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In Rise of the Runelords, many of the enemies the PCs defeat are larger than medium size. I'm wondering how to handle the magical loot that the PC's get from those creatures. Which of those items can the PC's use?
In the d20 SRD, I see it says:
"Size And Magic Items
When an article of magic clothing or jewelry is discovered, most of the time size shouldn’t be an issue. Many magic garments are made to be easily adjustable, or they adjust themselves magically to the wearer. Size should not keep characters of various kinds from using magic items.
There may be rare exceptions, especially with racial specific items.
Armor and Weapon Sizes
Armor and weapons that are found at random have a 30% chance of being Small (01-30), a 60% chance of being Medium (31-90), and a 10% chance of being any other size (91-100)."
This is somewhat contradictory: why do we care what size the armors and weapons are if all items magically resize to fit the new wearer?
Unless of course, this last part implies that all magical items _except weapons and armor_ resize. Which is also a bit confusing, because even within a given size, there's quite a large variance. For example, a 6'6", 300 lbs man and a 5'0", 90 lbs woman are both Medium size and theoretically should be able to wear the same armor... Which doesn't really make sense unless there is some magical resizing involved.
If there's absolutely zero magical resizing for armor, it also somewhat forces the DM to keep track of the dimensions of every NPC that the PC's loot in the campaign. Also, it means that magical items of Large and larger size would most likely not be worth much at all if one tried to sell them to human merchants: what are the odds that the merchant would be able to sell that weapon or armor to anyone afterwards?
Of course a simple answer is: "you're the DM, just do as you want", but I'm curious to see how this is handled by other DM's, and if by design, it's expected that the loot that PC's obtain from Larger-than-Medium foes throughout RotRL is assumed to be stuff that they can actually use, or at least sell at a decent price.
I assume things can magically resize to fit anyone in the same size category. Medium armmour is medium armour and it does not matter if its being worn by a sumo wrestler or a 90 pound female scout. Fits them both.
With objects like rings and robes and such I'll allow them to go up or down one size category without penalty. But weapons and armour stay the same size. Weapons in particular have attributes associated with their size that makes them a bad candidate for resizing effects.
All of this being said - I allow the players to sell over sized magic items without penalty so size issues don't really come up much in my game - if they can't use it then they sell it - since more often then not they sell even the things that they can technically use it really is just not much of a factor at my table.
When an article of magic clothing or jewelry is discovered, most of the time size shouldn’t be an issue
Its actually backwards from what you were wondering. Only the items called out resize, everything else is what it is. Weapons and armor, for example, stay their normal size.
I think somewhere there is even a magical property that allows for those items to resize, reemphasizing that they don't resize normally, but I can't find the trait right now.
Magical armor "resizes" enough to fit something of roughly the same size and shape, i.e. a dwarf or a half-orc could wear the same armor, but a half-ogre and a centaur cannot, because the centaur's armor, according to the rules, has to be specially made for him. But it may fit a dracotaur.
We've only made the first couple of games and they are trying to figure out what to do with the Quasit's returning dagger. I said that they could exchange it for a medium sized one.
We've only made the first couple of games and they are trying to figure out what to do with the Quasit's returning dagger. I said that they could exchange it for a medium sized one.
My PCs were hoping to duct-tape the tiny dagger to the end of a stick and make a magic spear.
I said no.
But they can sell it. It would make a good gift for your favorite tiny fey.
We've only made the first couple of games and they are trying to figure out what to do with the Quasit's returning dagger. I said that they could exchange it for a medium sized one.My PCs were hoping to duct-tape the tiny dagger to the end of a stick and make a magic spear.
I said no.
But they can sell it. It would make a good gift for your favorite tiny fey.
Resizing is a feature that's worth a +1. I'm betting that a balancing treasure factor is precisely the fact that the PCs can't make easy use of much of the treasure.
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In Rise of the Runelords, many of the enemies the PCs defeat are larger than medium size. I'm wondering how to handle the magical loot that the PC's get from those creatures. Which of those items can the PC's use?
Yes but that is purely due to flaws in the Game Engine...HD should equate to Race, and Class should give bonuses and penalties.
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Resizing is a feature that's worth a +1. I'm betting that a balancing treasure factor is precisely the fact that the PCs can't make easy use of much of the treasure.
Resizing is a flat 5,000gp. So, they can pay 5,000gp to put resizing onto it so that they can sell it for 4,000gp. If resizing were a +1 effect, it would be the third plus onto it, which would have a marginal cost of 10,000gp.
Find out how much it costs to have Polymorph any Object cast.
It seems like a reasonable non-broken use of the spell to turn that +1 Large Greatclub you got from the Ogre King into a +1 Medium Greatclub.
Too bad Polymorph Any Object specificly says it doesn't have any effect on magic items.
My house rule is that an existing magical items can be consumed as part of the material cost and exp cost of creating a new magical item.
In general I allow this to be a standard 50% of the creation cost, but if the item being consumed is the same basic class as the item being made I increase this to 75%.
So longsword +1, sized for a large creature is normally worth around 2315gp to buy, 1175.5gp to create and 92.6 experience (if my mental maths is correct). If it is used to create a normal sized longsword you get to offset the cost by 881.25Gp and 69.45exp.
If it is used to create a shield, the cost offset is 587.75gp and 46.3exp.
This allows the characters to get some reward from the items they can not use, with out the DM having to come up with some weird reason that the weapon resizes.
It also gives the item creators of the world a reason to buy unusual sized items, as it stops them having to spend as much exp on their items, at the offset of an increased cost in gold.
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I often play this one as being something of a combination of DM fiat and a percentage(which varies by campaign, one that makes magic items very rare and I want them to savor what they find since they can't buy more may have a higher chance of things resizing).
For instance, the quasit's dagger in my campaign did resize for the players. I figured it was relatively powerful magically(being a +2 weapon) but its power isn't very off balancing for a lower level group to have. So it became something they would have sold as soon as they found a place with enough cash on hand to pay for it, and became the wizard's favorite weapon(he's never used it, but he often brags about it). Who knows where the quasit may have gotten that from to begin with anyway, so it seems very likely that it could have once been a medium creatures.
Now, something like Ripnugget's +1 dogslicer seems very different to me. It is almost certain that this was forged by a goblin and has never(and certainly is never intended to) be in the hands of anything but a goblin. Why would they go to the extra expense and/or trouble to let it conform to fit to other's sizes? This sort of thing I instantly rule does not resize. For any item I figure seem to fall between, I normally give them somewhere between a 20%-50% chance of doing so.
Note: someone above mentioned the fact that armors just seem to magically fit you if you are in the same size category whether you're a slender young lass or a hulking half orc. For this, I use a rule from iron heroes. Most armors tend to have enough buckles and the like that they can be fairly freely resized, but when you start to get into the heavier armors that are more metal then leather, they must be sized to fit you before they work effectively. So a suit of fullplate might end up costing about 300 gold to resize(just 1/5th its normal cost) whether magical or not.
-Tarlane
I also thing you're seeing a 3.5 change ... I remember size-changing in 3.0 was much more lenient. Another sad flaw of the 3.5 revision....