Random magic items in 5th edition (5e) are a fascinating aspect of Dungeons and Dragons gameplay. These items can add an element of unpredictability, excitement, and flavor to any campaign. In this note, we will explore what random magic items are, how they work, and their role in enhancing gameplay. Random magic items are special enchanted items that players can discover or receive as rewards during their adventures. Unlike regular magic items that are predefined and have specific abilities, random magic items have their abilities determined randomly. This adds an element of surprise and mystery to the gameplay, as players never know what they might get.
Here’s another reason why the license issue is important. Lately, WOTC has made some shameful corporate decisions – from the way they treat and pay their freelancers of color, to the tepid disclaimer they added to past publications with racist tropes.
Lately, WOTC has made some shameful corporate decisions from the way they treat and pay their freelancers of color, to the tepid disclaimer they added to past publications with racist tropes. Censer of Serenity - An enchanted censer that was made by a daughter for her father, who was suffering from PTSD following the battle that robbed him of his arm.
This adds an element of surprise and mystery to the gameplay, as players never know what they might get. There are different ways to obtain random magic items in 5e. Some dungeons or encounters may have specific loot tables that determine what items can be found.
Random magic itdms 5e
I’ve been talking about building a D&D 5e random treasure generator on one page (sort of a companion to 5e Monster Manual on one page): a better, more granular version of the DMG treasure tables that assign coins, gems, and so on.
If you read my blog, though, you know that there’s one thing I love above all else, and that’s uncontrolled scope creep. As I’m working, I’m starting to feel that I’m leaving the job half-done. Random monetary treasure is well and good, but what about random magic items?
The DMG has 6 pages of tables to roll on to figure out what magic item you find. On the whole, these charts are pretty good. They’re not perfect – I’d adjust the frequency of many items, especially pesky common items like potions of giant strength and dust of dryness – but they’re usable, unlike the monetary charts. At this point in 5e, I bet a lot of you have given up on the treasure tables, but you might still be using the magic item tables.
Is it worthwhile to build a replacement for the magic item tables too?
I think it is. And there are three big reasons to do so: support for multiple game styles, rebalancing, and collective ownership.
Reason Number 1: Support for multiple game styles
In the lead-up to 5e, there was a lot of talk about how it would be the most customizable and modular of all editions. Want to play a grim-n-gritty game or a wuxia game? There would be various “knobs and sliders” (I think that was the analogy of the day) to give you the game you want. I’m almost positive that there were going to be sliders for low- or high- magic and treasure.
Those never materialized in the final game (unless I missed some page in the DMG?). We ended up with a fairly opaque treasure system. It’s not easy to tell how to adjust the magic-ness of your game on the fly – or even to tell how low- or high-magic 5e is by default.
So let’s figure that out now. With the DMG and Xanathar’s charts about expected treasure hoard rates, we can math all this out to determine the chance of any item falling into the hands of a typical adventuring party. Then you can decide whether you want a higher or lower magic setting.
A D&D party which does the by-the-book number of encounters, over 20 levels, will find about one permanent and four expendable magic items per level. Here’s some of what they get:
–10 potions of healing, and about 10 total of the other healing potions (greater healing, etc). About one potion per level to share among the party.
–About one spell scroll per spell level. Personally, this doesn’t feel super generous. Assuming that about half of spells are on the wizard spell list, a wizard is learning a new spell from a scroll maybe once every 4 character levels. It’s a bit disappointing to me because I love the idea of the knowledge-seeking wizard character who hunts down scrolls.
–4 magic weapons. On average, each character gets one magic weapon for their whole career.
–Very few AC-increasing items. Up until around level 17, the whole party finds about one AC-boosting item, such as a +1 shield or a ring of protection. At legendary tier, they maybe find a second one. The D&D team really put the brakes on runaway AC expansion – so much so that, while higher-CR monsters get more accurate, PCs don’t really get much harder to hit.
I’m curious about what you think. Does the D&D magic default seem right to you, or would you prefer more or less magic than this? What I learned from this exercise is: relative to 5e D&D expectations, I’m a high-magic DM! I probably give out twice as many permanent magic items as I would if I were guided just by the encounter frequency defaults and treasure tables.
Knowing my own inclinations tend towards high magic, I want to make sure to preserve the standard D&D default treasure payout for the people who like that style. However, I also want to include rules for running a higher or lower magic campaign.
So that’s one reason to build my own magic treasure generator: to build the sliders and knobs we never got.
Reason number 2: rebalancing.
Some things, like a relative scarcity of magic weapons, can be marked down to different playing styles: some things strike me as just plain wrong. I will make some adjustments to both the scarcity and the power level of certain items. For example:
The math validated my hunch that there are way too many giant strength potions given out. The average party, over 20 levels, gets 7 potions of giant strength. They may be useful for buffing the fighter in a big fight, but I’ve never found them that iconic or imagination-grabbing. I’d trade in a bunch of these for healing potions, please!
The average party gets 2 potions of climbing. I’m not sure that I’ve ever used any.
-The party has 60% chance at Universal Solvent, 15% chance at Sovereign Glue. What? If anything, these proportions should be reversed. Sovereign Glue on its own is a fun invitation to hijinks. Universal Solvent on its own is just nothing.
-The party gets a total of three pieces of magic ammunition (+1 arrows, etc). This one broke me. I tweeted about it and wrote a huge blog post which is maybe too in-the-weeds to post, even for me. The short version is this: a +1 magic arrow is a nearly insignificant resource. The fact that the whole party gets only one over 20 levels is, to me, insane. Insignificance plus hyper-rarity is a bizarre combination. In order to have a place in D&D, magic arrows either need to be a) much more common, or b) much more interesting. In my Inspiration app, I’ve got dozens of interesting magic ammunition variants: in my magic item table replacement, I’ll settle for making them a bit more common.
Sometimes I don’t just disagree with how common an item is; I disagree with what level characters it’s for.
For instance, the flame tongue sword is Rare. It does 2d6 (average 7) extra fire damage on every hit. That’s very powerful! It does more damage than the Very Rare Frost Brand.
The vicious weapon, like the Flame Tongue, is Rare. It does 7 extra damage on a natural 20. It’s about 1/20th as powerful as the Flame Tongue, but has the same rarity. It’s also significantly weaker than a +1 weapon (which has an Uncommon rarity).
I’ll be moving these and other items up and down the random tables to provide better balance. When you get one of your rare opportunities to earn a magic item, I don’t want it to be a dud or a game-breaker.
Reason number 3: collective ownership
The DMG random tables are not in the 5e SRD. In other words, they’re not open content usable by third-party publishers. 95% of the 5e magic items ARE in the SRD; the random tables are not.
This is important for a few reasons. For one, it means that you can’t legally make various helper apps (like my Inspiration app) that use the official tables to quickly roll up treasure. You can secretly use the official tables and hope you get away with it, but that’s not really honoring the terms of the Open Game License. So any third-party publication or software that randomly assigns treasure needs to come up with their own method for doing so.
Here’s another reason why the license issue is important. Lately, WOTC has made some shameful corporate decisions – from the way they treat and pay their freelancers of color, to the tepid disclaimer they added to past publications with racist tropes.
Now I expect that WOTC can do better in the future. But I also want to have options in my back pocket – specifically the option to play D&D without cracking open a WOTC book.
So once I create my own random treasure-and-magic items generator, I’ll make it available under the OGL so everyone can use it for whatever they want it for.
the blogofholding treasure generator
So what am I signing myself up for? I’ve already promised to come up with a new, improved, one-page monetary treasure generator. I’m almost done with that – I just need to run a few more simulations to make sure it provides the results I expect. And it turned out, fitting it on one page is easy. I need a bigger challenge.
Here’s what I’m promising now: A complete 5e treasure generation system for wealth and magic items, replacing the 10 or so pages of charts in the DMG. It will have the following features:
-The monetary system will be overhauled, as I’ve detailed before.
-There will be rules for high and low-wealth campaigns and high and low-magic campaigns.
-It will rebalance magic items by rarity and power.
-It will scale by party size. The current system works well for four- and five-character parties, but can’t gracefully handle huge-party or solo play.
-It will be released under the Open Game License.
-All of it – the charts, the customization rules, the tables for assigning 300+ magic items (but not the OGL license) – will fit on a two page spread. You can roll treasure and assign magic items without any page flipping. This seems like a crazy goal, but I’ve been playing around with it, and I think it’s possible. Hope you like small print!
We’ll see what else I end up adding before it’s done. I have a few ideas for extra features that I’d like to jam in, space permitting.
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This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 28th, 2020 at 10:33 am and is filed under RPG Hub. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
We’ve all been there, when a player is desperate to sell a random item they found on their adventure so they can free up space in their backpack. They might even try to make a surprise offer to an NPC.
Other times, the Dungeon Master (DM) may roll dice or use a random generator to determine the properties of a magic item. These properties can include things like bonuses to certain abilities, special powers, or unique effects. Random magic items can range from simple trinkets to powerful artifacts, each with its own set of abilities. Some items may provide combat advantages, while others may have utility features or even role-playing effects. The diversity of these items ensures that each player's character can find something that suits their playstyle and contributes to their growth and development. One of the benefits of random magic items is that they can lead to unexpected and memorable moments in the game. Players may stumble upon a rare item that completely changes the dynamic of a battle or provides a creative solution to a problem. These surprises add excitement and keep the gameplay fresh and engaging. Furthermore, random magic items can serve as plot hooks or catalysts for new adventures. The discovery of a mysterious artifact could lead the party on a quest to uncover its origins, or a cursed item might require a solution to remove its negative effects. These items can spark creativity and encourage players to explore the world and its mysteries. However, it's important for DMs to balance the distribution of random magic items to ensure fair and enjoyable gameplay. Too many powerful items can unbalance encounters and make challenges too easy, while too few items can leave players feeling underpowered. Striking the right balance ensures that random magic items enhance the overall experience without overshadowing other aspects of the game. In conclusion, random magic items in 5e are an exciting and dynamic element of gameplay. They add unpredictability, excitement, and flavor to campaigns, providing unexpected bonuses or powers to the player characters. These items serve as rewards, plot hooks, and catalysts for new adventures, enhancing the overall experience and encouraging creativity. DMs should ensure a balanced distribution of these items to maintain a fair and enjoyable gameplay environment..
Reviews for "Random Magic Items: A Key Element in 5e Campaigns"
- John - 2 stars - I was really disappointed with "Random magic items 5e". The items that were generated were completely useless and didn't have any real value or purpose in the game. It felt like a waste of time and effort to even bother with this product. I would not recommend it to anyone looking for meaningful or balanced magic items.
- Sarah - 1 star - "Random magic items 5e" was a complete letdown for me. The items generated were so overpowered and unbalanced that they disrupted the entire game. It felt like cheating to use these items, and it took away from the natural progression and challenge of the campaign. I would strongly advise against using this product, as it only brings frustration and imbalance to the table.
- Mike - 2 stars - I was hoping "Random magic items 5e" would offer some interesting and unique items to spice up our game, but unfortunately, that was not the case. The items generated were mostly underwhelming and lacked any creativity. It felt like an uninspired attempt at creating magical items, and I found myself quickly losing interest. I would not recommend this product to anyone looking for exciting and engaging magic items for their campaign.
- Emily - 1 star - "Random magic items 5e" was a total disappointment. The items that were generated felt completely random and didn't fit well with our campaign setting. It seemed like a lazy attempt at creating magic items, and it really took away from the immersion and enjoyment of the game. I would not waste my time or money on this product again.