Sunday, February 15, 2015

Roll All the Dice - Starting Equipment

Whereas; Purchasing equipment for those first level D&D characters is sometimes a tedious exercise in juggling weight and cost and when can we just get to the dungeon already,

Whereas; Most of a character's generation is already random,

Whereas; Choosing the right niche item "just in case we meet X" is a gamble anyway,Whereas; Roll-All-The-Dice Random Generators are a neat little gimmick,

So be it resolved that the world needs a one page chart that will let players roll all the dice to generate their starting character's equipment.

Roll All the Dice Equipment Chart [PDF]

One thing that might not be clear here.  Your starting cash is basically equal to the difference between the armor and weapons you roll and the armor and weapons you can use.  For example, a thief that rolls an 8 on the armor chart (plate mail and a shield) can only use a shield and leather (which is a roll of 4), so he gets the leather and shield and 4sp for his trouble.

Yes this means that fighting men start with no cash.  They are also the most likely to start with the most expensive gear - them's the breaks.

Yes this means that a fighter might start out the campaign with full plate armor, a shield...and a pitchfork.  There's a story there. A great single sentence story that tells you more about the character than you really need for day one adventuring.

Yes this means all characters start off darn near broke - guess they better not waste any time goofing about in town when there's a perfectly good dungeon nearby.  See also: fully armored knights fighting with a pitchfork.

2 comments:

  1. What is "wind and skin"? ("Wineskin" overenthusiastically autocorrected, maybe?)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Just so. That should be a wineskin full of wine. I'll try and correct that in the next few days.

    ReplyDelete

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