I openly and freely admit, I give out way too many magic items. I love making them and/or modifying published items. Maybe some day, some campaign, I'll be more miserly with magic items, but I severely doubt it.
I always liked the idea of giving out a lot of different magic items because I have begun to realize is my players will always forget all the different items that they have.
My party is lvl 5, they already forget regularly 2 magic items they have and the mage today, in a text conversation about our next session said "I don't have fireball, we can't do that." They dude took fireball and lightning bolt at lvl 5 but never used it and forgot .. lol
@@Edi62768 my party had a encounter with were-tigers, when they had a difficult time, only three pcs could do damage. After the encounter I told then that in the party inventory has at least one magic weapon for each one, 7 player, we all laugh about it. They are great, decide quickly what to do, don't drag the game, but if something goes to the bag of holding, is forgotten forever.
A player in my campaign has had a modified version of a blank elven lore stone since the second session. 22 sessions later he has finally decided to mess with and found out it can act as a spellbook, swap out cantrips(my way of adding the optional rules from Tasha's), and give advantage on arcana, history, nature, and religion checks. It was intended as a pretty big thing but has sat in an extra dimensional space for over half a year.
Yeah, me too. Ask the characters to refresh themselves with their inventory and heck, their abilities, and spells, too. I hate when they come back with, oh, I have advantage on dex saving throws so I actually didn't lose consciousness 2 sessions ago and the thief couldn't have stolen my money.... Yeah, sorry, you forgot you do means your character forgot, too.
I like giving potions and things when it makes sense along with a medieval economy destabilizing quantity of gold. Adventuring, as risky as it is, should have the potential great riches imho. The group I DM for has an artificer so I have to keep that in mind so as not to trivialize their class feature by devaluing magic items too much. I've been giving up things that will throw an extra damage die on certain elemental spells or emulate spell effects, low-level utility ones that might not normally be prepared. Or items that can be crafted and so on.
I kind of go by the rule of fun when it comes to magic items. It helps to know your players too. Some people love feeling untouchable and some love an element of chaos. There are strategists and there are min/maxers. I don't prefer items that give a straight stat boost or increase damage output. I feel my players have a lot more fun with unique magical effects. Ie. Ring of water walking made for a hilarious encounter with a water weird. In another session, one player used a wand of wonder as a last ditch effort to save an ally. He had a 4% chance of casting something that would help and it worked! Basically, fun magic items allow your players to be creative and make for memorable moments in a campaign.
I use the table. It is balanced in my experience. A friend of mine who DMs a diff game handed out lots of magic items and his players are like artifice fueled gods.
I gave out too many early on. Many of the things that break my world without fully understanding them. And all my players have high ac because of them. It did make encounter balance much harder
@@Rlol1902 or if one is super low and the others are normal to high. Like, just as a poorly hypothetical example, a wizard with negative con in a party with a barbarian, paladin, and ranger with great con and a tortle artificer with the 19 con amulet. Seriously though he had like 20 HP and 12 AC when everyone else was running around with 50+ hp and 16+ AC, it was a *nightmare* to balance. The tortle is still a nightmare. Infused +1 shield and the shield spell means anything level-appropriate needs like a 17 on the die to hit and any kind of basic mook straight-up can't hit him without a crit.
I'm pretty sure I've handed out enough items for each of my players to max out this table by themselves at level 12. Not going to list everything, but each one has a Homebrewed Legendary Weapon. I also gave them a Ring of Spell Turning, Cloak of Invisibility, Rakdos Riteknife, a failed opportunity for a Belt of Storm Giant Strength, and a plane-shifting flying ship that acts as their home base.
I mostly Homebrew magic items, or flavour them for the current campaign I’m running. Not every encounter or Boss carries a loot-able magic item, some stashes might only carry a basic or rare magic utility item. But I do tend to provide them with decent options to earn (it’s a sandbox map, and they’re mostly enjoying being mercs) plenty of gold to eventually buy stuff they might want I also use the “Sane Magical Item Price” PDF on hand
Our table doesn't really have a lot of magic items. However, our DM allows us the use of making custom magic items, so long as he seemed it balanced for it's rarity. My personal favourite was a wondrous very rare item called Time in a bottle. The bottle had 3 charges, and what it allowed me to do was to cast time stop, as a bonus action, but it would only last one turn, and could only be used once per round (even if I gave it to someone else during that time) To counteract the fact that stopping time is pretty strong, if I ever ran out of charges, it would break on a roll of 10 or lower, due to the volatile magic of the bottle. That and while it could regain charges, it was a d4 minus 2 on the charge, to try and balance it. Fun item though
not all worlds schould be the same, maybe it makes sense in yours, also u can just let them find things they cant afford to buy .. this gold advice is probably mostly there to be able to buy items in shops eventually.
@@trappyboi8678 if you have 2 spell casters a monk and someone to drive a stake through him, You can trap him in moving water and pummel him with spells and Ki-empowered strikes.
@@BramLastname So the martial just stands back and doesn't play?? What if you don't have a monk?? Strahd has legendary resistance and high con saves, there's also no running water around his castle. You're basically saying the casters are the heroes and the martials can fuck off as the supportive cheerleaders.
Also a while back Xp to level 3 made different tables to roll on that based the treasures and hoards the players find on the type of the creature they fight. It worked essentially the same as the default way, but the items made more sense thematically and also you could exclude broken ones you don't know how to incorporate into the story before you roll. I've never actually tried it so I don't know if it is fair, but it's free on his Patreon so check it out if you wanna.
I am terrible at giving out magic items. So much so that on my last campaing I decided to just lean on it hard and showered my players in bling. It had a more lighthearted tone, so it was pretty fun for them to look like characters out of Adventure Time.
Guess who gave a homebrew aertifact to EACH of my players? Battle CRs are balanced at +2 to their current level. Boy, they feel like superheroes. Even so they had two would-have-been TPKs. They survived the first because one of them struck a deal with the Raven Queen. The second, they got defeated by a vampire. And instead of just killing them, he turned them into vampires under his employee.
I think so far out DM has given us 3 pretty cool magic items and we've been playing for a few months at lvl 3. A potion of flying, a scroll of misty step, and a scroll of lighting
From a closer inspection, the wonkiness is with the armors that could be multiple types. Light Armor is considered the normal rarity. While medium armors get pushed up by one rarity level, and heavy armors get pushed up one more level. That is why +1 Plate is Lengendary instead of Rare. For those that would be considered past legendary, they keep them on Table I. They put them under 1 number on the d100, with Legendary+ getting double the chance of Legendary++. The only armors that don't follow this rule are Mariner's Armor and Mithral armor.
I definitely don't give my group enough items. They're level 12 and no legendaries. Maybe thirty to fifty magic items total, not per person. Mostly they tell me what kind of stuff they want, and I either I work that in, or they get lots of gold and buy what they want, or get items that upgrade. When I randomly give them stuff, that never really works out well.
Running a one-shot next week at lvl 3 and this table proved useful for determining how many magical items the party should start with. I was worried there might be some conflict over who would receive an uncommon magical item as that's what the table recommends for the level, but we have a new player in the one-shot so it's provided a little boon to them.
I made a homebrew adventure for my players at getting them from lvl 2-4 with them getting into a Dark castle where there was the option for them to find 11 magic items. (without all the pots). In the end they only found one. And not because they didn't roll well. Most of the stuff couldve been found because I use passive perception for some of the secret rooms. But inside the castle, which was a network of halls and rooms, they skillfully navigated the castle, always taking the hallway that didn't lead them to a secret room XD The castle was set up for them to use beams, and secret rooms/halls and stairs to bypass many of the fights and find magic loot. And in the end they ended up triggering EVERY encounter in this megadungeon and finding just 1 of the 11 magic items. My players are stupid, but i love them.
This has already been calculated on the ENWorld forums (a D&D focused site) back in 2016. In a 4 member party, the party should get 1 permanent item per level (so each PCs should end up at level 20 with 5 permanent magical items) and 4 consumable items per level. So... yeah 100 :)
Consumables: I usually litter them throughout the campaign, either purchasable or loot from places they explored. Magic weapons: Usually start to hand them out at level 5. If the campaign starts at that level, I'll give them one to begin with. For non-martial classes, this would be like a special arcane focus or some nice buff to their defense. This usually gets upgraded at level 9. Other magic items: Depends on the world, what PCs do, where they go, etc. For attunement magic items, I tend to think about stuff that might be useful for the PCs, rather than randomizing them. It feels bad to have an attunement magic item that no one in the party can use. For non-attunement, I think about this less, and sometimes throw out some funky ones and see how creative the PCs can get!
For my current campaign I'm using the chart as a rough guideline. I used it as a budget, but there were a couple of things that I wanted to give out earlier, so I didn't stick to it 100%. I definitely sprinkle the items around though, mostly, and some of them are even used by enemies to be taken and claimed.
I really like the idea of rolling treasure, it leads to a more organic spread and gives a fair distribution of gold too, I've played in games where we get like 100gp by level 5 and its just not satisfying with how expensive things are in the books,
Random table dropped a +2 staff of power. No one in the party was a sorcerer, wizard, or warlock. We sold it for gold, because prior to this the wealthiest the party (5 PCs) had been was one instance of 13k gold. We spent that on gear ASAP. We are lv 8. Got 45k for the staff. It wasn't ideal but such is life.
@@jamesbolt1003 stuff like this is why I pre-roll treasure hoards for anything that I've planned in advance. If there's too much that my party can't use, I'll swap it out for useful or at least usable items. Doing it this way can also give you ideas for items to give the enemies to use. If for example I'm prepping a wizard boss and i roll a staff of the apprentice in the loot, that wizard boss is now using said staff against the party before they get to use it themselves (actual example from tier 1 of my campaign)
@@aliciacordero8399 we also have a +2 great sword but it requires attunement by a fighter. Our fighter is a dex biased eldritch knight. She has no need for the great sword but wishes to keep it as it will gain additional properties if the wielder slays a dragon with said sword. Oddly enough our cleric would likely get the best use out of it as he's pretty stronk but as a life cleric has no martial weapon prof. I'm a moon druid planning on paladin ancients dip. I think my elemental wild shape should be able to use the sword but again it's unoptimized as I'm not a fighter; I won't get the bonus properties. -_- I am, however, (because of wild shape) the parties archetypal front line fighter on a holy mission from the Yggdrasil. DM has a bit of a crush on our fighter is my guess; she's pretty Marry Sue ish and she seems pivotal to the campaign. As an experienced DM this irks me essentially because the player is often unable to make it to games, is not very skilled in game mechanics, and often takes ages on her turn because she wasn't paying attention in combat. 9/10 times it ends in I attack BB or GFB and use eldritch war magic to make an additional single rapier attack. Why this thought process takes 10-15 min idk. Thank the gods she didn't make that blade singer she was going to try running. We'd probably have to wait 20-25 min as she going over a full casters spell list. -_-
@@aliciacordero8399 she also played levels 1-6 like a lawful stupid getting into multiple arguments with the party, reporting "crimes" to the authorities, and nearly undoing a carefully planned out and near bloodless end to a civil was as her family would be on the losing faction. At this point in the game I may have told her (in character) something along the lines of "if you fuck this up I'm going to dig your grave after we finish cleaning up your last mess". So, yeah, sorry about all the text but I guess I just needed to vent. :/
I would like to point out that the Artificer kinda throws this whole ass table out of whack. Ability to craft at 1/4 speed with a single Feat, and at 1/4 price, and just magic items into existence.
I never paid attention to these recommendations. From my point of view, they are supposed to serve newbie DMs and perhaps Adventurer's Legue DMs. My groups usually find magic items at a reasonable pace. They can find a fair amount of homebrew magic items tailored to what their characters like to do. The characters in my campaigns are definitely a lot more powerful than they should be, but I have no issue with creating challenging encounters for them. For instance, a bard in one of my campaigns has a book called Tome of Ten Thousand Insults. It requires attunement and empowers Vicious Mockery so it does d8 instead of d4 and he also gets to add his Charisma modifier to the damage done by Vicious Mockery.
I made scripts for all DMG Magic Items rolls with prices included in every item, the players absolutelly LOVE to roll for Treasure. At the beginning I would write in a handout for me the treasure and tell them, sore of, what to expect in the hoard, then they would choose if they get the already done list or roll and go for it, they always want to roll. Some players don't expend their inspiration points just to roll 2 times on the tables when it's time.
Thanks for the video, Ted. I've never looked at this table before, and before looking at it, I always thought that magic items were much more rare. I've definitely been shortchanging my players a bit in the magic item department because in another game (that I'm a player in) it feels like we have almost an over abundance of magic items, so I may have overcorrected in the game that I DM. That being said, I think that the large majority of items being some kind of consumable helps balance things out. Regardless, the next dungeon that my players get to, I think I'm going to up the treasures a bit. They're going to hit Level 10 soon, and I think it'll also feel awesome to get just a whole bunch of stuff.
I'd say if you're planning full 1-20, I'd plan on giving each character the same amount of major magic items as the max spell slots a full caster will get for spell levels within that tier. So Tier 1 is uncommons, and 1st and 2nd level spells are in there, which max out at four and three slots respectively. So over the course of the character's adventuring life, they should get three or four major uncommon items. For Tier 2 (rares), 3rd to 5th level spells all get three slots; Tier 3 (very rares), 6th-8th max out at one or two. Tier 4 (legendaries), only one. This gets you 8-10 major magic items over the course of an adventuring career that are pretty well distributed among rarities. Scatter some commons and consumables around and call it a day.
You missed something you said in the beginning the staring at higher levels table was all people had to go on. however in the DMG under the section for using the treasurer hoard's table it says: "You can hand out as much or as little treasure as you want. Over the course of a typical campaign, a party finds treasure hoards amounting to seven rolls on the Challenge 0-4 table, eighteen rolls on the Challenge 5-10 table, twelve rolls on the Challenge 11-16 table, and eight rolls on the Challenge 17+ table." So the information was there in the DMG and the distribution was the same.however most people are unaware of it. as its in a small easy to miss paragraph.Xanithars jest further clarified thing.
In regards to your level 18 campaign, and the question of should you change the number of Magic items you hand out if it doesn’t reflect what this list suggests, I’d say the answer is no, you shouldn’t change it based on this list. You should change it based on whether or not the characters have felt relatively balanced against the challenges you’ve presented them with so far.
I actually use this guide and I find it very useful. I have gone higher a few times on the table (gave a very rare @lv 5) due to them finding it in a cursed shop. It was a Ring of Shooting Stars, and I made the curse of every time he uses it the DC save goes up by 1, starting at 1. When they fail the save whatever atk they were doing with the ring is reflected to the user. The DC is currently 7, and I'm very much looking forward to when it'll eventually get him
Gary's original use of Alignments was for a language. This language crafts magical items. Factions in seek to destroy magical items in oppositional alignment. Simple fix that has been around for 33 years.
I like what matt Colville said about dnd. This game belongs to us, the players. Wotc won't come in our living rooms and enforce their rules in our game so if we want to give 200 magic items or 10 .. it is our choice.. whatever wotc choses to publish as a rule or canon is irrelevant and can only be considered as a suggestion.
This is true, but for pre-written adventures this is important to know if the DM doesn't want to be rebalancing encounters. It's also true if the DM relies on encounter calculators for designing encounters. But experienced DMs can do whatever they want.
When I first started DMing I used the table in xanathar’s… but now I’m much more loose, bc I think it’s easier and feels better than meticulously planning each item out lol
We/I need more suggestions for good low level magic items. I know I personally have had characters that were intended to inherit items such as a Moonblade but I get a lot of mixed messages about level 1 characters starting with powerful gear from DMs. Just to note I am a relatively new player. I have only played a little bit through discord before the channel was closed. Most of my RP experience is free form. So perhaps I am to be ignored and don't know what I'm going on about.
I've seen some people suggest magic items that scale with character level. Like at level one your sunblade is a magical weapon, yes, but no bonus anything. At level 5, maybe it becomes a +1. At level 7, maybe it gets the extra undead damage, etc. I always liked that idea
moon blade is actually one of the best to give to a really low level player. what you can do is have it's personalty but have the blade refuse to use any of it's power's as it's evaluating them maybe some time around level 4 or 5 it decided you are worthy and unlock a ruin, and now you have to go completely the binding retual. but you have to convince them your ready. after that as thay level you can unlock a ruin or two
I'm DMing my first campaign ever right now and I completely skipped over this part in Xanathars. After going through the the table I have definitely given my party more Rare Major magic items than I should have(group of 6 at level 8 and there are 5 rare items between them) so this will definitely make balance easier going forward. I also have definitely fallen into to trap of wanting my players to find the cool stuff that I plant for them and them not finding it and being disappointed and trying to coax them into looking harder. I was also wondering how other people handle shops that have magic items? I have mostly used websites that randomly roll magic shop inventories and it's worked decently but I'm just wondering how others do it.
so something i do is only have magic items available from a store in large cities, then i keep track of the months every month the shop gets a new set of uncomen items, half of the rare one very and a 5% chance of having a legendary item. once thay have that it only changes if a year goes by. and the number of items i use in order is: 10,6,4.
I would not rush to add a ton more items if you find you are behind that 100 item progression. I find that creative application of items can often make them more valuable than their rarity might indicate. With that, I have never felt the need to add more just because.
Let's face it, magic is a huge part of why we play the game... Attunement slots keep things in check, for the most part, and we can meter the finds to suit on the fly if need be. It's about the fun, and magic is fun... I also use scaling items, that grow with the character (Thanks Critical Role!), so can cut back on the over-provisioning somewhat. Been playing since ADD, and the rules were different back then, but I appreciate the slot restrictions, and there are plenty of great items that don't require attunement. Scale your encounters to compensate, there's no reason a few items lets them skate through anything. Be agile... If you put a great item in a spot they completely miss, move it somewhere in their path if it's a must have... Magic is cool.. it's extra, and adds an element to every encounter, just remember, enemies can have them, too....
Probably the two important numbers I'm drawing from this is that by the end, players should have 5 non-consumable magic items, including one Legendary, each by the end of the campaign.
Not going to lie my first campaign is a f around random dungeon crawl with me testing new magic items. The item i tested were dungeon dice that gave random magic items based on rolls so now I have a level 5 party with a belt of storm giant strength
I like low magic adventures, by lvl 4 I like one special magic item per character that I've personally made, I might throw in less special items that are more for utility less for magic sword or armor, by lvl 8 maybe 2 per character, by 12 maybe 3, each item I place where there's a small story or a challenge suited to the player I intended it, I also do not allow buying or selling magic, by tier 3 I allow one npc who can custom make items but it's costly and not always with money, I use an open door policy so my players can come to me if they want something unique that we can talk about and I can place in there path, I also hate Artificer but don't ban them, giving too many items depreciate their value, if u have a magic sword in my game it's probably the only magic sword u will ever get, also if u never contact me between games u probably don't get anything unless I've written it for a badguy and it probably has downsides or doesn't fit ur build because it was made for the NPC not ur character. Also potions in my games are alchemy not magic
I've had player at the table who complained that they had no magic weapons... At level two. I told him not to worry and that I will drop cool magic stuff when I feel it appropriate. He kept stating that everyone should already have a magic weapon, he was worried about running into monsters with non-magic weapon resistance. I told him that won't happen so early in the game, the conversation went as follows. *Him:* But what if we run into resistant monsters? *Me:* You won't. *Him:* How could you know that!? *Me:* Cause I'm the Dm, *I Am The Monsters!*
I'm at the start of this 5>18 campaign and I'm so curious to know it will be a medium-high magic campaign as I immagined 🤔 I'm also curious how many hours of play pass between level ups in your campaigns guys. Here's about 2 to 4, I think 🤔
I was thinking of hitting the various FB groups to ask this, but since I just caught your video I'll ask: do you know of any source of "what make sense" magic items for a particular creature? Like, if you were to kill a beholder, what would be the typical magic item detritus laying around? A lich? A gith stronghold? Surely just across the three of those, just "whatever they looted from previous encounters" is possible but it would be great if there was some sort of "rational list" of possible items would be great as a basis.
So one issue I have with this is that it seems to ignore gold. If you're rolling 45 times on hoard tables, that's a fuck ton of gold. Once your players get past level 8 or so...what are they going to be buying that isn't magic items and expensive consumable spell components?
Not going to lie, the treasure hoard rolling is a bit wank. On average your players will get an ocean of uncommon magic items, and occasionally a rare. I did 50 rolls and only got above 85 twice.
Player's should be happy they survive with their equipment not broken, lost or stolen. Awarding a ton of magic items is silly, because a magic item should be a reward, not an everyday item (that's why they are called 'magic' item).
also if you use this and realize your short on magic items here os a few ideas. a dragon has has a lot of stuff make it less coin and gems more items. a fault full of magic items stored by a wizard or kingdom Incase of war. a vampire has been stocking up for his up coming cue and your players have stombled appion the plan. i giant has a trash pile of all the useless small folk items you might be able to take some useful things from. that's all i got hope it helps someone
again... you are not checking the math friend, 355k xp to level 20 in 5E... BUT 3 Million xp for same levels in older versions like D&D and AD&D... yall try to put monster truck tires on an indy car and then try to drive it lol.
My players would be considered OP at pretty much any table(except for "those guys" but we don't talk about "them"). Eight players, each a Chosen of a God, each has a "growth item"(magic item that grows in power throughout the campaign, and access to most minor magic items with enough research. I threw out CR a loooooong time ago. Magic items in the game at this point are for my enemies that can use them. The party will occasionally find an upgrade, but those are few and far between. Powerful magic items are few and far between but my players know they are out there somewhere.
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We need more, how else will will be able to drink a potion of resistance for every damage type before every battle?
You start an alchemy business and develop a potion that gives you resistance to all elemental damage.
@@BramLastname or you get enough potions of resistance and just drink them all so that you’ll gain the benefits of each damage type resistance
@@clarkmilstead9927 I mean yes,
But that sounds like a lot of liquid.
@@BramLastname become a water elemental, but be made out of various potions of resistance
@@clarkmilstead9927 I mean,
That doesn't sound like a bad character to me.
I openly and freely admit, I give out way too many magic items. I love making them and/or modifying published items. Maybe some day, some campaign, I'll be more miserly with magic items, but I severely doubt it.
This is me. I as the dm love making magic items. I want to see them used. So I give them out.
I always liked the idea of giving out a lot of different magic items because I have begun to realize is my players will always forget all the different items that they have.
My party is lvl 5, they already forget regularly 2 magic items they have and the mage today, in a text conversation about our next session said "I don't have fireball, we can't do that." They dude took fireball and lightning bolt at lvl 5 but never used it and forgot .. lol
@@Edi62768 my party had a encounter with were-tigers, when they had a difficult time, only three pcs could do damage. After the encounter I told then that in the party inventory has at least one magic weapon for each one, 7 player, we all laugh about it. They are great, decide quickly what to do, don't drag the game, but if something goes to the bag of holding, is forgotten forever.
A player in my campaign has had a modified version of a blank elven lore stone since the second session. 22 sessions later he has finally decided to mess with and found out it can act as a spellbook, swap out cantrips(my way of adding the optional rules from Tasha's), and give advantage on arcana, history, nature, and religion checks. It was intended as a pretty big thing but has sat in an extra dimensional space for over half a year.
I find asking for an audit of items on a character sheet at the start of a session can help with this.
Yeah, me too. Ask the characters to refresh themselves with their inventory and heck, their abilities, and spells, too. I hate when they come back with, oh, I have advantage on dex saving throws so I actually didn't lose consciousness 2 sessions ago and the thief couldn't have stolen my money.... Yeah, sorry, you forgot you do means your character forgot, too.
I like giving potions and things when it makes sense along with a medieval economy destabilizing quantity of gold. Adventuring, as risky as it is, should have the potential great riches imho.
The group I DM for has an artificer so I have to keep that in mind so as not to trivialize their class feature by devaluing magic items too much. I've been giving up things that will throw an extra damage die on certain elemental spells or emulate spell effects, low-level utility ones that might not normally be prepared. Or items that can be crafted and so on.
I kind of go by the rule of fun when it comes to magic items. It helps to know your players too. Some people love feeling untouchable and some love an element of chaos. There are strategists and there are min/maxers. I don't prefer items that give a straight stat boost or increase damage output. I feel my players have a lot more fun with unique magical effects.
Ie. Ring of water walking made for a hilarious encounter with a water weird. In another session, one player used a wand of wonder as a last ditch effort to save an ally. He had a 4% chance of casting something that would help and it worked!
Basically, fun magic items allow your players to be creative and make for memorable moments in a campaign.
I use the table. It is balanced in my experience. A friend of mine who DMs a diff game handed out lots of magic items and his players are like artifice fueled gods.
I gave out too many early on. Many of the things that break my world without fully understanding them. And all my players have high ac because of them. It did make encounter balance much harder
Saving throws are your friend if the party has high AC
Just boost enemies + to hit with how much bonus you gave to your players
@@philpeters3689 yeah if all of them are high ac its no real problem, issues begin when one is super high and othere are "normal"
@@Rlol1902 very true. Put in a spellcaster or more serious mob to go after the tank
@@Rlol1902 or if one is super low and the others are normal to high. Like, just as a poorly hypothetical example, a wizard with negative con in a party with a barbarian, paladin, and ranger with great con and a tortle artificer with the 19 con amulet. Seriously though he had like 20 HP and 12 AC when everyone else was running around with 50+ hp and 16+ AC, it was a *nightmare* to balance.
The tortle is still a nightmare. Infused +1 shield and the shield spell means anything level-appropriate needs like a 17 on the die to hit and any kind of basic mook straight-up can't hit him without a crit.
I'm pretty sure I've handed out enough items for each of my players to max out this table by themselves at level 12. Not going to list everything, but each one has a Homebrewed Legendary Weapon. I also gave them a Ring of Spell Turning, Cloak of Invisibility, Rakdos Riteknife, a failed opportunity for a Belt of Storm Giant Strength, and a plane-shifting flying ship that acts as their home base.
I mostly Homebrew magic items, or flavour them for the current campaign I’m running.
Not every encounter or Boss carries a loot-able magic item, some stashes might only carry a basic or rare magic utility item. But I do tend to provide them with decent options to earn (it’s a sandbox map, and they’re mostly enjoying being mercs) plenty of gold to eventually buy stuff they might want
I also use the “Sane Magical Item Price” PDF on hand
Our table doesn't really have a lot of magic items. However, our DM allows us the use of making custom magic items, so long as he seemed it balanced for it's rarity. My personal favourite was a wondrous very rare item called Time in a bottle. The bottle had 3 charges, and what it allowed me to do was to cast time stop, as a bonus action, but it would only last one turn, and could only be used once per round (even if I gave it to someone else during that time) To counteract the fact that stopping time is pretty strong, if I ever ran out of charges, it would break on a roll of 10 or lower, due to the volatile magic of the bottle. That and while it could regain charges, it was a d4 minus 2 on the charge, to try and balance it. Fun item though
Dmg: a lvl 5 pc should start with 500+ GP.
My party who's lvl 4 and hardly has 100 gold between them: are we a joke to you?
You got more than 5
Lmao yeah give your party a treasure horde or something.
yeah the economy in 5th is broken. so dms that try to make it make sense ether end up giving far less gold or making things far more expensive
not all worlds schould be the same, maybe it makes sense in yours, also u can just let them find things they cant afford to buy .. this gold advice is probably mostly there to be able to buy items in shops eventually.
100 magic items (healing potions) to the party if they have no heal options.
Honestly I'm pretty sure that only giving the party healing potions,
Still allows your party to beat CoS.
@@BramLastname You can't harm strahd without martials having a magic weapon.
@@trappyboi8678 if you have 2 spell casters a monk and someone to drive a stake through him,
You can trap him in moving water and pummel him with spells and Ki-empowered strikes.
@@BramLastname So the martial just stands back and doesn't play?? What if you don't have a monk?? Strahd has legendary resistance and high con saves, there's also no running water around his castle. You're basically saying the casters are the heroes and the martials can fuck off as the supportive cheerleaders.
@@trappyboi8678 I didn't say it'd go well,
Just that it'd be possible
Just remember to not give cloaks of displacement, rings of protection, +X armor, +X shields, all to the same player
yeah learned that one the hard way myself now it's lower ac and thay have disadvantage or high ac. not both never again
@@harleycriswell8504 gave a ring and a cloak to a Bladesiger. I can count on my fingers the amount of timer he was hit after this
Also a while back Xp to level 3 made different tables to roll on that based the treasures and hoards the players find on the type of the creature they fight.
It worked essentially the same as the default way, but the items made more sense thematically and also you could exclude broken ones you don't know how to incorporate into the story before you roll.
I've never actually tried it so I don't know if it is fair, but it's free on his Patreon so check it out if you wanna.
I am terrible at giving out magic items. So much so that on my last campaing I decided to just lean on it hard and showered my players in bling. It had a more lighthearted tone, so it was pretty fun for them to look like characters out of Adventure Time.
Guess who gave a homebrew aertifact to EACH of my players?
Battle CRs are balanced at +2 to their current level. Boy, they feel like superheroes.
Even so they had two would-have-been TPKs. They survived the first because one of them struck a deal with the Raven Queen. The second, they got defeated by a vampire. And instead of just killing them, he turned them into vampires under his employee.
I think so far out DM has given us 3 pretty cool magic items and we've been playing for a few months at lvl 3. A potion of flying, a scroll of misty step, and a scroll of lighting
From a closer inspection, the wonkiness is with the armors that could be multiple types. Light Armor is considered the normal rarity. While medium armors get pushed up by one rarity level, and heavy armors get pushed up one more level. That is why +1 Plate is Lengendary instead of Rare. For those that would be considered past legendary, they keep them on Table I. They put them under 1 number on the d100, with Legendary+ getting double the chance of Legendary++. The only armors that don't follow this rule are Mariner's Armor and Mithral armor.
I definitely don't give my group enough items. They're level 12 and no legendaries. Maybe thirty to fifty magic items total, not per person. Mostly they tell me what kind of stuff they want, and I either I work that in, or they get lots of gold and buy what they want, or get items that upgrade. When I randomly give them stuff, that never really works out well.
Running a one-shot next week at lvl 3 and this table proved useful for determining how many magical items the party should start with. I was worried there might be some conflict over who would receive an uncommon magical item as that's what the table recommends for the level, but we have a new player in the one-shot so it's provided a little boon to them.
I made a homebrew adventure for my players at getting them from lvl 2-4 with them getting into a Dark castle where there was the option for them to find 11 magic items. (without all the pots). In the end they only found one. And not because they didn't roll well. Most of the stuff couldve been found because I use passive perception for some of the secret rooms. But inside the castle, which was a network of halls and rooms, they skillfully navigated the castle, always taking the hallway that didn't lead them to a secret room XD The castle was set up for them to use beams, and secret rooms/halls and stairs to bypass many of the fights and find magic loot. And in the end they ended up triggering EVERY encounter in this megadungeon and finding just 1 of the 11 magic items. My players are stupid, but i love them.
this i have been the stupid party lol. I've also ran something similar it's fun and a little frustrating when thay miss everything lol
For context, a level 9 Scribe Wizard could craft all the magic items in the level 5-10 group in about 18 months of downtime. 10:43
i appreciate this video because i think I'm close but not 100 even including healing potions
This has already been calculated on the ENWorld forums (a D&D focused site) back in 2016. In a 4 member party, the party should get 1 permanent item per level (so each PCs should end up at level 20 with 5 permanent magical items) and 4 consumable items per level. So... yeah 100 :)
Consumables: I usually litter them throughout the campaign, either purchasable or loot from places they explored.
Magic weapons: Usually start to hand them out at level 5. If the campaign starts at that level, I'll give them one to begin with. For non-martial classes, this would be like a special arcane focus or some nice buff to their defense. This usually gets upgraded at level 9.
Other magic items: Depends on the world, what PCs do, where they go, etc.
For attunement magic items, I tend to think about stuff that might be useful for the PCs, rather than randomizing them. It feels bad to have an attunement magic item that no one in the party can use. For non-attunement, I think about this less, and sometimes throw out some funky ones and see how creative the PCs can get!
For my current campaign I'm using the chart as a rough guideline. I used it as a budget, but there were a couple of things that I wanted to give out earlier, so I didn't stick to it 100%. I definitely sprinkle the items around though, mostly, and some of them are even used by enemies to be taken and claimed.
I really like the idea of rolling treasure, it leads to a more organic spread and gives a fair distribution of gold too, I've played in games where we get like 100gp by level 5 and its just not satisfying with how expensive things are in the books,
Random table dropped a +2 staff of power.
No one in the party was a sorcerer, wizard, or warlock.
We sold it for gold, because prior to this the wealthiest the party (5 PCs) had been was one instance of 13k gold. We spent that on gear ASAP.
We are lv 8.
Got 45k for the staff.
It wasn't ideal but such is life.
@@jamesbolt1003 stuff like this is why I pre-roll treasure hoards for anything that I've planned in advance. If there's too much that my party can't use, I'll swap it out for useful or at least usable items.
Doing it this way can also give you ideas for items to give the enemies to use. If for example I'm prepping a wizard boss and i roll a staff of the apprentice in the loot, that wizard boss is now using said staff against the party before they get to use it themselves (actual example from tier 1 of my campaign)
@@aliciacordero8399 we also have a +2 great sword but it requires attunement by a fighter. Our fighter is a dex biased eldritch knight. She has no need for the great sword but wishes to keep it as it will gain additional properties if the wielder slays a dragon with said sword.
Oddly enough our cleric would likely get the best use out of it as he's pretty stronk but as a life cleric has no martial weapon prof.
I'm a moon druid planning on paladin ancients dip.
I think my elemental wild shape should be able to use the sword but again it's unoptimized as I'm not a fighter; I won't get the bonus properties. -_-
I am, however, (because of wild shape) the parties archetypal front line fighter on a holy mission from the Yggdrasil.
DM has a bit of a crush on our fighter is my guess; she's pretty Marry Sue ish and she seems pivotal to the campaign. As an experienced DM this irks me essentially because the player is often unable to make it to games, is not very skilled in game mechanics, and often takes ages on her turn because she wasn't paying attention in combat. 9/10 times it ends in I attack BB or GFB and use eldritch war magic to make an additional single rapier attack. Why this thought process takes 10-15 min idk. Thank the gods she didn't make that blade singer she was going to try running. We'd probably have to wait 20-25 min as she going over a full casters spell list. -_-
@@jamesbolt1003 oof. Yeah that's definitely an issue to raise with your DM. Good luck?
@@aliciacordero8399 she also played levels 1-6 like a lawful stupid getting into multiple arguments with the party, reporting "crimes" to the authorities, and nearly undoing a carefully planned out and near bloodless end to a civil was as her family would be on the losing faction. At this point in the game I may have told her (in character) something along the lines of "if you fuck this up I'm going to dig your grave after we finish cleaning up your last mess".
So, yeah, sorry about all the text but I guess I just needed to vent. :/
I would like to point out that the Artificer kinda throws this whole ass table out of whack. Ability to craft at 1/4 speed with a single Feat, and at 1/4 price, and just magic items into existence.
I never paid attention to these recommendations. From my point of view, they are supposed to serve newbie DMs and perhaps Adventurer's Legue DMs.
My groups usually find magic items at a reasonable pace. They can find a fair amount of homebrew magic items tailored to what their characters like to do. The characters in my campaigns are definitely a lot more powerful than they should be, but I have no issue with creating challenging encounters for them.
For instance, a bard in one of my campaigns has a book called Tome of Ten Thousand Insults. It requires attunement and empowers Vicious Mockery so it does d8 instead of d4 and he also gets to add his Charisma modifier to the damage done by Vicious Mockery.
I feel like I want to follow guidelines like this, but then I look back and I haven't
I made scripts for all DMG Magic Items rolls with prices included in every item, the players absolutelly LOVE to roll for Treasure. At the beginning I would write in a handout for me the treasure and tell them, sore of, what to expect in the hoard, then they would choose if they get the already done list or roll and go for it, they always want to roll. Some players don't expend their inspiration points just to roll 2 times on the tables when it's time.
Thanks for the video, Ted.
I've never looked at this table before, and before looking at it, I always thought that magic items were much more rare. I've definitely been shortchanging my players a bit in the magic item department because in another game (that I'm a player in) it feels like we have almost an over abundance of magic items, so I may have overcorrected in the game that I DM. That being said, I think that the large majority of items being some kind of consumable helps balance things out.
Regardless, the next dungeon that my players get to, I think I'm going to up the treasures a bit. They're going to hit Level 10 soon, and I think it'll also feel awesome to get just a whole bunch of stuff.
Awesome topic.
Would love t see some of your home brew magic items!!
I'd say if you're planning full 1-20, I'd plan on giving each character the same amount of major magic items as the max spell slots a full caster will get for spell levels within that tier. So Tier 1 is uncommons, and 1st and 2nd level spells are in there, which max out at four and three slots respectively. So over the course of the character's adventuring life, they should get three or four major uncommon items. For Tier 2 (rares), 3rd to 5th level spells all get three slots; Tier 3 (very rares), 6th-8th max out at one or two. Tier 4 (legendaries), only one. This gets you 8-10 major magic items over the course of an adventuring career that are pretty well distributed among rarities. Scatter some commons and consumables around and call it a day.
You missed something you said in the beginning the staring at higher levels table was all people had to go on. however in the DMG under the section for using the treasurer hoard's table it says:
"You can hand out as much or as little treasure as you want. Over the course of a typical campaign, a party finds treasure hoards amounting to seven rolls on the Challenge 0-4 table, eighteen rolls on the Challenge 5-10 table, twelve rolls on the Challenge 11-16 table, and eight rolls on the Challenge 17+ table."
So the information was there in the DMG and the distribution was the same.however most people are unaware of it. as its in a small easy to miss paragraph.Xanithars jest further clarified thing.
the xanathar guide rules is what i use in my game. it gives enough magic items and my players are happy with it.
I've never counted the amount of magic items I gave my party,
But I'm pretty sure I'm quite low on the power front.
In regards to your level 18 campaign, and the question of should you change the number of Magic items you hand out if it doesn’t reflect what this list suggests, I’d say the answer is no, you shouldn’t change it based on this list. You should change it based on whether or not the characters have felt relatively balanced against the challenges you’ve presented them with so far.
I actually use this guide and I find it very useful. I have gone higher a few times on the table (gave a very rare @lv 5) due to them finding it in a cursed shop. It was a Ring of Shooting Stars, and I made the curse of every time he uses it the DC save goes up by 1, starting at 1. When they fail the save whatever atk they were doing with the ring is reflected to the user. The DC is currently 7, and I'm very much looking forward to when it'll eventually get him
I've already had them miss 2 hidden troves with items in them already, so the overstocking thing is very true.
Gary's original use of Alignments was for a language. This language crafts magical items. Factions in seek to destroy magical items in oppositional alignment. Simple fix that has been around for 33 years.
Solid food-for-thought video. More of these, please.
I like what matt Colville said about dnd. This game belongs to us, the players. Wotc won't come in our living rooms and enforce their rules in our game so if we want to give 200 magic items or 10 .. it is our choice.. whatever wotc choses to publish as a rule or canon is irrelevant and can only be considered as a suggestion.
This is true, but for pre-written adventures this is important to know if the DM doesn't want to be rebalancing encounters. It's also true if the DM relies on encounter calculators for designing encounters. But experienced DMs can do whatever they want.
When I first started DMing I used the table in xanathar’s… but now I’m much more loose, bc I think it’s easier and feels better than meticulously planning each item out lol
We/I need more suggestions for good low level magic items.
I know I personally have had characters that were intended to inherit items such as a Moonblade but I get a lot of mixed messages about level 1 characters starting with powerful gear from DMs.
Just to note I am a relatively new player. I have only played a little bit through discord before the channel was closed.
Most of my RP experience is free form.
So perhaps I am to be ignored and don't know what I'm going on about.
I've seen some people suggest magic items that scale with character level. Like at level one your sunblade is a magical weapon, yes, but no bonus anything. At level 5, maybe it becomes a +1. At level 7, maybe it gets the extra undead damage, etc. I always liked that idea
moon blade is actually one of the best to give to a really low level player. what you can do is have it's personalty but have the blade refuse to use any of it's power's as it's evaluating them maybe some time around level 4 or 5 it decided you are worthy and unlock a ruin, and now you have to go completely the binding retual. but you have to convince them your ready. after that as thay level you can unlock a ruin or two
I'm DMing my first campaign ever right now and I completely skipped over this part in Xanathars. After going through the the table I have definitely given my party more Rare Major magic items than I should have(group of 6 at level 8 and there are 5 rare items between them) so this will definitely make balance easier going forward.
I also have definitely fallen into to trap of wanting my players to find the cool stuff that I plant for them and them not finding it and being disappointed and trying to coax them into looking harder.
I was also wondering how other people handle shops that have magic items? I have mostly used websites that randomly roll magic shop inventories and it's worked decently but I'm just wondering how others do it.
so something i do is only have magic items available from a store in large cities, then i keep track of the months every month the shop gets a new set of uncomen items, half of the rare one very and a 5% chance of having a legendary item. once thay have that it only changes if a year goes by. and the number of items i use in order is: 10,6,4.
So 45 table rolls by level 20. That seems fair, 2 hoard roll per lever and an additional roll at 4,8,12 and 18.
Ill use this going forward.
I would not rush to add a ton more items if you find you are behind that 100 item progression. I find that creative application of items can often make them more valuable than their rarity might indicate. With that, I have never felt the need to add more just because.
Let's face it, magic is a huge part of why we play the game... Attunement slots keep things in check, for the most part, and we can meter the finds to suit on the fly if need be. It's about the fun, and magic is fun... I also use scaling items, that grow with the character (Thanks Critical Role!), so can cut back on the over-provisioning somewhat. Been playing since ADD, and the rules were different back then, but I appreciate the slot restrictions, and there are plenty of great items that don't require attunement. Scale your encounters to compensate, there's no reason a few items lets them skate through anything. Be agile... If you put a great item in a spot they completely miss, move it somewhere in their path if it's a must have... Magic is cool.. it's extra, and adds an element to every encounter, just remember, enemies can have them, too....
Even if you are behind the magic items you gave wave or rick are much more targeted for something they would use and that really synergizes with them
Probably the two important numbers I'm drawing from this is that by the end, players should have 5 non-consumable magic items, including one Legendary, each by the end of the campaign.
Can you brew a common Potion of Healing during a long rest according to rules in PHB page 233 ?
Not going to lie my first campaign is a f around random dungeon crawl with me testing new magic items. The item i tested were dungeon dice that gave random magic items based on rolls so now I have a level 5 party with a belt of storm giant strength
I like low magic adventures, by lvl 4 I like one special magic item per character that I've personally made, I might throw in less special items that are more for utility less for magic sword or armor, by lvl 8 maybe 2 per character, by 12 maybe 3, each item I place where there's a small story or a challenge suited to the player I intended it, I also do not allow buying or selling magic, by tier 3 I allow one npc who can custom make items but it's costly and not always with money, I use an open door policy so my players can come to me if they want something unique that we can talk about and I can place in there path, I also hate Artificer but don't ban them, giving too many items depreciate their value, if u have a magic sword in my game it's probably the only magic sword u will ever get, also if u never contact me between games u probably don't get anything unless I've written it for a badguy and it probably has downsides or doesn't fit ur build because it was made for the NPC not ur character.
Also potions in my games are alchemy not magic
I've had player at the table who complained that they had no magic weapons...
At level two.
I told him not to worry and that I will drop cool magic stuff when I feel it appropriate.
He kept stating that everyone should already have a magic weapon, he was worried about running into monsters with non-magic weapon resistance.
I told him that won't happen so early in the game, the conversation went as follows.
*Him:* But what if we run into resistant monsters?
*Me:* You won't.
*Him:* How could you know that!?
*Me:* Cause I'm the Dm, *I Am The Monsters!*
Part of the fun is killing an invulnerable monster using your brain instead of damage... like.. drowning or else.
I'm at the start of this 5>18 campaign and I'm so curious to know it will be a medium-high magic campaign as I immagined 🤔
I'm also curious how many hours of play pass between level ups in your campaigns guys. Here's about 2 to 4, I think 🤔
Magic items i think,should appear from level 4 or 5 onwards.Yeah low level ones,but not too many and only from level 3.
There's a couple of common magic items I'd be willing to throw in because they're not going to do anything special, or magic ammo.
I was thinking of hitting the various FB groups to ask this, but since I just caught your video I'll ask: do you know of any source of "what make sense" magic items for a particular creature?
Like, if you were to kill a beholder, what would be the typical magic item detritus laying around? A lich? A gith stronghold? Surely just across the three of those, just "whatever they looted from previous encounters" is possible but it would be great if there was some sort of "rational list" of possible items would be great as a basis.
I’m 100% sure my 4 person level 6 party has consumed 25 healing potions already . Hope our DM doesn’t see this an course correct
So one issue I have with this is that it seems to ignore gold. If you're rolling 45 times on hoard tables, that's a fuck ton of gold. Once your players get past level 8 or so...what are they going to be buying that isn't magic items and expensive consumable spell components?
They're probably buying land. By level 8 they're probably famous enough to have titles and undeveloped land given to them.
I have developed pretty much a looter shooter for my players. Monster hit hard needless to say
Not going to lie, the treasure hoard rolling is a bit wank. On average your players will get an ocean of uncommon magic items, and occasionally a rare. I did 50 rolls and only got above 85 twice.
That's how WOTC designed the game.
Absolutely I give more than all these tables including vestiges and artifacts
I have found most DM,s don’t give out hardly any magic items
Player's should be happy they survive with their equipment not broken, lost or stolen. Awarding a ton of magic items is silly, because a magic item should be a reward, not an everyday item (that's why they are called 'magic' item).
Well done bud.
I have only ever used the tables once. My players mostly get what they want.
I also have a tendency to go above level 20.
thanks ted
also if you use this and realize your short on magic items here os a few ideas. a dragon has has a lot of stuff make it less coin and gems more items. a fault full of magic items stored by a wizard or kingdom Incase of war. a vampire has been stocking up for his up coming cue and your players have stombled appion the plan. i giant has a trash pile of all the useless small folk items you might be able to take some useful things from. that's all i got hope it helps someone
I hope my DM's see this XD
again... you are not checking the math friend, 355k xp to level 20 in 5E... BUT 3 Million xp for same levels in older versions like D&D and AD&D... yall try to put monster truck tires on an indy car and then try to drive it lol.
My players would be considered OP at pretty much any table(except for "those guys" but we don't talk about "them"). Eight players, each a Chosen of a God, each has a "growth item"(magic item that grows in power throughout the campaign, and access to most minor magic items with enough research. I threw out CR a loooooong time ago. Magic items in the game at this point are for my enemies that can use them. The party will occasionally find an upgrade, but those are few and far between. Powerful magic items are few and far between but my players know they are out there somewhere.
First. 👁👄👁
is this what doing taxis feels like ???? its way too confusing !
Well if it's any consolation,
You can just be like does my party die without these?
If yes, you should probably give them said magic item.