Magic Added to the Treasure Table

I have been busy.

There are just over five hundred different magical items listed in the Dungeon Master's Guide.  This isn't all the magic possible in the game, of course not, but that seemed like the best list to begin with, and generally represents all the magic that I use (I've never been big on the need to invent new magic items).  It's a long list, and I've been patiently loading it into my recent treasure generator.  I wrote about that last week.

So now the generator provides magic, too.

To make it work, I took advantage of some work I did years ago, breaking down the frequency of each magic item on the main table.  For example (for those who have a DM's Guide), on page 121 there is a table that indicates what kind of magic item: d100, 01-20 = potion, 21-35 = scroll, 36-40 = ring, etc.

Then, under the potion table, also a d100, 01-03 = animal control, 04-06 = clairaudience, 07-09 = clairvoyance and so on.  So the base chance of getting an animal control potion by random roll is 0.2 x 0.03, or 0.006 ... expressed as a percentage, 0.6%.

Moreover, something like a dragon control potion is further broken down on page 125, so that on a d20, 1-2 = white dragon, 3-4 = black dragon, 5-7 = green dragon ...

So that a potion of green dragon control would have a ratio of 0.2 (first table) x 0.01 (potion table) x 0.15 (dragon control table) = 0.06%.

I went through the whole list and broke it down this way, not in the last week, but over a couple of weeks about ten years ago.  And there it has sat, the original purpose for my doing so tossed out in expectation that someday I'd think of something better.  And here it is.

The complete list can be found on the wiki link above, on the 'Magic Groups' tab.

Some people who know excel very well may shudder at the manner I used to randomly roll up the magic, as I did it in 23 separate calculations of 22 items each.  There were two reasons for this: one, because you can only pile so many IF statements in a cell before the program starts to have conniption fits; and two, because this made it easy to ADD magic items to various tables at a later date.  The table is based on the idea that really big treasures will roll for much larger magic items, while smaller treasures will be limited to smaller magic items.  As each magic item appears, that reduces the potential size of future magic items, so that a really big result will cut the list short ... and if the items are all small, a big treasure will have a long list of them.

I think it's one of the most brilliant things I've done in a couple of years - its a completely different way to rank a table, based not just on the relative likelihood of the item, but also its actual power and finally within the total value of the whole treasure.

I think in the future it will put a little more magic in my world; I think much of the magic it puts in will be more likely mundane and minor magic, as opposed to the heavy stuff being in the only decent random magic table in AD&D ... and I think it will put more magic into the hands of my NPCs.  I like it only about a thousand times better than that shit Creating a Party table in the back of the DMG.

I hope the gentle reader checks it out.