It's Gold *or* XP

"Gold for XP" is a concept from older editions of D&D. Essentially, characters get 1 XP per gold piece of treasure they acquire. 

The exact implementation of this concept varies between editions, retroclones, and individual DMs. Sometimes the characters get the XP as soon as they get the treasure. Sometimes they have to bring it back to town. Sometimes they have to spend it to get the XP. That might mean carousing or buying fancy clothes. Sometimes there's a training cost involved in leveling up.

My main issue with the gold for XP approach is that often, the character is getting both the gold and the XP. Even if the character is required to spend the gold, they're still gaining the XP from spending the gold in addition to whatever they spent the gold on, whether it be equipment, jewelry, NPC contacts, or whatever. The gold/XP is a double reward.

There's also simply isn't enough to meaningfully spend gold on in D&D - there's plate armor, hirelings, spell components, strongholds, and maybe magic items (although almost every version of D&D attempts to tell DMs that they should definitely not allow the purchase and sale of magic items, they never really provide any desirable alternative use for unwanted magic items or mountains of gold). 

In a gold for XP game, the DM has to juice the treasure being awarded to ensure the characters are advancing at an engaging rate. And in versions of the game like AD&D, when XP requirements were much higher, those numbers have to be juiced quite a bit. There isn't that much to spend money on, unless the players are really enthusiastic about playing house, throwing feasts, fielding armies, and the like. I'm personally into all of that stuff, but I've barely ever encountered other players who are.

In a gold for a XP game, I want the players to have something to spend their gold on, and I want that to be a choice. I don't want to handwave it and say "You throw it all away partying." But I also don't want them to have the jewels/stronghold/magic item and the XP.

It's gold or XP. That is, players must decide to convert gold to XP on a 1-to-1 basis. This way, player characters have something to spend their gold on (XP), and they have to choose whether they want the gold or the XP. They can't have both.

To use an example, an Old School Essentials fighter comes back from the dungeon with 2,000 gold's worth of treasure - exactly enough to reach 2nd-level. However, the fighter has to convert all of their gold into XP in order to do so. They might want to spend some of it on plate mail, or they may need to recruit new hirelings. If they spend any of the gold, they can't level up. They have to make a choice.

Every single use for treasure now comes with this same drawback and becomes a choice: Would you rather bribe that NPC, buy that magic item, and build that stronghold, or put all that gold towards your next level?

A character who spends their gold on material things will have fewer levels, but will be richer in equipment, land, and connections. A character who spends their gold on XP will be inherently more powerful but lacking in material wealth. A 9th-level fighter with a stronghold and an army is more capable of affecting change in the world than a 20th-level fighter with nothing.

Gold or XP also allows for differences between players and groups to emerge. The player who chooses to kit out their character will be slightly behind the ones who focus purely on progression. And, assuming equal division of treasure, any discrepancies are the result of how the individual players choose to spend their share of gold. 

A particularly cooperative group of players could even choose to contribute shares of gold towards ensuring a certain character levels up, if it's in the group's best interest. For example, if a 9th-level character dies and a new one joins the party at 1st-level, the surviving characters might pool their resources to bring the new character closer to their own level. Or, if the cleric is just shy of reaching the level when they can cast raise dead - which the other players agree it would be in the party's best interest to have access to - they can pool their money towards getting the cleric to that level.

I'm not particularly concerned with how to rationalize this in the fiction of the game or whether it "makes sense". It is purely a game abstraction. Sometimes I'm hyper fixated on the game's fiction and what mechanics narratively represent, and sometimes I don't care.

If there must be some logic to it, one could define it vaguely as "training expenses", although I think it's difficult to justify the fighter spending 120,000 gold in order to train and gain...2 hit points. There are certain things in D&D which simply have to be accepted as abstract game elements.

If I were to go the training route, I would definitely make that something the characters must seek out and devote time to in the fiction, however. For example, a wizard who wants to attain 2nd-level could train under the 4th-level hedge wizard in the starting village, but that same wizard would have to travel to the megacity's magical academy to attain 20th-level. This also requires having access to competent NPCs who are willing to tutor the character.

As for how long training takes, it could be one week per level to be gained, or maybe one week to gain a Tier 1 level and four weeks to gain a Tier 4 level. That could lead to some cool moments where after training for five months in their distant corners of the world, the Avengers-style party gets back together for One Last Job.

If I end up playing any edition of D&D this year, I'll definitely be taking this for a spin. I would most likely do this with Old School Essentials. The official adventures give out a lot of gold, but the rules don't really present much at all to spend it on. It could also be fun with 5e, particularly because I feel I've gotten the hang of pricing magic items for sale in that edition, which is where this type of choice would really shine, but I'm trying to play other games this year.

On Identification

In my most recent AD&D 2e play report, the player characters wanted to discover the properties of a strange alien helmet they found in an old tomb. The helmet had seemingly been used to torture someone so badly that they became a ghost, so of course none of the characters dared to try it on and find out for themselves what it was capable of. The players are not quite ready to embrace the old-school approach that is bribing or bullying their henchmen and hirelings into being magic item guinea pigs, either. So, they decided to find the most capable wizard in town and ask her to identify the item for them. 

The problem? According to Table 69 of the 2e DMG (page 154), getting an NPC to cast identify should cost at least 1,000 gold pieces per item or function of an item to be identified. The DMG states that "the costs of purchasing a spell are such that it is far better for someone in the party to learn the spell. In general, the mercenary use of NPC spellcasters should be discouraged whenever possible. The player character are supposed to face challenges on their own!"

Clearly, there is an intended playstyle justification for the high cost of getting an NPC to cast an identify spell. But there is also a mechanical justification - identifying magic items in 2e is hard! Below is the description of the identify spell in 2e, with important parts bolded (PHB, page 175):

Range: 0

Components: V, S, M

Duration: 1 rd./level

Casting Time: Special

Area of Effect: 1 item/level

Saving Throw: None

When an identify spell is cast, magical items subsequently touched by the wizard can be identified. The eight hours immediately preceding the casting of the spell must be spent purifying the items and removing influences that would corrupt and blur their magical auras. If this period is interrupted, it must be begun again. When the spell is cast, each item must be handled in turn by the wizard. Any consequences of this handling fall fully upon the wizard and may end the spell, although the wizard is allowed any applicable saving throw.

The chance of learning a piece of information about an item is equal to 10% per level of the caster, to a maximum of 90%, rolled by the DM. Any roll of 96-00 indicates a false reading (91-95 reveals nothing). Only one function of a multifunction item is discovered per handling (i.e., a 5th-level wizard could attempt to determine the nature of five different items, five different functions of a single item, or any combination of the two). If any attempt at reading fails, the caster cannot learn any more about that item until he advances a level. Note that some items, such as special magical tomes, cannot be identified with this spell.

The item never reveals its exact attack or damage bonuses, although the fact that it has few or many bonuses can be determined. If it has charges, only a general indication of the number of charges remaining is learned: powerful (81% - 100% of the total possible charges), strong (61% - 80%), moderate (41% - 60%), weak (6% - 40%), or faint (five charges or less). The faint result takes precedence, so a fully charged ring of three wishes always appears to be only faintly charged.

After casting the spell and determining what can be learned from it, the wizard loses 8 points of Constitution. He must rest for one hour to recover each point of Constitution. If the 8-point loss drops the spellcaster below a Constitution of 1, he falls unconscious. Consciousness is not regained until full Constitution is restored, which takes 24 hours (one point per three hours for an unconscious character).

The material components of this spell are a pearl (of at least 100 gp value) and an owl feather steeped in wine; the infusion must be drunk prior to spellcasting. If a luckstone is powdered and added to the infusion, the divination becomes much more potent: Exact bonuses or charges can be determined, and the functions of a multifunctional item can be learned from a single reading. At the DM's option, certain properties of an artifact or relic might also be learned.

The key takeaway is this: In 2e, the caster must spend 8 hours preparing to cast the spell, as well as at least 8 hours recovering from casting the spell, and because the caster must handle each item, they are vulnerable to any curses which might befall them from doing so. Additionally, unlike in D&D 5e, for example, material components of spells are consumed unless stated otherwise (PHB, page 114) - in 5e, they're not consumed unless stated otherwise (PHB, page 203) - meaning that every casting of identify in 2e consumes a 100 gp pearl.

In 2e, when the player characters pay 1,000 gp to an NPC wizard to cast identify, they are paying for an entire day of the wizard's time (8 hours of prep and at least 8 hours of recovery), as well as reimbursing the wizard for the lost pearl, the risk of curses, and the risk of falling into a brief coma. Suddenly, 1,000 gp sounds more fair.

Also worth noting is that identify in 2e does not automatically reveal information about the item (the spell always has a chance of failure). A higher-level wizard has a better chance of determining an item's properties, and a wizard with access to powdered luckstone can discern more specific item properties like exact bonuses and number of charges. If anything, identify should be more expensive depending on the level of the wizard whose services are employed, as well as any additional components they might be using.

This guy will risk getting cursed and falling into a coma for 1,000 gp.

Identification, Made Easy

Over the editions of D&D, magical item identification has gradually become faster, more reliable, and less costly. In 3e, identify takes 1 hour to cast and requires no recovery time, and it automatically reveals all properties of a single item, including the means of activating the item and how many charges it has (if any).

I don't remember much from my brief time with D&D 4e, but from Googling around it looks like this was the edition which introduced the concept of automatically identifying items on a short rest, which brings us to 5e (DMG, page 136):

"A character can focus on one magic item during a short rest, while being in physical contact with the item. At the end of the rest, the character learns the item's properties, as well as how to use them."

The identify spell still exists in 5e, for those players who don't want to have to take the time to identify items the more accessible way. 5e's identify takes 1 minute to cast if a spell slot is used, or 10 minutes when cast as a ritual (avoiding the use of a spell slot). The 100 gp pearl is no longer consumed. The spell allows the character to "learn [the item's] properties and how to use them, whether it requires attunement to use, and how many charges it has, if any" as well as "whether any spells are affecting the item and what they are" and "which spell created [the item]." (PHB, page 252)

So, at worst, the player character can spend an hour to identify an item without error (without even being a spellcaster or having any knowledge of magic). At best, they can spend a spell slot to identify it in 1 minute (if they know identify and/or have it prepared). In the middle, they can spend 10 minutes and no other resources to identify it (if they know identify and can cast ritual spells).

From 2e to 5e, we went from 16 total hours of time spent on a single casting of identify to as little as 1 minute, from a 100 gp pearl which is consumed with every casting to a 100 gp pearl that can be used indefinitely, and from an uncertain prospect of success and a one-property-at-a-time process of discovery to an automatically thorough and accurate reading of an item with a single casting.

Much like the intended playstyle of 2e (player characters should overcome challenges on their own) informs 2e's approach to identification, the intended playstyle of 5e informs 5e's approach to identification. In 5e, player characters aren't meant to struggle with mundane adventurer tasks like figuring out what their new toys are and how to use them. Player character abilities simply work, they work instantaneously, and they do not usually have drawbacks, penalties, or restrictions.

This is especially true of spells - players can only learn a handful of spells as their characters progress, so they're unlikely to choose those which they deem "underpowered" or unreliable Thus, all spells must attempt to be equally compelling in order to attract players to choose them. (Wizards can technically learn every spell available to their class, but even their potential, from the player's perspective, is throttled by the greedy DM's draconian vice grip on scrolls and spellbooks found in treasure hoards.)

The modernization of magic in D&D comes at the expense of the fiction which the game was originally intended to emulate - conjurers can pick and choose exactly what otherwordly creature they summon, and have perfect and minute control over such creatures, transmuters can spend lifetimes polymorphed into monsters with no risk of ever truly becoming monsters themselves, and rare, powerful, and alien artifacts readily and reliably yield all of their secrets and powers in as little as a minute (or at most, in an hour, to any non-magic-using schmuck who handles them and thinks really hard about it).

This guy doesn't even know magic, but even he can force the cube to yield all of its most occult secrets during his lunch break!

Identification, Made Boring

The consequence of the modernization of magic item identification is that there's simply no reason for player characters to experiment with magic items ever again. Why would they, when, in a worst case scenario, they can simply sit for an hour and think really hard about the item to unerringly learn all of its properties?

The 5e DMG (page 136) does shoutout experimentation as a means of identification, for some reason: "Wearing or experimenting with an item can also offer hints about its properties. For example, if a character puts on a ring of jumping, you could say, "Your steps feel strangely springy." Perhaps the character then jumps up and down to see what happens. You then say the character jumps unexpectedly high."

Why special mention is given to experimentation when the mechanics almost completely eliminate the need for it is anyone's guess. In some scenarios, the party may have no spellcasters capable of casting identify, and may not have time to stop for an hour, or may have need of the item urgently, but this has never happened in one of my games. It's probably because one of my players almost always plays a wizard.

The DMG also has a variant rule which eliminates the ability to identify magic items on a short rest: "If you prefer magic items to have a greater mystique, consider removing the ability to identify the properties of a magic item during a short rest, and require the identify spell, experimentation, or both to reveal what a magic item does." 

Of course, there's no example given as to what a combination of identify and experimentation looks like, which would be helpful, given that identify, as written, is 100% accurate 100% of the time - so in what scenario would experimentation also be needed? Even in a campaign where short rest identification is eliminated, the identify spell is still foolproof. 

If the player characters can't cast identify themselves, they can probably find an NPC to do it for them, and certain official Wizards of the Coast products list the price of magic item identification being as cheap as 20 gp per item, which is trivially cheap even at 1st-level. There is still no incentive to experiment.

Identification, Made Interesting

Ultimately, I was inspired to write this post by two things - my above reading of the AD&D 2e description of identify, and Prismatic Wasteland's post on Potion Clues. 

Warren's post specifically made me think about how in 5e, the DMG provides a brief description of what every potion looks like. A potion of healing is red and glimmers when agitated. A potion of fire breath is flickering orange, and smoke fills the top of the container and wafts out whenever its opened. A potion of animal friendship is a muddy liquid containing a fish scale, a hummingbird tongue, a cat's claw, and a squirrel's hair. 

Details like this invite players to speculate as to a potion's properties, take notes on potions they've encountered in the past, and perhaps most importantly, experiment. The characters have had potions of healing before, so they are able to recognize the glimmering red liquid. They are able to intuit from the appearance of a potion of fire breath that the potion has something to do with fire. In en encounter with a wild animal, they might risk quaffing a potion of animal friendship, having deduced that it has at least something to do with animals, and might give them an advantage. 

Hilariously, the DMG specifically says "Potions are an exception [to the usual identification rules]; a little taste is enough to tell the taster what the potion does." On the one hand, we have an interesting way for player characters to deduce a potion's properties just by looking at them. On the other hand, the DMG says, "Nevermind all that - just take a little sip, which has no consequences whatsoever, and all will be revealed!"

Warren writes that making the effects of a potion less immediately transparent "rewards characters who can identify potions, encourages seeking out sages who identify them, and creates interesting decision points when they have unidentified potions in their bags but their backs are up against the wall." I would go a step farther and apply this approach to all magic items.

In fact, the 5e DMG even suggests that all magic items should be visually distinct (page 136): "The command word to activate a ring might be etched in tiny letters inside it, or a feathered design might suggest that it's a ring of feather falling."

A few pages later, the 5e DMG has a great section on "Special Features" of magic items (page 141). That section includes tables to determine who or what created the item or was intended to use it, details from the item's history, and minor properties and quirks of the item. 

There's probably enough material here for a separate post which goes into more detail on making magic items themselves interesting, so that the process of learning their properties is in turn interesting. Discovering that a war hammer is a +1 war hammer and only a +1 war hammer is never going to be interesting no matter how the DM adjudicates it. So, a DM should never simply give the players a +1 war hammer - they can buy that in a shop, if all they want is a +1 bonus (magic item shops are already almost completely devoid of wonder, so the items to be found there might as well be accordingly wonder-less). 

Instead, that magic war hammer the player characters find by chance in an actual dungeon on an actual adventure is the Black Earth Bludgeon, crafted of solid stone and bejeweled with polished rock. It was made by cultists of Ogrémoch to slay beings of elemental air and the worshippers of Yan-C-Bin. It grants the wielder uncanny senses when underground, but makes them slothful and lethargic on the surface world, beneath the open sky.

So, how do the player characters learn all of this about the seemingly humble +1 war hammer? The purpose of my approach, which I'll detail below, is for a magic item's properties to be communicated entirely within the fiction of the game, and to encourage experimentation by the player characters as the single best way to truly discern an item's various properties.

Identification, Made Complex

First, we have to entirely eliminate identification via a short rest. It's both easy and reliable, which makes it boring. Then, we have to make identification via identify less informative. I don't want identify to reveal an item's properties at all - only fictional information about the item's identity. Casting identify should only reveal the +1 war hammer's name, origin, and purpose.

At the DM's option, identify could also be made more costly, and less reliable. Let's say that each casting of identify requires an Intelligence (Arcana) check to properly identify the item, and that the DC is determined by the item's rarity, like so:

Item Rarity    Intelligence (Arcana) check DC
Common         10
Uncommon     15
Rare                20
Very Rare        25
Legendary       30
Artifact            35

Now, a 1st-level wizard, assuming that they have proficiency with Arcana and start the game with an Intelligence of 16 (+3) - although I don't mind player characters starting with higher ability scores - can somewhat reliably identify common and uncommon items, and can less easily identify rare and very rare items. By 13th-level, the same wizard probably has +10 to their Arcana skill, meaning they can reliably identify rare items, and can occasionally identify even legendary items. Only a character with expertise in Arcana can ever properly identify an artifact.

On a failed check, the caster has failed to magically divine the item's identity from the depths of time. On a successful check, the caster learns that the +1 war hammer is the Black Earth Bludgeon, crafted by cultists of Ogrémoch to slay beings of elemental air and the worshippers of Yan-C-Bin. There's still plenty to learn about this item, but the player characters have a place to start.

What's to stop a caster from simply attempting to identify an item over and over again until they succeed? Make the 100 gp pearl component consumable when used to attempt to identify a magic item. Now, every attempt comes with a cost.

Players and their characters can still intuit things about an item based on its appearance, as I described with regard to potions. In the case of the Black Earth Bludgeon, the players, drawing on their knowledge of the genre, might conclude that the bejeweled stone hammer was crafted either by dwarves or elementals. They might seek out these creatures, or NPCs who are knowledgeable about these creatures, to attempt to learn more about the item.

If the players don't intuit information themselves, they might lean on their characters' skills to do so. A character proficient in History, Religion, or jeweler's or mason's tools might recall reading about the item in An Encyclopedia of Elemental Evil, recognize certain symbols of the Black Earth carved into the hammer's head or haft, or recognize the magical stonecutting employed by Black Earth artisan-priests. 

Loosely interpreting a rule from Xanathar's Guide to Everything (page 78) - as I've done in the past - tool proficiencies can be combined with skill proficiencies to gain advantage on ability checks. In my case, I allow two proficiencies of any type to combine in this way, not just one tool proficiency and one skill proficiency - so a character with any combination of History, Religion, and jeweler's and mason's tools would have an increased chance of recognizing the origin of the Black Earth Bludgeon. I would use the same DC-by-rarity guidelines I outlined above for identify.

This eliminates the need for identify to some extent, but this is a good thing, as it rewards players for being able to draw their own conclusions, or for making characters with niche knowledge and skills. In a scenario where none of the players or characters have any idea what the nature of an item might be, identify still exists, but it's more costly, in addition to being somewhat unreliable.

So, either through player skill, character skill, leveraging knowledgeable NPCs, or falling back on the identify spell, the players and their characters now know a bit more about the item. How do they figure out what it actually does?

Identification, Made Fun

They experiment! 

The Black Earth Bludgeon was crafted by cultists of Ogremoch to slay beings of elemental air and the worshippers of Yan-C-Bin, so the player characters might try using it to fight air elementals, Howling Hatred cultists, and flying creatures. Against these foes, the hammer feels twice as heavy when delivering blows, but not any more difficult for the wielder to swing. These enemies crumble against the hammer's awesome might. Perhaps, against these enemies, it grants additional bonuses to attack and damage rolls, or advantage on attacks. It might cause flying enemies to fall to the ground immediately, turn enemy cultists to stone, or banish air elementals back to their home plane.

The Black Earth Bludgeon is clearly attuned with the earth itself, so the player characters might try bringing it underground. Suddenly, the wielder has an intuitive sense of how deep they are beneath the surface, and which direction is north. Secret doors and maybe even dungeon walls crumble beneath the hammer's blows. Perhaps the hammer's head pulls in the direction of precious stones.

When they return to the surface, the wielder notices that the hammer feels twice as heavy. Their every step is a burden. The endless, wide open sky feels like it's crashing down around them. They're becoming agoraphobic.

In this way, the magic item becomes another character in the game. The player characters have to spend time with the item, devote resources to uncovering its secrets, and most importantly, play with it. 

For this to be truly interesting and fun, the magic item should likewise be interesting and fun. It should have a unique appearance from which players can draw conclusions, an origin and history which the player characters and NPCs might be aware of, and multiple features, including both benefits and drawbacks, which are discovered only through continual experimentation in a variety of scenarios. Player characters cannot simply find an item, sit down with it during a coffee break, and immediately decide if they want to use it or throw it in a bag of holding to sell at the local Magic Mart.

This playstyle isn't for everyone. To some extent, it's working directly against the intended playstyle of modern D&D, which might be too much for some DMs and players. There's presumably a reason why WotC designed this element of the game this way. I'd guess that it's probably because players complained about identification being too onerous in the past. WotC loves to design by committee, rather than by vision.

I'm sure there are plenty of players who simply want to hit the identify button and be done with it, and get to using their new toy, but sometimes it's more fun to start playing with the toy without knowing what it might do.

On Magic Items and Treasure Hoards

I find the official method for determining what magic items are included in a treasure hoard in 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons to be pretty unsatisfying. Basically, the Dungeon Master rolls d100 to determine the type of treasure hoard, depending on the "Tier" of the characters - Tier 1 is levels 1-4, Tier 2 is levels 5-10, Tier 3 is levels 11-16, and Tier 4 is level 17 and up (Dungeon Master's Guide, page 133). 

If there are magic items present, there will be one or 1dX magic items from Magic Item Table Y. My issue with this is that the magic item tables in question (page 144) are organized mostly by rarity (page 135) and by whether the items are "Minor" or "Major" items (I can't seem to find where the distinction is laid out, but generally speaking, "Minor" items are either consumables like potions and scrolls or more permanent items which have less significant (i.e. non-combat) utility effects - lots of "meme" items like the bag of holding, alchemy jug, immovable rod, and the like - whereas "Major" items tend to be weapons and armor, rods, staves, wands, and the like - many of which have some impact on the game's math or grant a combat ability).

So what's the issue with this method of organizing the tables? Well, I didn't really realize there was a problem until around 14th-level of my most recent campaign, where one dungeon's treasure hoard contained a +2 suit of armor, an Oathbow, and a staff of power. This in and of itself is not a problem, as these are perfectly acceptable treasures for a 14th-level party to acquire (bafflingly, the party sold the armor, gave the bow to an nonplayer character follower - who became a DPS juggernaut as a result - and the character who took the staff retired from the campaign immediately afterward, but that's besides the point). 

The issue became apparent when I prepped the next dungeon, which contained nothing but potions and scrolls. The first dungeon had a handful of great, iconic, useful items because when I prepped it I happened to roll the treasure type which directed me to roll on the magic item table consisting only of great, iconic, useful items. The second dungeon had a handful of consumables which the party promptly forgot about because when I prepped it I happened to roll the treasure type which directed me to roll on the magic item table consisting only of easily forgotten consumables (there's something to be said of players' tendency to forget about consumables and/or their hesitance to use them, but again, besides the point).

Another time, I might detail my method for determining the contents of treasure hoards, which includes magic items (the gist of it is that I use 5e's treasure tables in combination with Courtney Campbell of the Hack & Slash blog's excellent treasure tables in the Hack & Slash Blog Compendium II). For now, let's assume the DM is preparing a treasure hoard containing X magic items. If the DM is running 5e, their roll on the Treasure Hoard table tells them how many items are present and what magic item table to roll on, so they end up with a handful of the same type of item.

Contrast this with the original 1974 edition of  D&D - the monster encountered determines the "type" of treasure found (Book II: Monsters and Treasure, pages 3-4), and the type determines the chance for magic items (page 22), some of which are specific (i.e. "Weapon, Armor, or misc. weapon", "1 Potion", "1 Scroll", etc.), while others are general ("any 3"). In the case of the latter, the DM then refers to the following table (page 23):

Each of the magic item types then have their own unique tables on the following pages.

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (both 1st edition and 2nd edition) handle it similarly - each monster has a "type" of treasure in its lair, the type refers to a table, and the roll on the table determines if and how many magic items are present. A subsequent table is used to determine the type of these magic items:

AD&D 1e DMG, page 121

AD&D 2e DMG, page 183

The result of this system is not only a greater variety of types magic items in a given treasure hoard, but because the subsequent tables for each type of magic item aren't organized with the characters' levels in mind, it also allows the chance for low-level characters to stumble across something truly special, game-changing, and character-defining.

But, I understand why "new school" DMs might be hesitant to entirely dissociate character level from the power level of magic items they might find the way earlier editions of D&D did. Which is why I'm going to suggest an entirely different magic item table from another 5e book.

Fizban's Treasury of Dragons, published in 2021, is the rare post-Tasha's Cauldron of Everything (published in 2020) Wizards of the Coast book that I actually recommend (TCE is where WotC truly lost me with lazy, sloppy products of dubious worth to DMs - not to say there were not similar products before that - but perhaps that's a topic for a later date). FTD is a good book and an obvious resource for any DM who wants to include dragons in their game with "dragons" in the title. But it also contains a hidden gem - a second, more secret, better magic item table than that found in the DMG.

The table is in Chapter 4: Lairs and Hoards, on page 72. Like other treasure tables, it uses a d100 roll. The DM is meant to roll on the table corresponding to the dragon's age category (wyrmling, young, adult, or ancient). This is similar to how the tables in the DMG are broken up by tier, or character level.

Assuming the DM knows how many magic items are present (FTD similarly suggests a number of magic items in a given dragon's hoard, again determined by the dragon's age category, but the DM might prefer to use the DMG's tables as to number of items, or some other method of determination like I do with Courtney Campbell's), the DM can roll d100 however many times on the appropriate column of the table in FTD (treating wyrmling as Tier 1, young as Tier 2, adult as Tier 3, and so on). The DM can decide if the column they're rolling on is determined by character level or by the "tier" of the adventure site where the treasure is found (if the DM is running a sandbox, for example, where characters can presumably attempt to go anywhere and do anything, Tier 1 characters might end up trying their luck in a Tier 2 adventure site, and end up with Tier 2 treasures as a result).

This method produces a spread of magic items which is more diverse in terms of rarity and distribution of minor and major items. A Tier 1 party (or a party adventuring at a Tier 1 location) is still most likely to find common minor items, but there may be rarer items and major items mixed in as well. Another option, which I haven't playtested, is to treat a roll of 100 (or the DM's preferred number) as a reroll on the next highest column of the table, so that even greater items occasionally appear as well.

With both this system and that laid out in the DMG, it's still impossible to randomly find an artifact-level magic item. The DMG states that "artifacts only appear when [the DM] wants them to", hence why they're not included on random tables. Maybe this is good advice and what the DM wants, or maybe it isn't. I know from my own prep style that I'll probably never remember to deliberately place artifacts in my game. If the DM wants a chance for artifacts to appear randomly, they might treat a roll of 100 on any column of FTD's table as an artifact. They may want to follow up a roll of 100 with a subsequent d100 roll to confirm. Or, a roll of 100 might only result in an artifact when it's rolled on the highest (ancient/Tier 4) column of the table.

I would go so far as to also use the tables from past editions (2e is mine of choice) to determine the type of each magic item (i.e. potions and oils, scrolls, rings, etc.) so that these are also diverse - however, some knowledge of what constitutes a minor or major item in 5e would be required. For example, most or all consumables like ammunition, potions, and scrolls are considered minor items, and there are only a handful of minor armors, rings, rods, shields, staves, and wands. "Wondrous Items" (formerly known as "Miscellaneous Magic") can be either minor or major depending on what they do.

A secondary benefit of this system is that, while the DMG's magic item tables (understandably) include only those magic items published in the DMG, this method allows the DM to include magic items from those other sources published since the DMG's release. Using D&D Beyond (or some other filterable or searchable database of 5e resources, for those of us who don't give money to WotC anymore 😉 ), the DM can filter or search for minor or major items of the appropriate rarity and type to choose from. Frustratingly, at some point WotC stopped identifying items as minor or major (the aforementioned table from FTD uses the terms, but the items in the book itself are identified as neither - like I said, lazy, sloppy, of dubious use, etc.), so the DM will have to use some judgment as to what constitutes a minor or major item in some cases.

And that's it! Hopefully this post communicated what I intended, which is that the treasure and magic item tables in the DMG provide same-y, unsatisfying results (for me - maybe they're great for every other DM). I enjoy a bit more variety in the type, rarity, and power level of magic items my players find, and I don't mind doing a bit of extra work to get the results I enjoy seeing in prep. There are undoubtedly a lot of DMs who simply include the items they want to be in their games, whether because they're cool, important to the setting or "story", or particularly suited to a specific player character, and those DMs probably don't notice these issues at all. My prep style is randomization plus imagination, and I'm always looking for ways to make my randomization methods yield results that are satisfying and inspiring.

On Experience

Rewarding experience points is out of fashion among modern Dungeons & Dragons players, and the designers of D&D seem to recognize this. Although the 5th edition Dungeon Master's Guide, published in 2014, lists experience points as the default mode of advancement ("most often the reward for completing combat encounters", page 260), a quick perusal of any recent Wizards of the Coast adventure module or discussion among 5e Dungeon Masters will quickly reveal that the prevailing form of advancement is what people now call "Milestone Advancement".

What they mean is "Level Advancement Without XP" (page 261), specifically "Story-Based Advancement", but sometimes "Session-Based Advancement", and other times "player characters level up when the DM decides they do", or "Fiat-Based Advancement". Referring to all of the above interchangeably as "Milestone Advancement" seems to have won the hearts and minds of 5e players, regardless of how the DMG itself defines "Milestone". 

It's gotten to the point that I wonder if XP will even be in not-OneD&D (NOD&D)'s forthcoming DMG.

People seem to prefer "Milestone Advancement" for a variety of reasons. Story-Based Advancement ties character advancement directly to the advancement of the "story", signaling to the players that they're making progress through the pre-determined plot (as defined by the DM or adventure). Session-Based Advancement makes each session count, even if nothing of note is accomplished. Fiat-Based Advancement grants DMs the authoritarian power to arbitrarily decide whenever the players advance, usually because they or the players are bored at the current level and the DM is ready to design/the players are ready to defeat the next tier of challenges. 

XP tracking is viewed as another onerous burden upon the player characters, like tracking encumbrance, torches, or food and water. Nobody likes doing math and bookkeeping (i.e. using the calculator on one's phone to add one number to another number and write it down), and it's a real pain to erase one number and then write down another one (all that erasing puts an unseemly amount of wear and tear on the pristine character sheet - despite the fact that a large contingent of players are using some form of virtual tabletop or digital character sheet at this point).

But I like XP. I like it for a lot of the reasons that people like other methods of advancement. Tying XP gain to quest goals gives players the same feeling of progress as Story-Based Advancement and incentivizes attendance the same way Session-Based Advancement does (if XP is only granted to characters whose players show up, which I don't always do, but it is useful for open table games). Unfortunately, XP does take away some measure of the DM's draconian prerogative to advance the characters anytime they feel like it, assuming the DM isn't the type to handout fistfuls of miscellaneous XP on a whim.

The main reason I use XP is because it smooths out level advancement. Sure, with the other forms of advancement you can work out a structure so that the number of "pips" needed to level up increases alongside the PCs' level (such that "Tier 1" characters require a single bump per level, "Tier 2" characters require two, "Tier 3" characters require 3, etc., or any number of more complex structures). Most WotC adventures do this, and I have no doubt that each DM who doesn't use XP has their own structure they prefer, but it doesn't hit the same way the XP curve does.

That XP curve, by the way, does have some wonkiness in 5e. For example, it takes 21,000 XP to go from 10th- to 11th-level, but only 15,000 to go from 11th to 12th. After that, it takes 20,000 to advance to 13th and 20,000 again to advance to 14th. It takes 30,000 XP each to advance to 16th, 17th, and 18th (Player's Handbook, page 15). In short, the curve has a very random dip right in the middle and then stops being a curve. I know fellow DMs who have taken it upon themselves to "fix" the curve, but it's never bothered me enough to implement it in my games. 

Treasure is Its Own Reward

I would be remiss not to mention XP-for-gold, the old-school method of advancement which has been discussed by OSR bloggers for a long time. The idea is that the players will seek out whatever gets them XP. In old-school games, the players will prioritize obtaining gold, usually by pulling it out of a dungeon. Exploring the dungeon to discover its hidden wealth becomes the primary goal of the players. Their method of dealing with the dungeon's challenges - be they monsters, traps, tricks, or the layout of the dungeon itself - is entirely up to the players, so long as they get the treasure. If they can do it in such a way as to minimize the risk to their characters, all the better.

Similarly, Story-Based Advancement incentivizes the advancement of the "story", Session-Based Advancement incentivizes attendance, and Fiat-Based Advancement incentivizes...appeasing the DM, I guess.

Were I to run OD&D or AD&D, I'd certainly use XP-for-gold. There isn't much guidance for awarding XP for anything else, aside from relatively small amounts gained from fighting monsters. I've considered using XP-for-gold in 5e, but it doesn't quite work. 

WotC adventures are notoriously light on treasure (not that I run their adventures), and 5e's treasure hoard values only increase by "tiers", i.e., all treasure hoards from levels 1 to 4 are approximately equal in value, then bump up at 5th-level, then again at 11th and 17th. This means that characters in 5e would advance quickly at the beginning of each tier of play, then slow down at the end of each tier until they bump up to the next one. Compare this to older editions, where dungeon level corresponds (more) directly to character level and includes treasure hoards appropriate to that level:

OD&D Book III: The Underworld and Wilderness Adventures, page 7

I don't like XP-for-gold in 5e for another reason: treasure it its own reward. Gold and magic items are an incentive in addition to XP. Gold increases player character power by granting them access to better equipment, strongholds, social influence, and the like. Magic items increase PC power by granting conditional abilities and other benefits in addition to those they gain by advancing in level. XP is also being granted for navigating the monsters, traps, tricks, and dungeon and wilderness environments which stand in the way of the PCs and treasure, so it doesn't make sense to me to award XP for both overcoming those challenges as well as obtaining the treasure itself.

Murderhobo-Based Advancement

A common refrain when criticizing XP in 5e is that it's only earned through combat, which incentivizes the players to kill every creature they come upon, even if the creature is friendly or non-threatening! The players could go on a rampage in every settlement, murdering all of the villagers to accumulate that sweet 10 XP from all those helpless CR 0 Commoner stat blocks. After all, they don't get XP unless they fight, and surely they would get XP for killing all those civilians, right?

I attribute this way of thinking to that terrible aforementioned quote from the DMG, "Experience points (XP) fuel level advancement for player characters and are most often the reward for completing combat encounters." Surely this quote is actually saying that XP is only ever the reward for completing combat encounters, right?

The DMG actually does callout awarding XP for "noncombat challenges", just somewhat unhelpfully: 

"You decide whether to award experience to characters for overcoming challenges outside combat. If the adventurers complete a tense negotiation with a baron, forge a trade agreement with a clan of surly dwarves, or successfully navigate the Chasm of Doom, you might decide that they deserve an XP reward.

As a starting point, use the rules for building combat encounters in chapter 3 to gauge the difficulty of the challenge. Then award the characters XP as if it had been a combat encounter of the same difficulty, but only if the encounter involved a meaningful risk of failure."

Okay, sounds good. Wait, why are we using the rules for building combat encounters to gauge the difficulty of a noncombat challenge? How do I do that? Does the Chasm of Doom have a stat block?

Actual Milestones

The solution for me was when I discovered what "Milestone" actually means, according to the 5e DMG:

"You can also award XP when characters complete significant milestones. When preparing your adventure, designate certain events or challenges as milestones, as with the following examples:

• Accomplishing one in a series of goals necessary to complete the adventure.
• Discovering a hidden location or piece of information relevant to the adventure.
• Reaching an important destination.

When awarding XP, treat a major milestone as a hard encounter and a minor milestone as an easy encounter."

Forget that first part. I only care about the last sentence. How much XP is a hard encounter worth? What about an easy encounter? What about everything else?

XP-for-Challenges

This is one of my favorite tables in the 5e DMG (page 82), and it's the only thing I reference when determining how much XP the player characters have earned. Forget monster stat blocks. You can forget "Milestones" as defined by the DMG as well. You can forget them as defined by everyone else, too. This is all a 5e DM needs. 

Player characters don't earn XP by defeating monsters, or advancing the story, or because their players showed up or made the DM happy. They earn XP by overcoming challenges. That might mean fighting monsters or using some other means to bypass them, neutralizing traps, puzzling out tricks, traveling to a location for the first time, discovering a secret, completing a quest (or advancing the "story"), or any number of things. If the PCs did something non-trivial, they probably get XP for it.

How much XP do they get? The table above breaks it down. Each PC gets XP according to their level and the difficulty of the challenge overcome.

How difficult is the challenge? The DMG defines each level in combat terms:

Easy. An easy encounter doesn't tax the characters' resources or put them in serious peril. They might lose a few hit points, but victory is pretty much guaranteed.

Medium. A medium encounter usually has one or two scary moments for the players, but the characters should emerge victorious with no casualties. One or more of them might need to use healing resources.

Hard. A hard encounter could go badly for the adventurers. Weaker characters might get taken out of the fight, and there's a slim chance that one or more characters might die.

Deadly. A deadly encounter could be lethal for one or more player characters. Survival often requires good tactics and quick thinking, and the party risks defeat.

This can be applied to combat encounters as written. This method has the added benefit of circumventing 5e's wonky Challenge Ratings for monsters. The weirdness of the CR system in 5e is well documented. The shadow (Monster Manual, page 269) is far deadlier than its CR 1/2 indicates. An elemental myrmidon (Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, page 202-203) is considerably less dangerous than a regular elemental (MM, page 124-125), but the myrmidon's CR is two points higher. Plenty of times in my games I've intended for an encounter to be a certain difficulty level, only for the players to trounce it resoundingly or struggle more than I expected. 

Using this method, the PCs earn experience not based on the CR of the monsters they encountered, but on the actual difficulty of the fight (or other method by which the monster was avoided, neutralized, or overcome). If the big bad boss fight was resolved unexpectedly easily, such as by a wish neutralizing the enemy in the first round, then that's an easy encounter regardless of the enemy's CR. If the characters could easily get past the guards by killing them, but instead engage in a lengthy and clever social interaction or subterfuge, they get XP based on how difficult it was to accomplish that, not based on the guards' CR.

Similarly, for traps and tricks, the PCs earn experience based on the difficulty of overcoming the trap. If the trap was merely a setback and the PCs lost few hit points, they earn experience as for an easy encounter. If they spent some resources to overcome it (including healing resources), it counts as medium. A trap that nearly kills a PC is hard, and a trap that does kill a PC is deadly.

For other types of encounters, the DM needs to use their judgment. A ruin which is visible from the road just outside town is easy to find (but might have a secret entrance which is hard to find), whereas navigating trackless jungle or high altitude mountain peaks to find a different ruin might be hard or even deadly. Finding a single clue in an investigation might be easy, but putting the clues together and conclusively identifying and apprehending the culprit might be worth deadly XP. A quest which is resolved in a portion of a session is easy, but a big adventure which takes months of game time is worth deadly XP at its conclusion.

Sometimes, the players won't accomplish anything in a session. This has happened in my games when the players take a session between adventures to decide what they want to do next, or spend that time carousing or shopping in the city. I like for my players to feel that every session is "worth it", even if nothing of major consequence was achieved - after all, they took time out of their day to show up, and often commit to do so every week, sometimes for years at a time, regardless of what's on the agenda for that week's session. In these cases, I usually give each PC XP equal to an easy encounter, as a sort of consolation prize for showing up, sometimes sitting through bookkeeping or roleplaying that doesn't concern their character at all.

The system is flexible, and that's why I like it!