So, I was thinking about the Deck of Many Things, which in my campaign and the party has acquired it, but I’m wondering about the loot give by the Sun and Key cards. I’m wondering how I should go about rolling for what loot to give should a card be drawn, either list all the possible items out and roll, whatever numbers appear jump straight to that item (using Percentile Dice and a d10 for the multiple of hundreds), or alternatively, segment percentile dice for each rarity tier and then roll from within that rarity tier, (Example: For the Sun’s wondrous items, Common: 1-50, Uncommon: 51-75, Rare: 76-90, Very Rare: 91-99, Legendary: 100). I figure both have their merits but I’m not experienced enough to know how it’ll play out.
It’s straight chaos no matter how you decide to do it. For those cards I’d say just do the straight roll through all available options without tiers, since that is a bit more in-line with the nature of the deck (in my opinion).
Let them roll. Build suspence and fun. Then, give them the same thing no matter what is rolled.
How does this affect the game and the plot? If it's an open-world sandbox with no plot, then random might be best. However, if there is plot, use this to your advantage.
An example: a 15 is rolled, and that gives a Wand of Further Death to Undead. You think, "They're going to FrogWorldLand next, so that doesn't change much at all."
A different approach would be to award a Wand of TalkToFrogPeople on any roll. The players get fun out of it, and now they are a bit more invested in the plot. I'd be careful to not make it so obvious, but I hope you see my point.
So, I was thinking about the Deck of Many Things, which in my campaign and the party has acquired it, but I’m wondering about the loot give by the Sun and Key cards. I’m wondering how I should go about rolling for what loot to give should a card be drawn, either list all the possible items out and roll, whatever numbers appear jump straight to that item (using Percentile Dice and a d10 for the multiple of hundreds), or alternatively, segment percentile dice for each rarity tier and then roll from within that rarity tier, (Example: For the Sun’s wondrous items, Common: 1-50, Uncommon: 51-75, Rare: 76-90, Very Rare: 91-99, Legendary: 100). I figure both have their merits but I’m not experienced enough to know how it’ll play out.
As written, you don't roll for the Key at all, you just choose. For the Sun, you have the problem that there isn't a table of random wondrous items in 5e -- easiest method is to do a search on DDB filtered to your available source books, and pick randomly from that. For example, this selects all wondrous items from the DMG, XGtE, and TCoE, and returns 12 pages of hits at 20 hits per page, so roll a d12 for page, d20 for entry on the page.
Thanks for the suggestions and help. I do like Pantagruel's suggestions since I honestly barely have any of my own wondrous homebrew items, so going full random seems like the best option. I don't think I'll do much of specific items for specific characters unless the Divination Wizard really studies the cards since that might be in their purview. But otherwise, I guess I'll see what chaos unfolds.
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So, I was thinking about the Deck of Many Things, which in my campaign and the party has acquired it, but I’m wondering about the loot give by the Sun and Key cards. I’m wondering how I should go about rolling for what loot to give should a card be drawn, either list all the possible items out and roll, whatever numbers appear jump straight to that item (using Percentile Dice and a d10 for the multiple of hundreds), or alternatively, segment percentile dice for each rarity tier and then roll from within that rarity tier, (Example: For the Sun’s wondrous items, Common: 1-50, Uncommon: 51-75, Rare: 76-90, Very Rare: 91-99, Legendary: 100). I figure both have their merits but I’m not experienced enough to know how it’ll play out.
It’s straight chaos no matter how you decide to do it. For those cards I’d say just do the straight roll through all available options without tiers, since that is a bit more in-line with the nature of the deck (in my opinion).
This might not be a popular answer, but...
Let them roll. Build suspence and fun. Then, give them the same thing no matter what is rolled.
How does this affect the game and the plot? If it's an open-world sandbox with no plot, then random might be best. However, if there is plot, use this to your advantage.
An example: a 15 is rolled, and that gives a Wand of Further Death to Undead. You think, "They're going to FrogWorldLand next, so that doesn't change much at all."
A different approach would be to award a Wand of TalkToFrogPeople on any roll. The players get fun out of it, and now they are a bit more invested in the plot. I'd be careful to not make it so obvious, but I hope you see my point.
As written, you don't roll for the Key at all, you just choose. For the Sun, you have the problem that there isn't a table of random wondrous items in 5e -- easiest method is to do a search on DDB filtered to your available source books, and pick randomly from that. For example, this selects all wondrous items from the DMG, XGtE, and TCoE, and returns 12 pages of hits at 20 hits per page, so roll a d12 for page, d20 for entry on the page.
Thanks for the suggestions and help. I do like Pantagruel's suggestions since I honestly barely have any of my own wondrous homebrew items, so going full random seems like the best option. I don't think I'll do much of specific items for specific characters unless the Divination Wizard really studies the cards since that might be in their purview. But otherwise, I guess I'll see what chaos unfolds.