I’ve never really liked the idea of wish lists, and much less the idea of treasure being included in the Player’s Handbook. Unfortunately, that’s now the way it is, and as a DM you’ve got to adjust to the fact that your players have full access to a list of treasures that are available in the game, and more importantly you have to deal with the fact that they probably think that certain treasures simply suck.
There really isn’t much you can do, magic items have ceased being mysterious and truly “magical” and have instead just become another plus to the attack or defense modifier, and on top of that have become selectable by the players by their inclusion in the book.
So here’s a solution to avoid the mechanical & immersion breaking (in my opinion) aspects of wish lists: create random loot tables based on pc’s wishes. In essence you are having your players create your random tables while filtering away crappy items. Perhaps by tier, or by every 5 levels, you can ask each party member to give you 10 items they’d wish to have. You’ll quickly have at least 40 or 50 items from which to create the table, and have passed on the tediousness of picking magical items to them, while still maintaining the illusion of randomly getting a magical item that doesn’t suck.
So you have a percentage based chart that may look like this:
- Weapons 1-7
- Holy Symbols 8-15
- Orbs Rods 16-23
- Staff 24-31
- Wands 32-39
- Arms 40-47
- Feet 48-55
- Hand 56-63
- Head 64-71
- Neck 72-79
- Rings 80-87
- Waist 88-95
- Wondrous 96-100
You then populate it with a wish list that is composed entirely of items they would eventually want or would consider using, effectively filtering the list of items they’d consider crappy. Let me know what you think about this idea, I threw it out there so other people better than me at math could come up with their own version of it.
Off the top, I know that the percentage of getting a weapon, for example, is small. I’m just not a math person, this is just an example of what a chart may look like. So someone good with numbers please hurry and design a better one. 🙂
www. Newbie DM .com 
dwashba
January 31, 2010
I think that the table would lead to a lot of getting the stuff for slots you already have that aren’t necessarily better wich would mean they have to sell the magic item or something. I prefer to just give um stuff that they need to make it smooth.
newbiedm
January 31, 2010
@dwashba: I can see where you are coming from, and you are probably right, but then again, back in the days of random treasure I guess you couldn’t control the, eh, randomness of it either…. I see it as a way of appeasing those that are bothered by the mechanical aspets of treasure parcels and wish lists in their rpg.
Vincent Noiseux
January 31, 2010
Not a bad idea, but I think that you should put together anything that could be considered “Weapon” for different classes (example: staff, rod and orb for the Wizard), maybe even drop in implements in the same category?
I’d probably put 20% chance each for “Weapons”, armors and neck slot items (main items for stats) and split the rest among the others.
Also, if you want to use your table more often (say every combat or so, you could add another table: 40%: nothing, 40% consummables and 20% items).
I’m not certain if my percentages are better than yours, but I guess we’d have to try it to know.
David
January 31, 2010
Interesting idea. I do have a bit of a fancy for magical items being special, plot related, personal, but they really do just become a mechanic of the game, don’t they. We can try!
Mike
January 31, 2010
You may want to up the “weapon” percentage. I remember that the old editions had the majority of magic items coming from weapons and armor. I like this idea, it’s a good compromise between giving the players what they want and making sure the items are useful while still adding some mystery and RP back in. You may also want to add a few “DM items” that you think they might appreciate but doesn’t occur to them or things that may be useful for them in the future. Maybe the types of items given to you by your players can help inform the percentages. If all they want are swords, then there’s not a lot of wondrous items to play with.
Swordgleam
January 31, 2010
The idea has good aspects and bad, depending on your point of view. It would bug me, since it’s more important to me that, for example, the orc king have an orcish weapon I’m not going to use than that the orc king have a weapon I really want but which makes no sense for an orc to own. If your players don’t care that they just found a +2 Wand of Glowy Happiness in the Dungeon of Lolth, your way will work fine. (And there’s only so many times you can use the ‘it must have been dropped by someone who came here to vanquish the evil and failed’ explanation.)
I prefer to modify items from the books and give them to my players, thus making sure everyone gets unique stuff and keeping magic items mysterious. But we have a relatively low-magic game – if I were doing that for one item every level every player, it would get cumbersome.
Paul
January 31, 2010
First of all, why don’t you think they seem magical? They seem magical to me, especially since most items don’t require you to give up an enhancement bonus for their powers, and all thrown weapons return. Some items have properties, or encounter (or even at-will) powers, rather than daily powers, making them more “active”. They have less “punch” but strike me as plenty magical. What would make them more magical in your eyes?
Secondly, the way you describe it is how I thought wishlists were /supposed/ to work, apart from the random element. If you ask players to each give you five items each for each of the next five levels, you should have plenty of items to choose from, enough to populate treasure finds quite plausibly.
I’ll admit there are some items that “suck.” I myself don’t care for those that inflict or protect from only certain damage types. Even leaving out those items and a few other kinds that didn’t appeal to me, my list contained over 90 items, any of which I’d be happy to receive. A DM would almost /have/ to pick at random, if he didn’t want to figure out what they all did.
I guess the real issue is that some players feel that there are certain items they need in order to optimize their build, or adhere to a theme of, say, fire. Those who have a theme might be willing to put in the effort to either collect and disenchant items they /don’t/ want to save up residuum for the ones they do. The optimizers might be willing to do that, or they might feel “gimped” if they don’t receive a specific item “on schedule”. In that case, player fun might be at odds with DM fun, and negotiation is probably in order.
Jeez, another long response. Well, thanks for the article.
Jurph
January 31, 2010
I used the DMG’s parcels, where a party of N players gets a distribution of (N-1) items each level. But instead of just looking at it as hopeless, I wrote in a rotation where each player gets to be at the top of the list for one level, each player gets left out for one level, and each player gets to occupy each other slot at some level.
Once you know what level item each character is getting next level, and what slots each character already has, it’s pretty simple to find an appropriate item for each character at each level. This way I can ignore wish lists (preserving the surprise) but still ensure that there is an equitable distribution of loot.
If anything, I think it would be *harder* to randomize the loot tables from wish lists, since you run the risk of one player getting three or four items from any given level’s treasure parcel.
newbiedm
January 31, 2010
@jurph – that’s actually a pretty good system. I like it… the random tables would be harder to set up. It just seems like there is a percentage of players out there that like the random table systems of old… this is a way of emulating that more or less (not being a designer I know it has its hiccups)…
@paul – to me they lose their magic feel when they become items in a catalogue for players to pick from. there was a mystery in older editions when you weren’t sure what an items did because you didn’t own the dmg. 🙂
newbiedm
January 31, 2010
I would recommend everyone interested in the design decisions of 4e to read this blog posting from one of the designers. It’s an interesting read regarding magical items and their place in the game:
http://community.wizards.com/wotc_peters/blog/2009/12/08/magic_items_the_items_we_cant_publish
david.adsit
January 31, 2010
It seems to me that what you are looking for are the Alternate Rewards from the DMG2 (pg 136). These replace the magic item wish list to a large part as well. You grant your players boons based on what they have done and training bonuses based on what they actively seek out. This keeps the whole thing in game and very RPish which is nice for me as a DM. I have a mix of players from the guy who gives me 5+ options for that he wants at each level (which means I have to keep track so he doesn’t get a new helmet every level) to the 2 who don’t even spend all their starting cash/items (we started above 1st level) because they are disinterested in poring through the tomes to find the perfect gear.
Personally, when I play, I suffer from magic item overload in 4e. I don’t care to make the lists for my DM but I do because I know how much work she puts into the game and that if I don’t, she will take it on herself to pick the perfect items for my PC.
All said, I think that if the magic items weren’t all so damn special use (“this item is ideal for barbarians…well, really only for dwarven rageblood barbarians…who are level 5-7…”), this wouldn’t be such a problem.
cwfilson
January 31, 2010
A few words on what *I* do. First and foremost, I do not like wishlists for the same reasons NewbieDM doesn’t.
I first take into account the types of weapons and armor my players are currently using. More applicable to your previous post, I have a spreadsheet for my characters that list weapon type, armor type, best skill, highest passive perception, AC and NAD, languages, current magic items (and the values of those items each player posesses). What this allows me to do is have an idea of who really needs something and generally what they might want.
When I write adventures and encounters I keep the DMG parcels very much in the front of my mind. When I go to place treasure I try to integrate the treasure into the environment while keeping in mind who needs something and what that something might be. A den of thieves are probably not going to be running aorund in plate armor and a long bow probably won’t drop from a bunch of gricks. I tend to create (as part of the encounter write up) a small random d6 table for the type of magic weapon.
An example:
I know I need a 2h weapon because Sora my 2H fighter has gotten a bit shortchanged recently (her item value from my spreadsheet is way below everyone elses). It is going to be dropped by a hostile barbarian who would probably have something a bit less “magical.” I end up picking out a Vicious +2, but then I randomize what it is (d6: 1-2 Greataxe, 3-4 Greatsword, 5-6 Falchion).
For the record, *I* think a random magic item table should be about 40% weapons, 30% armor, 20% other items (with a higher focus on neck pieces) and 10% consumables. This is just the items, not counting gold distribution as well. Weapons and armor are absolutely the most important with neck pieces being a close third. The rest of it is fluff.
Filson
Noumenon
February 1, 2010
There is a way to use random treasure in 4E. The reason you can’t do it now is that the players will end up with 10 random items, only two of which work, instead of 10 appropriate items they can use. According to this Enworld thread, you can give random treasure and still have the players appropriately equipped if you
a) allow selling items for HALF price rather than one-fifth
b) raise all item treasures by one level
(This does give out one level + 6 parcel but there’s a way to avoid that in the thread if you don’t want to.)
Antipirate
February 3, 2010
I don’t like asking my players for wish lists it gives them too much control over what items they get. I do however throw out open questions about what they want their items to do and how they feel about the items they have, that combined with my own guesses of what they/need is usally pretty good.
The random loot from say 3.5 had the problem of generating items that were good but got sold because they didn’t fit any of the players fighting styles.
I give my party one weapon one armor one neck slot and one other item each level this should result in a complete turnover of enhancement bonus items every five levels which I think is good for balance.
Pay close attention to the physical discription of magic items it’s a good way to make something more then a stat bonus.(unless your party is so out of touch that they’d dress in a clown suit just for a stat bonus). Also artifacts are impossable to just see as stat bonuses.
Paul
February 3, 2010
I use a system similar to this when doling out treasure to my players. Generally I ask them for 2 items from each category that they would be interested in, and I also choose an item from each category for each player. These all go into the random table and it gets rolled by me when I am setting up the adventure. This way, if I roll a magic sword, whoever they are fighting will be using it against them in the combat.
DeeSlayer
February 25, 2010
I believe it is bogus real DnD the Dm comes up with everything i understand random encounters but come on the DM is suppose to be the smart one He should not have to refer to a random rolling stuu=ff cause only he knows whats in his forrest not some table
Chris
May 26, 2010
Our DM didn’t give us magical weapons. Instead, he would give us Runes and Blessings. Runes, ranging in level from 1 to 6, could be used to enchant one of our weapons, the level of the Rune matching the enhancement bonus of the weapon. Blessings were for armor, and worked basically the same way. Of course, if a player had enough money, they could get a magic weapon without a rune(e.g. We killed a red dragon, and I took the dragon’s longest tooth. When we reached a city, I was able to make a Wyrmtooth Dagger+2 out of the tooth, although I needed to borrow some gold from our cleric and fighter)
I’m not sure, but I think our DM might be retiring this system when we resume playing in the fall, as it doesn’t really allow for Arm, Head, Waist, etc items, as they don’t have an enhancement bonus. Right now, our DM has said that we can get one magical item for each slot, as long as it is level 11 or lower. I think this might make our party a bit overpowered, but our DM promised he’d make encounters harder to compensate.
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