Question, How many of you DM's use XGTE for awarding magic items.

[FirstAgeMagic]

Page 135 of Xanathar's Guide has two tables. Magic Items Awarded by Tier and Magic Items Awarded by Rarity. I just came across this again recently and according to this chart, I really short my players on magic items, lol.

So now I'm just curious. Any DMs out here use this chart to doll out magic items? Or do you do it mostly by feel?

[stoutstien]

Short answer is I don't hand out magic items. I place them in the world where they make sense and go from there.

[Darth Credence]

I'm with stoutstien - magic items are where they fit the world, not randomly assigned as treasure. I will freely admit that I probably give less total loot out than most tables - my players have just turned level 9, and the wizard of the group complains about not having enough money. I think a lot of this is a person problem, as some other members of the group have enough money that they have spent it on exotic meals for random strangers, or what they thought was a dragon's egg, and so on.

[TyGuy]

I place magic items by feel and theme. I try to take into consideration things like:
Which PC needs a bone thrown their way?
What items would the NPC/location have and why?
Could the party/PC use an upgrade piece, utility piece, or flavor piece right now?

[Dark.Revenant]

I don't use the XGTE rules unless the players are doing something that requires the XGTE tables. For instance, if they spend money and downtime searching for sellers who might want to let go of magical items for money (there's a war going on; this is profiteering in action), I might roll for them and use the guidelines in XGTE to price/gate them.

Sometimes, I really want some kind of item on an NPC, so the players can loot the item if they defeat or barter with that NPC.

Rarely, if the players wind up in a place that logically should have certain types of items (e.g. scrolls in a Wizard Tower), then I'll either handpick or randomly place them, depending on the circumstances.

More often, if I really need to add an item in, what I'll do is make the item first and then design an adventure around it. I might throw in a few more minor or companion items in the process, however.


I'm with stoutstien - magic items are where they fit the world, not randomly assigned as treasure. I will freely admit that I probably give less total loot out than most tables - my players have just turned level 9, and the wizard of the group complains about not having enough money. I think a lot of this is a person problem, as some other members of the group have enough money that they have spent it on exotic meals for random strangers, or what they thought was a dragon's egg, and so on.
Wizards must spend 50 gp/spell level to copy a spell, let alone the cost of gaining access to spellbooks or, worse, buying scrolls. While I disagree that Spell Scrolls should be the only way to acquire extra Wizard spells (WotC adventures often have some spellbooks or spell copying available), it's still clearly something that should either be an adventure award or, at least, cost some extra money.

So if that Wizard really wants to get, for example, Cone of Cold, Storm Sphere, Polymorph, Scrying, Phantom Steed, Tiny Hut, Lightning Bolt, Slow, Enlarge/Reduce, Absorb Elements, Ice Knife, and Hideous Laughter: that's 1750 gold right off the bat, and let's conservatively say that the cost of spellbook access for those would be double, for a total of 5250 gold. If you followed the rather generous DMG guidelines for loot, I'd expect the player to have received a grand total of around 9800 gold over the course of a level 1–9 career. If you've awarded significantly less, I'm sure the player is feeling the crunch. Wizards and, to a lesser extent, Clerics, feel the burn of insufficient funds more than other classes.

[PhantomSoul]

None of my groups use them; in three cases because a module is approximately followed, and in the rest because magic items are based on what fits in the world and fits in the moment. (Roughly three player groups currently, but that makes a lot of campaigns because two of three groups have more than one campaign and different DMs depending on the campaign.)

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Clarification -- I DM one of the campaigns.

[KorvinStarmast]

Any DMs out here use this chart to doll out magic items? Or do you do it mostly by feel? No. On the very rare occasion that I roll for magic items, it's out of the DMG table. But normally, I either have magic items from a published adventure (they are too generous, I have discovered) or I place an item here or there to fit into the overarching world/adventure situation.

I have a home brewed artifact that we made for my brother's world; I have my version of the Rod of Seven parts in another campaign (PCs have found one, another one is nearby in the hands of a Warlock whom they decided not to kill and lute, but rather to keep as an ally since he is working a hard problem on 'portal to the fey wild is manfunctioning, weird stuff comes through at random times' issue that is related to the main, overarching threat to both the region and the game world (PCs still haven't glommed on to that, no worries, plenty of time at this point).

I'm with stoutstien - magic items are where they fit the world, not randomly assigned as treasure. I am leaning far harder in this direction now that I've run a few published adventures and notice, somewhat to my dismay, the number of items that can be tripped over by the PCs. I sub in consumables sometimes just to keep things from getting out of hand.

[DarknessEternal]

It doesn't define major or minor, so I ignore it.

[Darth Credence]

Wizards must spend 50 gp/spell level to copy a spell, let alone the cost of gaining access to spellbooks or, worse, buying scrolls. While I disagree that Spell Scrolls should be the only way to acquire extra Wizard spells (WotC adventures often have some spellbooks or spell copying available), it's still clearly something that should either be an adventure award or, at least, cost some extra money.

So if that Wizard really wants to get, for example, Cone of Cold, Storm Sphere, Polymorph, Scrying, Phantom Steed, Tiny Hut, Lightning Bolt, Slow, Enlarge/Reduce, Absorb Elements, Ice Knife, and Hideous Laughter: that's 1750 gold right off the bat, and let's conservatively say that the cost of spellbook access for those would be double, for a total of 5250 gold. If you followed the rather generous DMG guidelines for loot, I'd expect the player to have received a grand total of around 9800 gold over the course of a level 1–9 career. If you've awarded significantly less, I'm sure the player is feeling the crunch. Wizards and, to a lesser extent, Clerics, feel the burn of insufficient funds more than other classes.

I believe it is more of a problem in their head than in reality. I just looked at their sheet. They are 8 wizard/1 cleric, and they have a total of 35 wizard spells in their list of known spells (total of 72 spell levels), two of them 4th level, and they have not gotten their new spell for going up to total level 9 yet. (By your assumption, which I find reasonable, that's 10,800 gp worth of spells in their book, although I know they didn't spend that much to get them.) They have a level 2 and a level 3 spell scroll, and they recast find familiar probably averaging once per session, simply to change its form. And even after all of that, if I convert everything to gold, they have just over 100 gp on hand. The wealthiest person in the group has a little over 2000 gp on hand, and the second poorest is just under 1000. As a group, they own an extensive mine that brings in money just for existing, if they ever decide to go back and pick it up.
But this is great information for the future, so I'm glad you pointed it out to me. The campaign has two more major set pieces before we hit what I would consider the midpoint, at which time the things they will be involved in will change quite a bit. I'll have to keep an eye out to make sure that I don't allow them to get into a crunch where money is truly stopping them from doing things. Unless they waste a bunch of it on shady people selling dragon's eggs, of course.

[FirstAgeMagic]

It doesn't define major or minor, so I ignore it.

It actually does. It sends you to the DMG tables for rolling random magic items. Tables A-E are "Minor" and F-I are "Major".


For context, most of the magic items I dole out are ones the players have asked to track down, or the items I place in my world (tho, these are usually very powerful homebrew items). On the rare instance I think they've earned a magic item I don't have ready, I'll roll on one of the DMG tables a few times and pick the one I find appropriate.

I would be interested to hear from anyone that HAS used the chart. How did that affect "balance" (balance is in quotes because I feel 5e isn't really balanced, to begin with, but it's in the player's favor so giving them even MORE power does seem like you'd have to really up the challenge)?

[Gignere]

It actually does. It sends you to the DMG tables for rolling random magic items. Tables A-E are "Minor" and F-I are "Major".


For context, most of the magic items I dole out are ones the players have asked to track down, or the items I place in my world (tho, these are usually very powerful homebrew items). On the rare instance I think they've earned a magic item I don't have ready, I'll roll on one of the DMG tables a few times and pick the one I find appropriate.

I would be interested to hear from anyone that HAS used the chart. How did that affect "balance" (balance is in quotes because I feel 5e isn't really balanced, to begin with, but it's in the player's favor so giving them even MORE power does seem like you'd have to really up the challenge)?

I’ve used the charts in XGTE to model a magic mart in a very high magic setting. Basically when they took downtime to shop for magic items I’d have them make the charisma roll and than I would roll up magic items based on the corresponding tables based on the roll. That’s what is available at their neighborhood Magic R Us.