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How cheap is cheap?
There was a flask of endless coffee once. Not sure what the cost would be but certainly within your guidelines. And a +1 sword which sang when out of its scabbard - whether or not you wanted it to keep quiet - which might sneak in if the singing rates as a minor curse.
I'll rack my brains for other stuff which has popped up over the last 30 years.
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32
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Ring of invisibility, lesser. It doesn't make the wearer invisible, only itself.
Ring of spell turning. When activated, it loudly spells out the word "t-u-r-n-i-n-g" in the language of your choice.
Arrow of sleighing. When fired from a bow, it transforms into a sleigh, dealing substantial impact damage, once.
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Liar of Building. When played it tells you about all the massive buildings it made in the hands of more skilled players.
"Yeah, I built the Pyramid of Ra-Sekmet the 4th, the Dragon Gate Bridge, and the entire City of Kaer Maga. That was when I was played by a real musician, not a hack like you."
The Wet-Nap of Cleanliness.
Once per day on activation cleans the user, as prestidigitation.
Ring of invisibility, lesser. It doesn't make the wearer invisible, only itself.
Ring of spell turning. When activated, it loudly spells out the word "t-u-r-n-i-n-g" in the language of your choice.
Arrow of sleighing. When fired from a bow, it transforms into a sleigh, dealing substantial impact damage, once.
you magnificent bastard you
There was a flask of endless coffee once. Not sure what the cost would be but certainly within your guidelines. And a +1 sword which sang when out of its scabbard - whether or not you wanted it to keep quiet - which might sneak in if the singing rates as a minor curse.
I'll rack my brains for other stuff which has popped up over the last 30 years.
Heh, my GM "gave" my character a decanter of endless mead. Quite useful for my Qinggong/Drunken Monk. By "gave" I mean that I had to trade magic items with the previous possessor. :)
As a GM I once gave out a +1 dagger of Errant Flight. When thrown, it automatically missed. First time the player threw it, he rolled a Nat 20. And still missed. He was only slightly mollified when he later learned the story of the dagger and that it was commissioned by a noble for his young son, whom he was afraid would throw it around in the family keep and didn't want the kid to hurt anyone accidentally.
As a GM, I do tend to find it difficult to hand out good, quirky items to the party. The key to a good, quirky item from the GM's perspective is that you need to make sure that it has its uses in the party. A folding boat, for example, could count as a bit quirky, but if your campaign takes place entirely in the desert, and the party never sees a body of water, then its pretty much useless. Throw some kind of water based trap at them in the middle of the desert though and suddenly that item isn't so quirky anymore.
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This is... amazing.Ring of invisibility, lesser. It doesn't make the wearer invisible, only itself.
Ring of spell turning. When activated, it loudly spells out the word "t-u-r-n-i-n-g" in the language of your choice.
Arrow of sleighing. When fired from a bow, it transforms into a sleigh, dealing substantial impact damage, once.
you magnificent bastard you
"Okay everyone, roll for Stealth and we will see if you can sneak past these guards while-"
"...or yeah, let's just roll initiative."
A folding boat is also a shelter/shade, hard cover, perhaps the furnishing you put in front of a door you want kept closed...
I once gave a party a Xeno's Arrow. It moved half the distance to the target, the first round, then half the previous round's distance, toward the target, every round.
Jacob's Larder is a handheld toy/noisemaker, but if a leaf or similar object is placed under its ribbons, and the toy worked, the leaf disappears, until it is specifically looked for, and the toy worked. Herbs stored in a Jacob's Larder emerge as fresh as when they were stored.
A Looselace (usually found in pairs, but read on), threaded into a boot (or other laced garment), drawn tight, and tied once, will soon untie itself, and let the boot flop open, appearing about to fall off. But, the looselace's magic will keep the footwear in place. The wearer of the looselaced boots can remove them at will, and step into them and find them immediately as secure as before. Looselaces are banned in Bearkshire, after some wag seeded several in a dancehall dressingroom.
I highly recommend the loot for less books from Rogue Genius Games. There are maybe a couple things that are unbalanced (not really more than you find in Piazo publications) but for the most part they are balanced, useful, flavorful and great for a low level party (or a higher level character that wants a few fun tricks.)
Check out this thread: 101 interesting items.
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RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32
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I once gave a party a Xeno's Arrow. It moved half the distance to the target, the first round, then half the previous round's distance, toward the target, every round.
That is brilliant. Let me steal it :)
Two quirky items from my past campaigns... the first is a ring of weather protection. Anyone who wore it would not be hit by rainfall, snow, and so forth. Given that the campaign took place in a harsh winter, the PCs almost ended up fighting over this one.
The second is the hat of knowledge. It's one of those conical wizard hats (cornuthaum) that gave a mild bonus on knowledge checks. It would also spout random trivia whenever it felt like it, and be a smartass about knowing more than its wearer (think the Fact Sphere from Portal, only slightly more factual). For example, when fighting a tiger, it would "helpfully" tell you the Elvish word for tiger, or its average tail size, or similar distracting factoids.
(edit) Oh yeah, and one from a friend's campaign. I don't recall if it was a cursed item or a regular curse; anyway, the campaign was mostly underground (Underdark-style) but whenever they would come up for supplies or for a village, there was heavy rain. It took the players a few months to realize there was something odd here and start wondering why on earth it was always raining for them. Weeeell....
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RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32
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Ring of Silence: This magic ring duplicates Silence centered on itself. The effect lasts until it is deactivated. The trigger method is by command word.
Scroll of Remove Blindness, anyone? It's self-only.
And I just remembered the Gem of Sole Trapping. Yes, you read that right. It's useful to get dinner, I suppose...
Anybody have cheap, memorable loot they have given as GMs or received as players? How about cursed items? Are there any such things you would recommend giving to a 6th level party?
A Feather Token (Tree) was given as a random party item in one of our previous campaigns by 2nd level. We all thought it was stupid until we used it to basically skip past an entire dungeon-crawl to the top of an area, since we didn't want to burn all of our spell slots to fly up.
We were time-pressed, so skipping it was a smart idea. Quite frankly, that was perhaps the best use ever for a Tree Token. Every time we come across loot, we joke that a Tree Token would be among the wreckage (since it was otherwise useless until that point).
Ring of invisibility, lesser. It doesn't make the wearer invisible, only itself.
Ring of spell turning. When activated, it loudly spells out the word "t-u-r-n-i-n-g" in the language of your choice.
Arrow of sleighing. When fired from a bow, it transforms into a sleigh, dealing substantial impact damage, once.
I want a emporers outift of invisibilty looks like you are dressed nicely when you look at it and is invisible to everyone else.
I want a miniature boat, that can enlarge to normal size when it touches land. Just because useless boat...
Also a ring that makes you unable to die by disease, old age, etc, because it makes you undead.
An entirely metal quarterstaff that calls down lightning strikes when wielded. Just imagining a PC picking up this staff then being struck my lightning. Also this +beguiling gift would be hilarious!
A stranglers glove. Glove gives +5 to CMB to grapple, but also instantly forces the person wearing it to try to strangle themselves.
[Insert weapon here] of Critical Alteration. Nat 1's act like Nat 20's all other rolls count as either Nat 1's or normal you choose.
Chalice of Immortality, this chalice can not be destroyed!
I want a miniature boat, that can enlarge to normal size when it touches land. Just because useless boat...
Also a ring that makes you unable to die by disease, old age, etc, because it makes you undead.
An entirely metal quarterstaff that calls down lightning strikes when wielded. Just imagining a PC picking up this staff then being struck my lightning. Also this +beguiling gift would be hilarious!
A stranglers glove. Glove gives +5 to CMB to grapple, but also instantly forces the person wearing it to try to strangle themselves.
[Insert weapon here] of Critical Alteration. Nat 1's act like Nat 20's all other rolls count as either Nat 1's or normal you choose.
Chalice of Immortality, this chalice can not be destroyed!
The boat has something similar in inner sea gods called the safecamp wagon that turns into a toy wagon. I had a character concept where an orphan dwarf adopted by humans parents has them sell the safecamp wagon and then she gets pissed meets her uncle and searches after what was here keepsake toy as a mcguffin.
Rogue Genius Games has a whole line of pdfs with cheap and quirky magic items, and one of them is even free.
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A few of my favorites:
The bladed belt is pretty neat as a replacement for a weapon. It only takes up the belt slot when you're wearing it, which is probably briefly when you're switching it up for a different sort of weapon.
Quick runner's shirt is basic, but nice. Lets mortals get their full attacks in when they count, especially if you keep a few on hand.
Boots of the cat let you get away with some stupid jumps at minimal cost of HP and not being knocked prone. Pretty great protection from pits or getting flight options dispelled/removed as well.
Gloves of reconnaissance let you peek and hear through up to 15 foot thick surfaces. Lots of fun stuff you can do with that, especially good for scouting in dungeon crawls or spying on people.
The hat of disguise is a classic item for superficial disguises. Doesn't really hold up for long term espionage due to the low save DC, but it's great on the street or for traveling.
Sleeves of many garments let you get whatever clothes you want whenever you want, and they're only 200 gp!
There are plenty of awesome feather tokens (like the tree token mentioned above). Also sitting pretty in the cheap consumable level are skill elixirs that let you pump up a skill check as if you had a 10,000 gp item to boost it for an hour at an economical price.
It's probably a good idea to keep some universal solvent around, especially in case of an "accident" involving sovereign glue.
Stubborn nails are awesome for a lot of creative situations. Sticking stuff to other stuff, keeping stuff closed, jamming locks, sabotage, lots of nefarious tricks.
Stunstones are a nice group-friendly solution for invisible enemies. The damage is minor, and the stun is unlikely to land against most enemies, but the faerie fire always lands and is CL 5 (so it lasts 5 minutes).
If there are divine spellcasters in the party, guiding vellum is handy. It adds a little to your workload as a GM, but it's great for guaranteeing that a party is ready to handle whatever unusual circumstances are coming up in a given day.
Those are all the ones I can think of at the moment. I might make a more exhaustive list of nice, cheap items some other time, but it's 3 in the morning over here so I should probably hit the hay.
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I'm going to break tradition and talk about NON-magical loot which is cheap and interesting:
- Coins can be interesting if they are of unusual mint. Although they have been gone from the game for a while, I have re-introduced Electrum Pieces to my campaign as the coinage from a lost civilization, so when they show up the party knows that some cool ancient artifacts might also be in the area.
- Shiny Rocks: Low level monsters like Goblins and Kobolds in my campaign often have shiny rocks in their loot. These are usually just interesting polished stones of various kinds which can be sold or bartered away by the party later. They're basically copper/silver pieces but re-skinned to be slightly more interesting.
- Artwork: Not necessarily worth a lot, but whether it's painting, or sculpture or something else, it can depict people, places, or concepts which are important to the campaign.
- Trade goods: Raw iron or copper can be worth quite a lot, or salt, or grain. Minor alchemical items like a tin full of Tindertwigs can be invaluable to the party later on. Alcohol and tobacco as well make good treasure, depending on your party's vices.
- Drugs: Valuable, potentially dangerous, always interesting.
- Books: I often include books which, when studied for a week (maybe with a successful INT check), grant 1 free rank in a particular knowledge, craft, or profession skill. The whole party can take turns with the book and then sell it off afterwards.
- Small Animals: A caged lizard that secretes a valuable poison, a rare songbird or a talking parrot, or a trained mouse all have value and are fun for the party to play with.
- The Inexplicable: A gem that pulses with orange light in a random pattern. A small clockwork device who's purpose and function are unknown. A wooden puzzle box that no one can open. A scroll written in a cypher that can't be decrypted. A stone idol of a god no one can identify. Are these things valuable? Maybe. Useful? Who knows? You'll have fun listening to the party's many amusing theories about these small enigmas.
Not cheap, but the best quirky/weird magic item I ever had, was an intelligent, +4 Sword of Sharpness (1st edition sharpness = severed limbs). Sweet right?
But the sword was an abject coward. It would resist being pulled from a scabbard, try to twist out of my hand, and constantly yell (audibly), screaming for help and begging for its safety.
GM had me do the old ego/will fight every time I wanted to use it in combat. Our stats were such that I lost about 20% of the time.
Real pain in the back-side, but dang-it, it was a +4 sharpness weapon!!
Not going to get rid of it!
Maybe you can save that one for when they gain a few levels.
I have one that the party really loved;
One of the players was looking for his mentor a half-orc named Brock. He intimidated / bribed a goblin to help search. However the goblin seemed to have some trouble with what he was looking for, 'half-rock', 'rock-orc' and such, but eventually the player was satisfied that the goblin knew what it was looking for.
A few days later it returns and looks really pleased with it self as it hands over the half-spork to the character.