My party got the talisman of the sphere in adventure 1, put it in there backpack and forgot about it for the next 5-6 adventures. We are about to finish up Gathering of winds today, and it struck me that now would be a good time to remind them of the artifact and its power.
I was thinking maybe a way of them freeing allustan would be to use it... I donno, maybe controlling a spehere and rolling into the field would be a way to get allustan out? Maybe they find a scroll to summon one of these temporarily in Flycatchers lair?
I just think it is so cool that they can use the talisman in the final adventure.... but if it just sits in there back pack till then it is kind of hokey...
Anyone with other/better ideas on using this talisman sometime before level 21?
I wouldn't add anything in before the last adventure. Believe me, players have a tendency to use everything they have to break an adventure- and giving them a Sphere of Annihilation, even for a little while, could be devastating.
Besides, no reasonable magic could summon a Sphere of Annihilation. Remember, it's an Artifact.
And, wait a minute, you said they already finished the adventure- they why the heck is Allustan still inside his bubble? The adventure is quite clear on how to free him, and the sphere of stasis he's in is nothing like a sphere of annihilation. I think forcing something into the campaign like that would be more hokey than just letting them hang onto it until the last adventure.
I know, the sphere is way to powerful for this level... I was hoping maybe for something else they could do with it, or even some trap that has a sphere in it ect. It just seems weird for it to sit in there pack for 20 levels.
That's what artifact level magic is like. We're just jaded because in D&D we start getting permanent magic items early on and wear or use them constantly (and we always seem to know it's a +1 keen longsword or whatever because it's easier for the DM if you keep track of your own stuff. Think about Aragorn toting around the broken shards of his distant ancestor's sword for decades, or of all the strange Terangreal that Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time characters dredge up but can't figure out and it doesn't seem quite so strange anymore.