Need advice with magic item / artifact

[Zaros Liserii]

Hey, new DM here and I need some good advice.

Situation is as such: I'm running the Kingmaker AP and the group has just defeated the Stag Lord and captured his fort. The group found the Stag Lord's helm but unlike the AP, I decided to make it an intelligent artifact that will bend one character to the will of Lamashtu and against the followers of Erastil. They don't know this, all they know is that it is a magical item that radiates (Strong ALL) and has some amazing abilities (think Predator) Why? Because interesting story.

The group emailed me their concerns about my inexperience and overpowered munchkin items. Fair enough. They asked for a vote to change the item back to how it's written in the adventure. I'm letting them vote on it, because if they're that worried, well, they should have their concerns addressed.

It seems silly to go, "just trust me", because I'm new to DMing and I haven't earned their confidence yet. It seems equally silly to reveal the secret of the item and spoil the surprise.

So do I revert it back to a mundane item and forget that part of the storyline I planned or do I revert the item and KEEP the cursed nature of the helm?? I'm concerned that the second option will be viewed as DM revenge.

Perhaps there is a better third option?

Thanks in advance,
Paul

[ParagonDireRaccoon]

It's a cool idea. The potential pitfall of a cool idea is that it can easily do more harm than good. If they vote to change the item back, I would make the item as written and give the player who uses it the option to have it slowly turn into the item you wrote up. If you work with the player(s) it's easier to make it work.

[ParagonDireRaccoon]

I thought about overpowered munchkin items some more. If the DM gives players a really cool item, the players might be overshadowed by the item. If you give them a powerful item, there need to be limitations on it so the players feel like using it is an accomplishment on their part.

Say you give the group a Wand of Deus Ex Machina with 50 charges. Expending a charge defeats any encounter with the best possible outcome (PCs and allied NPCs have full hp, spells, and uses times-per-day abilities, loot is undamaged, opponents killed or incapacitated as the PCs decide). This would make the next 50 encounters trivial. But if you give them a Wand of Deus Ex Machina with 2 charges that could be fun. The group would have to vote on if an encounter warrants a use of the Wand.

[Secane]

Sudden thought, why not let them know that the helm is cursed and set them on a quest to restore the helm back to it original purpose?

Aka, Helm of Erastil (Cursed by Lamashtu) -----> Quest -----> Restored Helm of Erastil

They "earn back" the lost of the cursed helm's extra abilities with items and rewards found during the quest of de-cursing the helm.

[Zaros Liserii]

My original plan was something like this:

Party finds an exceptionally powerful item. But of course too good to be true is indeed the case. It is cursed in a way that they really want to be rid of it, but it's actually quite hard to do so. The item causes problems for their fledgling kingdom. In the end, the BBEG takes the artifact from the party.

This was supposed to accomplish a few things:
1. Give the party a powerful item for a little while
2. Contrast their desire to use the item vs. show respect to the locals for whom it is a rather negative symbol, perhaps losing/making allies.
3. Deal with a secretive and problematic curse.
4. Introduce BBEG a lot earlier in the adventures while removing the item.

Unfortunately, now its more like:
1. Dm messed up
2. Players had to protest and vote to fix the game
3. Cursed nature of item may be seen as DM revenge
4. Introduction of BBEG may be seen as DM finally admitting he's wrong and using cheap encounter to rid the party of the item.

I don't know, short of telling the party what the story would have been (and ruining it) of how to show them I had things in hand all along. (That's assuming that the above plan was a good idea, which it may not be) I can just drop the whole thing and not even mention anything, but then this issue might ruin other storylines in the future.

It would be a lot less fun to run the module completely as written, I get to flex no creative muscle.

I do appreciate the advice given, and both of you are giving me ideas on how this might be handled.