AL DM Question: Am I allowed to give out Magic Items.

[Raithier Foxhaven]

When I first started, it came up after a couple of fights and people at the table would say "I search the body..." or ask "is there any loot?" After several times of telling them no, I asked the other GMs at the store and found the answer that was explained here. A disappointing one. I then started introducing adventure hooks like A Thousand Tiny Deaths to add quick loot options to standard DDAL games.

I have done Tales from the Yawning Portal, SKT, HotDQ, and now ToA. All of them have this problem. So far in ToA I have been able to give out an Alchemists Jug, and a horn of blasting. + random gold. They are level 6 and 1 magic item. Needless to say the question has come up several times "Wheres the loot..."

Its come down to adventure hooks and hours upon hours (+ money to obtain adventures) to get loot in the adventure.

I have also suggested that the players make backstories in order for me to tie them into the God Weapons in ToA to justify giving a couple of them at the end.

Honestly this is such a problem that I am leaning to not running AL games any longer.

On a side note: Can my players use their down time days to build magic items as described in Xanathar's guide? I dont see any reason why they cant, but again this attempt at logic fails me when it comes to the reasoning behind AL sometimes...

Thanks!

[Talyn]

I barely have any experience with AL but in PFS (granted, we don't usually ask about looting bodies... it's just something you learn that's different from home games) any loot we get during the adventure we can use until the end of that adventure. We don't keep it unless we purchase it at the end, but it's usable the whole time otherwise.

Maybe an AL DM can offer some insight if the situation is similar?

[Trenloe]

5E in general is a lot more magic item light than previous versions of D&D. The designers made a decision to control power creep (you'll hear the words "bounded accuracy" frequently) and allow a similar progressive increase in power a PCs level. Throwing lots of magic items into the mix can break this. That's why you won't see many magic items in WotC produced products.

Some info here: https://olddungeonmaster.wordpress.c...nded-accuracy/

[Raithier Foxhaven]

Thanks for the info. I figured it was some kind of philosophical reasoning behind it. Just seems to really go against rewarding players though and the state of fun that I think alot of players are looking for.

Thanks again.

[damned]

Try Curse of Strahd - no magic and no gold!

[Raithier Foxhaven]

Why would they do that. Its total and complete Horse crap!

[midas]

Man, Storm King's Thunder has a ton of magic items. Can't swing a dead gnome without hitting a magic item table roll.

One of the reasons why organized play limits magic items to what is in the module is to help curb, "My friend ran a game for me and gave me this Holy Avenger" circumstances.

[marcusrife]

In my opinion it gives out too many magic items. If you run modules there is always at least one per module. That is one for every two to four hours played. I would never give out that many in my own campaign. Luckily given the rules they get spread out pretty evenly, players tend to come and go, and players are consistently starting over with new characters.

[DragonsDen13]

But on the flip side, in a homebrew game, the magic items have less chance of being wasted because no one uses that type of weapon, that class, etc.