Dumbest (scripted) Loot

[Firechanter]

I noticed that in a lot of published modules, particulary Paizo Adventure Paths, a lot of scripted loot drops are more of an insult to the players rather than an asset to the party. Often they seem to only serve the purpose of _nominally_ adding WBL without actually being useful in any way.

Some examples:

- Skull & Shackles: in the early game, the party is kept extremely short on loot; without getting into too much detail I will just say that at level 6(!) my character didn't even have a Masterwork Weapon, let alone a Magic one. The entire party gear combined was worth maybe 6-8000GP, and most of that was hogged by a single character (who still was the first to die).
One of the very few magic weapons that do drop, one is a Harpoon with a list price of ~18000GP. Of course a Harpoon is an Exotic weapon which can't be used effectively without proficiency, no, not even as a regular shortspear.
But the absolute cake is taken by the loot you get when you overthrow your victimizing boatswain and capture the prize ship: you get a _magical hammock_ that helps against seasickness. Note: you are automatically immune against seasickness with a single rank in Profession: Sailor.

- Rise of the Runelords (iirc?): very early on, level 2 or so, you kill a Quasit who drops a magical dagger. Around +2 worth (ca 10000GM), Very Small size, to make sure absolutely nobody in your party can use it.
Now that's no problem if you can simply sell it for the regular tariff of 50% List price. But again, I have heard of a lot of GMs who deny this, for reasons such as "You can't use it, and neither can anyone else, so why should anyone buy this?", which might be "realistic" but won't help the game.

- everywhere: apparently, magic item crafters are really dumb, because in >70% they spend a lot of time, effort and gold to enhance an inferior base item. I can't even count the +1 Scalemails, Chainmails, Banded Mails or Half Plates that apparently someone somewhere thought were a better idea than simply grabbing a Chainshirt or Breastplate or Full Plate. So again, that crap is good only for selling, only that this time you have to lug an extra 50lbs around until you get to a merchant.

- Generally, Paizo AP writers seem to derive some special kind of sadistic pleasure of seeding their adventures with loot that is expensive but worthless / unusable by the players.
Most magic weapons that are not just Vanilla +1; i.e. if they are +2 or better and/or have any additional properties, they are Exotic in most cases. If you are very lucky it's "just" a Bastard Sword, which you can at least use two-handed as martial weapon. But very often you get **** like harpoons, boarding pikes, gnome hooked hammers, double swords etc etc. Or they are flat out of the wrong size.

What kinds of dumb, useless, annoying (scripted) loot drops have you experienced?

[Mr Adventurer]

In the World's Largest Dungeon, one NPC has amongst his equipment listed a whittling stick. It's italicized, so you know it's magical.

No description is given of this item.

We decided that it was a stick enchanted so that no matter how much you whittled, it always remained the same length.

Hey, if you're trapped in a dungeon forever then you gotta have something to do!

[Necromancy]

I found it necessary to houserule in 4e residuum and transfer enchantment

[sakuuya]

In the World's Largest Dungeon, one NPC has amongst his equipment listed a whittling stick. It's italicized, so you know it's magical.

No description is given of this item.

We decided that it was a stick enchanted so that no matter how much you whittled, it always remained the same length.

Hey, if you're trapped in a dungeon forever then you gotta have something to do!

The WLD is terrible (with regards to loot, but also terrible in general). Before the players even get into the dungeon, there's this titan corpse with +5 armor and weapons. They don't resize, so they're useless for PCs. The only point, as far as I can tell, is to waste the party's time.

[Kurald Galain]

What I've noticed in many adventures (not just PF) is that you first encounter enemies with a rare but specific "gotcha" (e.g. they're incorporeal, or deal massive amounts of acid damage, or cast darkness zones, or whatever), and afterwards you find an item that would have helped against that enemy (e.g. wraithstrike weapon, or a ring of acid resistance, or a see-in-the-dark amulet), and from that point on you never encounter anything with that particular gotcha again.

Aside from that I've played a scenario that revolves around a mighty and important artifact weapon that just happened to be weaker than the random loot the fighter was already carrying (same + to hit/damage, but the random loot had useful properties and the artifact didn't). Yeah, that kind of breaks your plot if the powerful artifact really isn't.

[atemu1234]

The WLD is terrible (with regards to loot, but also terrible in general). Before the players even get into the dungeon, there's this titan corpse with +5 armor and weapons. They don't resize, so they're useless for PCs. The only point, as far as I can tell, is to waste the party's time.

The party artificer says hello.

[Flickerdart]

Aside from that I've played a scenario that revolves around a mighty and important artifact weapon that just happened to be weaker than the random loot the fighter was already carrying (same + to hit/damage, but the random loot had useful properties and the artifact didn't). Yeah, that kind of breaks your plot if the powerful artifact really isn't.
It might not have been the adventure writer's fault - 3rd edition's artifacts are mostly really, really bad.

[Kurald Galain]

It might not have been the adventure writer's fault - 3rd edition's artifacts are mostly really, really bad.

Considering the adventure's writer wrote the artifact for his adventure, of course it's his fault.

[Studoku]

The WLD is terrible (with regards to loot, but also terrible in general). Before the players even get into the dungeon, there's this titan corpse with +5 armor and weapons. They don't resize, so they're useless for PCs. The only point, as far as I can tell, is to waste the party's time.
Apparently ignoring the dungeon and dragging them back to town to sell is not what they're for.

[Psyren]

I consider scripted loot to be like scripted encounters - helpful suggestions and guidelines at best :smallbiggrin:

[sakuuya]

Apparently ignoring the dungeon and dragging them back to town to sell is not what they're for.

IIRC, there aren't any towns anywhere near the megadungeon. But walking for days dragging giant chainmail (it's at least not stanky, because the corpse doesn't smell because...oh, who knows) still might be more fun than the WLD.


The party artificer says hello.

This is a good suggestion, but it involves dragging around a couple hundred pounds of worthless gear for five levels. The WLD has a module-fiat forcefield to stop players from leaving. When I played the WLD, the DM actually bothered with tracking supplies and encumbrance, so this was a no-go for us.

[SiuiS]

In the World's Largest Dungeon, one NPC has amongst his equipment listed a whittling stick. It's italicized, so you know it's magical.

No description is given of this item.

We decided that it was a stick enchanted so that no matter how much you whittled, it always remained the same length.

Hey, if you're trapped in a dungeon forever then you gotta have something to do!

All the free fire tinder you could ever want! Free feather token materials! Free raft padding! I want that stick so bad, you don't even know!

Could you, like, whittle a duck, with some stick on the en, then "shave off" the duck, and get both your whittled duck and also a whole stick?

[atemu1234]

IIRC, there aren't any towns anywhere near the megadungeon. But walking for days dragging giant chainmail (it's at least not stanky, because the corpse doesn't smell because...oh, who knows) still might be more fun than the WLD.



This is a good suggestion, but it involves dragging around a couple hundred pounds of worthless gear for five levels. The WLD has a module-fiat forcefield to stop players from leaving. When I played the WLD, the DM actually bothered with tracking supplies and encumbrance, so this was a no-go for us.

Ah. That's not much fun.

[Mr Adventurer]

All the free fire tinder you could ever want! Free feather token materials! Free raft padding! I want that stick so bad, you don't even know!

Could you, like, whittle a duck, with some stick on the en, then "shave off" the duck, and get both your whittled duck and also a whole stick?

Oh yeah, well, I didn't want the party to end up with nothing - they earned that stick! Whittling shavings off the end of a stick is far from efficient for collecting sawdust, though.

As for making things - if you were a skilful whittler, sure. But it's only as big as a stick.

[Firechanter]

What I've noticed in many adventures (not just PF) is that you first encounter enemies with a rare but specific "gotcha" (e.g. they're incorporeal, or deal massive amounts of acid damage, or cast darkness zones, or whatever), and afterwards you find an item that would have helped against that enemy (e.g. wraithstrike weapon, or a ring of acid resistance, or a see-in-the-dark amulet), and from that point on you never encounter anything with that particular gotcha again.

Confirming! I remember playing a bunch of dungeons/adventures like that. I don't remember any specific examples now, but the phenomenon was there. I think that was also a common nuisance in some of the better known computer games (NWN?).

[manyslayer]

I just finished running the adventure path Legacy of Fire and thought the treasure in that was OK. I changed a few things and added some for my own side treks and such. One thing I liked was there was a magic weapon that was found that leveled up with a character but the type of weapon was not defined so that the character that found it it was the type that that character used (the statues of the original wielder had been damaged and were missing arms/hands so there was not evidence of what it had been). And the party got 2 other of these types of weapons without the having to wait for levels in the 1st and 2nd adventure (or had the opportunity to).

Then again, there was a special magic sword to be used against fire creatures and such that the party had to get special material for and it was just a +1 fire outsider bane frost weapon (the party already had a few similar weapons) so I crafted my own (wielder gained fast healing against any fire damage, suppressed spell-like and supernatural abilities of fire creatures it struck). And it was a falchion in a party of single handed weapon (or unarmed) fighters. So I made it a longsword.

OK, so at least the first weapon wasn't a type they weren't proficient in.

[deuxhero]

I always felt that magic "Scalemails, Chainmails, Banded Mails or Half Plates" should be passed down through families or artifacts in the archeological sense: Breastplate/Full-plate didn't exist when they were made. I similarly like bronze magic weapons showing up in such situations.

[icefractal]

Yeah, I remember loot being a scarce thing in RotR; especially at the beginning, because of the goblins. I don't know if this is a rule, or just something several DMs have all decided on individually, but goblin gear is this special category where it has the full effectiveness of normal gear but is almost completely worthless to sell. Because it smells, or looks crappy, or something. There's also a lot of large sized gear later on, which some DMs make difficult to sell. RotR adds insult to injury by giving you a ton of loot right near the end, when you don't have time to go sell it or craft anything.

On the unused artifact front - Kingmaker. There's a sword, and while not astounding I think it might ordinarily be a decent weapon. But ... the party was a Druid, a Monk, and a Psion*. None of us were even proficient. Later on, the Monk took some feats just so he could use the sword with flurry. It was still significantly less effective than his normal punches, but we used it against the BBEG for the sake of style.

*This worked out better than you might expect. Kingdoms generate tons of wealth, and the Monk can benefit a lot from that, more than other warrior-types. While the casters might be more powerful in absolute terms, the Monk was in practice a highly contributing member of the party.

[Belkarseviltwin]

But the absolute cake is taken by the loot you get when you overthrow your victimizing boatswain and capture the prize ship: you get a _magical hammock_ that helps against seasickness. Note: you are automatically immune against seasickness with a single rank in Profession: Sailor.


That's not for the crew. It's for the passengers. Think how much extra you could charge passengers if you guaranteed that they wouldn't get seasick.

[Namfuak]

Not useless, but dumb - in the book my group is playing ("Shackled City"?), a random demoness has a +6 spear at level 12 or so. Selling that put us quite a bit above wbl I think.

[Coidzor]

- Rise of the Runelords (iirc?): very early on, level 2 or so, you kill a Quasit who drops a magical dagger. Around +2 worth (ca 10000GM), Very Small size, to make sure absolutely nobody in your party can use it.
Now that's no problem if you can simply sell it for the regular tariff of 50% List price. But again, I have heard of a lot of GMs who deny this, for reasons such as "You can't use it, and neither can anyone else, so why should anyone buy this?", which might be "realistic" but won't help the game.

Think of this like Paizo providing you an early warning system to see whether the GM you're playing with is worth finishing the AP with. :smallamused:


- Generally, Paizo AP writers seem to derive some special kind of sadistic pleasure of seeding their adventures with loot that is expensive but worthless / unusable by the players.
Most magic weapons that are not just Vanilla +1; i.e. if they are +2 or better and/or have any additional properties, they are Exotic in most cases. If you are very lucky it's "just" a Bastard Sword, which you can at least use two-handed as martial weapon. But very often you get **** like harpoons, boarding pikes, gnome hooked hammers, double swords etc etc. Or they are flat out of the wrong size.

There is a sort of perverse demand to justify including such silly weapons as gnome hooked hammers in the list of equipment for the game by having them show up somewhere, anywhere, I think.

[Mr Adventurer]

Not useless, but dumb - in the book my group is playing ("Shackled City"?), a random demoness has a +6 spear at level 12 or so. Selling that put us quite a bit above wbl I think.

Are you sure that wasn't just her attack bonus in the statistics block - Spear +6 melee (1d8+6, 20/x3)?

[nedz]

But the absolute cake is taken by the loot you get when you overthrow your victimizing boatswain and capture the prize ship: you get a _magical hammock_ that helps against seasickness. Note: you are automatically immune against seasickness with a single rank in Profession: Sailor.

Presumably you get to sell the ship though ?


What I've noticed in many adventures (not just PF) is that you first encounter enemies with a rare but specific "gotcha" (e.g. they're incorporeal, or deal massive amounts of acid damage, or cast darkness zones, or whatever), and afterwards you find an item that would have helped against that enemy (e.g. wraithstrike weapon, or a ring of acid resistance, or a see-in-the-dark amulet), and from that point on you never encounter anything with that particular gotcha again.

This is an old Gygax trick so it's a very old tradition.

I don't run, or play, published modules so it's not something I encounter too often. If you are running such a game then you should, at least, customise this stuff. Unusual equipment used by unusual foes is fine, but you should have some usual equipment used by usual foes too perhaps ?

[Coidzor]

Presumably you get to sell the ship though ?

Eventually, but you kinda need the ship to get around for a while there from what I recall. Plus, one of the central conceits of the AP that holds it together is that if you've agreed to play it, then you want to become king of the pirates.

[Namfuak]

Are you sure that wasn't just her attack bonus in the statistics block - Spear +6 melee (1d8+6, 20/x3)?

I'd have to double check with the DM, but as I recall we asked the same question and he confirmed it was the enhancement bonus.

[Aegis013]

In the 3rd level adventure Module "Dry Spell", which overall, is a pretty reasonable one off adventure, one of the enemies is carrying an Eversoaking Sponge. That thing is valued at 26,400gp (would sell for 13,200gp). That value is greater than the entire party's WBL up to that point, assuming they're taking the thing on at level 3, and worth more than the entire shift from level 3 WBL to level 4 (assuming a 4 man party). Considering the enemy in question is in a cave and the party presumably comes in through the only entrance, it's unlikely the baddy can escape, so the party should obtain the loot in question unless something really off the wall happens.

It's not actually all that bad, especially if the party just uses the sponge instead of selling it. It's just the worst one I'm presently aware of in the scripted things I have.

[deuxhero]

Google tells me that item originally appeared in the 3.0 AEG and never appeared in 3.5 outside that module.

So they could have easily reduced the cost when updating it. The cheapest way would be to base it on a blue dragon's "Destroy Water" SLA (0th level equivalent) which makes it a much more sensible between 4000 GP (slotless destroy water at will) and 10000 (slotless destroy water and create water at will)

[Heliomance]

There's one Eberron module that features an adamantine door. One of my friends ran it. You better believe the party calculated the weight of that door (heavy) and from there the value (lots) and came back to the dungeon with a battering ram. They sold it to House Cannith and were set for money for the rest of the game.

[Blackhawk748]

Fright at Tristor and Forge of Fury have this problem, to a smaller extent. In both there is an NPC with a Double Bladed sword (why god why??) and in Fright the PCs get a +2 Keen Kukri. Oh ya. Ive ran the module several times (as its a decent quest) and never have i actually had it be a problem. Usually the party keeps it and i simply dont give any loot geared towards that character for a bit, or they sell it and get 9000 gp, but its not like they're under WBL by a lot, 1k max, this puts them well over standard WBL, so i need to shoot low on WBL for a bit.

Forge is weird, i mean your at WBL and the loot is ok, they even have a +1 Rapier and its medium!, but otherwise its a +1 Bastard sword and a +2 Dwarven Waraxe as well as a random assortment of stuff. Thankfully its stuff thats worth money.

[Aegis013]

Google tells me that item originally appeared in the 3.0 AEG and never appeared in 3.5 outside that module.

So they could have easily reduced the cost when updating it. The cheapest way would be to base it on a blue dragon's "Destroy Water" SLA (0th level equivalent) which makes it a much more sensible between 4000 GP (slotless destroy water at will) and 10000 (slotless destroy water and create water at will)

There's nothing in the module that suggests a price for it. Or even its function. It's just listed as a possession of one of the enemies. As far as I know, there's nothing anywhere that updates the item, so it defaults to its 3.0 rules.

[Firechanter]

Presumably you get to sell the ship though ?

You might, but that would end the campaign. ;) You're supposed to start your own pirating career and this is your (first) ship. It's not supposed to count against your WBL, though, as far as I'm aware.

Also have to say that I had a rather peculiar GM for that game, and didn't stay in it too long. But we were seriously undergeared as long as I was there (until level 6).

At first you start out as shanghaied crew on a pirate ship. In your first ship-to-ship battle, the party has to take the enemy quarterdeck, which is defended by some sailors and an officer. The officer has some costly gear (+1 chainshirt and a magical boarding pike iirc), but even though we killed her, we didn't get to keep the loot -- it went into the captain's hold and we only got a share of about 300GP each.
I don't know if the AP actually tells the GM to handle it this way; I do know of at least one other group that got to keep the stuff.

When we were "independent freelance entrepreneurs, marine", we did make some plunder, but then we had trouble selling it in the ports. The NPCs either refused to trade with us "because they didn't know us", or they offered just about 25% of the actual worth. Again, I don't know if it's supposed to be that way, or if this "they don't want to trade with you because they don't know you" is a thing the GM thought up to screw us over.

Well in short, it was a terrible game, and I never really looked forward to the sessions very much.

[Kantolin]

I think I'm the odd one out in that I like unusual equipment that's a bit wonky to use for the middle section, provided the DM does have an eye out to ensure that people don't fall behind the power curve.

I mean, going from a chain shirt to +1 half plate isn't going to kill anyone presuming you have the 12 dex as your goal is full plate. The fighter who has specialization in scimitars might not pass up the nifty +1 frost rapier that fell into his lap.

Now, if the DM is on a mission to ensure your WBL will not function and you never can obtain anything of value, then you're probably in a poor game anyway. I've been in those games as not-a-caster; it's not fun to be level 14 with a nonmagical spear since apparently nobody in the entire gameworld besides my character used any kind of a polearm.

(Fortunately, as a psychic warrior, I could at least use greater magic weapon equivalent myself).

Also, I do think that a good DM should have an eye on 'endgame'. If you want to play the lance wielding Paladin on his mighty steed, it's bad form for the DM to never allow you to have a lance. But having a period in the middle where you're using a mace that belonged to a holy man of your order for awhile? That can be cool.

We had a lot of fun figuring out how to get use out of an apparatus of kwalish that showed up out of depth, since the DM didn't say 'You have an apparatus of kwalish so you no longer get gear you actually need to function'.

[Belkarseviltwin]

I'd have to double check with the DM, but as I recall we asked the same question and he confirmed it was the enhancement bonus.

I'm currently DMing Shackled City. If that's the succubus in the cathedral in the Abyss, it's a +1 Wounding Spear. That's the only demoness with a spear I can think of in the adventure path.

[Firechanter]

Oh I just remembered one particularly dumb item that dropped early in a 3PP campaign:
A Short Sword of Mighty Cleaving.
Because Power Attack & Cleave work so well with a Light Weapon.

Name of the campaign? To the best of my knowledge, it was titled Shades of Grey. *g*

[redzimmer]

The WLD is terrible (with regards to loot, but also terrible in general). Before the players even get into the dungeon, there's this titan corpse with +5 armor and weapons. They don't resize, so they're useless for PCs. The only point, as far as I can tell, is to waste the party's time.

It might makea good gift to offer a titan with Greater Planar Ally... if you can carry it that long.