ARCHIVE 002
Your at the start of a new campaign. Everyone is making or has made their character. Session 0 is nearly at an end when a player approaches with a request. “Can he have a magical item at the start of the game?” If your first instinct is NO, then your right… for the most part. Level one players at the start of an adventure generally have a leg up with a magic item. And if one guy gets a magic item then another guy wants one also and, before you know it, everyone glows in the dark from all the magical swag they’re hauling.
But it doesn’t necessarily have to be that way. Here are a few why’s, why not’s, and how’s on allowing (or gifting >:D) magic items for your fresh new level one party.
But first, a caveat. This article was inspired by several sessions of mostly 5th edition D&D. This article may or may not be useful for your fantasy RPG of choice.
For example, I would absolutely NOT recommend a magic item for a level one party in Dungeon Crawl Classic unless they found it while playing the character funnel at level 0. If you do not know DCC, it is an OSR (Old School Renaissance) game that encourages randomness at character creation and NEVER fudging the rolls by player OR Judge (Dungeon Master). Giving away a magic item willy nilly is anathema to the spirit of DCC. Likewise, there are a number of fantasy RPG’s that, for theme or flavor, want or require players to begin weak so that they could feel so much stronger and accomplished if they survive, even just to the next level. So keep that in the back of your mind while proceeding to read this article. It might not be useful for your current game now but there are a lot of games out there where this could be useful later. And with that…
WHY NOT let your players have magic items at the beginning of a level one campaign?
1. Everyone will want one. And you may be saying to yourself, ‘so what?”. In a small game this may not be a problem. 4 or 5 people with a whatsit of whoodoo or some such might be fun. But what about 6? What about 8? My current group is 10. How do you balance encounters if everyone has a magic weapon? What if some magical devise instantly unravels a villainous plot that should have taken an entire session to discover? What kind of chaos can be wrought when you allow a player to control a random effects generator and then decides to use it in the kings court because he’s bored? “Well simple,” you say as you discover you’ve suddenly been turned into straw, “Just don’t give them those kinds of magic items.”. OK, fine…. What’s left?….
2. Is catering to a power fantasy going to be fun? Maybe. I am writing from a 5E perspective and, let’s face it, D&D 5E has left sword and sorcery, skipped over high fantasy, and delved strait into swords and superheros. So much so my next character is going to were spandex. But why lean into that when you haven’t fully mastered your own character? Why even have the distraction of another magic doohickey when you’ve not faced your first combat? What can YOU do? Would the encounter have been more or less a challenge if you didn’t have that magic item? Did your players rob themselves of a tense interaction for a chance to show off the glowing thing of something-or-rather? Which brings me too…
3. It wasn’t earned. Finding unknown treasure is the bread and butter of old school D&D. Finding even a simple potion was an event! It was a reward for a job well done… or just survived. Now what? Sure, there will be other magic items to find but you and each of the players already have one. Why should the DM hand out more? And what if you find something better than what you started with? Then what? Dose it really matter?
4. This one is my favorite. A quote from Lamentations of the Flame Princess author, James Edward Raggi IV. I paraphrase, “When a player finds a cool new magic item the character becomes that magic item. They start trying to solve every situation with that magic item.”. It hasn’t happened often but I have seen it happen. A magic egg that mesmerizes people, “let’s let it loose in the tavern and rob everyone”. A never ending water skin, “Let’s fill the pit trap we’ve fallen into and swim out”. A deck of cards that can give fortune or woe, “Were screwed. Wonder what this card does?” Granted, these situations can turn things very interesting and create complications and unforeseen circumstances. But, still, the player has stopped relying on their own initiative and defaulted to the new shinny toy. Now imagine that at level one, in the first session, before anyone even steps out of the tavern…
But it’s not all doom and gloom. There are some good reasons to start your players off with something extra.
WHY let your players have a magic item at the beginning of a level one campaign?
1. EVERYONE WILL WANT ONE! LOL! Come on. Who doesn’t want some piece of keen gear right from the start? It get’s players excited. True, they are excited for the glowing thingamabob you just handed to them and all it’s possibility but, hey, excitement is excitement. It’s why grandparents give their grand kids candy when they are supposed to be on a diet.
2. What’s wrong with a power fantasy? True, it takes a little of the game out of the game. It’s really hard to challenge a player in the current edition. But, hey, your already playing a power fantasy with 5E. A level 1 5E character is as powerful as the average level 5 character from 1st edition (AD&D). What’s one extra bobble going to hurt?
3. Future Complications… This sounds bad. Like the magic item in question is going to cause you problems at the table. NO, my dear Dungeon Master. No. It can cause the PLAYERS problems in the game… and that’s a good thing. It is a much overlooked possibility most DM’s will miss…. But more on that later. Here is….
HOW to let your players have magic items at the beginning of a level one campaign.
Ohhh, where to start…. How about with…
THE EPIC SWORD OF EPICNESS!!!… and other over powered baubles. LOL, no. Just, no. All the game breaking problems aside, the player has to justify having an artifact level magic item at level 1. Or even just a regular powerful magic item. “Oh, my Grandpa left it for me in his will”. That’s nice. What was he doing with it? Did he ever use it? Why did he think YOU should have it? “I found it”. Really? The Hope Diamond was just lying in a gutter? “A mysterious stranger handed it off to me and died”. Neat. Has a plot hook and everything. Now the DM has to spend time figuring out who is looking for it and fitting it into his champagne that may well be a published adventure. But if you can hand wave that away, now you have a new twist. Even the most benevolent of kingdoms is not going to want and untested adventurer with dubious alliances walking around the country with the equivalent of an unsanctioned nuke. So your guy with the Sword of Instant Head Removal is going to be a target regardless of his alignment or background.
So with all the obvious problems aside, HOW can it be done? Well, a weapon of that scale IS the adventure. The spotlight is firmly on the character wielding the weapon or item. If it’s an artifact level weapon then there will be factions conspiring to get it. The player had better have strong alliances with powerful people. People who will be asking for favors. If the weapon is just a very powerful magic item the player is still a target. Magic items are not cheap and powerful ones will go for enough gold for a person to retire comfortably. Remember, magic weapons in 5E are always obviously magical. The second the blade is unsheathed, everyone knows. There is no hiding it.
Now let’s look at the other extreme. The not so game breaking minor items. These items are usually disposable like scrolls or potions. These are the safest because the player will not want to use it willy nilly. It could be level 5 before that player whips out that potion of invisibility he had sine lvl 1. Because once it’s gone, it’s gone. Older editions of D&D had magic items with magical charges. Think of them as spell slots for a single spell that go away permanently. Typically, these were wands that could spam the same spell so long as it still had charges. I’d shy away from those. A level one player with a wand of Fire Balls is going to cause havoc. But you might do something fun with the concept like allowing the item to have one freebie cast but each time afterwards you’d roll percentiles to see if this was the time the item ran out of magic. That way the player gets to use his cool thing but will be loath to just wield it in every combat. Finally, you have the utility items. Things not used in combat but are just handy. Bag of Holding, Staff of Light, comfy track shoes. These could come with there own problems but are not too game breaking. In an old school D&D game these items could be huge. But in today’s game, how often is darkness a problem when most races have dark vision? When was the last time your DM made you keep track of how much you were carrying? No matter how comfy your shoes are your still going to stop when the rest of the party wants to make camp. Here is a useful item I made for a recent game. A pocket lighter that never needed to be refueled. A useful item that would never come into play that, at best, might be used as a weak candle.
And what about everything in between? Well, your mileage may very. Magical weapons that are just magical with no particular power except they can hit targets that could not normally be hit are pretty safe… and boring. It’s when you give them an ability or two they might be a problem. Glows in the dark? Meh. Everyone has dark vision now a days. Who cares? Casts Shatter after every short rest? Wait a minute. Hold on there tex. Shatter is an AMAZING spell and is pretty strong in the hands of a caster. Now Joe Rouge can sling it around too? Yah, no. It’s these in between magic items that are going to be the trouble. The little minor stuff will work itself out after a level or two. The epic stuff will turn your lower levels into mostly roll play with a rando combat so the players can show off like it’s an issue of Shonen Jump. You KNOW it’s going to get ugly. But those in between magical gizmos are real chaos. How do you decide what is equal between players? “I got a hammer that shakes the Earth!”, “I got boots that make me a Ninja!”, “I’ve got a glowing rock.”. What a head ache. Maybe randomize the items the players get? Great. The wizard has a magic sword he can’t use, the rouge has a dagger that talks out load when unsheathed, and the fighter has a magic My Pillow that gives him an addition spell slot after every long rest. Uhg. I don’t know what to tell you. Your just going to have to feel it out and know ahead of time that some one is going to have a better magic item then everyone else. It happens in games when the magic items are found so now it’s right up front at level 1. You asked for it.
Something fun you may want to try is letting your players make there own magic items. Just give them some guidelines and see what their creative minds come up with… I personally LOVE the idea BUT even this could run into problems. Here is a little antidote from a game I played the year 5E dropped. I wanted something fun and possibly useful for my Arcane Trixter. Now pay attention. I told my DM I wanted a ring that would cast a level 1 spell once a day automatically when a specific trigger happens. Now stop reading this and think for a moment. Would YOU say yes? It’s a single level 1 spell. So what? And it only can happen once a day? That’s pretty limiting. AND it needs a specific trigger that may or may not happen? Why not? Now think to yourself, “Is this a good idea?”…. Well, let me tell you the details I conveniently left out. The level one spell was Spare the Dying and the trigger was falling to 0 Hit Points in combat… Yikes. I knew what I was doing, and I didn’t think it would be that bad. It turned out to be a VERY good magic item. In a game where character death is fairly rare I effectively made my character nigh unkillable. Yeah, we had to make some adjustments. I eventually ‘lost’ the ring. I think we gave it condition that if my character went down twice in a day it lost its power forever. Which was fine. It wasn’t my intention to break the game. It was fun while it lasted but the ring had to go so into the fires of Mordor it went.
So what do you think? Still want to give magic items to level one characters. Of course you do… But maybe not right now. When the time is right and you want to add a little chaos and power to your game. Or maybe just to see what would happen. It can be done and it can be fun. You, as DM, are just going to have to work a little harder to challenge the players.
Good luck with that…
