#awarding loot

I’ve touched on this a tiny bit in my getting started series, but I felt really talking about the loot you choose to live your players would be an excellent resource for many aspiring Dungeon Masters out there.  Mostly, I want to talk about a few things in particular:

How to avoid giving players ‘too much’.

Gold, and maintaining its value.

Magic items, both minor and major.

Altering existing magical items and creating your own.

Odds are, if you’re a DM, one of these topics is something you wish you knew more about, and for good reason!  Poorly handling treasure can be somewhat catastrophic, and there is no ‘safe side’ to err on.  

Typically, though, you don’t need to get ‘all’ of treasure management right to keep your game engaging.  In addition, there are a few band-aid solutions that can come at certain progression points to help patch up issues.  I’m going to mention these first before moving on.

    Help!  I gave my players too much gold!

This is a rough one.  The coins your players acquire are an excellent tool for attaching weight to something.  It’s important to understand that having too much money is something the party is allowed to do if they’ve just legitimately been saving it.  If your party ends up with too much money because you made a mistake, however, there are a few things you can do help manage the situation...

Steal it.  This is mean, but playing your players’ wealth off as a device to set up another adventure can work, assuming your players don’t lose their minds and hiss and scream and cry about it.  In this scenario, I would typically steal all of it, and then have them come to find that much of it is gone when they finally track down the culprit.  Making an adventure with a net loss is dangerous though, as it discourages players, which is why I’d only suggest doing this if their problem of too much money is relatively small.

Reimagine price tiers.  Yes, your players have lots of money now.  Those items on Magic Item Table A, B, and F that you sneak into shops from time to time only cost 1, 2, or 5 thousand gold coins (or less, if it’s consumable), and now your players have 10,000 gold a piece!  Magic Items are rare though, and how much more expensive they get as they become rarer is at your discretion!  You can also keep certain less-rare items more expensive purely because of how useful they are (I’m looking at you, Pearl of Power, Gauntlets of Ogre Strength, and Headband of Intellect!)  Consider making these more useful items and rarer items progressively more expensive, and simply work in the wealth you’ve bestowed upon your players into that equation.  You may also want to adjust the cost of land, buildings, and vehicles accordingly.

Gold sinks.  Like stealing, this is kind of mean, but slapping an impassable barrier in the form of a crucial NPC needing a lot of money is good way to lighten the load of a player’s wallet.  The only issue with this is that it’s D&D, and if your players are dead set on not lightening their wallet, they’re going to tear down the world you’ve built to make it happen.

At the end of the day, when you make a mistake, sometimes the best thing you can do is tell your players and explain that a change needs to be made.  And yeah, you’re going to get players who tell you “No” when you say this, who say they earned it, and demand they be allowed to keep their mountain of money no matter how much it inconveniences you.

Unruly players are part and parcel of being a DM.  Players who go out of their way to trip you up and gain an unfair advantage are fine, even good fun, but when one of their ploys works too well, you need to put your foot down.  It’s important to understand in these situations that you’re doing the bulk of the work to keep the game running, and that your fun needs to be assured just as much as the players.  Events like these can kill a campaign, but at the end of the day, you did the work and that one unruly player is throwing a tantrum over something game breaking.  Call their bluff, and accept they might storm off, because that player who’s causing you a problem is cause you a problem again if they think they can get away with it.

    Help!  I gave my players too many magical items!

This one is actually really easy to solve: tell your players you’ve been too generous, and scale the loot back.  Unless you’ve given them a ton of incredible gear, this is an issue that’s solved with time.  Consider making future rewards less impactful ones, like Bags of Beans, Alchemy Jugs, and other lesser items that can make for good fun.

If you gave your players something far too powerful for their level, attach a cost to it.  That incredible weapon?  It was stolen, and the proper owner wants it back!  Or maybe its ancient, worn by time, and at risk of breaking.  Having your players roll a D4/6/8 and having the item crumble on a natural 1 is a good way to give them that taste of power without any permanence, and any lack of rolls made prior can be chalked up to you explaining they’ve used the item beyond what it was intended for.

Some players will get upset at this, but it’s not something you should ever fold on.  Compromise can come in the form of them getting something in return for giving an extremely powerful item up, but never in the form of them being allowed to keep the item.  Your level 4 Adventuring Party shouldn’t have a Sphere of Annihilation.  Stealing the Daern’s Instant Fortress some NPC used to shield them in a moment of panic is cute, but the players using it as a 10D10 damage bomb that early in the campaign is far too destructive and inhibiting to your ability to design encounters and situations.

How to Avoid Giving Players ‘Too Much’

It’s important to understand when you start a campaign that how much magical loot your players get is entirely up to you.  This can be a lot, which works well in high fantasy settings where magic is abundant and the history is vast, or very little, which works better for more quaint settings or settings where magic has come to be frowned upon and treated with distrust.

Regardless of however much loot you decide to give your players, please understand that the important detail is your consistency.  If ‘feeling’ it out hasn’t gone well, or you want to be certain of your consistency, you’ll want to start classifying the adventures you offer by length, difficulty, and experience earned.  Here’s a basic list to help you see the differences I’m talking about:

The easiest of the easy.  Short length, easy to find, low risk, and relatively easy enemies.  No significant items should be awarded here, even in High Fantasy.  If the adventure comes without a gold reward, a consumable can be used in its place (a useful potion, perhaps).

A mid length adventure, something that takes a whole session (3-4 hours worth of play) and typically requires a player to make use of a short rest or two so they can conserve their resources.  In this scenario, offer only a little bit more gold than what the easiest jobs offer, but add an item of worth as well.  This can either be in the possession of an enemy, or in a chest somewhere.

A long adventure, sprawling multiple sessions and having multiple parts.  Players should find this somewhat difficult, and if all goes well, they may even have been forced to use some of their precious consumable items.  This adventure, as stated, is long and has multiple parts.  Awarding 2-3 items is fine, whether they be spread out or as part of some great stockpile found at the end, at least for high fantasy.  In lower fantasy, 1 item overall will be enough to earn the excitement of your players, and in the starkest of settings, having a magical item only be found half the time on such a long adventure can even be appropriate.  Just remember that, in the case of especially low magic fantasy settings, these limited magical items should be memorable ones!  Don’t be afraid to give the players real power, even at a lower level, as there is no plans for things to get more abundant down the road.

A finale.  Regions in settings have major problems, or ancient threats that tend to resurface.  When the players stumble upon an ancient evil working in the shadows, watch as it succeeds in committing regicide (King/Queen assassination), track it to its evil lair, recruit the locals to help assault said evil lair, and finally bring the monster to justice, they deserve a substantial reward.  Not a lot of these are going to happen, maybe as few as 3/4/5 before the story your players’ current characters are on concludes, so don’t be afraid to cut loose.  In High Fantasy, this can be as much as an item a piece for the players, as well as a large sum of gold.  In lower fantasy, 1 or 2 items is fine, maybe filling out the rest of the player slots with consumables to accompany.  In the starkest of campaigns, these should still guarantee at least a single magical item.  If your campaign includes items of great power, like artifacts, mythical items with story-related attributes, or items that grow and become more powerful under certain conditions (or all 3!), this is a good time to hand one of them out.

With those 4 bullets, you create guidelines for yourself.  You may find that even this system is too much for your tastes, but take heart, you can always dial back what the players fine.  Not every adventure can or should be a big loot winner, lest your players stop being excited when finding interesting or powerful items.

Gold, and Maintaining Its Value

Gold is tough to deal with.  The expenses of daily life are pitifully cheap, and even things like horses, carts, and carriages don’t demand a particularly steep price.

So, how much gold should your players earn?  Well, the first thing to consider is the party size.  200 gold at level 1 is a lot, but 50 gold for each player for something dangerous (or found as the collective hoard of a group of bandits) is a little more manageable.  Charging 50-100 gold for a basic healing potion makes that not very much, especially if you’re demanding your players either pay a small amount each day to cover their daily living expenses, or if you’re having them go about their day naturally and are keeping track of how good a job they’re keeping themselves fed and healthy.

As things progress, making hundreds of gold per adventure isn’t odd, and the treasure horde of a finale can quickly have each of your players coming into thousands a time.  And this is okay!  Sailing Ships cost 10,000gp!  Magical Items cost huge sums of money as well, with items (not consumables) from Magical Item Tables A and B (Dungeon Master’s Guide, pg. 144) costing up a thousand gold each (Bag of Holding is a good example of this).

It’s okay for players to acquire these large sums of gold, and even stockpile it, so long as you haven’t flooded their wallets with the stuff.  Try to remember that magical items are not common, even in High Fantasy settings.  That’s why, with the exception of basic healing potions, everything basically starts with a description of ‘uncommon’ rarity.  As far as Magical Item value goes, I use a scale something like this in my own campaign for magical items the players purchase (when they can find them):

Consumables A-B | 50 - 1000gp - There’s a lot of variance here, because lesser spell scrolls are very cheap, but Elemental Gems are quite powerful.  Conjure Elemental, after all, is a 5th level spell, but Elemental Gems can be used by anyone, and require to concentration to maintain, making it a VERY powerful consumable indeed.  Try to remember that when you price items, the odds of them being found and their value in a shop need not correlate.  Value is based on usefulness, for just like in real life, having something rare does not necessarily make it valuable.

Consumables C-D | 500 - 2500gp - These are the big kid items.  The one-use powerhouses that even higher level players consider valuable.  These items cost a lot, but can have a serious impact on a battle when used, and typically have a price tag to reflect that.

Magic Items A-B-C-F | 500 - 3000gp - This is a big category, and it covers a wide range.  Understand now, before I say anything else, that this is not meant to be a shopping list for your players.  Asking around town and finding a shop with any magical items at all should be something they work to do themselves.  Some of these items, like Alchemy Jugs, Caps of Water Breathing, and Driftglobes are very minor, hence the 500gp price tag.  More significant items though, like Gauntlets of Ogre Strength (~2000gp Value) and Winged Boots or a Broom of Flying (~3000gp Value) are worth much more.  +1 Weapons and Shields have a value that’s up to you, but understand that they bypass resistances of enemies who are resilient to non-magical equipment.  In a High Fantasy setting, anywhere from 500-1500gp is fair game, depending on how heavily you wish to gate that first magical item.  In lower fantasy settings, these should be difficult to come by, as they’re meaningful, and may cost upwards of 3000gp.

Magic Items G | 2000 - 10,000gp - This does not include Flame Tongue.  Flame Tongue grants an additional 2D6 damage on attack rolls.  For its power level, it deserves to be on Magic Item Table H.  Having a chance for it to appear at ‘G’ table level is fine, but price-wise, it doesn’t fit well with the rest of Table G.  The lower end of Table G typically consists of Ioun stones, as these, while powerful, can potentially be destroyed.  Any and all +2 equipment should be very expensive, as should weapons that counter certain enemies while being an excellent weapon to begin with (Dragon Slayer, Giant Slayer, etc).  I’d put all of these over 5,000gp in value, with Sun Blade being at the top for its proficiency rules and radiant damage typing.  In general, items in Magic Item Table G are extremely impactful, often giving players the ability to do things they otherwise couldn’t, and should be treated as such when considering their cost.  

Magic Items H | 10,000gp - 50,000+gp - Yeah, these items are EXPENSIVE.  Priceless, even.  Things like stat books should never be for sale, unless done in some black market scenario rife with danger.  Simple, but powerful items (like +1 top-tier armors, +3 Weapons, and +3 Shields) should cost tens of thousands of gold coins.  Items like a Manual of Golems, however, should command a truly incredible price, perhaps even at auction and pursued by powerful criminal forces or wealthy archmagisters.

Magic Items I | Don’t - I’m not kidding, don’t sell these.  These items are legendary, and the very event of one being sold would be something that would draw all eyes in the world.  I don’t even know how a group of players would acquire the money to afford something so sought after, but if your players do somehow find their way into unfathomable riches, you should expect these items to cost hundreds of thousands, or even millions of gold a piece.

Magic Items, both Major and minor

I’m almost a little regretful that this section is so late, but that’s just how it worked out this time.

Magical items are exciting.  This is an undisputed fact, even if their effects aren’t wholly useful in combat.  We already know what Major items are, they’re the items I’ve been talking about in the post thus far.  They’re magical weapons and armor, or powerful potions that can greatly improve a player’s ability to fight or manipulate the world around them.

And then there are minor items.  Minor items work differently in that their effects are, as the name suggests, extremely minor.  This can be armor that’s put on or taken off faster than normal, a wand that makes people smile (even if it doesn’t make them happy...), or an amulet that let’s a person forgo rolling for a natural 10 once per rest.  Xanathar’s Guide to Everything has more detailed descriptions on these items and more, and I highly suggest anyone without that book who already enjoys 5th edition to track a copy down for themselves.

What’s most important about minor items is that, while the players get a neat tangible effect, it doesn’t greatly upset the balance of the game.  Because of this, you can be a little more liberal with their distribution.  That said, settings with less magical elements or ‘lower fantasy’ settings should probably forgo them for the sake of the theme.  For everyone else, these items are fantastic to clutter the shelves of shops selling interesting odds and ends, and let even a low level adventure pay out in a smallish ‘hoard’ of goods.

In the event of a lower level adventure with a finale that calls for it, such as an adventure that ends in a younger dragon as the final encounter, you can create a fledgling hoard of goods that looks like the real deal.  Start with what you’ve decided the adventure’s proper loot should be, in this instance we’ll call it a ‘mid length’ adventure with room for one decent item and a small amount of gold.  

The first thing we do in this instance is accept that the players are going to find a slightly better reward for their efforts, and that’s fine.  You can do this every once in a while.  Do this by adding a large amount of copper and silver coins to the treasure pile, turning that small pile of gold into a mound big enough for the dragon to sleep upon.  Then, look at some minor items!  Adding two or three of these can boost the legitimacy of your mini-hoard without horribly upsetting the game’s balance.

Or, if you really want, you can manufacture some interesting new minor items.  To do this, we need to get into...

Altering Existing Magical Items and Creating Your Own

I have a feeling that most of the people who start reading this article want to see this.  From a more technical standpoint, the best part about 5th Edition is how easy it is to homebrew content, which is to say, to come up with things to use in the game yourself.

Creating Minor Items

Following up from the last segment, we need to come up with some new magical items for our mini-hoard.  Ironically, these ‘simplest’ of magical items are some of the most difficult to come up with.  An effect players will like, but has little effect on game balance, can be difficult to create.

Here’s an example item I’ve created in the past as a minor magical item:

Mirror Journals

(Uncommon)

This set of journals (1D4+1) are mirror copies of one another, and the contents of their pages magically stay that way at all times.  If anything is written in one of the journals, it appears in the others as well.  A message written in the journals vanishes if whomever holds the journal places their index and middle fingers together and brushes over the text.  This erasing can only happen if it's attempted in the journal in which it was original written, but causes the message to be erased in all of the journals at the same time.

This item offers not immediately obvious direct combat benefit, as drawing it and stowing it could eat a player’s action, and writing in it would take another.  It does, however, allow players to keep in contact with key NPCs, but with the drawback of potentially leaving important information out for other, less friendly NPCs to find.

At the end of the day, though, in a lot of ways this is just an ‘altered’ version of another magical item (even if I hadn’t intended it when I made it), that item being ‘Sending Stones’.  Sending Stones is arguably a more powerful item, due to the way its ‘restrictions’ protect the actions of the user, and the way that using them takes far less time.  Still, Sending Stones isn’t a ‘minor’ magical item either...

Altering Items

This is a good time to talk about altering items in general, specifically, tweaking items in minor ways to make them a little different (or, potentially more powerful).  

Let’s take the ‘Circlet of Blasting’ as an example of this.  Editing this item to become something a bit more unique (or flavored toward the environment it was found) can be done in one of two ways:

Having it cast a different, second level spell.

Having it cast a different version of Scorching Ray.

In the first instance, we have the option of using another spell.  This method is very straightforward and easy to manage, as most second level spells are comparable to one another.  The only thing to remember is that Scorching Ray is not a concentration based effect, so it should not be replaced with one.  A ‘Circlet of Combustion’ that lets you cast Flame Sphere would probably be a much better item, if only marginally so.

The second option is something I like to do all the time.  Anyone can learn to cast Scorching Ray (well, anyone of the right class), but something like ‘Acid Ray’ would be a bit more unique.  You can even make the item a bit better by tapping into an element that’s less universally resisted, such as thunder or psychic damage.  Either way, these little touches can be used to match an item to its location (such as a Circlet of Mind Flaying, which would cast a psychic version of Scorching Ray and be found in an Illithid Lair).

Creating Magic Items

I feel like this right here could have an entire post dedicated to it, and it probably will in the future.  For now, I’m just going to give a simple, slimmed-down explanation on what I do to create a magical item from scratch.

     Step 1 - Assess the power level.

This step is first, and for good reason.  A Circlet of Blasting, for instance, casts a second level spell once per dawn.  A Hat of Disguise allows you to cast Disguise Self, a first level spell, at will.  They’re both in the same tier of item, but their power levels match because Disguise Self is a lower-level, non-combat spell AND it requires attunement.  In general, if an item’s effect is both constant and very useful, it should require attunement.  Basic +1/2/3 Equipment is the exception to this, and likewise a Circlet of Blasting, being a one-off per day, is fine to be passed around.  An item can also not require attunement if having it be easily passed around is part of its strength, such as with a Cloak of the Manta Ray.

     Step 2 - Do something new.

Make sure your item has some level of originality to it.  After all, if you can alter an existing item to achieve your goal, doing so will probably reduce the odds you accidentally open Pandora’s Box and make your players hilariously powerful in ways they should’t be.  

Next, ask yourself ‘why doesn’t this item exist already?’.  This is probably the hardest step, and warrants the most explaining, but in this instance let’s look at items like Gauntlets of Ogre Strength and Headbands of Intellect.  These items set a stat to 19, which can potentially be very strong for lower level characters.  Why, then, is there no item for Dexterity, Charisma, or Wisdom as well?  The answer here is simpler than you might think - they’d be much, much stronger.  Not only would they potentially convey similar bonuses, but they’d shore up a character’s Dexterity or Wisdom Saving Throws, two of the most common in all of the game.  A Charisma item, likewise, would boost an entire subset of skills that is universally useful to any character, those being to persuade, deceive, or intimidate.  There are also far more spellcasting classes that use Charisma and Wisdom than intellect, and while many melee classes use Strength, it affects far, far few skills and saving throws than the others.

So, after doing all of this, take a moment to double check you’re not doing anything that’s a big no-no for balance reasons:

Giving a player at-will use of a non-cantrip spell that deals damage.

Creating an item that’s functionally similar to another that already exists.

Giving a player an effect that does more than you intend. (Ex. An item that might boost the DCs of a cleric is fine, but an item that boosts wisdom can convey too many benefits all at once).

Making sure your item fits the power level of your players.  (An item that sets Dexterity/Wisdom/Charisma to 19 could be fine, so long as you understand that these are actually very powerful items).

     Step 3 - Give it flavor.

One thing you can do that the loot offered in your DMG has more difficulty with is tailor your item to fit the setting.  After all, an Apparatus of Kwalish is cool, but it hardly makes sense in some places.

Flavor doesn’t have to fit the setting, though.  Flavor can also be used to make an item more appealing to certain members of the party, an important thing to do from time to time when someone greedy in the group is snapping up all the best gear and is a little too proficient (or belligerent...) in getting everyone else to back down in trying to claim it.

Most important of all, flavor makes an item cool and special.  This is why a jeweled scimitar described in great detail can become a party’s obsession despite it clearly being nonmagical, because the item intended to fetch a high price at a store was elevated by a touch of flavor.

As a final note, I’ll drop an item I mocked up real quick to give an example of an item both flavorful, useful, and maybe obviously better in the hands of certain players than others:

The Brute's Answer

(Very Rare, Requires Attunement)

This curious item is shaped like the lower half of a helmet, and when donned covers the jaw of its wearer with a crude, darkened, and jagged metal plate.  

While you wear this 'helmet', you may insult a creature as a reaction to them casting a spell, and that insult will carry with it the effects of a counterspell (3rd Level).  If your intelligence modifier is negative, and you are countering a spell of 4th level of higher, you may add your proficiency bonus to the DC for countering the spell.  

Once used, this property of the 'helmet' cannot be used again until the next dawn.

It’s a strong item, landing either as a lower to mid-range Table G item or a very, very good Table F item.  It’s better used by someone brutish, as the name implies, and creates a clear cut example of who might be best for wielding it, as well as fitting the flavor of the item.  Finally, it require attunement, because Counterspell is a very strong, iconic spell, and a player shouldn’t be able to pull this out of their bag and put it on whenever it pleases them.  Having to suffer through a fight with no spellcasters, effectively negating the item’s use, is part of balancing the opportunity cost of such a strong effect.

In Conclusion...

All in all, there’s a lot more I wanted to say on a range of topics here, but Treasure is difficult.  I think it succeeded in being an in-depth look at treasure overall, but treasure itself is such a broad topic with room for so much debate that I’d need to give much of what was talked about here its own post to really do it justice.