How about cursed cursed items? Picture a flubbed bag of devouring that just noisily tastes whoever reaches into it (making it a standard action to retrieve an item from it), briefly glomping their arm with a toothless "mouth", making "mmm-MMM!" sounds and leaving the arm covered in extradimensional slobber. Or a robe of vermin that is supposed to cause concentration-affecting bites but instead causes the wearer to attract any nearby mindless vermin to simply hang about as if fascinated, with the expected social ramifications.
Elaborating a bit more for our campaigns something like a vicious weapon would be a cursed item getting a boon at the cost of a drawback.Indeed, the very best cursed items are the ones that have a unique benefit.
Just be careful when putting on the Helm of Opposite-Opposite-Opposite-Opposite Alignment.
Just be careful when putting on the Helm of Opposite-Opposite-Opposite-Opposite Alignment.How about cursed cursed items? Picture a flubbed bag of devouring that just noisily tastes whoever reaches into it (making it a standard action to retrieve an item from it), briefly glomping their arm with a toothless "mouth", making "mmm-MMM!" sounds and leaving the arm covered in extradimensional slobber. Or a robe of vermin that is supposed to cause concentration-affecting bites but instead causes the wearer to attract any nearby mindless vermin to simply hang about as if fascinated, with the expected social ramifications.
Elaborating a bit more for our campaigns something like a vicious weapon would be a cursed item getting a boon at the cost of a drawback.Indeed, the very best cursed items are the ones that have a unique benefit.
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Some more thoughts on this:
1) The need to identify items pretty much means you can't use the stuff you found until you have downtime to identify it. Whether that is a good or bad thing, though, I'm not sure.
2) Personally, I never use cursed items. I just can't see why anyone would make one and I don't agree with them being due to a failure in making them, either--where did the additional power come from?! Yes, someone could make one as an assassination weapon--but anyone worthy of such effort is going to have a lot of protection and unlikely to go into combat in the first place.
As to #1, I do agree that some of this is a relic of the older versions of the game wherein identifying items was not exactly cheap. More to the point, depending on the style of game you ran, even if you had the money for it, you might not have yet located said material component (this of course, being far more common a game style a long time ago than currently). That said, it can be fun to try to identify items without identifying them, but as a practical matter, you do need to figure out the stats pretty quickly just for bookkeeping purposes. This is especially true as magic items have become more prevalent in the games as well. It might have been pretty easy to add the additional +1 behind the scenes before (or subtract 1 if it were an armor item) but now its a lot more work for the GM.
As to #2, I can think of a number of reasons for creating a cursed item. The necklace of strangulation for instance might be a particularly good assassination item depending on the target. You want to kill the King's daughter in order to (insert reason here), what better way than to gift her a beautiful necklace on her birthday? Done right, you don't even need to be there when she opens it. She'll see a gorgeous necklace and won't be able to wait to try it on!
Or, you are a budding villain who has several key henchmen laying the groundwork for your plan of ultimate doom but you don't fully trust them? How about giving them an item they can't remove so you can scry on them -- works great for when they are killed by those darned adventurers too.
Other items, like cursed swords/armor, I guess that would have to be described more as "something went wrong" that wasn't intended, but I do agree it becomes a little more difficult to explain how it keeps getting passed around. Depends on the nature of the curse I guess.
I prefer when the curse comes because the holy sword was used to slaughter innocents, that kind of plot-curse.
This too. :)
That said, it can be fun to try to identify items without identifying them, but as a practical matter, you do need to figure out the stats pretty quickly just for bookkeeping purposes.
unless you're using Automatic Bonus Progression and thus most items don't grant simple numerical bonuses.
As to #2, I can think of a number of reasons for creating a cursed item. The necklace of strangulation for instance might be a particularly good assassination item depending on the target.
Can you even purposely create cursed items?
Can you even purposely create cursed items?
It's a grey area, as a GM I absolutely rule no. They're created by accidents, not on purpose.
Otherwise everyone just crafts Dust of Sneezing and Choking on purposes, which at least causes everyone to be disabled for at least 5 rounds, which is otherwise known as "long enough for the rest of your party to kill everyone else even if you're disabled in the process of administering the dust".
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That said, it can be fun to try to identify items without identifying them, but as a practical matter, you do need to figure out the stats pretty quickly just for bookkeeping purposes.unless you're using Automatic Bonus Progression and thus most items don't grant simple numerical bonuses.
As to #2, I can think of a number of reasons for creating a cursed item. The necklace of strangulation for instance might be a particularly good assassination item depending on the target.Can you even purposely create cursed items?
Yes, you can. See the Black Markets Player Companion.
That said, it can be fun to try to identify items without identifying them, but as a practical matter, you do need to figure out the stats pretty quickly just for bookkeeping purposes.unless you're using Automatic Bonus Progression and thus most items don't grant simple numerical bonuses.
As to #2, I can think of a number of reasons for creating a cursed item. The necklace of strangulation for instance might be a particularly good assassination item depending on the target.Can you even purposely create cursed items?Yes, you can. See the Black Markets Player Companion.
Can you post an excerpt?
The d20pfsrd site copies the relevant information here.
Note that even with Black Markets, there are items that don't have construction rules, such as dust of sneezing and choking, which would be absurdly broken if crafted as easily as dust of appearance.
Also note that the GM has the usual discretion with respect to custom magic item creation--even more so, really, given such gems as "Opposite effect or target: Cost is reduced by 50%".
Player: "Ha, I've crafted a cheaper dust of disappearance!"
GM: "No, you've crafted dust of covering myself with glitterdust."
The Girdle of Opposite Gender is another example -- it provides what is in game terms a mostly cosmetic change with no truly useful effects. I suppose it could have its price based on the Elixir of Sex Shifting, with the price adjusted appropriately for the fact that it can affect someone involuntarily.
The d20pfsrd site copies the relevant information here.
Well Frankly, I consider that to be awful and should have never been written.
Given the players the ability to create intentionally cursed items like Dust of Sneezing and Choking is too dangerous.
Blahpers says it doesn't specify construction rules, but to me it appears that the requirements are "whatever it was to produce the original item" + Bestow Curse or Curse, Major spells.