How do you pick spells to give players on scrolls, wands etc.?
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 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 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.
If I'm doing it out of the kindness of my heart (aka the players are taking way too long to solve what should be a relatively easy problem and I'm getting impatient), I'll give them exactly what they need to get through the problem.
I usually would have things pre-placed in advance. Especially if they are going to be needed for something and there's a chance a party member wouldn't have the skill/spell to do it. But that doesn't always mean the players will find it or even look for it.
If it's just random loot time, I use the tables and roll dice for it.
It’s something I’m thinking about right now because I’m in the middle of thinking about giving out one as I write this.
The factors I’m thinking about are things like: finding a good spell that helps promote teamwork, because I think the strength of teamwork is something I really value about Pathfinder but find my players don’t go for it as much as I’d like. So the item should hopefully nudge them a little in the right direction. I’m also thinking about things that might be thematically appropriate for where they’re getting the scroll from. And finally, I also want something that’s going to feel fun and powerful in our campaign, without completely trivialising an encounter that’s meant to be difficult.
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.