Once you’ve decided “I want to give them a scroll now” or “I think it’s time they deserve to get a spell staff”, how do you go about choosing which spells those are?
I assume different people have different ideas here, there isn’t one right answer. This is meant to be an open-ended discussion prompt.
I like to use the weird spells that players rarely take due to being less than optimal. That way they still get to use them situationally, without having to “waste” a slot.
The exception is when there’s a particular story reason for a certain type of item to crop up; for instance, a group of assassins hunting a powerful mage might have a lot of dispel and antimagic type things.
I love to do spell scrolls in a three different ways that sometimes overlap. One is spells that fill a gap in their list which is usually very similar to spells that they ask for. I encourage asking for things so I can know but don’t give them everything. This is similar to spells that would be useful for the current adventure or the next one.
The other are weird or very situationally useful spells because I want to see them in play. These are just things that no one would ever pick because they are situational. These are just fun to have especially if they get them from NPCs or dead enemies. These I give out more freely
The last are thematically appropriate spells. Doing a cold themed dungeon get ready for lots of cold damage spells or other similar spells. These are kind of fun because you can get some odd balls in there as well.
I guess I love weird spells.
I imported the JSON files from the Foundry VTT module into a Pandas dataframe in Python and randomly select from there, using the party’s casting rank +1 as an upper limit.
I’ve got two methods for scrolls.
The first is “Don’t bother with anything they are capable of casting by themselves.” As in, I’ll only drop scrolls of a higher rank than their top slots. The flashier the spell, the better.
The second is “The player is actively seeking this out in-character,” in which case I’ll just drop a cache of 4-8 of the spell at the end of a mini-quest performed alongside whatever the current job is.
I’ve got one method for wands.
Is the spell something with a persistent effect? Then bam. There you go. I’ll never drop a wand that loses its utility as soon as you spend the actions, or worse, as you level up. Spells like fireball are a no-go, but spells like Shape Stone are great.
And as for staves, I’ve got two again.
One, does the staff have a good evergreen first level spell (or more) like Illusory Object or Heal? Then it’s going into the loot piles.
And two, is there a thematic link I can make to where the staff is found? That’s a going on the baddies’ fireplace mantle to sell their aesthetic.
