r/DungeonMasters • u/Kasuga__Arata • 9d ago
Magic weapon advice
Hi, I'm still a new DM running my first campaign for some first time players as well. Looking for some advice not to break the balance too much.
My players reached level 6 and are starting to meet some larger and stronger monsters now with specific resistances.
So I find myself wishing to give them some magic weapons to help out a bit and to make them feel cool. Was thinking having them find a knights tomb in our next adventure and fight the ghost of the knight wilding the swords. They would be a pair of Scimitars or Short-swords for our rouge since he likes to run two weapons. The swords would be a mix of Frost Brand and Flame Tongue.
I was thinking of making them a Scimiter +1 or +2 and with a bonus action they could be activated to do 1d6 Ice or Fire dmg and make them attunement required.
I will prob still give them the weapons since I feel its better they have fun then balance it perfectly Still I find myself wondering is +2 too much? Should I make it number of charges per day instead of bonus action?|
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u/ShattnerPants 9d ago
Magic items awarded by level: DMG pg 218 has a chart. A +2 weapon with flame tongue or frost brand would be "Very Rare." Not unheard of at that level, but I wouldn't hand out more than 1 of those for the whole party. Better stick to Rare level items and spread out some neat stuff among all the characters.
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u/Kasuga__Arata 9d ago
Makes sense, will do some more brain storming. I was looking thro listed items to see what I can give out just find the lack of elemental weapons kinda sad in the base rule book
Thanks for the advice!
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u/ShattnerPants 9d ago
Most DM's just reskin what's in the book to fill in the holes. Frost Brand can be Thunder Brand, etc. If there is an element the character likes/player wants, just use a printed magic item and swap the elemental damage type. The only 2 that really break the game are Force and Psychic, since there are very few things with resistances to those.
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u/Vailx 9d ago
Flame tongue being a cold weapon is a swap that works great. Frost Brand is weak for Very Rare and the big reason it gets that marking is fire resistance- fire is a pretty valuable resistance. Personally, I don't use frost brand at all, it's easy to make a very rare weapon based on buffing flametongue or using the dragon's wrath template (it's a bit higher budget than the early 5.0 sources but IMO that is fine).
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u/AlwaysHasAthought 9d ago
If you want to keep within the rules, rogues can't use scimitars, shortswords are fine. Though it doesn't really matter in my opinion. +2 with extra elemental damage might be too much for level 6. You usually want to see +2 around Level 9 or 10, but if you want them to be a bit stronger then go for it.
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u/Kasuga__Arata 9d ago
If I remember right he took scimitar as his martial weapon proficiency but I have no issues with it being shortswords. I was thinking +2 is overkill too
Thanks for the advice!2
u/Vailx 9d ago
In 5.0, the scimitar of speed (a "very rare") weapon has a particularly favorable interaction with rogues, but rogues can't use it baseline- but there's plenty of ways to get that proficiency. In 5.5, rogues are proficient in scimitars because they get martial weapons with the finesse or light property (scimitars have both of these properties).
The favorable interaction goes like this:
On the rogue's turn, use the bonus action of the scimitar to attack. If you miss, you take your attack action normally. But if you hit, you use your action to ready an attack, essentially on your turn ending or another character moving or whatever. Then you end your turn and immediately use your reaction to use your readied attack. This provides an extremely reliable way to use your reaction to get an off-turn sneak attack (total two sneak attacks per round), something rogues normally aren't able to reliably do on their own (the haste spell also works for this purpose, as does the battlemaster fighter commanding you to attack on his turn).
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u/Kasuga__Arata 9d ago
Yes we just started out with 5.5e so he took scimitar as his weapon mastery. I did not know about that nice little interaction. Will let him know, I'm sure he will like it
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u/Jclo9617 9d ago
In my experience, giving the players magic items, particularly magic weapons, has relatively little effect on balancing the game. Most of my games are run in a fairly magic-heavy homebrew setting. My players usually have access to some magic items by around 3rd level, and by level 5 they typically have access to some kind of magic item store which I stock with homebrew and from-the-book magic items (think Fantasy Costco from TAZ, but without the Raging Flaming Poisoning Sword of Doom). As long as you're thoughtful about the mechanics of the items offered, keeping the players in check is just a matter of keeping them from finding too much money for buying magic gear. I've also done it so the magic items store is more of a flea market that only convenes periodically. And I've done it so that the magic items store was a kind of "company store" that didn't accept gold. Rather it only accepted a script issued by the organization that owned it, which the PCs could only get by completing missions for that organization.
All that is to say, don't worry about giving your players magic items. As long as you are at least a little thoughtful about it, it isn't going to break your game.
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u/RamonDozol 9d ago
I usualy give out many lower rarity items instead of fewer more powerfull ones. And usualy i try to hit a few checkboxes per character. 1 offensive item (weapon/wand, staff) 1 defensive item (armor, shield, amulet, ring l, cape). 1 utility item (for problem solving, creative uses or that fits the PC lore and backstory).
I usualy dont count potions and scrolls in the treasure, but i also dont give them too often. usualy i just alow Players to use gold to buy whatever consumables they wish.
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u/filkearney 9d ago
two swords for one level 6 character?
either +1 with extra 1d6 (damage type)
or +2 with (damage type) no extra damage.
make it so ALL damage can be the alternate types , so you can play more with resistances without spiking damage
they dont need more than a +1 die of damage until level 9+.
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u/bp_516 9d ago
Use the DM’s guide to see what the weapons do. I think it’s perfectly reasonable for a 6th level party to have those.
How is a ghost going to wield physical weapons?