like a Ring of Bureaucratic Wizardry? or a Ring of clumsiness?
im looking for ideas for a backstory i'm writing.
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I've used them for side adventure hooks in the past but not recently.
I've used them for side adventure hooks in the past but not recently.
what was the hook?
I actually INTENTIONALLY played with cursed items once xD. I was playing a Malefactor from TPK Games. They have an ability where they can ignore the penalties from cursed items and only gain the benefits, but only if YOU are using it. So I managed to get some fun by intentionaly creating cursed items to combine with things like slight of hand to give to people xD. Or Bluff checks to give to people. Things got REALLY funny.
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I have used the following cursed items in games before:
Bag of Devouring - It was identified incorrectly as a bag of holding. The party kept putting treasure into it for four sessions before they finally attempted to remove a piece of said treasure, and discovered the truth.
Ring of Contrariness - Identified as a ring of flying. Two sessions later the player tries to use the "flight" ability and is hurled through the air in the opposite direction. Needless to say that player was not happy at first, but the other players laughed.
Armor of the Golden Samurai - (I was a player in this game.) Our main fighter ended up with this beautiful suit of armor. Then our first combat the armor turns to butter robbing him of all armor bonus to armor class. After the combat he tries to remove the armor, and cannot due to it is cursed, soul linked to him for having worn it into combat. We went through an entire adventure just tracking down the origins of the armor, and getting it "fixed". Once we did so, he had the best armor in our party hands down.
Backbiter - a cursed longsword I got stuck with using. It identified as a longsword + 1, singing. Thus the party granted it to the bard, me. I tried using it in combat, and it struck me on successful hits, and my enemy on fumbles. Also if I tried to draw any other weapon I had, I found I had the singing sword instead. It made terrible amounts of noise making stealth impossible. I ended up having to stay way behind the party in the rear, and not using a weapon at all for levels four until level fifteen when the party finally decided it would be better to have a bard that could actually participate in combat more than just performing, or casting a few spells. My gaming group at that time was one that disvalued bards. They wanted me to drop the bard, and play something else. When I stubbornly refused, and proved worth time, and time again; they finally agreed to help me in my quest to liberate my sword as we all had agreed to help the main fighter, the paladin, the wizard, and the cleric in the past. The fighter had the above armor. The paladin had a cowardly shield that evaded attacks letting the paladin get hit. The wizard had a cursed ring that would randomly fire off one of the wizard's spells for no reason. Once even hitting the entire party with a randomly cast fireball. The cleric had a cursed holy symbol that empowered undead rather than turn them.
I could go on and on, but I have rambled enough already.
As a GM, I don't like to drop truly cursed items randomly. If I include such items, they're part of the plot-- or were a warning against obtaining them in some fashion.
For example, I once placed an intelligent +2 cursed berserking greatsword inside the tomb of a long-dead barbarian king in a barrow-mound. The PCs were good, but detected the magic item, so they opened up the sarcophagus and looted the body-- including the sword that had been the king's undoing. I placed the item there partly for metagame reasons to teach the PCs not to go grave-robbing. At the next fight, the party fighter nearly killed the wizard because of the curse.
I also usually play that cursed items need a specific action taken to lift. In those cases, casting remove curse tells the caster what needs to be done to lift the curse (and usually suppresses the curse temporarily).
I've never had to deal with a cursed item on my PC, but I've played in a game where another PC was using one. He was a bard who had found a Girdle of Opposite Gender at some point. The player was obsessed with charming/ suggesting NPCs to put it on.
in our game right now a pc has a gauntlet he cannot take off.
though i have a story from years ago i always found funny. we were lvl 4 in an adnd game and the party fighter drinks his potion of fly and tells the dm hes going to fly in tge air swoishing over the tree tops all wuxia then swoop in on the enemy. he doe his attack then excuses himself to the bathroom.
the dm then tells the rest of us he drank the potion and started skipping towards the enemy while making swoishing sounds and kicking off trees. it was apparently a potion f delusion.
Rarely. Most of them are pretty lame, and it just becomes a matter of 'wait a day, cast remove curse, destroy it, move on'.
Kimera757 has the right of it. A cool cursed item is something that you find yourself thinking 'well, it's nice to have BUT ...' and might be tempted to keep, rather than something that's pure drawback that you want to get rid of right away.