As a DM, have you ever given out loot that was too powerful for the party? How did you fix it? #dnd

as a DM have you ever given out loot that was just too powerful for the party how did you fix that leave yours down in the comments below us DN D players can never really get enough whether you play three times a week or once a month part of you always craves more we get our fix however we can by watching short stories online D and live streams balers gate well allow me to offer you something new the best available follows a party of new adventurers trying to make a name for themselves in hopes of being sponsored in a competition Water deeps Festival of Heroes which sees the chosen parties delving into the depths of under Mountain risking life and limb to suppress the evils and monsters below to protect the city above the dungeon of the Mad Mage is filled with danger treasure glory and Mysteries yet to be revealed come watch the journey from humble beginnings into heroic Legend as we adapt a campaign years in the making into an illustr at ated web series with art from doodle poodle author of tales from the tables we pride ourselves in converting hours long sessions into smoothly paced episode with limited animation music Blood Sweat and Tears get in on the ground floor of something great en join the forever DMS table today Link in the description I made that mistake once and had to correct it though it didn't go exactly the way I had planned our party was about level four or sixish I think I had laid out a quest and part of it saw the Elven Ranger a favorite class wind up with a bow not just any bow however but it also had some sort of extra piercing enchantment damage that would allow the arrow to pass through one and hit a second Target in line combined with a specialized 3.5 Edition Ranger basically made it a laser beam pew pew that was a problem and was my inexperience as a DM basically the ranger was suddenly able to blow holes in just about everything this became very apparent after a few encounters the story I created included a couple of large nasty monster henchmen an ogre and a troll who worked for the big bad evil guy an evil wizard no less I pumped up The Troll henchmen and they ambushed the party on a narrow bridge well most of them decided on indirect tactics when confronted with this huge and mean looking Beast oh not the ranger though he thought this foe would easily be defeated with his mighty bow he didn't take into account the reach of his enemy however after landing a blow with an arrow from his ranged weapon quite close to the troll I might add the powerful and hungry troll Shrugged it off and then got mad really mad he rushed the tast the elf and grabbed him doing damage with his claws to the ranger uh-oh as you may know a 3.5 addition has an attack called Ren he hits with both claw attacks it latches onto the opponent's body and tears the flesh this attack automatically deals an additional 2D 6 + 9 points of damage the troll had done a lot of claw and bite damage already the once Mighty Ranger was immediately torn into two pieces ouch I had not expected the ranger to run up and get close enough for this just get beat up and lose the weapon to the bad guys I rolled a little too well and when the elf couldn't escape I figured his companions might at least be able to help him and to late though in the end they delivered the body and the bow to a powerful Elven Druid for safekeeping problem solved although a bit of a rough way to go about it early on all the time so much so that our games were referred to as Monty wall games however over the decades you learn how to balance the correct amount of cash and Magic given as rewards now the biggest issue is when you have enemies with character levels thus they will be equipped with useful magic and once they are defeated the group gets all that stuff a good way to prevent overuse of powerful items your bad guys use would be to have them fight with unconventional weapons and or weapons that have a cost or drawback for example a flaming burst Frost burst plus two spiked chain is a deadly weapon but if nobody in your group is proficient with it then it will cost someone a lot of penalty season Feats to be good with it if your enemy naturally has cold resistance 5 then give them a frosted long sword that deals an extra 2d6 on a hit but also deals the user 2 Hp per round of cold damage as long as it is held having evil cleric wear a magical suit of plate armor so evil looking and loaded with profane symbols that nobody would want to wear it and so on if you give out too much you just have to roll with it and learn better for the future you don't have to try to retroactively fix it Dawn's Edge the counter to a third of my campaign so the party is level six and they cleared most of an undead dungeon they are just before the final boss of the dungeon an undead Mage that had apparently been making deals with fiends the party investigates everything so they find a secret door that leads to a room with a very high level devil end it the devil had apparently been trapped by clever magic and used to gain power by the upcoming boss he wants to make a deal he will help out the party in exchange for them breaking the magical bindings and setting him free now my plan was simple the devil will give them a powerful Undead slaying weapon to help against the boss with that wording the weapon is given only to help against the boss and it is taken back as soon as the boss is defeated as its purpose as defined in their deal has been fulfilled the party learns an important lesson about devils and their deals this day and I get to mess with them a little the fighter that gets the blade already has another powerful weapon anyway so she can keep using that a sweet talking demonic great sword that secretly plans to eat her soul here's what happened about half or even a full hour of the party negotiating the terms of the and seriously stretching the lines to the point that the devil is only accepting it because he can get a lot of suffering with how he fulfills the many extra things the party is asking for and out of spite for the boss that trapped him here's a side note real quick if you're curious as to what some of the extra things they asked for also resulted in otherwise skip this part entirely an hour a very lore heavy roleplay on why the warlock's patron is hiding important things from the Warlock and and surprise surprise the cleric learned a lot of things about him that should not be known trademarked and ended up turned to stone after the dungeon to prevent collateral damage from knowing these things that are forbidden knowledge for good reasons now don't worry he was already planning to leave the group due to scheduling issues and there was half a session dedicated to his character saying his goodbyes to everyone it was an extremely satisfying scene that brought many tears to us the Fighter's demon sword was entirely identified so I gave them the nearly onepage long stat block and told them it is about to wake up and progress to stage one out of its three stages they reviewed it carefully and decided that neither at stage one feature that allows it to subtly change her memories related to itself once every 3 days for example to make it seem like he wasn't just caught lying yesterday yeah he's totally trustworthy uh-huh fingers crossed there nor the stage three feature where it can straight up possess her is worth the power of that sword so they dropped it then the devil took it and already knew who to give it to as part of another deal of course probably the Nemesis of this same fighter but back to the point one of the things that the party managed to negotiate is that they could keep the sword and pass it down through the generations and it can only be taken back but has to be taken back when they've lost it for a full month month and the devil cannot make any steps towards making this happen now the weapon is a long sword called Dawn's Edge it is the only plus two weapon the party has encountered so far but it also deals 2d6 extra radiant damage to Undead and fiends Undead cannot even carefully touch it without suffering this 2d6 damage and they instinctively know that this blade is powerful against them additionally it can cast a special Channel Divinity feature from it even if she otherwise does not have the channel Divinity feature though then using it has a few restrictions that is basically a 30ft radius of radiant damage explosion around the sword without Friendly Fire for 28 damage plus 1 d8 against Undead and this ability recharges each Twilight not dawn so technically it can be used twice every 24 hours yes because it's related to the undead hating goddess of Twilight also when it kills an undead it turns them to Ash so they can't be raised by necromancers again and it also entirely bypassed this specific upcoming boss feature for being super hard to properly kill well it did a lot of work in the boss fight and it was really amazing to use and if the party isn't fighting Undead or fiends it will just be a pretty damn strong weapon so it's all cool um well that that is until they get to the immediate next story arc where one side quest boss is a vampire another side quest is about clearing a mad scientist dungeon of his Undead creations and The Big Bad Evil guys faction can summon demons all of which you guessed it is countered by the weapon oops well my solution to the problem is this they earned it so they get to keep it as an awesome reward I am going to adjust the difficulty of combat encounters so that the party doesn't stomp over everything but they will also get to keep feeling empowered and rewarded for their amazing job I will also put enough non- countered enemies in the next story arc for the sword to not constantly obliterate everything I will also introduce an NPC that serves the goddess associated with the blade she would really love to have it and it would help her make her job a whole lot easier so they can't but don't have to give it to her it's up to them and finally if the blade ever proves to be too oppressive and makes balancing too hard I'll just talk to my players and tell them this is the issue and figure out a way together to Nerf it but keep it feeling awesome I consider this final thing to be the absolute best solution nearly every situation where you as a DM can mess up the balance we are all here to have fun together and it works best when we can help each other other with it getting your players input on important matters is important as a DM and you also don't have to do everything behind their backs or on your own often the players even suggest a perfect solution that you hadn't thought of especially if they are experienced players sometimes characters experience incredible Fortune sometimes they have just as incredible Misfortune stop trying to give away treasure and Magic like Monty Hall from let's make a deal you're a DM not a game show host charge for room and board and drinks at the tavern The Stables need to pay for labor rent and feed for the horses too travel is incredibly slow and exhausting without transportation and beasts of Burden you know shopkeepers want to make sure you have the best and the best costs a lot even if it's just a little bit better any excuse to charge more money for more better is is a great excuse what are you Walmart bad things happen taxes Bandits death blackmail extortion More Death theft magical holes in the Multiverse that are attracted to magical things tend to just swallow them up and return them to the magical sinkhole where magical things and the occasional Odd Socks go to die it's a chaotic World acts of nature acts of God especially nice adventurers made d donate their stuff to others who need it more especially Quest givers yeah the Orphans of St cuthberts are really going to need that Holy Avenger back in the temple where it belongs in order to break the curse believe brother it's for the children especially rude adventurers May donate their stuff to even Rudder bigger meaner bullies especially questgiver bullies the spider goddess needs the skull of domination you you don't want to be turned into a spider demon do you it's best when the spider goddess gets what she wants sometimes the magic charges run out and there's only one way to recharge it and it ain't easy sometimes it gets harder and harder to recharge over time sometimes the magic becomes more of a curse than a blessing now you're just talking about old age and I feel offended hey everybody Brian von va checking in after for the vid make sure to leave a like subscribe bring the spell and let us know as a DM have you ever given out loot that was just too powerful for the party if so how'd you fix it all the love see you next time bye for now

Channel: MrRipper

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Id: FXAaO4VcA1s

Length: 14min 39sec (879 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 26 2024