Hello, I’ll be running my first darksun 3e Adventure in about a week and i was wondering what level should i interduce magic items to my PCs. I got some cool ones in mind like +1 cristiline short swords that regrow in water if broken. but i’d would gladly welcome any ideas, magic items and recomended levels for magic items. also any tips for a first time DS dm :P (not my first time DMing though). i was also interested if any Dungeon mastahs out there have any favorite monsters. personally i like the memphits. with CR 3 they make a good challeng for a 2nd level party. Especially the salt, dust, and fire memphits. thier elemental feal just ties in so good with divine magic (did I hear some one say “cult”). any way, any wisdom is greatly welcomed.

like +1 cristiline short swords that regrow in water if broken

I Love It! Think of that idea as stolen.

As far as at what level to start getting magic items, same as any other world. I just don’t give out as many redundant items (i.e. back-up weapon).

Favorite Monsters: At low levels, I like gith : I use them to fill the role of goblins, orcs, etc. Other wise I really don’t have one favorite monster, mixing things up has been one of my strong points as a Game Master.

Obviously, it’s up to you to do whatever you want in your campaign, but one of the things that really set Dark Sun apart from other D&D settings is a much lesser emphasis on magic items and more on the character’s skills & abilities. When I was DM in other settings like Dragonlance & Forgotten Realms, the PCs often accumulated a huge horde of magic weapons, armor, rings, cloaks, wands, potions, etc. by the time they were 8-9th level. This made the campaign seem less dramatic or suited to character development, and instead it turns into power-gaming with “munchkin” characters. In the end, play becomes boring because there’s no challenge the DM can invent that the PCs can’t easily conquer with their full adamantine plate armor, rings of unlimited wishes, bags of holding, and +50 keen flaming vorpal swords of destruction.

Personally, I’d recommend running Dark Sun as a “low magic” campaign, since this makes sense in terms of its historical background (i.e. magic has been outlawed for the past 2000 years or so, with the sorcereer kings monopolizing it as much as possible), and it also helps the DM create more challenging campaigns since the PCs will have to use their skills, feats & abilities to solve their problems rather than just whipping out another magic item. As a general rule of thumb, I’d say that low level PCS (level 1-5) should be given masterwork stone/bone weapons and the occasional metal dagger as a reward, then move up to non-magic metal weapons and the occasional 1 weapon for mid level (6-10), then +2 weapons for levels 11-15, +3 for levels 16-20, and +4/5 weapons and the occasional artifacts for levels 20+. Also, try to limit it to 1-3 magic items per PC even at higher levels. NPCs in most of the published adventures don’t have tons of magic items, so it will unbalance the game if your players do.

The most obvious way to keep magic items limited is to reduce the amount of them in the treasure PCs get for defeating various monsters, and the random treasure tables for Dark Sun give out much less than those used on standard D&D worlds. Many of the beasts of Athas have claws, teeth & hides that can be used to make weapons & armor, and sometimes their blood or organs can be used as spell components, so you don’t need to give any additional treasure – the monster’s dead body is reward enough. I’d also substitute valuable trade goods (giant hair rope, silkwyrm silk, agafari wood, obsidian orbs, etc.) for coinage to emphasize that it’s a metal-poor world. You can give them things like potion fruits, esperweed, poisoned arrows, etc. that are one-use items. Lastly, you can have magic items get stolen or broken. We see magic weapons breaking even in the DS novels, where Rikus breaks the “Scourge or Rkard” when he tries to cleave a giant’s boulder in mid flight and where Sorak gets his magic elven sword “Galdra” broken when an evil mercenary grasps its hilt. And of course the rarity of magic items will prompt templars, bandits, and mercenaries to hunt down anyone they know has a powerful magic item so they can steal it for themselves. When I DM’d, I let an 8th-level fighter find a +2 glass sword known as the “Siltblade” and fight with it for a couple weeks, only to have a siltrunner thief with an invisibility potion sneak into camp at night & steal it for his master, a Balicite templar.

I would early on give the party a magic steel weapon, and have it taken away in the first town they enter by a corrupt templar. That will set the tone. My view is that a party can have as many magic bone and stone weapons as they need. They just will break all the time.

The metal ones should be carefully guarded secrets of the party. Essentially if a guy walks into a bar with a metal sword every adventurer should eye him up and ask the question:
Is that man more awesome than me?
If the answer is no, then they should be scheming for it.

Another strategy the DM can use for magic items is to give them one that seems useful at first but later turns out to be cursed. In the “Black Spine” adventure, the PCs have to help a slave tribe known as Tenpug’s Band fend off a large gith army, and they find a magic gem in an ancient temple called “Rubyheart” (it’s in the “Legends of Athas” supplement). If I remember right, it allows its user to cast all kinds of fire spells like fireball & flame strike so it can be used to help defeat the gith, but if you keep it for long it possesses its wielder and turns them into its slave and forces them to start sacrificing people to it or something.

I’m pretty sure that a lot of the magic weapons left over from the Cleansing Wars would be like this, since they were evil & intended to commit genocide or slay preservers & druids in the Jihad. You could have the PCs find one of these weapons & use it for a bit, but eventually they’d realize it’s evil and they’d have to try to destroy it – just like the “One Ring” from the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy.

I love the cursed item idea. :P i’ll have to look up that gem….

The process and requirements to create a magical item are far too demanding for a wizard to create a magical obsidian axe +2 or some nonsense like that. I keep all of my weapons in the campaign metal or of a unique or sturdy material (drake bone, Rascilinn hide, bullette shield, etc.)

I like to tie the magical items in my campaign to the elemental magics of the world. Yes, that might be a two handed +2 steel sword, but unless it is submerged in earth for 1hr a day it is ONLY a +2 sword. If you submerge it you can cast Stoneskin once a day and Cure Light Wounds once a day.

I just last week had a PC Gladiator who had a double bladed +1 spear made of air drake bone. He’s had that thing for a long time, and last week he fought an air drake. Unbeknownst to him the spear acted like a Nine Lives Stealer (except it only had one charge) and when the drake failed its save the drake AND the spear blew apart fantastically.

There are lots of good low level beasts to throw into the mix. Gith have already been mentioned, but Sand Howlers, Lirr, Giant Scorpions, Gian Lizards, Minotaur Lizards, Sligs, Undead (Zombies, Skeletons, maybe even a Dwarven Banshee), Thri-Kreen, Flailers, Antloids, Id Fiend, Gaj, Silt Runners, Reggelids, or Zhackals can be solid low level encounters… and of course B’Rhog are always fun, and will scare the crap out of players of all levels, they’re easy to kill, but MAN do they hit hard!

I love the elemental idea with the weapons. However, I would expect many of the magic items would be more about being soaked in life. Trees, plants, animals, people… doesn’t seem to matter as long as if it is arcane magical, it gets some life from somewhere.

Cleric made weapons would certainly fall into a sacrifice to the elements sort of role… but then what do you do with psionic weapons? Power point sacrifice?

Also, how do you handle weapon wear? For now I ignore it, because keeping track seems to be just a stat thing, but it gives the world more flavor in my opinion.

Something I thought of as I wrote this, it would be awesome if as an option, you could break the crystal sword off in someone. Perhaps a str check after a critical hit to leave the weapon embedded in your opponent causing bleed damage or stamina damage. Just a thought.

On your last part; I think that would just be a special effect of the wounding power covered in the DMG. Like the spear-thing used in the second Hellboy movie.

I handle weapon breakage by my own made up rules. I do not use the standard as, if memory recalls, it is based on damage. Something like “Whenever maximum damage is rolled a breakage check is required” Well… that doesn’t make sense to me. So a long sword has a 1 in 8 chance of breaking, but a two handed battle axe has a 1 in 10? If a weapon does 2d6 damage then it only has a chance of breaking 1 in 36 times! 2d8 is 1 in 64! (It should be noted that my group and I use 2nd addition still, all of the DS material is 2nd edition, and I’ve been DMing DS for 18yrs now, so we stuck with it) I base the breakage on critical miss and critical hit numbers. So for 2nd edition if they roll a 1 or a 20 to hit they roll a % breakage that I determined based on non steel materials (Iron, Bronze, Bone, Obsidian, Stone, Wood, Agafari Wood, Chitin, etc.) Critical hit of 20 does double damage, so it is like the “broke sword in opponent”, however a Critical miss of 1 is like “missed opponent and hit shield/rock and it broke with no damage to opponent”

Psionic items are seperate, and easy in 2nd edition to determine. I like to couple psionic with minor magical bonuses. For example, one of my PCs has a gladius that is steel +1, however it’s really cool bonuses come from the fact that it has 3 psionic powers. On Round 1 it tried to get Enhanced Strength on the user up and will take the user to maximum racial strength, round 2 it Girds the ES, round 3 it Grafts the sword to the user, and round 4 it tries to Gird the Graft. By the 4th round of battle the uer is amazingly strong and cannot be disarmed… and the Gird lasts for an hour! Obviously if the user is far below racial maximum the weapon may not have the psinoic strength to do round 3 & 4, but that’d be rare.

Other items are easier… keep in mind Psoinics is more prevelant in DS, so those items should be easier to find. A necklace that has beads, each time you put one in your mouth it grants Biofeedback for 10 rounds, the bead shrivels, useless, and looks like a raisin on the necklace instead of a nice round plump bead.

etc.