Curses That Don't Suck

[DRD1812]

How do you make curses more interesting than, "I cast remove curse?" I've got an example of an interesting curse interaction over here, but it relied on player buy-in rather than clever design. The way I see it, there's a tension between trivial challenges on the one hand and long-term, crippling debuffs here.

My question is this: How can GMs design curses that last long enough to actually feel like a curse without crippling a character for sessions at a time?

[Garretmander]

Mostly by making them so they don't cripple the character, making them want to remove it immediately so their character works again.

Require the PCs to be cursed in order to proceed through some sort of magic puzzle.

Or add in a number of benefits that help a character's schtick along with major drawbacks so they're tempted to remain cursed.

[Mysterious Stranger]

Many curses in stories have a removal condition. To get rid of the curse the person must meet the removal condition. With remove curse as a spell it is easy to get rid of a curse. This is also because bestow curse is a spell so they kind of counteract each other.

To make curses interesting make some that are not subject to remove curse, but have a removal condition. Make sure the removal condition is something that the player can actually meet. Also give some benefits to the curse, but the negative should out way the benefit.

If you avoid curses that affect combat the players are more likely to play along. Have the curse involve social situations instead of combat. If the curse reduces a player’s combat ability they will try and get rid of it as soon as they can.

[Scrapper]

An annoying curse that runs for a few weeks, simple enough to remove with remove curse or any other cure spell, but the catch is, it jumps to the cure caster, and continues to transfer to each next healer/curse remover until it's time runs out. Some powerful Fey or extra-planar beings may endow the casting of some such curse that a mere mortal spell may have troubles with.

[McDaygo]

If you allow 3.5 material look at the book of vile darkness where they expand Bestow curse options and the “dying curse”. Fixing a Duing curse can be a mini adventure all on its own.

[DungeonmasterCal]

Hmm...I'll be taking another look through the BoVD!

[ErichAD]

Make sure the curse does something in a more natural fashion so that it provides some advantages and disadvantages. Do things like decreasing someone's weight so they can climb and swim better but blow away in high winds, or increasing them to the next size category but applying their increased weight to their encumberance.

[I am Nemesis]

my favorite curse was a goblin bone earring that gave my Bard a 9 Strength.
the great thing about that was the Bard started the game with an 8 Strength.

[Coidzor]

I think the first thing to do is to sit down and do some brainstorming about what exactly you want curses to do and be and what role you want them to have in the story.

A punishment and a plot hook can share some commonalities in terms of the end result, but how you go about thinking about and building them will be notably different, for instance.

Even just looking at punishments, looking at the reason for the punishment, both in-game and out-of-game, will help pave the way.

[Pan, definitely not a Kitsune]

Mysterious Stranger wrote:

Many curses in stories have a removal condition. To get rid of the curse the person must meet the removal condition. With remove curse as a spell it is easy to get rid of a curse. This is also because bestow curse is a spell so they kind of counteract each other.

To make curses interesting make some that are not subject to remove curse, but have a removal condition. Make sure the removal condition is something that the player can actually meet. Also give some benefits to the curse, but the negative should out way the benefit.

Slightly related: Conditional Curse

One spell level higher, +5 on the removal-DC, and you have to specify a "possible within a year and a day" clause that removes the curse.

[DRD1812]

So to sum up so far:

* Require the PCs to be cursed in order to proceed through some sort of magic puzzle.

* Add benefits to the curse.

* Make some curses removable only under curse-specific circumstances.

* The curse jumps to the person who cures it.

* Beneficial curses (throg like having big monster teeth!).

* Conditional curse seems specifically designed to solve this problem without making "remove curse" arbitrarily useless.

It's not often that I see a thread with so many on-point suggestions. Cheers to all you guys!