In D&D
and AD&D and clones, Treasure Types (A, B, C, etc.) have been often
discussed, as has been the "abandoned" or "unguarded"
dungeon level treasure tables such as that on page 7 of Underworld and Wilderness Adventure. Yet surprisingly, the "Items" aka
magic items or "prize" table of Monster
& Treasures page 23 is almost never talked about. The loot the players acquire is perhaps the
most important aspect of a campaign, especially the magic items. Certainly, the use of items of magic greatly
effects encounters. Adventurers equipped
with fireball wands and displacer cloaks are going to have a very different
monster encounter, than the same party might if equipped with run of the mill
arms and armor. In theory then, that makes
the Magic Item distribution table of prime importance, perhaps one of the most
crucial tables in the game. Yet, it is seldom considered.
Instead
folks tend to argue over whether and when to use which lair or level treasure
table, or whether to use some 3e style GP reward calculation, or as is often
the case, to just make it up from scratch.
Here's the
thing - whatever means used for determining coin and jewels, it's almost
irrelevant, it is the Magic Items table that ultimately has the biggest game
impact.
What isn't
being appreciated here is the reality that the game was designed with the
expectation that, barring a few special purchases, the average group of
adventurers would have exactly the same percentage
of magic items as in the items table. In
other words, if the table generates magic Rings 5% of the time, then 5% of the
party's magical possessions will be rings.
That magic
item balance should hold true at least until 11+ levels, where the Magic-User
can begin to make their own items. Indeed
the very reason magic item creation is prohibited until 11th level may well
have been to keep lower level Magic users from over gifting themselves with
powerful magic, and thereby skewing the general balance between classes.
With this in
mind, I thought it very interesting to trace the evolution of the various magic
item distribution tables as a design element.
As the
presentation standard, I'll use the table order given in AD&D, since it is undoubtedly
the most common. Notice that maps are
included, and I have further interpreted this category to include manuscript
and books, because that is indeed the
case in some instances we will be looking at.
Maps & Manuscripts
|
Potions
|
Scrolls
|
Rings
|
Rods, Staves, Wands
|
Miscellaneous Magic
|
Armor & Shields
|
Swords
|
Miscellaneous Weapons
|
Here to
follow are all the important magic item tables from pre-D&D to AD&D, as
devised by Gygax & Arneson.
The oldest
record we have isn't actually a table, but a stocking list. In Dave Arneson's First Fantasy Campaign, he
reprints his dungeon stocking notes for levels 7-9 and Tunnels, ranging from late 1971 to late 1972, with the tunnels seemingly being the earliest. By categorizing the various items, figuring
out the frequency per level and averaging across all 4 levels, we get the
following combined results.
ITEM
|
%
|
Maps & Manuscripts
|
0
|
Potions
|
0
|
Scrolls
|
14
|
Rings
|
0
|
Rods, Staves, Wands
|
0
|
Miscellaneous Magic
|
11
|
Armor & Shields
|
24
|
Swords
|
29
|
Miscellaneous Weapons
|
24
|
(The figures
in all the tables shown here are rounded to whole numbers sometimes resulting
in a total slightly over 100).
Given the
small sample size, these figures certainly are not "scientifically"
accurate, but I'd say they give us a pretty good idea about magic treasure in early
Blackmoor. Take note of what is not
found on the list, especially rings, wands and curiously, potions. These are all items that have yet to be added
to the game. Techincally, there are no "scrolls" either, instead
there are "spells". Although
these spells may be something like liquid based balls, they essentially
function just as a scroll would in game play, whether the spell is on paper or
not. In any case, perhaps the most significant thing to note here is that magic
swords made up nearly 1/3 of the treasure, and when combined with other weapons
and armor, nearly 2/3rds of the magic to be found is combat equipment. While this does get significantly modified over
time, we shall see that the dominance of weapons and armor remains in the game
throughout the Gygax/Arneson era.
Our next
table is even more complicated. In the summer of 1972
Arneson created a new adventure area called Loch Gloomin, and created new
stocking tables for it. I've previously cleaned
up and commented on those tables in this post.
http://boggswood.blogspot.com/2014/08/stocking-blackmoor-wilds-in-1972.html
These
stocking tables rely on a series of d6 and 2d6 rolls, so converting them to %
required a few more steps, and won't neatly add up to 100% because some 10% of
the items (such as clothing) have no equivalent in the AD&D items
table. When all is said and done, here
is what the 1972 item table comes to:
ITEM
|
%
|
Maps & Manuscripts
|
9
|
Potions
|
22
|
Scrolls
|
2
|
Rings
|
0
|
Rods, Staves, Wands
|
6
|
Miscellaneous Magic
|
20
|
Armor & Shields
|
5
|
Swords
|
9
|
Miscellaneous Weapons
|
14
|
Interestingly,
swords have really dropped off here, and potions have the biggest share. Nevertheless, weapons and armor altogether
still account for 1/3rd of the treasure overall. Scrolls and wands are now apparent, but there
are still no rings.
Alright,
moving on to the next table - found on the very next page of the FFC following
the Loch Gloomin notes - we have Arneson's draft Magic Items table that Gygax
developed into the published version found in OD&D, as confidently
demonstrated in this post (about halfway down)
http://boggswood.blogspot.com/2014/11/the-mystery-of-18-pages-of-notes.html
. Here is how it breaks out in the
AD&D order:
ITEM
|
%
|
Maps & Manuscripts
|
11
|
Potions
|
13
|
Scrolls
|
0
|
Rings
|
0
|
Rods, Staves, Wands
|
7
|
Miscellaneous Magic
|
10
|
Armor & Shields
|
13
|
Swords
|
36
|
Miscellaneous Weapons
|
9
|
Swords are
once again the big story here at a whopping 36% of finds, and of course,
weapons and armor are again close to 2/3rds of the items. Before getting to much in to the nitty
gritty, lets move on to OD&D, via Gygax spring of 1973 draft (as copied in Mark Bufkin's Beyond This Point be
Dragons), side by side with the published version of
1974, and the reorganized "Holmes Bluebook" version of 1977.
ITEM
|
'73 Draft
%
|
'74 3lbbs
%
|
'77
%
|
Maps & Manuscripts
|
16
|
25
|
25
|
Potions
|
13
|
19
|
19
|
Scrolls
|
8
|
15
|
15
|
Rings
|
17
|
4
|
4
|
Rods, Staves, Wands
|
4
|
4
|
4
|
Miscellaneous Magic
|
4
|
4
|
4
|
Armor & Shields
|
13
|
11
|
5
|
Swords
|
13
|
15
|
15
|
Miscellaneous Weapons
|
9
|
4
|
10
|
These three
were all put together by Gary Gygax (including the "Holmes" table),
and thus reflect his thinking in the OD&D era.
There's lots
here to take note of. Rings make their first appearance, and the significance
of maps in the treasure hoard is clearly a big change from Arneson's tables. As someone who has used these tables, I can
honestly say coming up with a new map for 1 out of 4 of the treasures with
"items" wasn't something I looked forward to. Another important trend to note in these
tables is that the chance for perishable items like potions and scrolls tend to
go up, at the expense of permanent items like armor and, especially, rings. This trend is no accident as Gygax explains
on page 121 of The Dungeonmaster's Guide:
As mentioned previously, the MAGIC
ITEMS table is weighted towards
results which balance the game. Potions, scrolls, armor and arms are
plentiful. Rings, rods and miscellaneous items of magic
represent only a
25% occurrence on the table. This is so done in order to keep magic-users
from totally dominating ploy. They are sufficiently powerful characters
without adding piles of
supplementary goodies. What they gain
from the
table will typically be used up and
discarded.
By the same
token, the high occurrence of swords and combat equipment greatly favors Fighters
- a fact which also improves the balance between the Fighting and Magic using
classes.
With that in
mind, let's move on to something fun.
Suppose we look at all the tables thus far considered and average them
out. Theoretically, that would give us a
good merger of both Gygax and Arneson's general views. Here is what we get:
ITEM
|
OD&D Era Average of all %
|
Average without BM Dungeon
%
|
Maps & Manuscripts
|
14
|
17
|
Potions
|
15
|
18
|
Scrolls
|
13
|
10
|
Rings
|
3
|
5
|
Rods, Staves, Wands
|
4
|
5
|
Miscellaneous Magic
|
9
|
8
|
Armor & Shields
|
12
|
9
|
Swords
|
20
|
18
|
Miscellaneous Weapons
|
12
|
9
|
Now you will
notice I've done this two ways - a column with all the data looked at thus far
and a column without the data gleaned from
the Blackmoor Dungeon levels. I find that including the Blackmoor dungeon
data is both historically relevant and yields the most interesting results for
game play. Consequently, these
"average of all" numbers form the basis of most of those used in the
Champions of ZED prize table. The exceptions
are that wands etc. in the CoZ table use the 5% figure at the expense of 1 % from
maps. I also arbitrarily lowered the
Miscellaneous Magic to 7% which is both closer to the OD&D percentage and
necessary to get a true 100% total.
Table shown below:
ITEM
|
Champions of ZED
|
Maps & Manuscripts
|
13
|
Potions
|
15
|
Scrolls
|
13
|
Rings
|
3
|
Rods, Staves, Wands
|
5
|
Miscellaneous Magic
|
7
|
Armor & Shields
|
12
|
Swords
|
20
|
Miscellaneous Weapons
|
12
|
Before going
further, it is interesting in light of the DMG quote to consider the direction
Gygax went for AD&D.
ITEM
|
AD&D DMG
|
Unearthed Arcana
|
Maps & Manuscripts
|
11*
|
1*
|
Potions
|
18
|
20
|
Scrolls
|
14
|
15
|
Rings
|
4
|
5
|
Rods, Staves, Wands
|
14
|
15
|
Miscellaneous Magic
|
13
|
14
|
Armor & Shields
|
14
|
15
|
Swords
|
9
|
11
|
Miscellaneous Weapons
|
13
|
14
|
*These
percentages are extracted from items subsumed in the miscellaneous magic
tables; and I included "scarabs" when determining the percentage or
amulets & medalions, because they are sometimes described as amulets. Although in AD&D maps have a 10% chance
of appearing, UA appears to drop maps altogether. Books are extremely rare in each.
As can be
readily observed the "items" tables of the Dungeon Masters Guide and
Unearthed Arcana are practically the same, especially if Maps were included in
UA or removed from AD&D. As Gygax's
"last word" on the matter it might be interesting to compare our raw
average of Gygax + Arneson OD&D with Gygax AD&D:
ITEM
|
AD&D
DMG
|
OD&D Era Average of all %
|
CoZ
|
Maps & Manuscripts
|
11*
|
14
|
13
|
Potions
|
18
|
15
|
15
|
Scrolls
|
14
|
13
|
13
|
Rings
|
4
|
3
|
3
|
Rods, Staves, Wands
|
14
|
4
|
5
|
Miscellaneous Magic
|
13
|
9
|
7
|
Armor & Shields
|
14
|
12
|
12
|
Swords
|
9
|
20
|
20
|
Miscellaneous Weapons
|
13
|
12
|
12
|
Remarkably,
there are really only two differences here greater than 3%. The chance to get magic swords is
significantly better in the OD&D average, and Wands/Staves significantly
less. These two differences are very
important however for an OD&D campaign.
Wands/staves
are truly one of the most powerful and handy tools at the Magic-users
disposal. At most in all the OD&D
era tables, wands and staves comprise no more than 7% of magical treasure, and
usually only about 4%. Yet in AD&D
wands are 2 to 4 times more frequent.
I've seen players with bandoleers of wands, but by the book, an OD&D
character should hardly ever find them!
So what we
get with the CoZ table, and to a slightly lesser extent in the OD&D table, is a
distribution of magic items that greatly favors fighters through equipment and
disposable items. Swords in particular,
usually of the intelligent variety, are much more of a staple in the OD&D game,
and more still (5%) in CoZ as they were in Blackmoor. If closely followed, as intended, the Magic
Items table is indeed a game changer.
2 comments:
I'd be interested in how the ratio of magic items on the tables match up with the magic items found in possession of the various pre-gen characters of early module. I've noticed that many pre-gen magic-users have magical bracers which are fairly rare in the charts.
There's also the issue of duplicates affecting the ratio of items carried versus items found. So once the party finds enough magic swords for all the fighters, any newer sword will either go on the shelf or replace one that is currently carried. So, miscellaneous magic item, where duplicates are rarer, might begin to dominate.
Good point about swords. Some would likely be given to henchmen and others sold.
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