Knights & Knaves Alehouse

The UA Treasure section is totally cool.

That’s all I wanted to say.

Falconer wrote:The UA Treasure section is totally cool.

It's definitely one of the high points of that book, I agree. There are some items I'm not very fond of, but then that's true of the items in the DMG, too, so I don't mean that as an indictment of UA.

The only things of the top of my head that I didn't like about UA treasures were the 'Anything' items. Otherwise, yeah - I use those tables for random generation.

There are some new items in UA I don't like -- the myriad of over-specific protection scrolls, the any-class-usable fireball and lightning bolt wands, most of the Anything items (though I like a couple of them - Anything Swords and Anything Wands) -- but for the most part I think the items are cool and interesting and help keep the game fresh for players who have the DMG more-or-less internalized but don't know UA, pretty much the same as the MM2. In the last couple one-off games I've run I've made a point to give the pre-gen characters UA magic items and spells -- potions of vitality and fire breath, rod of flailing, staff of slinging, scimitar of speed, shoes of Fhlarlangn, anything wand, etc.

Agreed, this is the strong point of UA, and why its worth buying/having. Along with some of the spells. I've been tempted to rip out the horrid parts.

T. Foster wrote:There are some new items in UA I don't like -- the myriad of over-specific protection scrolls, the any-class-usable fireball and lightning bolt wands, most of the Anything items (though I like a couple of them - Anything Swords and Anything Wands) -- but for the most part I think the items are cool and interesting and help keep the game fresh for players who have the DMG more-or-less internalized but don't know UA, pretty much the same as the MM2. In the last couple one-off games I've run I've made a point to give the pre-gen characters UA magic items and spells -- potions of vitality and fire breath, rod of flailing, staff of slinging, scimitar of speed, shoes of Fhlarlangn, anything wand, etc.

Just a bit of trivia. The any class usable wands pre-date the publication of OD&D. Gary once told me a story of a time he was playing Yrag in Dave Arneson's game, and he mentioned Yrag threatening to fireball Rob and Terry Kuntz's characters for some reason. I asked him about it and he stated that originally there were fireball wands that anybody could use.
Crystal Balls used to be any class items too. Robilar had one that he used when he solo adventured to scry the rooms in the dungeon before opening the doors.

Right, but by the time OD&D was actually published that had changed, with good reason (I remember someone (maybe even you?) bringing this up on one of his Q&A threads and him saying that he decided to limit those items to mages only because that made a stronger distinction between the class-types, which he liked) and I think it was a mistake to reverse that in UA.

I'm torn on the issue of the wands. I've never given one away, but since they are more or less artillery pieces, I could see a mage knowing that if he was on a battlefield he would become a prime target crafting one for somebody else for a military campaign. But I usually don't like things that water down the archetypes when I play D&D.
For the crystal balls. I guess I feel the same. There's obviously the Palantíri that could be used by anybody, and the possibility of getting a hypnosis ball into a non-M-U character has appeal, but it does intrude on the M-U niche a bit.

I am not even too comfortable with the idea of thieves being able to use spell scrolls. Similar sorts of drawbacks would have to be present to induce me to allow characters with no spell ability to use much in the way of spell like items.

I, on the other hand, am double-plus comfortable with Thieves using MU scrolls. Give those poor suckers a chance to shine!

Plus the fact that they can't do it until 10th level and there's a 20% chance of failure are significant mitigating factors. If there were equivalent restrictions on or risks associated with the all-class wands of fireballs and lightning bolts I wouldn't have as much problem with them (similarly to how I have no problem with level 8+ rangers being able to use crystal balls).

Falconer wrote: I, on the other hand, am double-plus comfortable with Thieves using MU scrolls. Give those poor suckers a chance to shine!

Somehow that dowes not surprise me one bit.

T. Foster wrote: Plus the fact that they can't do it until 10th level and there's a 20% chance of failure are significant mitigating factors. If there were equivalent restrictions on or risks associated with the all-class wands of fireballs and lightning bolts I wouldn't have as much problem with them (similarly to how I have no problem with level 8+ rangers being able to use crystal balls).

Right, which is what I said. In fact, though, there is a 25% chance of failure and a somewhat unexplained chance of a reverse effect.

Falconer wrote:The UA Treasure section is totally cool.

That’s all I wanted to say.

Anything in particular got you fired up?

Was looking for a magic weapon for a monk, and found lots of options. Was just looking through it, and overall I guess I found very little to dislike, so from now on I will use it when rolling for treasure!

Oh, and one would think OA would be the place to go to find interesting monkish magic weapons. Surprise, surprise, it’s not!