Head of Vecna: Would You Do It?


Gamer Life General Discussion


This is a bit of a spinoff from the GM Kill Rate thread.

Would you do something like the Head of Vecna? Or any similar sort of devious trap to test for foolhardy PCs?


Context.


No, because while it may be funny in concept, I doubt my players would take it well.


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Nope, because I don't have players that gullible.

Grand Lodge

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Possibly, because I don't have players that gullible.


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No, not my style.

spoiler:
However once I had the PCs come across a spyhole in a wall in a catacombs. There was a softly spoken voice that kept saying three....three...three...

When one of the PCs took a look in the spy hole they were poked in the eye. After which the softly spoken voice started saying four.....four.....four


Our players have joked around about such things but never....losing their heads over it :)


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I might have it in the game as a rumor, but I have not had anyone(player or PC) gullible enough to fall for it.


My players have already heard of the Head, so it wouldn't work. I know a couple of people who might be gullible enough, but I don't think they've heard of the Hand or Eye, so they wouldn't know what to do.
In general, this kind of trap...most of the people I know would have big flashing warning signs in their heads if I tried it.


Since cutting off the head prevents Raise Dead, I would only...

..nah, scratch that. I'd definitely pull it. And I think I know exactly which player would be tempted despite the warnings of everyone else.


With my old gaming group sure but we've all gone our separate ways. The folks I play with now are all very new to me, which is to say I don't know what's going to cheese them off, so no.


I think it might be amusing if the Head actually worked but basically just resulted in Vecna coming back to life using the PC's body. In another recent thread I had the idea that somebody might hold a sweepstakes where the prize was the Sword of Kas. I guess some other Evil artifact might work just as well.

In one current campaign the DM keeps presenting the PCs with Evil artifacts and relics, some of which the party has to carry around to keep Evil NPCs from getting them. Some of the items can talk or communicate by telepathy and won't stop telling us about how they could help us. There's a magic demon skull which forces the Barbarian to make Will saves sometimes, and my Viking is wearing a sentient daemon skull as a helmet.

I know that's a bad idea, but we had to take the item with us as part of the quest though, and wearing it just seemed like a cool idea at the time. The funny thing is that the PC's last name of Askettil translates roughly to "God Helmet" whereas at this point little could be further from the truth...


Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Starfinder Charter Superscriber

LOL, my all time favorite-ist magic item!!!!
I would love to see it pop up in our game!
We definitely would do "something" with it!!!

Sovereign Court

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I think the critical point that the entire thread is ignoring is that the GM didn't inflict the Head of Vecna on his players.

He only allowed the players to inflict it on each other. He didn't even come up with it.

Hell yes I'd allow that, provided I was allowing PvP in the first place.


Devilkiller wrote:

I think it might be amusing if the Head actually worked but basically just resulted in Vecna coming back to life using the PC's body. In another recent thread I had the idea that somebody might hold a sweepstakes where the prize was the Sword of Kas. I guess some other Evil artifact might work just as well.

In one current campaign the DM keeps presenting the PCs with Evil artifacts and relics, some of which the party has to carry around to keep Evil NPCs from getting them. Some of the items can talk or communicate by telepathy and won't stop telling us about how they could help us. There's a magic demon skull which forces the Barbarian to make Will saves sometimes, and my Viking is wearing a sentient daemon skull as a helmet.

I know that's a bad idea, but we had to take the item with us as part of the quest though, and wearing it just seemed like a cool idea at the time. The funny thing is that the PC's last name of Askettil translates roughly to "God Helmet" whereas at this point little could be further from the truth...

Yeah, I would figure that the head of Vecna would make you into Vecna rather than grant you powers.


I would if I thought it would work. But alas, I play with veteran gamers who're familiar with it.


A player trap such as this would undoubtedly work in my gaming group, because the players would assume that if something like that actually existed in the game, it couldn't be so obviously broken.

If a GM was to actually use it as written, most of us would admit we were pretty dumb. One or two players might feel it was a GM cheat, but they'd admit it was their own fault.

We'd go on with new characters and threaten the GM's life if he ever did anything like that again.

But we'd still be laughing about it long into the next campaign.


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First, if you *really* want to appreciate the story, you want more than the Wikipedia article...The Full Story

Devilkiller wrote:
I think it might be amusing if the Head actually worked but basically just resulted in Vecna coming back to life using the PC's body.

This is the part that makes the whole story for me. At no point does it seem to occur to any on the PCs involved that even if the Head were real...Who do you think is going to be in charge when you put Vecna's head on your body??


Ramarren wrote:

First, if you *really* want to appreciate the story, you want more than the Wikipedia article...The Full Story

Devilkiller wrote:
I think it might be amusing if the Head actually worked but basically just resulted in Vecna coming back to life using the PC's body.

This is the part that makes the whole story for me. At no point does it seem to occur to any on the PCs involved that even if the Head were real...Who do you think is going to be in charge when you put Vecna's head on your body??

That's why it's so funny. It's a wonderful example of how players can get ahead of themselves and make assumptions about things that just aren't true. So-called "logical" assumptions that aren't really logical. And it pretty much always spells their doom...


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Who would want a head that was missing an eye?

Shadow Lodge

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Meh. I personally prefer "The REST of Vecna".

It's fun to fully reassemble him.


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You guys are giving me ideas...


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Kthulhu wrote:

Meh. I personally prefer "The REST of Vecna".

It's fun to fully reassemble him.

Now I'm picturing a Vecna themed Operation, where you're putting pieces back in.


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Now this is making me want to build a campaign based around Vecna! WHY???!!!


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Sir Awesomesauce McSnazzlepants wrote:
Now this is making me want to build a campaign based around Vecna! WHY???!!!

I think you could draw inspiration from Castlevania 2. The heroes have to gather various parts of Vecna, say eye, hand, heart, and spine, and use the pieces to revive him in order to truly defeat him.

How do they revive him? If you're pushing the sacrifice angle, then one will have to volunteer to have all of the parts grafted in, at which point they will become Vecna, or at least a vessel to contain his essence. Or, for a become monsters to fight a monster approach, they have to graft the parts onto an innocent. Otherwise, it could simply require a dark ritual.

For extra fun, make possession of one of the parts grant a profane bonus to an attribute, even without grafting. This will make the eventual battle with Vecna that much harder because they will have to give up the part, and lose the bonus. It could also be a fun plot hook if the bonus involved having an evil aura.


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Or why not heart, scalp, other hand, other eye, molar and foot? *whistles innocently*


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So all we have to do is re-write the "Rod of Seven Parts" to make it "Vecna of Seven Parts" instead.

The scary part is deciding how the parts are sectioned...


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Or... you could try Die, Vecna, die!


Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Starfinder Charter Superscriber

Didn't 1st edition also include a full set of Vecna's teeth?


Queen Moragan wrote:
Didn't 1st edition also include a full set of Vecna's teeth?

You're thinking of the Teeth of Dahlver-Nar. I don't think he had a connection with Vecna.


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The final issue of Dragon magazine had stats for the Left Ear of Vecna.

And, yeah, all this talk of gathering pieces was reminding me of Castlevania 2 as well.


Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Starfinder Charter Superscriber

That would be too fun, find most of Vecna's head parts, then after they've all been attached to people, find the head!

Silver Crusade

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Kobold Cleaver wrote:

This is a bit of a spinoff from the GM Kill Rate thread.

Would you do something like the Head of Vecna? Or any similar sort of devious trap to test for foolhardy PCs?

I am totally going to do this in my home game.


Sissyl wrote:
Or... you could try Die, Vecna, die!

TO expand, DVD had a whole bunch of other genuine Vecna parts, including the fingers of his other hand, skin, feet, etc.


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The head of Vecna! Man, I haven't seen reference to this in YEARS! I fist heard this story in the mid-1990s, and it was old then!

I don't like to trick my players, and don't tolerate PvP in my games, so this would never happen at my table. But it's still a great story!

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