Quest for the Awesome Doohickey; Does It Even Work?

[Vrock_Summoner]

In many fantasy roleplaying games, if you're willing to put in the substantial quest effort, you can get awesome doohickeys that make future problem solving easier for the rest of the game, which you wouldn't have gotten if you hadn't put that effort in. This works best if either 1) the system is one in which character power doesn't progress much or the narrative is more emphasized than the mechanical resolution of problem solving, or 2) the equipment itself scales with the character.

The former is simply untrue for the base assumptions of D&D (though some people run it that way, and power to them for figuring out some houserules or whatever for having more fun at their table), while the latter is... Difficult in implementation and presentation, to say the least. It can work once as a neat effect, but scaling quest reward is something that both only tends to work well for weapons, and more importantly gets old instantly the second time it's used with one group, even in different campaigns, because fluff justifications for that sort of thing run rather thin.

Plus, there's the factor where D&D balance (insofar as it works) tends to basically require that your equipment is up to par but not too far above it, else challenges quickly run the short distance in either direction to "basically impossible even with great ingenuity" to "utter cakewalk." And power grows so rapidly that you're basically choosing between "invalidates all challenge now for lasting worthiness" and "makes things easier but still challenging now and is obviated at the next equipment level along with all the other outdated gear." There's the plausible solution where you require gear to get up to par in a particular area whose requirements don't change much (some of the higher-end Flight items are equally useful to level 5 and level 15), but requiring a dedicated quest to reach basic effectiveness feels... Heavy-handed.

So at the end of the day, in D&D 3.5... Are quests for non-MacGuffin items really worthwhile to either the player or the overall game? From the player perspective, the equipment will either diminish your fun via reducing encounter challenge to the nether regions, or be obviated as quickly as any other level-appropriate equipment, both of which are dissatisfying. From the game perspective, it presents a difficulty in keeping the other characters in the party feeling special without ignoring the value of the acquired item in favor of status quo. It also either makes challenges to the party more difficult to balance, or fails to meaningfully impact the game for very long, which probably causes the players to wonder if it was worthwhile at all.

Do my points not stand? Is there a special ingredient that I didn't notice on the recipe explaining why item quests can be worthwhile endeavors for those involved? If they do stand, is there a way you guys have done it to make the item's acquisition have lasting impact, without its immediate presence breaking the game for some duration? I'd be interested to hear everybody's thoughts on the subject.

(Again, this bears little in regards to non-mechanical MacGuffin quests. It doesn't matter what the plusses are on the Sword of BEG-slaying, it's necessary to take him out, and then will go on to be replaced, or it'll have no useful ability but be the key to activating the gate that sets the next arc in motion, or it'll be a relatively weak pair of teleporting boots but have historic value that lets you unite the dwarf and elf tribes via its presence, or whatever.)

[Fizban]

This is a problem I have also considered, how to have "dungeon items" that matter. I think one of the biggest factors missing from why it works in other media is simple availability: in other media you usually can't just nip down to the magic item mart and buy a whatever, and crafting it yourself is unlikely at best. In a videogame you might pull money out of dead cows in perpetuity but cannot convert it into anything but specific weapons and armor. In a book magic items might do anything but the character just doesn't have the resources or skill to get/create it (Harry Potter) or there's no time to waste because the plot's over in a few days (Dresden Files). In DnD a campaign takes place over a long period of time making time crunches more difficult, magic items are given market prices, and towns are assumed to in some way have available any item of X price or lower. Any problem can be beaten by converting the copious amounts of cash you loot from your enemies into solutions.

All you've got to do then is remove that: players only have access to the loot you give them and what they can craft themselves, which may have further restrictions in case you can't think of something. Maybe there's nothing to buy, or maybe there's no one to sell to and they don't find hard cash. Then you can have a quest at any level for items that solve problems, especially lower level effects useable at-will and higher level effects with very specific uses.

If the campaign features lots of foes without access to darkvision, a Dark Lantern makes many fights much easier without requiring multiple castings of Darkness. Communication and scouting items like the Silver Raven, Blue Quartz Eagle, Farspeaking Amulet, and Scout's Headband let the players prepare for fights and alert allies over long distances, which are extremely valuable in campaigns against a moving enemy (where you can't wait around). A Kodate of the Spirit Dragon can let one person pop in and out of a sealed room or protect them for a couple rounds of combat per day. A Pick of Piercing completely invalidates Force effects 3/day, saving up to three 6th level spell slots that could have been used elsewhere. Even sharing a pair of Boots of Levitation is much faster and safer than having multiple heavily armored creatures climbing a rope. In all these cases the players can make the choice of following up on a lead for a magic item worth a fraction of the party's wealth that they can already duplicate with their own spells, or ignoring it to save time at the cost of increased strain on their spell slots later on.

If you want to keep the idea of trade in magic items around but still remove it from the campaign, lean on the time restriction: stick them far enough away from any town that could produce a useful item that the traveling is prohibitive. So a frontier campaign on a pretty strict time limit where the party doesn't have access to fast enough travel magic to circumvent the time limits, but this removes "further down the line" since the line is pressing you right now and makes not pursuing any item they know is within reach just plain stupid. If you're fin with removing it you could shrink the setting: no civilizations with big enough centers to generate the wealth needed to sustain magic item trade and bring in regular high level characters, but then either the PC's will quickly outstrip the levels of everyone everywhere or every town will need it's own party of high level retired adventurers guarding it to keep them in line (which is a short-lived solution). I gather the latter is what older editions of DnD looked like before 3.x started up WBL: anyone getting to 10th or so was a badass and you could only find items the DM gave you so even a Horn of Fog was a plot worthy mcguffin.