Loot!

Allright, I know I just did a whole spiel about alternative rewards, but I thought I'd take the time now to discuss some aspects of traditional rewards that aren't always considered.

I went over magic items and cash in the previous post, but there's a dynamic here that is sometimes overlooked (and I must admit, I was overlooking it until just recently). Specifically, there are items (magic and mundane) that most players will want for their characters. Things like rings of regeneration, stat boosting items (gloves of dexterity, etc.), flaming or frost weapons (or whatever), immovable rods (they're just fun), and magic armors or clothing fall into this category. These are items that you can expect the characters to shop for themselves with the cash loot. Other magic items are often very useful, but they don't support the characters' natural abilities in as obvious ways. These items are good for placing as treasure because the characters will want to hold onto them, but wouldn't necessarily think of buying them (particularly if they have limited gold, those magic weapons take priority). I came to this realization while playing a favorite rogue character of mine. I was making a shopping list for our next stop in the capitol city and stopped to think of the magic items I had picked up from treasure piles. I had a couple magic short swords, some kinda ring, +2 shadow leather armor, and a minor circlet of blasting.

Wait, where'd that circlet come from?

Now, I had been spending just about all the money I found in building up my equipment, and I never considered an item quite like the circlet. Don't get me wrong, I love it, especially against undead when my sneak attacks are useless, but even against the living I can cause massive damage by using the circlet AND adding sneak attack damage (it's a ray, I can do that). So now, I'm considering saving up for the major circlet of blasting (maximized damage = good).

The point here is, folks, that you can make traditional loot much more interesting or exciting by throwing in items that players probably wouldn't go out and buy for themselves, but they certainly would not let go of if it got plopped in their lap. Here are a few examples (note: these are not in any particular order and some are much more powerful than others): Items of elemental command (bowl for water, brazier for fire, censer for air, stone for earth), any of Quaal's feather tokens, figurines of wondrous power, sovereign glue (hehehe, universal solvent is not here because if they need it, they'll buy it), horn of fog, Nolzur's marvelous pigments, and Murlynd's spoon. Now, this list is by no means exhaustive, and your players may be a little more open to unusual purchases than most, so just take a look through the DMG and see if you can pick out some that you've never seen in a game before, give them a shot. Also, some items are only really useful in certain situations or when dealing with specific creatures. In this case, be aware of your campaign's environment and how that could effect character purchases and also how your loot could foreshadow the rest of your adventures (this may or may not be a good thing).

Ok, that's all for today. I'm gonna go sneak attack my way to a mithral (mythril/mithril? whatever) chain shirt.

Tags: magic items, loot, shopping, reward, Dungeons and Dragons, D&D, D20

Player Rewards

I haven't died! Yay!

Sorry for the delay in posts, it has been a busy couple of weeks.

Let's get down to business. The topic for today is the various rewards DMs give to the characters (or players depending on how you look at it). This is kind of a post for newbies, but I think veteran DMs could benefit from a reminder. There are a few basic, classic, and plentiful rewards:

• Gold- Money makes the world go 'round, and it makes adventuring a lot easier when you can afford that +5 vorpal greatsword or that staff of fire (I sure do loves me my fireballs). Money is a necessary staple in a campaign for a number of reasons. First, it's versatile, it can be used for all sorts of things that you couldn't (or shouldn't) normally put in a treasure hoard (horses, rooms at the inn, favors from local wizards, etc.). Also, it allows players to customize their equipment easier rather than relying on whatever they may find randomly. There are a few problems with money. The biggest of these is that it's rather boring. "You step past the dead husk of a dragon and into his treasure room. There you find 32,150,983,406,436,436π gold pieces." Whoopee.... Ok, granted, I love to find a mountain of coins every once in a while, but you can't do that every time. This leads to the next problem however, how the hell do you carry all that cash? Especially in high-level campaigns, it can take a lot of dough to purchase those spiffy items you really want, and it'll take all your strength just to lug the stuff around until you find somewhere to shop. Thus, the final problem: what if you can't find anyone selling something you want or need? At higher levels, not many people can make equipment that will actually help you. Let's move on.


• Loot- This is where you can cut out the middle-man. If you know your rogue would really want some boots of elvenkind, you can just slip it into the random treasure for them. This is also where you can introduce your own magic items and other trinkets that the players may really like but have not thought about. There are also a few problems here. First, the players may not want what you give them. If this happens they have a couple choices: leave it and then it is as if it didn't exist and they wind up with less reward or sell it for a fraction of what it's worth and they are still left with less reward (from a numbers stand-point). Also, if you provide them with everything they want, then they're not going to need money as much and it becomes less of a reward to get that mountain of coins. So it requires some balance here.


• Experience- This is a tricky one, especially because XP is used for more than leveling. On the plus side, XP is a good reward because it can be given spontaneously. If a player is roleplaying particularly well then give them some XP, right then and there (a good rule of thumb I've come across is to give 10XP per character level for an instance good roleplaying). The downside is that this can unbalance a party if it's not watched closely. It can be a way to help characters who make magic items or cast spells with XP components, but at the same time it makes those abilities a lot more powerful when they know they can make up their XP loss with a little acting. On top of all that, it's a very subjective call. Be prepared for your players to complain of favortism and the like.

So those are the basics. "What else could there be?" You may ask. You may not. That's not the issue. The point is there are alternatives! Don't get me wrong, the basics are essential and can make for a very enjoyable game on their own. But, if you are able to keep track of your party's balance pretty well, and want to give your players unique and special rewards there are some things you could throw out there.

• Skill ranks- This is a pretty light reward if you don't go overboard with it. Every once in a while this makes for a nice little surprise reward. Usually, there needs to be a direct roleplay component to this. Say, for instance, your ranger character spends a week chatting with a local huntsman. You could decide to grant the ranger a rank in survival or knowledge (nature), depending on the specific topics of discussion, for good roleplaying and staying in character (this is assuming the ranger did an exemplary job in this fashion). You can also get very specific with this reward to make it less able to unbalance the characters. Maybe the bonus rank only applies to the terrain type the huntsman is familiar with or even only to the surrounding area (this makes the reward more and more like a simple circumstance bonus as it's restricted).


• Feats- Yes, you can give feats as rewards. This can be like the skill rank reward if the feat you give is one of those that gives bonuses to skills (e.g. Stealthy or Athletic) but it is quite a bit more powerful. These are, of course, to be given less often than even skill ranks and usually for a significant accomplishment (you may also want to give them less in the way of other rewards to compensate). Feats and skills are good alternatives to the traditional rewards because they're permanent and can't be taken away. The first time you're arrested and stripped of your equipment, you may lose your precious dragon scale armor forever (after all, the captain of the guards could really use that armor), but no one can take away your animal affinity. So let's say you just put your party up against an entire army of displacer beasts, invisible stalkers, or drow (who made good use of their darkness ability). Would it be out of the question to award the blind-fight feat to a couple of the characters that have plenty of experience fighting unseen opponents by now (sure they could've used it earlier, but no one said you're done throwing invisible creatures at them hehehe). This adds a bit of realism and makes the characters seem more like growing people. The problem with these is that they're hard to balance. Some feats are more useful than others, and the same feat isn't as useful to one character as it is to another. So it's a little hard to balance feat rewards.


• Spell-like abilities and other stuff- This is the catch-all category. You can pretty much put anything you want in here. Fireballs at will, wings, resistances, immunities, special abilities (like evasion) whatever. The problems with these I think are fairly obvious. They can be extremely powerful or unbalancing and it can sometimes blur the lines between classes. Now, being able to cast prestidigitation at will isn't quite the same as being able to cast flame strike at will so there is a range to the power presented here. These rewards I think should be given maybe once or twice to a character in a campaign. Any more and it becomes less special (or the players start expecting it). But if you do hand out one out of the blue, the player is probably going to be especially pleased and surprised, and the character will take on a whole new level of uniqueness (c'mon, casting prestidigitation at will, how cool is that? little magical effects going off all around you, all the time).

Ok, I hope that gives someone an idea for some unexpected and unique rewards for their players. Remember, changing things up and keeping your players on their toes helps to add to the experience. New is good. Try it out. And with that out of the way I leave you with this thought:

It's hot in Topeka.

Tags: reward, feat, skill, rank, spell-like ability, gold, loot, Dungeons and Dragons, D&D, D20

The Rod of Life

Disclaimer: I don't suggest actually putting this in game unless you know what you're doing.

I was bored the other day, so I decided to come up with one of the most powerful magic items I could think of. This is, the Rod of Life.

The Rod of Life is an unlimited use rod that casts true resurrection on command. Caster level 17th.

Ok, first question, why a rod? To that I respond why not? Actually, I chose a rod because they rarely duplicate spells. Normally, they have magical effects that are similar to spells, but significantly different. So, for an item that will never see the light of day anyway, let's make it a rod.

Now, every cleric wants one of these now right? So what does it take to make one? (because you aint gonna be buying one let me tell you....)

First you need the spell true resurrection, everyone got their holy symbols? Good! Now open your texts to page 1. Anyway, the base price to make one of these babies is not that bad, only about 275,400 gold. So that means that to create one, you need to spend 137,700 gold on materials, and sacrifice 11,016 experience points. Got it? Wait! We're not done yet! True resurrection also has a costly material component. Specifically, 25,000 gold in diamonds, and for unlimited uses, we need this component 100 times over! Woo! So the final cost for creation comes to a whopping 2,637,700 gold (which is almost the total wealth of a party of 4 level 20s according to the wealth-by-level charts). In addition, the rod would take 276 days to complete.

So there you go. Craft yourself a Rod of Life, find the nearest 170 year old (or younger) epic battlefield, and start raising all the good guys!

Tags: true resurrection, rod, cleric, item creation, Dungeons and Dragons, D&D, D20

Half-Dragon Templates

No, I'm not going to wonder about the difference in power between a half-dragon and a true dragon. That works for me. No children, I come to you today with startling news.

I received my first question! WOOT!

Ok, so what was the question you ask? That's another question I respond.

Anyway, the first question comes to me from Amp and it concerns ways of granting the half-dragon template to a character that was not born with it , details are left out to protect the players (they'll need all the protection they can get), and they're irrelevant anyway. The details, not the players. Amp had considered using some form of a wish spell (which would have done the job), but thought that was a little overkill. So, I broke out my books and set to work.

The first thing that came to mind was the Dragon Disciple prestige class from the DMG (pg. 184). Gain 10 levels and you become a half-dragon, sweet. But, since Amp was considering a single spell for the job, I thought perhaps there wasn't enough time for all that. So, on I looked.

The next thing I came across was the spell Polymorph Any Object from the PHB (pg. 263). This spell, can be permanent if the change is not too drastic from the original form (there are tables to help with all that), and I would rule that polymorphing from a base race to a half-dragon/half-base race would qualify as permanent.

Now, I know some people have problems with the polymorph line of spells, so I decided to come up with a third option. Since Amp was already considering using powers of massive proportions, why not make an artifact? Artifacts are fun because they can do anything. They don't have to follow the normal rules, they don't have to work for everyone or in any kind of consistent manner at all if you don't want them too. Sure there are those that do, but an artifact with even a hint of intelligence can refuse to work if it doesn't want to. So, how about an Altar of Draconic Lineage, or a Statue of Draconic Perfection (or semi-perfection as the case may be) that grants the half-dragon template to those it deems worthy (or something). Here you can be as creative as you like.

So, I hope that was informative and not too confusing. You now have at least three different ways of granting the half-dragon template (by class, by spell, and by item).

So who's next?

Tags: dragon, half-dragon, template, artifact, polymorph, dragon disciple, Dungeons and Dragons, D&D, D20