It has been a looong time since I have been a DM and I am about to run my group through the Shackled City. I love everything about it except I might want to make magic and specifically magic items not as common as they are. I dont want a Skie's Wal-Mart of magic items where players can walk in and browse the shelves for that Bastard Sword +4. I want any magic item that is found to be something of great importance with possibly a bit of history, not just a bauble pumped out from the College Magica's Crafting Items 101.
I know that a lot of 3.5 is based around the creation of and the availability of magic items, especially as characters gain levels and meet beasties that are tougher and tougher.
I was hoping to get your thoughts on this. Is it possible? Will it make life hell for me and my group? Like I said it has been a long time since I DMd and I don't have a ton of time (2 kids) to invest in re-writing things. Has anyone done this?
Thanks for the input.
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You could simply limit the inventory at Skie's (there is a great resource at
http://therpgenius.com/Default.aspx?alias=therpgenius.com/shackledcity
it has a list of available items by chapter, with a backstory for most of them.
Failing that, I would just try to tailor the magic items used by the enemies to those needed by the party. Playing a Bastard Sword wielding fighter sucks if you never get anything better than masterwork just because that's how the dice fell when recieving random treasure.
There are a ton of enemies in this campaign that uce weapons, armor, and items, so just changing the type shouldn't be too time consuming.
Creative Director
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The best trick is to simply stick to Cauldron's gp limit of 15,000 gp. The best a PC can do here is a +2 bastard sword. Now, that said, Shackled City makes many assumptions about how a PC will be armed and equipped depending on their level. The amount of treasure the adventure hands out isn't simply randomly determined; it's calibrated to make sure the PCs have enough gold to buy what they need if they don't find what they need. Many of the encounters and enemies that the PCs face in Shackled City assume that they'll have access to magic weapons, flight, teleportation, the ability to raise the dead, and so on. If you run the adventure as a low-magic campaign, you'll find it is a MUCH deadlier adventure overall. And it's pretty deadly to begin with.
My suggestion is to avoid running Shackled City as a low-magic campaign. It's not meant to be run as a low-magic game, any more than it's meant to be run as a d20 Modern or Mutants & Masterminds campaign.
Thanky you both for the replies, I really appreciate the input. James, that is pretty much what I thought and I am going to go with the campaign as it was written. It is just too damn good to pass up and miss out on the fun.