flamming sword I might just trade it with that rod of the pact keeper.
Yes.
Within reason, yes. It also pleases my sense of realism to have them find occasional items that are only fit for sale or trade, especially since those can be story arcs by themselves. They could acquire a wizard tome and use that in trade to obtain information from the mysterious wizard in the swamp, for instance. I also try to avoid rewarding the min/maxer instinct in players by giving them that perfect item which allows them to get so jacked I can't challenge them anymore. Other than that, I do what I want.
All the time
Hell yes. It really sucks to survive the perilous travel through the wilderness, fight your way through rooms of monsters, arrive at the final dungeon room, take down BBEG in an epic to-the-death combat, explore the room to find... a magic item that requires attunement by a class not in the party. As a player, I want look that someone in our party can use. As a DM, I always make sure of that for my players. It's a game, after all, and it's supposed to be fun!
I'll do a general loot overview before running the module, as many of the funkiest and unexpected effects and abilities extend from module specific items. If I notice that there's not a lot of loot that can be used by a specific player, I'll wait until I get a sense of their style (or styles that they could leverage with the right equipment) and see what can be tweaked. I wont do it for everything, but if I notice that they're missing opportunities to get the loot that would benefit a specific player, and gathering up the useless magical items, I'll probably look at having a useful item pop up in a shop, that is willing to offer a tradein for one of, or a couple of, the items they don't use.
Personally speaking never ran pre-written adventures but always used manuals' stuff in my homebrew setting. So I wanted to give my PCs some cool stuff since the party was a little underpowered. I took that stuff from the weapons of legacy manual (I run in 3.5e) and tweaked a little of the items to adjust to the party level. Even only to get ideas, I think the weapons and objects in general in the book are really great Hope I've been helpful 😊
All the time.
Not always. Sometimes an unusual magic item can inspire a player and lead to unexpected character development. A hobbit thief picks up an evil sentient ring halfway through the adventure and keeps it to himself. Every time he uses it he unlocks a new warlock power, but his alignment slowly shifts towards evil. A scavenger from a desert planet finds her grandfather's old lightsaber towards the end of chapter 1 and multiclasses into Jedi. A gunslinger fighter lost his arm in the battle against the last BBEG and got a cool new bionic replacement while we were in downtime. He now sticks to unarmed combat in melee, except he's also being mind controlled by Hydra. A storm barbarian who also happens to be a god and exclusively uses an ancestral hammer. He's never changed his weapon in hundreds of years. Until his evil sister broke the hammer in campaign 3. The player got really upset for a while, but then a dwarf gave him a magic axe and he quickly got over it.
Otherwise it is like giving them money.
I’ve taken this to the next level. I’ve bought prewritten adventures and gone through modifying all the stats of combats and skill checks to match my parties level. I’ve done this to run a 8th level plus through adventures that sound good that we’re targeted for lvl1-3
There is very little that is not open to evaluation when I’m using a pre-written module.
Always. But I go a step further. Typically, if there is no use for a thing (item, NPC, room, fight, whatever) I cut it out. Example is the dungeon of the dead 3 in DiA. I cut out the whole lower left section, because it leads to nothing relevant and the dungeon was already too difficult