The bandit's pockets contain a rusty pocket knife, two silver coins, and a small...

>The bandit's pockets contain a rusty pocket knife, two silver coins, and a small, perfectly round stone with an eyeball painted on it.
Junk loot is pretty fun.

The stone is just a marble. The pocket knife has a 5% chance to instantly kill a target.

Law of Conservation of Detail, pham. The more detail you describe something in, the more your players will think it's something plot-relevant.

If there's nothing special about it, I'd at least drop the "perfectly" part from its description.

The stone is a behelit. Have fun watching all your friends be eaten

Definitely; it's a lucky day for the adventures when they find pots or chests of gold

Enjoy your eclipse

There's something special about everything, if it's special to you.

Clearly, the bandit was horror-marked by the horror Aazhvat Many-Eyes and we are in deep shit.

wow haven't seen that shit in ages, loved that book, even if the game was pretty shit.

Pretty much why I entered the thread.

You got it wrong, user.

Dispersing your detail constantly is the way to cure your group from metagaming.

PERFECTLY round? Holy crap.

I.. I love you

I'm playing a Kobold in my current campaign. I have been awarded a shiny spoon, some raw bacon, shiny stones and a gold piece, It's been fantastic. The shiny stone I gave to a bartender who gave it to his wife and now he loves me.

>you fish around the dead man's pockets and withdraw...
>several red herrings

And then you trade the red herrings to a starving orphan in exchange for a magic dagger they found in the gutter.

>The bandit's pockets contain a rusty pocket knife, two silver coins, and a small, perfectly round stone with an eyeball painted on it.
Did we just steal Halvar´s treasure chest?

>The bandit's pockets contain some crap I think you wouldn't care about

>lel the junk loot was actually a artifact, too bad you threw it away or mishandled it LOL

You say this like I'm not setting it all up in a pile and casting Detect Magic on it regardless.

>lel the junk loot was actually a artifact
Why would you think that?

>Why would you think that?

It's a gotcha that comes around sometimes. Not very often, but once in a while someone will be like "yeah that totally plain piece of miscellaneous trash was actually useful, but you threw it out... I probably should have signposted that better".

>The rusty pocket knife is enchanted to forever be sharp and is treated as a +1 dagger.
>The two silver coins are enchanted to act as sending stones.
>The stone is really a +1 sling bullet with the returning property.

It's the ol' "Grail in the Garbage" cliche.

Would you prefer
A grail in the cabbage?
Or one that's been hidden
By a Charles Babbage?
Or grail made from skull,
Noble and savage?
Mayhaps, a grailmaiden
You'd like to ravage?

>Charles Babbage hiding the Grail
I knew that robotic fucker was up to something!

I actually very much like this. Why would a band of rag-tag bandits have a stash of wealth and powerful weapons in their dank ass cave just because i'm level 15?

>Mayhaps, a grailmaiden
>You'd like to ravage?

Maybe it's my pointless, crippling optimism but that sounds like a plot hook. Now you have to go Back! To that first level dungeon and get to re-experience it in a new context while sifting through piles of trash and refuse. Or follow a trail of monstrous merchants, peddlers, and fences to find out what happened to this piece of seemingly useless offal.

Alternatively, why are you attacking rag tag bandits when you're level 15? I know it doesn't always work like that, but ideally you are interacting with people/enemies/concepts of a commensurate power level to your own.

I was just trying to make a point user

The magic dagger is a key to the lowest level of a dungeon.

Well, the legend mentions the blood somewhere in it, no?

...

Community Service?

At the end of the lowest level of the dungeon, beyond the horde of ghasts and wights, set atop a carved diamond pedestal, is a single piece of chalk.

The chalk was created by a legendary archmage, and is the only thing capable of drawing the symbols needed to summon and bind an obscure breed of demon.

You give the chalk to 2 random young girls, dismayed they couldn't play hopscotch due to the kingdom's low chalk supply. In return they give a dirty coin one found in the street.

Unfortunately for all involved, the summoning symbols look a lot like a typical hopsctoch outline.

I often include interesting little items like that. It's fairly common for my players to find blood-stained hanks of yarn, bags of nail clippings, and occasionally bags of sweets on enemies they slay.