So one of my players, playing an artificer in the campaign, was stumbling through the DMG, looking for more crunk to outfit the party with, courtesy of his obscene crafting capabilities. (Last time I let an artificer approach the Magic Item Compendium carte blanche.)
Nevertheless, my player (and brother) pointed out a potential item he could craft that he thought might make for an interesting "weapon": the Mirror of Opposition. As a high-level artificer fully capable of "faking" the necessary spells for the item, it is well within his reach--at least by the time he intends to use it.
See, he told me his plan was to use the mirror of opposition against Demogorgon--the inevitable BBEG by this point--hoping that by creating an exact duplicate (no save/no SR) when he looks into the mirror, they will find themselves with a surprising "ally".
Although not one to refute a clever plan, I had experience with rules cracking against the penultimate BBEG in AoW (long story, very painful, lol), and just said "no". He argued (amicably) that he would even hang the thing from an immovable rod when the time came, and admitted that the whole thing was just a wistful throwback to 2nd Ed.
But I started thinking. Because of Demogorgon's duality, and the fact that each of his two sides has their own separate clones already--Bagromar and the other one--even if he were subjected, what would be the result? Would one of the clones emerge? Might Demogorgon's control over tanar'ri come into play, backfiring the plan? Who knows? But I thought it was fascinating enough of a query to open to discussion.
Thoughts?
Just one thought:
Give your players what they want: an exact duplicate of the most chaotic creature known to existance... just the other way round.
What would that creature act like?
Rigid and overly "lawful" to the point of becoming a tyrant "in the name of Good". I can imagine a Demogorgon whose heads might now cooperate, thus your players might have given the answer Big D had always been looking for - a worse threat than even the original himself.
The Idea is great. Let your players work with it. And let them face the consequence.
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Since both 'halves' of Demogorgon are separate entities, whichever one looks in the mirror could indeed, create its own double; ie, one head, one arm, one leg, half a torso, and spend the battle flailing around on the floor in agony and bleeding rapidly to death, spurting gallons of blood everywhere each round...
Random attacks and Balance checks all round, methinks!
Ho! Ho!
Making the reflection a Bagromar or Tetradarian would be more consistent.
This does bring up the interesting comment (made even by the OP) that the cursed items do seem to sit in an odd state of "2nd Ed Nostalgia".
I mean, cursed items should be called that because they're, well, cursed! An item with a corner case use isn't really cursed, unless you plan to be VERY creative with it. Using the bag of devouring as a nasty trap for theives in your castle, or sneakily getting a few of those backstabbing spears sold to your enemy's army, thats a "cool" use of cursed items, in my opinion.
But holding up a mirror in the BBEGs face and getting his evil/not-evil twin? Seems to me the sort of storytelling DM fiat that only very smart and capable DMs should consider (the magic blahblahblah that when presented before the evil and nigh-invincible blahblahblah will summon forth the blahblahblah to defeat him). Having players pull that just feels like a cheezy cop-out of any culpability of doing it on your own.
Long story short: am I the only one who thinks cursed items should actually be Cursed with a capital C, bringing woe to those who encounter them? Or should they be more like defective product that could still be used if you dont mind the defect?
This does bring up the interesting comment (made even by the OP) that the cursed items do seem to sit in an odd state of "2nd Ed Nostalgia".
I mean, cursed items should be called that because they're, well, cursed! An item with a corner case use isn't really cursed, unless you plan to be VERY creative with it. Using the bag of devouring as a nasty trap for theives in your castle, or sneakily getting a few of those backstabbing spears sold to your enemy's army, thats a "cool" use of cursed items, in my opinion.
My big complaint is that they slapped on the 'cursed' label and then did not put any thought into play balance. There is no real indicator in the text that these items are unavailable to PCs and there should have been some kind of indication of this so players would not keep wanting to buy the damn things.
I had to house rule the damn things out of the shopping list.
IIRC, when I read the description of the 3.5 Mirror of Opposition, I don't remember it stating anything about an alignment changes. It just makes a double of the person looking in the mirror that does what they can to kill the viewer and then entice others to look in the mirror.
So, if Big D were to look in the mirror, the mirror-image Demogorgon would still be CE, and if successful in destroying the demon prince, it would assume the position of demon prince in the original's place.
I'd say, let the artificer have his plan . . . and then the party will have two Demogorgons to fight.
Edit: re-reading some of the posts other than the op I see that matthew vincent kinda already stated what I was getting at.
...it's funny, 'cause my bro was telling me about a "3-ring gate/rail gun" trick, involving dropping an object through one gate, having it emerge above the other, until it hits terminal velocity, then shooting through the third one for phat damage. Pure speculation, but uproarious use of some of the wonky wondrous items in the DMG.
In the item description of the mirror of opposition, it says "Upon the defeat or destruction of either the duplicate or the original, the duplicate & her items disappear completely."
I'm still learning about the rules of the game & I would like for anyone to help me by defining what a "defeat" is. I wouldn't think it would mean death, because then what would destruction mean? I just want to be clear on what status changes constitute a "defeat" by definition. Thanks for any input on this, I have no experience with actually getting to play a character, so I'm trying to get understanding about what experienced players have to say.
It is a broken item. Just end the entire discussion by having big "D" have a wish spell ready to stop it from ever being available to the characters to purchase, that would be beautiful to see the looks on their faces when he pulls out the wish spell. Or have big "D" destroy the item, thus breaking the magic instead of attacking his double. The loss of a 92K item could sting their pride.
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...it's funny, 'cause my bro was telling me about a "3-ring gate/rail gun" trick, involving dropping an object through one gate, having it emerge above the other, until it hits terminal velocity, then shooting through the third one for phat damage. Pure speculation, but uproarious use of some of the wonky wondrous items in the DMG.
I have a feeling that he got that idea from playing Portal. :)
Making the reflection a Bagromar or Tetradarian would be more consistent.
Bagromar or Tetradarian with as many negative levels as Big D himself. Sure that the reflections attack the "orginal" but with negative 10ish levels stacks on them probably puts them in the two-three shot kill range from any attack the big guy will throw at them.