#sleepycinema

[utilitycaster]

Hello, I am a first-time DM and I was wondering if you had any recommendations for magic items for a level 3 party, with a mix of experienced and new players? (we are playing a home-brew campaign that is currently city-based, with some eventual fey wild exploration). The party is an arcane trickster rogue, a hunter ranger, a college of creation bard, an eldritch knight and a forge cleric (worshipping Tymora), and they are about to have a big fight in a lair where a wealthy high-level Bard/Warlock NPC has stashed some extra goods. Any recommendations, ideas or suggestions of items to steer clear of would be very appreciated. I hope you are having a great day!

Hey! so to be honest I am not a big Items Person though I'm working on it, so you may wish to ask someone else. I will say, the Xanathar's guide items are all mostly useless except in highly specific circumstances but also VERY funny, and are appropriate for a low-level party. While this is a pretty strong party comp, and I'd honestly consider sticking strictly to consumables (ie, have some healing potions or a few magic arrows, maybe one or two cool uncommon other potions) you could give them some low-level magic weapons? Like, of the "Moon-Touched Sword" and "Trident of Fish Command" variety - technically magic so they overcome resistance to non-magical items, uncommon in rarity, +1 bonus at most.

Silly items that are useful in niche situations are in fact the best ones though. I'm not an item person but my DM in one game is and we have a token that turns into an emperor penguin for a minute when activated. It actually has been useful as a distraction, and also the gnome paladin likes to activate it when she needs to hug someone her height, but it's mostly hilarious.

[theladyragnell]

Hi, I saw your recent tag and was just wondering if you could say more about the surveys you send your players? I've been thinking about doing something similar with my dnd group but I'm not quite sure the best way to go about doing it. Thanks!

Hello, I'd love to!

I've done a few surveys now (all just through Google Forms, if you're looking for the practicalities), and they've varied pretty widely! It tends to be a decent mix of how's-my-driving and what-do-you-want, with some help-me-flavor-things thrown in and the occasional piece of outright psychological warfare. Your own group will probably need different mixes of these, but some examples!

How's My Driving

I'm making a habit of starting each survey off with a "I would like to see more ... " and "I would like to see less .." and I like doing it that way! It's a way of asking for feedback that doesn't feel judgmental to me and while my players haven't given me anything in the "less" category yet, but I like to give them that option. I've also done things like give number lines for whether pacing is fast or slow, encounters are hard or easy, things like that.

What Do You Want

I do a lot of this, and a broad variety! Everything from "what's your priority for upgrading equipment" to "are there any monsters you think it would be cool to fight" is fair game. I've also asked my players things like what order they'd like to tackle adventures in (to avoid spoilers I've done it where I give an adventure a few keywords and ask them to mark which ones they want to do first) or, on the survey I sent out tonight, to prioritize what dangling plot threads they think they'd like to deal with first. I know my friends well, but I also want to make sure that all the work I'm putting in goes to something they'll care about, so while I avoid spoilers as best I can, I'm not afraid to ask them plenty of questions! I fairly recently did a one-question survey that was essentially "how much do you want me to fuck you up" and the answers were very helpful!

Help Me Flavor Things

One of my favorite questions I've asked my players is just what images and emotions the PCs associate with their magic! I got some really cool answers that I can use when I really want to make a meal of a good moment. I'm a pretty flavor-first DM, but I think it's really cool to have a character roll perception or arcana and really try to flavor the resulting explanation like I think the character would conceptualize it. There's a decent overlap between this category and the previous one, because players telling you what they want can explain PC goals and thus make it easier to flavor.

Psychological Warfare

Look, sometimes it is VERY fun to ask "how much does your character trust their patron/deity" and see what response they make. I needed to know, because the warlock's patron was lying to her and it would have flavored any insight vs. deception DCs if she'd started suspecting anything, and also the question struck fear into her heart. Or @sovinly, who DMed our last campaign, also did some surveys, and at some point asked our PCs' greatest hopes and fears and then used the hopes to devastating effect literally one session later when it had been implied to be a long-term survey. Not every table enjoys the psychological warfare! But yours might.

[drsoed]

from screen to dream...

[drsoed]

sleepy heads...