[4e] Enemy Magic Items

[Dentarthur]

When running a game, I often want to give a badguy some magic weapon/armor/whatever with a special ability, to spice things up and scare the players. There's no system, though, for accounting for the increased threat provided by the properties of a magic item in an NPC's hands. There's the "magic item threshold", but that only considers the enhancement bonus. How can I compensate for the monster's new ability? I'd considered adding a smidge more XP, maybe what a minion of the item's level would be worth. Or should the item be its own reward?

[Kurald Galain]

Several RPGA modules take the approach that, if an item is to be had as treasure, it may be placed in the hands of an enemy instead of in the proverbial chest on the floor. I do not believe this changes the XP value for the encounter.

That shouldn't be a problem, though; the XP value of an encounter also cannot take into account terrain minutiae, party composition, quality of tactics, and outcome of dice rolls. I'm sure that if you put your mind to it, you can make two encounters that are technically worth the same amount of XP, where one of them is a cakewalk and the other is a TPK. So don't worry too much about adding one item to an enemy.

[kieza]

I'm sure that if you put your mind to it, you can make two encounters that are technically worth the same amount of XP, where one of them is a cakewalk and the other is a TPK.

The easiest way is to put needlefang drake swarms or fire beetles into one. Some monsters are just trickier than others, although those two are particularly overpowered. Really, though, if you're just giving a monster a single item with a power, it shouldn't make too much of an impact. Now, if you're planning on introducing the 4e version of an artificer, you might have to worry; if that's the case, try replacing some of his normal powers with item powers. I sort of did that when I introduced an Artificer-ish NPC, and it worked okay. I think that one of my players wants to be one with his next character, though.

[Ninetail]

Let the item be its own reward, unless you're throwing in something that vastly changes the nature of the encounter. Like an artifact, or an item that's 10 levels above the party's average.

A +1 sword in the hands of a random goblin doesn't really change the encounter. It's just a bit more damage for that one enemy. The Hand of Vecna in the hands of a random goblin, that has major implications.

(If the item is powerful enough to have that kind of impact, I'd just grant XP as though it were an additional monster of that level. Probably minion XP, to reflect that it doesn't have its own separate actions or health pool.)

[OneFamiliarFace]

I would advise looking over the "Level Bonus and Magic Threshold" on pg 187 of the DMG. Most item powers will not drastically alter the course of a battle. Usually, they will result in one more turn up for a bad guy or a PC falling one turn faster (which with Leaders in the party shouldn't matter terribly).

As long as you make sure the item power is equivalent to the level of the monster or lower, then it shouldn't make too much of a difference. The good ones still use up valuable levels.

And definitely do what is advised by the above posters: include the NPC's magic item in the treasure. Now that the players have seen what it can do, they will surely want to strip it from their opponent's now mutilated corpse once they have finished him off.

[Yakk]

An easy method would be:
1> Increase the level of the monster by 1. Give it 1 more attack, 1 more to each AC, 1 more defense, more HP, etc.

2> Don't apply the enhancement bonus of the item. That was effectively factored in above.

3> Give the monster the ability to use the daily power and/or properties of the item.

Note that I didn't change the monter's damage expressions. Ideally the daily power of the item should make up for the difference in what the damage expression of the monster is, and what it should be. Eyeball it. ;)

When you level up the monster, you can also bias the above effects. Ie, you gave an orc a magic chain suit: so give it +2 AC, +2 fortitude, and don't change it's attack at all when you level it up