Rewarding Treasure in D&D
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- Опубликовано: 28 сен 2024
- In this video, we dive deep into the art of rewarding treasure in Dungeons & Dragons! As a Dungeon Master, handing out loot is more than just tossing gold and magic items at your players. We'll explore creative ways to make treasure feel meaningful, from unique magical artifacts with rich lore to valuable information, favors from powerful NPCs, and rare, world-shaping resources. Learn how to weave treasure into your campaign’s story, give players rewards that build character arcs, and make every piece of loot an adventure in itself!
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Now that you mention it, the original ice wind Dale and Baldur's gate were both really good about giving a history when you identified certain magical weapons. This is back in like the 90s I think.
Back in the 90's, when games were actually good, made by people who loved games, werent scared to try new things, and wasnt run to the ground by grueling capitalists demanding mass appeal microtransaction riddled casino apps they call "games".
The Good Ol Days™️
Yeah it's a really good idea in my view. Just wish more DMs did it! Thanks for watching.
Gary Gygax used tell the story that his daughter Heidi (player) used to bully his son Luke (DM) into letting her choose the treasure that she got after an encounter. So that type of table goes back to the OGs.
@@elliotvernon7971 at least it’s not a new, modern concept. 😂😂
Professor Dungeon Master was talking about handing out a gnomish dagger called "Queen Killer". You always find it in the back of a dead, often gnomish character. It is ornately worked, I think with a very small delicate scroll work that you actually need some sort of microscopic vision or hand lens or magnifying glass to discern. The scrollwork is of armoured gnomes stabbing the gnome ahead of them in the back. Each gnome in the infinite scrolllwork is stabbed from behind and is stabbing the gnome in front of them. Their eyes are wide open and their screaming mouths point upward. The Dagger is +1/+2 from behind, I have it adding 20% to assassination attempts, and if attacking from behind the damage cascades. If you roll a 4 on the 1d4, roll again, roll another four, roll again. The damage could be infinite. The Dagger was used to assassinate a gnomish queen who cursed the wielder and the item. Roll a one while backstabbing with this and it wrenches around and stabs the wielder in the back. Roll for damage with the same chance of cascading damage.
Love this item and if you never attack anyone from behind it's just a kind of interesting looking +1 dagger with some discoverable lore attached. generally having a story and a look to the magic item or even a conventional item makes it more interesting.
But I digress though one of the treasure items I like to hand out is a magnifying glass and a telescope. Both very useful. I do tend to hand out consumables though I have found in 5E we are almost never pushed to the point where we have to use our scrolls or potions so those things become less precious. I have a back pack full of carefully wrapped potions ready to explode in an immiscible mess.
I'm also trying to hand out potions of strength/speed/growth/levitation/flying/waterwalk/feather fall rather than just healing potions all the time.
I do sell down filled jackets and pants in a Aero Mages floating tower that act as lightweight padded armour and also grant advantage versus cold damage. i'm thinking of letting my wizards wear this stuff though I am imagining George from Seinfeld trying to cast spells in his Puffy Winter Jacket. Maybe not.
I don't really have any rhyme or reason to it. I just put treasure where I think it makes sense. I treat it more as decor to make the world more immersive than a reward for accomplishing things. if you explored the place and found the treasure, you did what we came here to do when we agreed to play D&D. well done.
In my campaigns I used to not give a lot of magic items and treasures but I preferred giving like one extremely powerful and interesting artefact per “arc” but I might try to give smaller ones
@@andreaforti2577 smaller ones can be fun to give options, I just would be careful not to give too many.
My brother and I played a game where we armed up fifth level characters with holy avengers/dancing swords/ridiculous armour to attack the Keep on the borderland. It was fun , we took the Keep apart, but we never used those items or characters in any other adventure. It was more to see what having all those items that are sitting there in the dungeon master's guide that you could theoretically find and see what they were like.
They were pretty good.
I want the players to have an idea of the treasure they could recover before going on the adventure. It's part of the rumors they hear & why they choose that adventure. But the details are up to me. But they can donate a chunk of change to their temple & pray for a magic item & get a vision of where to find it. That’s way better than buying it outright but still gives them some choice.
A lot of treasure is actually just the value of the monster they kill. There's a bounty on trolls & dragons & such, & alchemists will buy the parts to make potions. And the heroes often have a choice of potion, like the heart of a hell hound can make a potion of fire breath or a potion of fire resistance.
It’s been awhile since I came cross one of your videos. Glad to see you’re doing well
@@codychavez9839 thanks. I’m actually becoming a dad soon.
@@LokisLair you lucky b*stard! Bring forth the next generation of gamers!!
I still give Experience based on the Magic Items that individual characters acquire. I also give 1 XP/gold piece acquired.
This is all in addition to the Experience for the Monsters slain and other events the characters participate in, such as good role-playing or a unique or creative way of using a spell or character ability.
Sometimes the "A" in AD&D stands for "Accounting."
Ahh yes 1XP = 1GP. I've never been in an AD&D game before but the concept sounds intriguing. Definitely encourages a different style of play.
@@LokisLair It actually works fairly well once you learn how to give out treasure in a more regulated way. This doesn't work as well if you give thousands or tens-of-thousands of gold pieces at a time, but that's where Encumbrance rules come in handy, or being able to Teleport the gold from a dungeon to a location that the Wizard knows well. (This only works well once the characters are high enough level to teleport the gold.
It also assumes that inanimate objects (rather than people) can be teleported.
@LokisLair We allowed double dipping, which was definitely the best and most fun method.
1 Gold = 1 XP
Spend 1 Gold = 1 XP
It allowed players to spend treasure on gear, but also push themselves over that small edge to the next level if they needed. The players who eatned extra XP in the session, essentially earned more gold bc they didnt need to double dip.
If your gear is balanced with level/skill progression, that works even better. Then you can choose how you get more powerful and in what area.
@@LokisLair I am currently transcribing the last of 4 separate dungeons for my AD&D 2nd Edition Game. Still trying to decide if I want to use Gold for Exp, as 1st Edition does.
I may still include it in addition to the RAW methods from 2nd Edition. I have three Kingdom maps created from hex maps, and plan to set the campaign in one of them.
I love giving names and history to the magic items the players discover! In my game the only generic magic items are consumables / single-use items. Anything that has a permanent nature to it was created by someone, for someone, and likely with a specific purpose in mind (even if that purpose is merely "protect me from harm"). So it won't be JUST a +1 Sword. It will be a +1 sword that casts light 3/day, or has 1 to 3 charges of the True Strike spell, or maybe Guidance 1/day. Y'know, nothing grossly powerful but an ability that adds interest to the item and makes it useful for something besides bashing monsters with (or makes it really good in combat a limited number of times).
Even with the various miscillaneous / "wonderous" items from the DMG I always try to change them in some way so that they aren't just another bag that is larger on the inside than it is on the outside...*yawn* My bags of holding don't usually look like bags at all. It will be a small chest, or a pouch made from a toad skin that occasionally croaks or tries to hop away.
IMO, changing up the same old magic items helps keep experienced players interested, as well as bringing the world to life.
@@mikeb.1705 great comment and you’re absolutely right!
Thank you! Someone finally said what I have complained about for years. You are preaching to the choir here my friend. I have most of my big items placed in advance. Weaker or lesser items can be rolled for when the players score a haul. Keep up the good work.
@@Marcus-ki1en thanks Marcus. Good to see you!
Don't have this problem in Shadowdark
Definitely don't, you're right.
My players are skeptical of large treasures and powerful artifacts because they know the unwanted attention these things will bring
How have you manifested that mentality in your players? I would be interested in knowing.
@LokisLair Great question.
They realize that they have to be at least as powerful or secretive as the place protecting the items where they were obtained in the first place.
Otherwise, what they have achieved is only to make these items more accessible to rulers and opportunists by bringing them to the surface or bringing them into a community.
Notoriety has these pitfalls.
I really enjoyed creating my first BX dungeon using the basic rules to do so. Roll random rooms. Roll total treasure. Fill rooms with treasure.
Created a great dungeon and a great experience.
Cant remember if I used BX or OSE at that point though, as I went from BX (Keep on the Borderlands) to OSE halfway through the "campaign" (one dungeon).
I gotta get a readable version of ODnD. The original is a painful mess that I cannot decipher. Every time I come back to it, some things make more sense, but then I forget and get a different interpretation
@@TheArcturusProject I had the same problem with the poor editing of BX, which is why I went with OSE for the most part, using adventure modules (KotB) as a reference.
Use simple disposables like potions, salves. one shot tokens, scrolls etc. A token for meteor swarm is 1 shot and would blow the mind of a 3rd or 5th level spell caster. perhaps the simple commoner servant found it, reads out at a good moment. A wand of fireballs which holds 5 charges. It DOES NOT recharge at dawn. However the spell caster CAN recharge the item by casting fireball at it five times.
I am playing an ACKS game with some people at the moment. I did have one of the players ask me for a *Monk's Belt*. Keep in mind ACKS is an OSR game that doesn't have as many +5 items as 3rd/3.5 edition. I had to say No, but I would let them research or have someone create something like *Gloves of the Iron Fist*, which grants +1 AC and allows the wearer to deal 1d6 damage in unarmed combat. They seemed okay with that, so I guess they're just waiting to meet the right person to ask about what they would need to make it. I am already thinking about some of the ingredients: hide from an ironskin bear; the tears from a dying harpy; and a breath of eternal wind.
I've had a p player specifically ask for a specific magic item at the beginning of the game, sure it fit thematically but i was left wondering what the point of it was... It went from exciting to a possible expectation... Like what if i DON'T have the holy avenger? What if you need it and find it's been ruined, broken?
Players don't seem to enjoy much mystery i find with randoms. I can't even keep the lid on what an item actually does until they test it.
One of my favorite items I ever got for a character was a requested item from the master Smiths of the Dragon Isle of Ao, I jad to wait weeks for this item, but partially because of that, and that the DM didn't hand out items too often. This actually made us a lot more resourceful, or in my case I wound up playing very Versatile and raw powerful races and classes. I think it's important to also have the items that they loot not be 100% usable, like a party of paladins is not going to be able to justify grabbing the Unholy Greataxe of Speed, no matter how much they may want that Speed Enchant.
I found out that giving PCs randomly very powerful items are actually a great idea but that can only work when the RPG is around having glass-cannons instead of HP-bloats . I homebrewed my whitebox OSR into my own system but i liked that almost everything is mostly rolled by 1w6 Dice because it actually comes more as the Zelda-heart-system instead huge flat numbers . Its like the Hearts are six-pieces and you think in that way much easier and balancing the items have an actual spectrum while 5e is mostly wonky and janky to balance everything out .
That's why i love to create magic item and randomise the best with the weak ones . Even with an very powerful item/weapon/armor they arent suddenly untouchable but more efficient because there are other factors that can actually hurt the the most . Anf when they wanna have a specific item , i suggest them an adventure that guarantees them this item .
Sometimes loot are the sole reason alone to go on adventuring .
If you're trying to say that milestone isn't as intuitive as gold=exp and that "I need to feel like I'm doing something in order to make the levels feel worth it", it's assumed you aren't doing anything or contributing in the game if there's milestone attached to it. You wouldn't sit around in a year of downtime and ask the GM "Hey, it's been a while in-game, do we get a level up?", so why would you assume you aren't doing anything in a milestone game to earn the level up?
Sometimes it's difficult to line up a situation where a level up makes sense; perhaps it doesn't need to make sense.
ahh the promotion of murder hoboisum.
@@evanhershberger9971 I haven’t had murderhobos in my game/s for a long time.