)? Do you just replace this "quota" with Psionics to balance it out? Or are there other methods for balance without saturating your DS campaign with Psionic or Magical items? Or am I mistaken that DS was meant to be a low magic setting?And we've all been DMs where we accidently gave out too much treasure sometimes. So we have to smudge a few stats, die rolls, etc... to help out either side. Its really the DMs job to make sure the PCs dont become unbreakable, and to make sure the PCs dont break to often.
So I just sometimes glance after a couple games at the amount of treasure Ive given out and check the DMG as to their "opinion" on how much a PC should have.
Also Psionic Items are just thrown in with Magic Items as treasure. Some DMs prefer using Psionic Items rather then Magica Items in DS. But remember magical items last a long time, so they could be ancient even before all this sand got in our boots.
--Also Dirge I sent U a PM on how cool Wisconsin is.
Which means that you can pretty much just replace magical items with psionic items, as you mention.
The best way to go at it is to ignore the standard XP system of D&D. The DMG offers some variant xp systems according to encounters, and other d20 campaign settings offer variant xp systems (Wheel of Time and Star Wars d20 are apparently good suggestions, though I haven't checked them out yet). Midnight also has an interesting take on it.
And anyways, I never liked D&D's xp system. It just makes no sense that killing monsters is the only way to get better at what you do, no matter if what you do is cast healing spells, steal things or plow a field. How the heck do commoners gain levels anyways?
Originally posted by Shei-Nad
You could, but I don't think you should. None of the NPCs of the original settings had much magic items on them, nor any good equipment for that matter. Its just a part of Dark Sun. Even the accumulation of wealth with levels should be questionable. Being set free and staying alive are pretty much the best treasures available in a Dark Sun campaign.
Well, I don't remember.. was there a source for Psionic items? I haven't looked at the 2e Psionic book in years, and I don't remember much about them in the DS2 books. It could be that were Dark Sun created today it would have a lot of psionic items to balance the XP chart.
The best way to go at it is to ignore the standard XP system of D&D. The DMG offers some variant xp systems according to encounters, and other d20 campaign settings offer variant xp systems (Wheel of Time and Star Wars d20 are apparently good suggestions, though I haven't checked them out yet). Midnight also has an interesting take on it
And anyways, I never liked D&D's xp system. It just makes no sense that killing monsters is the only way to get better at what you do, no matter if what you do is cast healing spells, steal things or plow a field. How the heck do commoners gain levels anyways?
Well, right. But how do you do treasure? Is there an appropriate way to randomly designate a treasure that works with the current system while not showering the PCs with world changing amounts of gold and iron?
However, I would suggest just not doing it. Without even diverging to other d20 systems or house systems, take the DMG and go see variant xp systems. There's one for free form. 75xp per character level I think per balanced encounter, or something like that. There are plenty of guidelines for xp awards based on how the characters managed an encounter. If the PCs found it easy because they had magic items, give less xp. If they found it hard because they didn't, give more. Not that hard, I should think, but does require more thinking that simply handing out the xp value of each killed monster.
That picture in the 3.5 DMG with the monsters holding XP tags is probably the best representation of D&D there could be. Anyways.
I personally don't make up for the lack of magic with psionic items. For me part of the feel of DS is the lack of really good equipment and the survival factor of having to use what you've got on hand.
One of the ways I account for the lack of magic/psionic items is to avoid creatures with lots of/ hard to overcome damage resistance. I also avoid creatures with lots of spell-like abilites (especially instant kill types). When I roll up NPCs I strip them of most of their magical equipment also.
I give out magical items sparingly, but from time to time players will discover previously 'hidden' powers that their existing items have. For example, one of my players gained a +1 steel sword (already impressive in a DS campaign!), a few sessions later, in lew of awarding another magic item, I told the player that he had discovered that through an act of will he could cause the sword to trigger a 'feather fall' effect. In this way, they get a little power boost, but no new items. This helps keep the low magic feel, and makes the rare magical item even more impressive to the players as the campaign progresses.
I hope this helps answer what I beleive it is you are asking.
P.S.
I also encourage useing the free form experience rules as they encourage the party to think more about the goals of the adventure/campaign than about what they can kill next.
Originally posted by Draggah
I think the initial poster's question deals more with how to find appropriately challenging creatures for DS parties (who should be lacking in magic items compared with standard D&D parties) when the CR system assumes a standard D&D level of magic.
I personally don't make up for the lack of magic with psionic items. For me part of the feel of DS is the lack of really good equipment and the survival factor of having to use what you've got on hand.
One of the ways I account for the lack of magic/psionic items is to avoid creatures with lots of/ hard to overcome damage resistance. I also avoid creatures with lots of spell-like abilites (especially instant kill types). When I roll up NPCs I strip them of most of their magical equipment also.
I give out magical items sparingly, but from time to time players will discover previously 'hidden' powers that their existing items have. For example, one of my players gained a +1 steel sword (already impressive in a DS campaign!), a few sessions later, in lew of awarding another magic item, I told the player that he had discovered that through an act of will he could cause the sword to trigger a 'feather fall' effect. In this way, they get a little power boost, but no new items. This helps keep the low magic feel, and makes the rare magical item even more impressive to the players as the campaign progresses.
I hope this helps answer what I beleive it is you are asking.
P.S.
I also encourage useing the free form experience rules as they encourage the party to think more about the goals of the adventure/campaign than about what they can kill next.
That was incredibly helpful!! Thank you.
This is always a tough one to consider. The AD&D DS material had altered tables to roll on instead of AD&D's tables, which resulted is less gold, more Ceramic, less equipment in general, and less chance of magic items.
Some people like having more magic items in their campaign than others. It comes down to the DM doing what he wants to do. If you want a lot of magicv in your game, go for it, but make the players work for it.
This can be accomplished by banning all Item creation Feats. Even potions. Takes a day to brew potions, takes weeks to grow a plant of magical fruits. Want to introduce a +2 steel longsword into your game? Put it in the hans of the BBEG of the day.
One of the things I have always hated about random treasure generation, is that some of my DMs would be like "Hey, you just killed a level 43 FighterMage, lets see what treasure he had. . Okay, You find a +18 sword strapped to his back, and a Fully Charged Wand of "slay anything" etc. . . Why the heck weren't these things getting used? If the BBEG has a potion of Cure Moderate wounds, doesn't it make sense that he would try to duck out of the action for a moment and drink it if he's hurt? Consider the stuff the guy has beforehand, and let him use it against the party. That way when the characters lay their hands on it, it means something. Maybe the BBEG has a wand of fireballs with 14 charges in it, and he uses it in battle. The characters now want that thing, but they want to kill him and get it before he wastes all the charges in it.
+2 Leather armor? Was the Bad Guy wearing it and benefitting from it's AC bonus?. . Simple things. AND, if the players don't fare too well against a Bad Guy with a powerful magic item, well, maybe that magic item was a bit too powerful for the group anyway.
In our Dark Sun game, we had a few magic items, but nearly every oone of them came from vanquished foes. With the exception of My Half Giant's +5 Greatsword. Yes, +5.. sometimes, and here's the story of that.
Half Giant started life in slavery without any memories. Lawful was his fixed alignment, and through most of his slavery he was nuetral, switching to evil when he was really oppressed, and good when he was taken care of. After they escaped, they needed a weapon. Well, after some funds were acquired, in a bazaar, Benny, the Bard (And the Half Giant's best friend) was shopping around and found an merchant willing to sell an "Erdlu dropping of a weapon" It was a Steel Greatsword!! The Merchant found that it was much too heavy than it should have been and absolutely no use to him, so he thought it was flawed, and since it was "magical" he didn't want the Heat breathing down his neck. He thought he overcharged us, he was wrong.
So Engus (The HG) gets this steel sword. Nice. Well, after some particular bit of adventuring his Alignment switches from LN to LG and BAM, +5 sword. In the hands of Nuetral Characters, it's just a normal sword, and in the hands of Evil character's it can hardly even be drawn from it's scabbard, and then it weighs too much to properly weild in combat but in the hands of good characters, it's got a nice +5 attachment to it. That sword was with him throughout the rest of his days. Even later when they defeated opponents with Flaming Bastard swords and the like, everything was given away, except for a backup weapon for those times of the week when he was just in too foul of a mood for the sword to work right for him.
So it was a great weapon specially in a DS Campaign, but it had the built in limitations of the Half Giants revolving Alignment (and no one else in the Campaign was a "good" Character so he knew no one else would be able to use it either)
But overall, just think of what the item is that you are thinking of bringing out into the game. Think of an appropriate method of introduction. If you want them to find it, make it tough leading to the finding. Putting it on a foe means the foe gets to use it against them until they pry it from his cold dead hands, and if you want to sell it to them, make sure you charge something appropriate
And as for Experience, tailor each CR based on it's Challenge. Read through just what Easy Challenges and Hard Challenges mean. If the Party is using most of their resources (Potions/spells/PPs/Magic item charges) then make sure the EXP reward is approptiate (We had a party which could easily blow through Encounters of up to 4 levels higher than us because we had a great offense, but we were deperately lacking in the healing department, so since we had to take time and heal night for night, the DM didn't gimp us on the XP). If you think that your 5th level Party will breeze through your CR 5 encounter, then make it a CR 4 encounter by default, or take the CR 5 reward and take off 20-40% of the reward. Make it somewhere above what a CR4 would have been, but not nearly what a CR5 is. Whether their breezing comes from magic items possessed, racial variety of the party, class variety, or just some damn good roleplaying and tactics on the player's parts, adjust the XP awards according to how well difficult/easy it is to get through the encounter, not by what the Book says you should hand out.
And as for Star Wars / Wheel of time Experience. Without grabbing the books and verifying, It's basically a 1,000-3,000 per average level of the party to be split among the party depending on how easy-difficult it was to get through the session. So, even if the group went through and slaughtered tons of bad guys, if it was an "easy" session, than the 8th level party gets 8,000 XP to split between them. the awards are more "overall story" awards than a "per kill" award system. Personally, I kind of like both methods, and I think a mixtrure of the 2 could work really good. Take the CR exp system and take off one of the 0's on each of the awards, and then take the general story award presented here again with a 0 missing, (so all awards are divided by 10 so to speak) and it may work out well enough to use all the time. OR, if it results in too little experience, take the 1-3,000 and divide by 2 or 4 instead of 10. . . Use your judgement
Ok, I love the original DS rules that gave all characters, and heck, even the NPCs/monsters, very high stats.
So, what if instead of raw wealth, folk and creatures gain STATS as they go up levels?
So what ratio for that, +1 stat per level, to be asigned at will, or something else?
Like the HG sword tale
In our game, the two PCs, a pair of real crooks, always wandered over the elven market in Tyr for "goodies" to obtain. Anyway, they found a ring was magical (trader didn't have detect magic, but they sure did). I like randomness, as it throws great quirks into proceedings that are often great sources of RPing...*DM decides to roll d100...DM rolls 00...hm, DM decides ok, the ring's gonna be useful and permanent, as he's normally very stingy with loot in DS...rolls ANOTHER 00...wo! DM decides it's a Ring of Three WIshes, hey, how often do you roll two natural 00s in succession!?Said ring became major plot item for them.