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What did the Rod of Wonder do in your game?
In mine, where I was using an extended Rod of Wonder table in combination with the classic DMG one, it...
- summoned a banquet table and chairs, set with a gourmet meal for four
- caused one party member to glow bright yellow
- fireballed half the party
- caused a 50ft tree to grow under the wielder ... twice
- cast a cone of acid immediately in front of the wielder
- caused gems to stream forth from the wand
- caused silver coins to stream forth from the wielder's ears for five rounds
- transposed the wielder with a randomly selected party member
- summoned a sturdy steel cage enclosing the wielder
- fired a lightning bolt
The party had gotten impatient of waiting on Pilt's audience, and had kicked off a fight in the rooftop stadium. Since Pilts had turned invisible at the first sign of combat, they took care of Jabbyr and Pilt's various minions (aided by a rioting crowd).
Pilts himself hid in the crowd and attempted to get the Rod to do something useful. After a couple of false starts - the aforementioned gourmet meal - he managed to get off a fireball. This resulted in our cranky, Badass Good (and fire-resistant) tiefling fighter sitting on Pilt's throne, glowering, glowing, and on fire. Several members of the crowd immediately began worshipping him as a new minor deity. The rest of the crowd were too busy trying to get away from the rogue, whom Pilts had charmed, who was "trying to clear a hole in the crowd for his new buddy" by throwing vials of alchemist's fire.
The next activation caused a tree to manifest on top of the building, lifting Pilts, and the wolverine who had been in the pit next to him, 50 feet into the air. Being in Bridgefront, and thus constructed of the cheapest and flimsiest materials around, the building immediately developed a worrying list. Unfortunately, the next activation did exactly the same thing - Pilts and the wolverine rose another fifty feet, then fell twenty feet as the weight of the tree caused half of the building to collapse. Those in the crowd who had not been thrown off the building stopped rioting and began fleeing in terror.
At this point the party, bereft of targets, stopped to trade insults with the still-invisible Pilts, interrupted only by a yowling wolverine (the unfortunate victim of the sixth rod activation) rocketing out of the tree trailing acid and falling off the building.
The monk spotted the trajectory of the gems from the seventh activation, rocketed up the tree, and started hunting for Pilts. She didn't have to wait too long: after the eighth activation, his invisibility and displacement were rendered rather less useful by the showers of silver pieces coming from his ears. The paladin began trying to climb the tree, and found his ineptitude at climbing very rapidly solved when the ninth activation caused Pilts to swap places with him. Unfortunately, he now found himself on top of a hundred-foot tree with his target on the ground and no obvious means to get down.
Stripped of his handy hiding place and his invisibility, Pilts decided to run for it. He managed half a lap of the stadium with monk and fighter in hot Benny Hill style pursuit before getting off another rod activation. A hefty steel cage fell from the sky over him, temporarily granting him refuge from his pursuers.
Unfortunately, while Pilts could easily dodge from side to side in the cage avoiding the fighter's swords and the monk's grabs, his advantage did not last when the paladin finally found his way down from the tree, stuck his glaive into the cage and asked Pilts to surrender. Pilts responded by attempting to Dimension Door out... at which point all the held actions of the other party members fired. Pilts found himself grabbed and held against the cage bars. In one last desperate attempt to get away, he rammed the Rod into the face of the monk and activated it. The monk ducked, and a searing bolt of lightning shot over her head and demolished what was left of Pilt's stage.
At this point the finally-uncharmed and enraged rogue waded in with his humanbane rapier. The rod was confiscated by the paladin and, since we had decided that Rods of Wonder must be illegal in such a lawful society, was returned to the Acadamae for destruction with great prejudice.
Verdict (from Pilt's point of view):
Attack actions: 4
Useful attack actions: 1
Dubiously useful actions: 2
Useless but harmless actions: 2
Actions that would have been harmless if not for circumstances: 2
Harmful actions: 1
Verdict (from table point of view):
Possible the most ludicrous fight we've played... and that was after a fight with Laori that turned into mud wrestling between her and the female monk, and which featured the tiefling being tossed through a wall, set on fire, tossed off a bridge, emerging covered in mud with a fish flapping on his shoulder, being stepped on, being tied to a Rope Trick to lift him back onto the pier, being landed on by a muddy monk and Laori, and finally getting a clod of mud in the face for good measure.
We're going into the Vivified Labyrinth tomorrow night, so a little bit of levity before grim lethality was probably a good idea :)
In my game, Pilts got off one fireball - well, that's what he thought. He rolled the result of "you believe that some other effect happens". The next round the enchanter dropped some sort of charm spell on him and the fight was over (I *hate* Save or Suck spells).
Then my meta-gamey players sold the Rod immediately because they'd rather have a +1 sword than a weird magic item.
Then my meta-gamey players sold the Rod immediately because they'd rather have a +1 sword than a weird magic item.
Okay, but who bought it? Maybe some underworld thug got his hands on it and is feeling cocky. Maybe a rich aristocrat has it but keeps messing things up. Maybe a pseudodragon stole it.
With items like this one I like to remind my players that selling them doesn't make them vanish out of existence. :)
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Pilts only got to pop off the 600 butterflies effect. It was rather effective though, since 10 combatants were in a rather small room.
Eventually the party gave it to the gnome sorcerer.
Repeat: They let a gnome sorcerer have a rod of wonder.
There's been on point-blank fireball already. I reckon one more of those will be all it takes for someone in the party to steal it and chuck it in a river.
An update from the above. The PCs decided they had to confront the Arkonas before disposing of the rod.
Two of my PCs - the druid (in hummingbird form, smouldering from a recent Scorching Ray) and the wizard (currently invisible) - got trapped in a tiny room in the Vivified Labyrinth with Vimanda. The wizard/paladin decided to use the Rod of Wonder for some unfathomable reason, pointed it at Vimanda, closed his eyes, clicked and...
...it started raining heavily in a 60ft area. A drenched Vimanda glared at the now-extinguished druid and launched into a tirade about lowly food not having the right to turn a hunt into a stupid farce.
Luckily, the discs turned, allowing Vimanda to leave, before the Rod did any more damage.
Mikaze: you just know that with an item like the Rod, if it were chucked in a river it would turn up in the belly of a fisherman's latest catch or something similar (possibly having done something to its temporary host - like causing it to grow leaves, turn purple or become the world's first telepathic fish) :)
We havn't had anything quite as hilarious as all that. Pilts didn't get to use the rod at all (he got demolished before he got a chance to act), but our kobold sorcerer//dragon shaman claimed it as his right and has used it at pretty much every opportunity since then (not instead of doing something useful, but for example if we were fighting weak enemies or if none of his attacks were effective against a major enemy). His player's exact words were "Did you really just give Morte a rod of wonder? <cackling>" Here's the highlights:
More recently, he shrunk himself down to Diminutive size (Small - 2 size categories), or approximately the size of a small rat. Unfortunately, this was while fighting in an area known to have groups of Shadows patrolling, so it may end up being very bad for him.
Good grief. They're still using it...
The rogue got blinded in the most recent encounter. Still wishing to contribute, he pickpocketed the Rod from the wizard, aimed it at where he remembered the enemy being, and fired. The first firing caused animated band instruments to march up and down the middle of the area. The second cast a stinking cloud on the enemy... which would have been great if it weren't for the fact that the opponent had ridiculous saves and the party members in melee around it did not.
I have a feeling that this rod will be destroyed with great prejudice at some point :)
Zurai: Awesome! I love the idea of a thoroughly bemused Glorio running around entangled in vegetation :D
Somewhere in the Multiverse Lord Zagyg giggles maniacly..ah fond memories.
Group #1, I play a Celestial Sorcerer who thought that the Rod was pretty darn cool until the party got caught in a Stinking Cloud. I eventually just sold it for the money, I like my spells better.
Group #2, I play a Shoanti Cleric(filler/healer) who got turned GREEN. I didn't care much for the gumby-look or potentially being mistaken for an orc. As a group we came to the conclusion that 'remove curse' would be able to fix it as the Rod's information dosn't specify. It is basically just a permanented cantrip.
Have you got a complete list of your Rods effects?
I'm tempted to give it to one of the slightly unstable lackeys in the RotRL game I'm running
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Have you got a complete list of your Rods effects?
I'm tempted to give it to one of the slightly unstable lackeys in the RotRL game I'm running
For the sake of even more randomness, I'm using an alternate table from here, alongside the standard table.
When someone rolls for the Rod, I use an odd-even roll as well as a percentile. Odds, the effect comes from the corebook Rod table; evens, it comes from the alternate table. Anything which doesn't make sense is rerolled.
I also found a Wild Surge chart (about halfway down the link), which is excellent, although I haven't had a chance to use it yet :)
My group has had two great uses of the rod ever since the hafling rogue picked it up. The first happened in the vivified labrinth. He had the rod out when he got hit by the symbol of insanity. As a group we decided that since that was what he had in his hand andytime he had to attack he used the wand. Nothing disasterious happend but the rain and grass filled the dungeon.
The second time, he tried to use it on the havero tentacles and it came up as detect thoughts. He then failed his will save on trying to read an alien mind and is now left with an INT of 1.