While the Dungeon’s Master team enjoys some well-deserved vacation time, we’re breaking out the greatest hits and shining a spotlight on a few of our favourite articles from 2009. We’ve searched for hidden gems that our newer readers might have missed and our long-time readers will enjoy reading again. Enjoy a second look at these greatest hits from Dungeon’s Master.
The idea of giving names to magical items really struck a chord with our readers. This article quickly jumped to the top of our analytics and still remains one of our most popular and often read articles.
Many of the people who commented on the original article agreed that PCs should cherish their magic treasures and not just treat them as portable wealth. By naming items, the players become more attached to their sword or wand. It becomes more important to the player and enhances the role-playing.
Other comments suggested not immediately revealing a magical treasure’s true power or potential until the PCs either identified the item or had an opportunity to use it. After all, if the PCs don’t know that it’s a +1 sword then they have to call it something else. This is certainly a reasonable approach, but my experience was that by not revealing the item’s power up front – at least out of game – then the PCs waste a lot of time identifying items, not to mention the havoc of recording an unidentified item in Character Builder.
Another comment about scaling power in magical items reminded me of a campaign we ran a couple of years ago in which our DM approached things very differently. All the PCs found or earned +1 items early in the campaign. Then as the PCs leveled up, the items would get more powerful. This way a PC who became particularly attached to their +1 sword didn’t have to trade it for something better as they got more powerful.
The day after running this article we ran another article about magic items. The follow-up explored the pros and cons of introducing Intelligent Magic Items into your campaign. So whether your sword got a name because you named it or because it already named itself, PCs should never have refer to their weapon as just a +1 sword.