Basically, I'd like some cursed and trapped items. Preferably relatively balanced, but balance is secondary to the rule of cool.
The players are going to visit a cursed castle, and within it there will be lots of cursed magic items.
One of the places that will be the most dangerous is the torture chamber, so I'd like some traps and curses on that theme... In particular I'm looking for something related to the iron maiden, but anything goes! :D
The Blood Sucking Ruby
On the table across from the various torchering devices is a fist sized ruby. (DC 15 perception reveals its 3/4 filled with a liquid of some sort)
When this ruby is held in a bare hand it imediatly begins to suck blood from the hand of the holder dealing 1d8 bleed damage per round its held (DC 20 Reflex negates)
Each turn it fills up 1/4 of the way (meaning that in 1 round it will be full) and when it is full, it burst covering anybody within a 20 foot radius in blood.
Being freshly marinated for the various swarms of undead/vampires/whatever that love the taste of blood that lurk within the temple.
I'd have the iron maiden be haunted by the ghost of some princess or minor noblewoman who died in it. She's usually invisible but can possess people and once she does, she trots their bodies down to the torture chamber and locks them inside the iron maiden. Once they're inside and suffering as she did, then she can manifest, talking to the men as if they're her awful husband and the women as if they're her husband's mistress, since like many ghosts, she's nuts, and is reliving portions of her life as well as her dying fantasies from when she died in the maiden.
Having left one of them down there trapped (ideal for the party member who didn't show up this week) she can then go manifest upstairs in her memory as the innocent young bride sent to her wedding at this far away castle, acting with extreme confusion and fright at the abandoned castle and asking the adventurers for help when she isn't screaming and fainting.
Resolving her fate would be going to the crypt, finding the casket with her bones, and taking them back to her homeland rather than leaving her in the place where she was murdered.
Gloves of vampiric touch are insidious. They don't radiate evil, but when you identify them and find out they are made from the skin of someone who was bled to death, Paladins and some clerics can get angry.
See 100 unusual treasures for yellowdingo's Thumbscrew of truthfullness. Also, 51: Jenny's ring: This silver ring set with a white pearl is worth about 500 GPs. It radiates no
magic or alignment, but it is haunted. Treat it as a soul jar. Jenny is a small girl killed by ghouls.
Wis. 6, Int. 12. and Cha. 18 give her a possession DC of 13 but she has few skills. She can read
common, sing children's song 5, dance 5, and has knowledge history 7. She wants to find a
body she can use to live, and will help anyone who helps her goal. If the wearer is feebleminded
or something, Jenny takes over.
I don't have any curse ideas for you off the top of my head. But a place like that seems like it would be an appropriate lair for a few mimics and cloakers.
Oh, wait. A spiked choker. You know what to do.
And a cursed painting of some sort. Don't know what to do with it though.
I don't have any curse ideas for you off the top of my head. But a place like that seems like it would be a good lair for a few mimics.
A baby mimic posing as a weapon. Every hit it eats and grows. When it gets big enough, it turns on you.
There are some excellent suggestions in this thread. I'm going to use several of them. I like the ghost in the iron maiden idea in particular.
And a cursed painting of some sort. Don't know what to do with it though.
I actually have one already. It's a painting of a horse. If they look away and then look back at the painting, the horse will be gone and a nightmare will be standing behind them :D
A baby mimic posing as a weapon. Every hit it eats and grows. When it gets big enough, it turns on you.
AHHAHAHAHAHAAA! That is an AWESOME idea! I'm totally using that when one of my groups reaches the city that is their next goal. How shall I credit you?
Maybe it can have a Perception check whose DC goes down as the change in the weapon gets more obvious to notice that the weapon is growing, with an accompanying Knowledge:Dungeoneering check to realize that maybe this isn't just a cool, fleshgrinding sword but something possibly dangerous? Thoughts?
Regardless, I love it.
Snowglobe with strong magical aura, attempts to use it/figure it out result in party members being trapped inside.
Hand-cranked musical device(like a player-piano or music box) that plays madness in musical form.
Animated chair that tries to throw you out a tower window.
Curtains or Throw rugs that rise up and smother.
Vanity of Captivation that causes the victim to sit in front of it and obsessively comb their hair until they begin to actually comb off chunks of scalp.
Unwieldy chest or jewelry box that binds itself to whoever touches it, plus compels them to carry it. No one else can lift or move it except the victim. I usually add something positive to these as well; like they're boxes of holding or something, to make the curse double-edged.
Compass that always points you just a bit off-course.
Bag of Irretrievable Holding -- works just like a BoH except you can't get anything out of it; can engender a quest to find the dimension where all your stuff is.
Sword that turns into a length of rope when you try to use it as a weapon, and into a weapon when you try to use it as rope.
I'm going to add this to The Cleaves so put on the blade in tiny letters,"Goth Guru visited The Cleaves and all he got was this dagger."
A mimic is an aberration so Knowledge the Planes. DC20 at first. Go down 1 every time it eats and grows.
I'm going to add this to The Cleaves so put on the blade in tiny letters,"Goth Guru visited The Cleaves and all he got was this dagger."
A mimic is an aberration so Knowledge the Planes. DC20 at first. Go down 1 every time it eats and grows.
Hahahaa! Done and Done.
Riffing on downrightamazed's bag of irretrievable holding idea...
...a bag of holding that opens to the same nondimensional space as someone else's bag of holding. PCs find the bag with stuff already in it, and add some of their own stuff. Sometime later they can't find what they know they put in there. Other times they find stuff they're pretty sure wasn't in there before. And occasionally, very rarely, in fact, they find another hand (claw?) groping around for whatever its owner is looking for.
A ring of protection that actively prevents you from dangerous courses of action. Beyond that, it also provides the normal AC bonus afforded by a normal ring of protection.
I've actually got one of these floating around in a campaign I'm running right now. The mechanics are kind of tricky. For any dangerous skill challenge (jumping across a chasm, climbing a wall), I look at the player's chance of rolling success on the skill check, factoring in bonuses. So if the player needs, say, a six or better to succeed, I roll a d20, and if I roll anything below six, then the ring attempts to assert its will over the character, and it's the player vs. the ring on a will check ("Whoa there, boss!" a tiny voice says. "Maybe we should think this thing through..."). If the player loses, the ring successfully prevents the action (play this however you want: paralysis sets in, or it becomes ridiculously heavy, etc.).
On the upside for the player, the ring bonds with the character and gets to know his weaknesses over time. For example, the PC that has it now is highly susceptible to (ironically) will-based attacks. After failing three such attacks, the ring has bestowed upon him a free re-roll of any failed will check ("Hey boss! Don't fall asleep on me...fight it! C'mon, fight it!"), with a +1 bonus.
Thinking about it now, the ring should probably confer a penalty equal to its bonus whenever the PC is rolling to overcome intimidation. That might be taking it too far, though.
The ring is motivated by warmth. A dead PC means it has no warm finger to live on, hence its vested interest in the PC's well-being.
Maybe the other bag belongs to a necromancer who is storing parts he cast gentile repose on. Maybe he's trying to build a girlfriend(Flesh Golem).
Cursed items are really nasty, anyways, heres one I plan to add to a campaign if I ever go about making one.
Its a +5 Vorpal Longsword (Cursed, but any weapon will do anyways)
The catch? well it heals instead of damaging the target, the user obviously gets deluded into thinking its actually doing harm than good. You can allow a will save to disbelive, but otherwise requires a remove curse to get rid of the weapon. OH instead of getting decapitated, it acts like heal instead :)
Cursed items are really nasty, anyways, heres one I plan to add to a campaign if I ever go about making one.
Its a +5 Vorpal Longsword (Cursed, but any weapon will do anyways)
The catch? well it heals instead of damaging the target, the user obviously gets deluded into thinking its actually doing harm than good. You can allow a will save to disbelive, but otherwise requires a remove curse to get rid of the weapon. OH instead of getting decapitated, it acts like heal instead :)
Make it radiate time magic so it can crit heal. :)
There are some excellent suggestions in this thread. I'm going to use several of them. I like the ghost in the iron maiden idea in particular.
And a cursed painting of some sort. Don't know what to do with it though.I actually have one already. It's a painting of a horse. If they look away and then look back at the painting, the horse will be gone and a nightmare will be standing behind them :D
Ok, I'm going to have to remember that one!
Here's another. It's not original, but: A dining hall with a banquet table set for a meal. Nearly all the seats are occupied. The ones that aren't number the exact number of party members. (Castle Amber comes to mind :)
Druidic potion of poison. Radiates magic and cats the poison spell on the drinker.
Cause minor damage potion. 1D8 +1 to drinker.
Potion of sleep. Drinker must save or snooze. Maybe DC15 will save. If identified, insomniacs pay full price for a 1st level potion.
Potion of delusion. Makes drinker think they are a chicken for ten minutes.
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I've thought about this one for awhile, and have always thought that this would be one of those useful cursed objects.
The Mercenary Eyepatch
This is a black leather eyepatch with embroidered with a crimson skull and crossbones. A character wearing the eyepatch gains the benefit of continuous Deathwatch, and Discern Value as well as low-light vision and dark-vision through the covered eye, as if the eyepatch were not obstructing vision. However, for every minute that the eyepatch is worn it extracts 10 minutes of blindness (in that eye) from the character when it is taken off and cannot make use of the item again until the blindness dissipates.
Not all cursed items have to be traps. Some can just be items with drawbacks or quirks.
Then it becomes a choice for the characters; is the benefit worth the cost?
As an example: a ring of elemental resistance that provides a high resistance bonus (or at least higher than normal for the PCs level). The draw back is that, while worn, the wearer can only speak and understand the corresponding elemental language (Ignan for fire, Auran for air, etc).
Also! don't forget to put some actual, real, no strings attached treasure in there. If everything is rigged to kill/curse/hurt the PCs, they will quickly learn to not trust or touch anything.
Here's another gem from The Cleaves.
Green potion
Potion of remove disease made with Belladonna. It will cure afflicted lycanthropy, but recovering their strength will take time.
I'm going to add this to The Cleaves so put on the blade in tiny letters,"Goth Guru visited The Cleaves and all he got was this dagger."
A mimic is an aberration so Knowledge the Planes. DC20 at first. Go down 1 every time it eats and grows.
Aberrations are Knowledge (Dungeoneering)
I'll note that in the traps topic.