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I was prompted in a private message to share my item saving throw conversion for Shadowdark, so here it is. This should be reasonably familiar to those who've played AD&D, though there are fewer categories and everything uses the standard Shadowdark DCs. But for those new to the concept, how and when do you use this, and why?
So first the how. To determine if a given item was destroyed by a source of damage, roll a D20 and try to get equal to or over the listed DC when cross-referencing the item material and the type of damage being inflicted. Magic items gain a +2 to the roll and an additional +1 to the roll for every +1 modifier. The magic item gains advantage if the attack is "in its own mode" (to quote the LBBs), ie. a Necklace of Fireballs gains advantage to survive fire, a shield gains advantage against blows from weapons. If when cross referencing a material and damage source you see a "-" then don't bother rolling, it just survives. If the source of destruction is a disintegration effect, or something akin to the fires of Mount Doom then it's probably just gone, but if you roll for it then the DC should be 20.
So when and why would we use this chart? If you want to avoid magic items from being a player resource rather than a character resource then you could roll every time a character dies: roll a check for each item the party wishes to recover, with a DC determined by the source of damage of the final blow. If you want to add some more stakes to a lower-lethality game then you could instead roll checks for each item the character was using when they went down to 0HP, or even just roll a check for a single item at random. You could also use this chart as is, or as a guideline, when monsters directly target magic items in combat. However you use it the result will be some greater amount of attrition of magic items, as well as the possibility of the untimely loss of some mundane gear. It also just adds a little more grognardiness into Shadowdark which some people find fun.
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