Magic Items in Odyssey

I think AD&D 2nd edition was the last version of D&D to make magic items interesting. I used to love accumulating a janky pile of random tools and figuring out a way to make them work. Later editions turned magic items into a resource for making characters more powerful with augmented AC, attack bonuses, and damage.

That shift also came with a significant growth in character class features. In AD&D, characters relied on magic items to provide virtual class features. Most classes offered a few benefits at low levels, with a few outliers (druid, monk) consistently providing new features. In AD&D, your magic items created an extra level of tricks you could pull outside of your class’s core features.

I really like that feel and want to replicate it in Odyssey. I also think it makes sense that you can find better weapons and armor. After all, a cool sword or mighty staff is a logical magical item to find in a fantasy world. The trick comes down to finding a way to categorize items and make sure that it’s easy for DMs to hand them out without breaking the game or making magic items feel like upgrades you ordered from Amazon.

Organized by Tier

 To start with, I want to make life easy for the DM. Magic items are organized by tier. Within its tier, an item is an appropriate reward for the party. This approach makes sure that you don’t accidentally hand out an effect that breaks the game. With spells and other class features organized by tier, it’s easy to compare magic items to what characters can do and rate them appropriately.

Organized by Power

Within a tier, there are three categories of items. I am also going to talk about a fourth category of items that you won’t see in the game.

Upgrades: Upgrade items are superior versions of items that the characters can purchase, such as weapons, armor, and arcane implements. Unless an upgrade item is powerful enough to qualify as an artifact, you can also use gold to purchase these items.

These items are not necessarily magical. They can include weapons and armor made from rare materials, an implement that grants a benefit when you cast a spell, and so on. However, in terms of game design they follow this rule: upgrades are as complex as mundane gear. They give you bigger numbers than mundane stuff, but they don’t add complexity.

Potions and similar one-use items fall into this category. However, I’m toying with implementing a one-minute delay between drinking a potion and gaining its effects so that they aren’t options in combat. I still need to think about that.

Curios: These items are all weird objects that do unique things. They expand your options rather than improve on things you can already do. Curios might let you paint a functioning door on a wall, walk on water, speak the forgotten language of the sea, or turn into a butterfly. In play, they can be powerful if you think of clever ways to use them.

An adventurer might have a few curios stashed in their backpack. If the right situation arises, they can prove quite valuable.

Artifacts: Artifacts are the mightiest items you can find. They are also the only items that require attunement. An artifact gives, but it also takes. When you attune to an artifact, it draws power from you just as you draw power from it. It might compel you to take certain actions or prohibit you from acting in a certain way.

Artifacts grant you expanded abilities, new ways to spend resolve, and upgrades to things you already do. The Sword of Volcanic Genesis might be a two-handed sword that does 4d6 damage on a hit and allow you to spend resolve to cast fireball and burning hands. You can plunge it into the ground to open a volcanic vent. You are compelled to offer sacrifices to the volcanic heart of the world, and when you die wielding the sword you burst into flame as Surtur calls you and the sword to his court to serve at his side.

Artifacts are powerful, but they are puzzles. Their power comes at a cost. Abuse them, and you may find yourself rolling a new character.

Artifacts unlock powers as you level up. An apprentice tier character, who offers less power, gains a shadow of what a tier four character gains from them. Remember, above all else artifacts use you as much as you use them.

Since artifacts want you to find them, they show up more often on the treasure tables than you might expect. Since they also turn their users into puppets, you can count on each artifact including a monster stat block for the NPC wielding it and rules for adding it to an existing monster.

Modern Conveniences: This category of items won’t appear in the game. Bags of holding, everburning torches, and decanters of endless water remove the danger and tension from the game in my experience. They are modern conveniences, handy short cuts to take the sting out of adventuring. I’m not crazy about that. I think they make running high level adventurers more difficult, as the players carefully eliminate hardships from their lives.

When these items do show up, they will come with risks or drawbacks. The torch of the unconquered sun might never burnout and remains lit even underwater, but each time you activate it you risk summoning the solar who wants to reclaim it for her deity.

Rate of Acquisition

These numbers might change, but I expect that across tiers one to four each character gains:

• One upgrade per level, typically purchased with gold rather than found

• One curio per tier

• One artifact gained across tier three and four, though the DM can make an exception since artifacts can support lower tiers of play

A 10th level character has therefore churned through 9 upgrades, and probably has held on to three of them, carries four curios, and has one artifact.

Apprentice tier is an exception, since your upgrades there put you in line with a 1st-level character. You’ll get better weapons, armor, and implements, along with a few potions in that tier.