Too much stuff too soon?

[Efrate]

Started a 5e game yesterday, did a mini dungeon along with session 0. After a fight with a cult leader, our loot at level 1. A +1 scimitar, a ring of protection +1, a wand of healing word with a few charges, and around 1k in gold after selling the stuff we got from the cult.

All this at lvl 1. I thought 5e was lower powered, but this seems nutty. Am I wrong?

[strangebloke]

Definitely more wealth than I'd suggest, but there's no real problem with having wealthy players.

[Armored Walrus]

We'll prepare for a post from your DM about how to challenge players that are overpowered in a few weeks. ;)

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

We'll prepare for a post from your DM about how to challenge players that are overpowered in a few weeks. ;)

Yeah, basically. The gold and the wand are fine IMO but giving +1 AC and a +1 weapon is a big deal with the narrow margins of 5E.

[strangebloke]

Yeah, basically. The gold and the wand are fine IMO but giving +1 AC and a +1 weapon is a big deal with the narrow margins of 5E.

humorously, at this level, a +1 AC item is not that OP. At this level, a few hundred GP more would give a greater AC boost.

Since no one starts with the best armor they can get.

[Naanomi]

humorously, at this level, a +1 AC item is not that OP. At this level, a few hundred GP more would give a greater AC boost.

Since no one starts with the best armor they can get.
It becomes a much bigger deal once they get that best armor though... +1 AC changing 15 to 16 is good, changing 20 to 21 is spectacular

[nickl_2000]

It becomes a much bigger deal once they get that best armor though... +1 AC changing 15 to 16 is good, changing 20 to 21 is spectacular

Are you allowed to sell it for rare item prices? Because that buys you the best armor, immediately.

[Deox]

Knee-jerk reaction says "yes, too much".

Few questions, however. How many characters are in the party? How socially ingrained was the cult in the surrounding area? If there are quite a few party members and the cult may have some political influence, I could see this as acceptable. Not to mention, the amount of plot hooks this could encourage.

[strangebloke]

It becomes a much bigger deal once they get that best armor though... +1 AC changing 15 to 16 is good, changing 20 to 21 is spectacular

That.

And really, these items aren't a problem by themselves. If the DM gives them this much loot every few sessions... that's completely unsupportable.

[Armored Walrus]

that's completely unsupportable.

Not really; you can always scale up encounters. Yeah it will be power creep in the campaign, but a DM can always adjust.

[Unoriginal]

Well, if I ran an adventure that ended with lvl 1 PCs with that much gold and magic items, I would use the opportunity to turn this into a "you got lots of stuff, but can you *keep* it?" situation, because as soon as the PCs flash their gold and their shinnies, all bad guys and thieves of the surroundings will want their stuff.

I mean, the gold alone is enough to make more than one honest man tempted to just take it from you.

[Armored Walrus]

Yeah, to OP's question. It definitely is a lot of loot for one session of 5e. But I'm sure you'll all still have fun with the game.

[Deox]

Well, if I ran an adventure that ended with lvl 1 PCs with that much gold and magic items, I would use the opportunity to turn this into a "you got lots of stuff, but can you *keep* it?" situation, because as soon as the PCs flash their gold and their shinnies, all bad guys and thieves of the surroundings will want their stuff.

I mean, the gold alone is enough to make more than one honest man tempted to just take it from you.

That was similar to my train of thought. NPCs may recognize that +1 scimitar ("Hey, that looks like Timmy's. How'd he get it?") or when they're wanting to trade and buy some things and start dropping tons of gold, that could also raise some eyebrows.

[ProsecutorGodot]

Well, if I ran an adventure that ended with lvl 1 PCs with that much gold and magic items, I would use the opportunity to turn this into a "you got lots of stuff, but can you *keep* it?" situation, because as soon as the PCs flash their gold and their shinnies, all bad guys and thieves of the surroundings will want their stuff.

I mean, the gold alone is enough to make more than one honest man tempted to just take it from you.

This is a pretty common tactic, even in pre written campaigns. A lot of faction NPCs or seemingly random strangers are often given tags like "If they see X weapon on your hip they will stop at nothing to take it/kill you for having it"

That's definitely a lot of stuff to be thrown at a lvl 1 party. That said, it could have just been the DM's way of giving you a high magic item start to the campaign in a more meaningful way than allowing you to do that at character creation. If that was the intention, I like the idea because every opportunity I've given my players to choose their own magic items has ended in power gamed choices and no fun choices. Those are pretty potent items though and will likely influence your early adventuring career.

[GlenSmash!]

At level one for magic weapons I like to just have ones that are considered magical for bypassing resistances, but no other bonus. Or maybe the odd +1 Dagger.


Not really; you can always scale up encounters. Yeah it will be power creep in the campaign, but a DM can always adjust.

Right I wouldn't call it unsupportable, but it would be a lot more work. And for someone who who has a difficult time doing the extra work it pretty much amount to the same thing.

[strangebloke]

Not really; you can always scale up encounters. Yeah it will be power creep in the campaign, but a DM can always adjust.

I meant unsupportable in the sense that he'll run out of interesting magic items to give the players.

This was a level 1 encounter, and he gave them 1 rare item and 2 uncommons. By 15th level, the players will have been through dozens, possibly hundreds of encounters. They will be literally covered in magic bling, and if he wants to keep the loot interesting, he'll need to keep scaling up the loot.

If a level 1 encounter yields a rare... what does a level 15 encounter yield? You're going to have to turn to homebrew at some point, and at some point the items overflow will just be completely out of control. It would be like a game of Borderlands up in here.

[Ivor_The_Mad]

Started a 5e game yesterday, did a mini dungeon along with session 0. After a fight with a cult leader, our loot at level 1. A +1 scimitar, a ring of protection +1, a wand of healing word with a few charges, and around 1k in gold after selling the stuff we got from the cult.

All this at lvl 1. I thought 5e was lower powered, but this seems nutty. Am I wrong?

How many players do you have. Our players are about to face a Big Bad and found 7 magic items. We are a party of 4 level 12s.

[Efrate]

We were down one but we wanted to get a feel so it's 3 pcs. Cult was responsible for a few kidnappings in town, nothing huge yet, that we know of. The leaders dying breath was spent saying they are watching you now, so it might be stolen or set up for conflict soon.

Both ring and sword went to our melee rogue. It just seems like a really strong start. Will be all 4 pcs next session in a few weeks. Plus like 6 healing potions but those are non magical I think.

[Pex]

Well, if I ran an adventure that ended with lvl 1 PCs with that much gold and magic items, I would use the opportunity to turn this into a "you got lots of stuff, but can you *keep* it?" situation, because as soon as the PCs flash their gold and their shinnies, all bad guys and thieves of the surroundings will want their stuff.

I mean, the gold alone is enough to make more than one honest man tempted to just take it from you.

That's a passive aggressive DM vs. Player attitude.

If the DM Honest True realizes he erred in giving out too much, then the solution is talk to the players, admit the error, and fix it by fiat with something more reasonable.

If the DM gives out lots of treasure then have it stolen on purpose, he doesn't belong in the chair to manipulate players like that.

[willdaBEAST]

By most standards, that is a lot of loot and magical items to give out of a single session, especially that low level. However, that depends entirely on the campaign being run. Are you and your party essentially heroic superheroes in a high fantasy setting? Then pile on the loot. If your DM is trying to create a gritty survival simulation, it's going to take a lot of work to mitigate that power spike.

From a story perspective, the DM could use this as an opportunity to set up a villain, either by stealing the items or destroying them. This forum doesn't ever seem open to taking anything away from players though and it is something that needs to be handled delicately or it'll feel cheap.

My personal approach as a DM would be to have the big bad introduced after the party receives all these magical items, but even then the party is far to inexperienced to put up much of a fight. The big bad could then distribute the magic items to his primary henchmen, setting up the party to hate both the big bad and have a reason for hunting down important subordinates.

It's also a pretty common video game trope for you to start out extremely powerful and then some event causes you to revert to a weaker state. That may not translate to DnD well though.

[Slipperychicken]

Started a 5e game yesterday, did a mini dungeon along with session 0. After a fight with a cult leader, our loot at level 1. A +1 scimitar, a ring of protection +1, a wand of healing word with a few charges, and around 1k in gold after selling the stuff we got from the cult.

All this at lvl 1. I thought 5e was lower powered, but this seems nutty. Am I wrong?

Since it sounds like you guys had to do some looting for the gold, I'm not quite so concerned about that: it's perhaps 330 gold each? It's seems reasonable for clearing and thoroughly looting a mini-dungeon full of humanoid, civilized enemies. You're unlikely to do anything funny with it beyond getting equipment that is kinda decent.

The healing word wand is a consumable, so I'm not hugely concerned about that. It's just more healing.

Giving you guys a magic weapon and a +1 ring on top of that is a bit much for one session at level 1 though.

[Angelalex242]

At low levels, money is important, because you're saving up for your plate armor or breastplate/half plate armor. Or studded leather, I suppose. At high levels, money becomes nearly meaningless. Just how it goes.

[Unoriginal]

That's a passive aggressive DM vs. Player attitude.

If the DM Honest True realizes he erred in giving out too much, then the solution is talk to the players, admit the error, and fix it by fiat with something more reasonable.

If the DM gives out lots of treasure then have it stolen on purpose, he doesn't belong in the chair to manipulate players like that.

Pex, you may not believe it, but not everything is DM vs Player attitude.


It is neither something that a DM who has planned for it should change, nor "manipulating players".

It is an adventure concept. You got stuff, now protect it. Nothing wrong with that.

If you had actually read my post, you would have seen I'm not advocating for having the treasure "stolen on purpose", I'm saying that NPCs would try to steal it because, yes, walking around with expensive stuff is a dangerous activity, in the D&D world, as many NPCs who had to hire adventurers for protection (and those who died despite said protection) can attest. Various thieves want gold, and more than one brute would enjoy a magic sword.

So maybe rather than jumping to conclusion that I'm advocating for passive-aggressive DM vs Players thing, you can consider that different people have fun differently, and that some people might enjoy having their PCs defend themselves against hordes of wannabe robbers like, you know, adventurers tend to do.

[strangebloke]

Pex, you may not believe it, but not everything is DM vs Player attitude.


It is neither something that a DM who has planned for it should change, nor "manipulating players".

It is an adventure concept. You got stuff, now protect it. Nothing wrong with that.

If you had actually read my post, you would have seen I'm not advocating for having the treasure "stolen on purpose", I'm saying that NPCs would try to steal it because, yes, walking around with expensive stuff is a dangerous activity, in the D&D world, as many NPCs who had to hire adventurers for protection (and those who died despite said protection) can attest. Various thieves want gold, and more than one brute would enjoy a magic sword.

So maybe rather than jumping to conclusion that I'm advocating for passive-aggressive DM vs Players thing, you can consider that different people have fun differently, and that some people might enjoy having their PCs defend themselves against hordes of wannabe robbers like, you know, adventurers tend to do.
I'm with Pex here, actually.

You stated that you would have NPCs try and steal it because it's more loot than you want them to have. That's a sort of adversarial way of putting it, which is somewhat inconsistent with what you're describing here.

If you're using this purely as an adventure hook, that might be fun, but you'd need to play fair. Have someone incompetent try and steal from them. Have somebody competent... hint that many more will be coming. Really, if you wanted to make it a real adventure and not just a sideplot, you'd need to give them something very valuable, like an artifact.

[DivisibleByZero]

Our group is currently level 8.
Your group has more magic items than we do. about the same number of magic items as we do. We might have a fourth. Maybe.

[ad_hoc]

At our table we may never even get a magic weapon.

Getting a ton of powerful items will have a major effect on the game. It isn't right or wrong, but you may end up enjoying or not enjoying the game because of it.

[Unoriginal]

You stated that you would have NPCs try and steal it because it's more loot than you want them to have.

No I have not. I've neither written nor implied such a thing.




If you're using this purely as an adventure hook, that might be fun, but you'd need to play fair.

Ah, yes, because I'm advocating for unfairness, of course...

[ProsecutorGodot]

I'm with Pex here, actually.

You stated that you would have NPCs try and steal it because it's more loot than you want them to have. That's a sort of adversarial way of putting it, which is somewhat inconsistent with what you're describing here.

If you're using this purely as an adventure hook, that might be fun, but you'd need to play fair. Have someone incompetent try and steal from them. Have somebody competent... hint that many more will be coming. Really, if you wanted to make it a real adventure and not just a sideplot, you'd need to give them something very valuable, like an artifact.

Strahd sends spy's at the players to steal artifacts like his Tome or simply to collect hair or other mundane belongings to keep tabs on them with scrying. Werewolves will approach you in the woods and actually observe your belongings to make sure none of your weapons are silvered instead of jumping the party immediately. There's a group of Barbarian's in SKT that will impede you in visiting a key location. If you kill them and a trapped and unconscious barbarian you find later in a spider filled cave sees the Barbarian chiefs axe or amulet on you she'll try to kill you at her earliest opportunity.

I don't think Unoriginal meant to phrase it in a way that implied he would automatically send people after them but it makes too much sense for people (read Criminals and Thieves) to become interested in a novice group of adventurers parading around town with fancy weapons and a lot of gold. They probably wouldn't think to keep those things under wraps which is why published adventures account for these types of situations. It's a common trope, it doesn't have to end up as a DM v PC issue and isn't automatically going to be one.

[quinron]

By way of an explanation for OP, since nobody seems to have given it yet - it seems your DM rolled randomly on the "Hoard Treasure" table in the DMG. Due to the massive disparity in results across those tables, you can end up giving as little as a handful of spare change or as much as 4 uncommon items. I'd reckon if your DM is used to earlier editions and their demand for magic items, they're bumping up those results.

As for how to deal with it, as others have suggested, your DM will probably end up compensating by making battles a little tougher. I tend to give a high-fantasy level of magic items out, and I've found a pretty reliable way to compensate for this with my encounter building. If your DM is new to the edition and doesn't realize how overpowered this can get, it's probably worth mentioning to them just so they know; after that it's their choice how they want to deal with it.

[strangebloke]

Strahd sends spy's at the players to steal artifacts like his Tome or simply to collect hair or other mundane belongings to keep tabs on them with scrying. Werewolves will approach you in the woods and actually observe your belongings to make sure none of your weapons are silvered instead of jumping the party immediately. There's a group of Barbarian's in SKT that will impede you in visiting a key location. If you kill them and a trapped and unconscious barbarian you find later in a spider filled cave sees the Barbarian chiefs axe or amulet on you she'll try to kill you at her earliest opportunity.

I don't think Unoriginal meant to phrase it in a way that implied he would automatically send people after them but it makes too much sense for people (read Criminals and Thieves) to become interested in a novice group of adventurers parading around town with fancy weapons and a lot of gold. They probably wouldn't think to keep those things under wraps which is why published adventures account for these types of situations. It's a common trope, it doesn't have to end up as a DM v PC issue and isn't automatically going to be one.

From unoriginal's second comment it was clear what he meant.

From his first, in the context he made it in, it genuinely sounded like an urging to sic thieves on the player as a way to counter their newfound loot. "Oh you think your cool with your loot now? Well, this dragon has been looting for a +1 ring of protection..." It's something you have to be very cautious about, particularly in advice threads because a lot of newer DMs do think that way. I sat through years of such behavior.

Challenges are fun for players. Countering something that's "wrong" in a game by sending challenges is not a good way to handle things. I think we all agree on that. A challenge in the form of thieves might be a good way to springboard off of your last adventure. I think we all agree on that. I just had an issue with the clarity of Unorg's first post.

[opaopajr]

How many wanna bet that the PCs forget to up their Lifestyle, and embed within a society, so as to keep themselves and their belongings away from hungry, prying, desperate eyes? :smalltongue:

Eh, seems like the GM will figure it all out soon enough. :smallwink: Monty Haul and the perils of the 'Let's Make a Deal Dungeon' lives!

[MaXenzie]

Started a 5e game yesterday, did a mini dungeon along with session 0. After a fight with a cult leader, our loot at level 1. A +1 scimitar, a ring of protection +1, a wand of healing word with a few charges, and around 1k in gold after selling the stuff we got from the cult.

All this at lvl 1. I thought 5e was lower powered, but this seems nutty. Am I wrong?

Generally, the party should find their first +1 weapons and armor at around about level 5.

If this is merely a Beginner's Boost to help lower level characters progress, that's great. But if the DM intends on giving this level of loot after every mini-dungeon, dungeon, and large encounter, then you'll very quickly start becoming too loaded with gear to have much challenge, even if he/she upscales the encounters.

Basically, as long as you don't receive any more loot of this level for a while, you should be fine.

[Amdy_vill]

Started a 5e game yesterday, did a mini dungeon along with session 0. After a fight with a cult leader, our loot at level 1. A +1 scimitar, a ring of protection +1, a wand of healing word with a few charges, and around 1k in gold after selling the stuff we got from the cult.

All this at lvl 1. I thought 5e was lower powered, but this seems nutty. Am I wrong?

it is ok for them to have the magic items but the money could be a problem. you will need to build around that money. good thing is in the base game there is vary little that money can do. if you are allowing people to buy magic items keep the prices high or don't let them do that for awhile.