I don't think I'll ever understand players. They had tens of thousands of gp to spend. They had access to "Big Six" items in the shop. There were powerful scrolls. A carpet of flying. And they wound up blowing their wad on an apparatus of the crab. They immediately took it for a joy ride around town and then parked it in their base. They haven't touched the thing in months.
What about the rest of you guys? What's the weirdest magic item you've ever been excited for?
Sheet of smallness back in D&D 1st It shrunk non-magical inanimate objects down to carry size and then let you make em big again whenever you wanted. (However if you get hit by a dispel magic things could get messy depending how you were holding on to the small objects. )
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We had one guy in a 2nd edition AD&D game get a goblet with some sort of transmute liquid spell on it (from Unearthed Arcana?) that turned any water poured into it into elven wine. His elf took that as his treasure and spent the rest of the campaign drunk, as he drank nothing else...
Everybody loved darts of the hornet's nest. We'd fight over those if they ever appeared in treasure!
My players were very exited to have found a Robe of many Things. Their goal for the campaign was to somehow use all the items.
Most memorable usage was when they drew the boat and used it to slide down the slope of a valley into a stampede of ostriches/golarion chocobos, killing one of them via crash.
Another treasure was Baba Yagas Mortar in Reign of Winter. ...it could fly and change size from handheld to vehicle size. They used it to run over a monster attacking an NPC, shrunk it, inserted it into the tripped monsters behind.... and commanded it back to vehicle size. Fun times.
(I now see a pattern of vehicular violence there)
Way back in middle school I had a game with friends where they insisted on grabbing whatever "loot" they could find. This often meant they would stuff their backpacks with empty bottles, paper, plates, and other useless junk. We didn't track weight so it led to some pretty ludicrous circumstances where huge amounts of objects were stuffed into people's packs. I let them come across what I called a "pest engine," which affixed to the bottom of a backpack. You could activate it and it would consume some of the detritus at the bottom of the pack and form it into a small animated construct that would run forward and explode, dealing damage based on the "loot" it was formed from (glass would deal piercing damage but cause bleed, paper would deal minimal damage but blind them from the parchment that flew into their eyes, torches and tindertwigs would deal fire damage and set things alight, etc). It turned into a hilariously fun and wonky way to clear space on character sheets and also to deal damage in combat. I made up the details of what each effect was on the spot when they activated it, and I'm almost certain it was wildly imbalanced, but we didn't know any better at the time and it was extremely fun.
My (I was a player) party found a scroll of Ice Ship inside the World's Largest Dungeon.
Our goal:
Drop it on someone (it does not say that it has to be summoned in a body of water).
(We did)
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While attempting to repel a siege of their tower, the PCs had exhausted all of their spells and ranged ammunition.
So what did they do? They lured the enemy commander to the base of the tower by feigning surrender. While they were being bound, the party rogue, hidden at the top of the tower, pulled out a folding boat and dropped it on the enemy commander, doing just enough damage to kill her!
I'll never forget what the rogue said afterwards: "Huh, not so useless after all."
XD
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I was super excited when a librarian character of mine found a bookmark of deception. I bought a blank journal, tucked it in the back, would read the illusory story then remove and replace the bookmark to generate a different book.
I'm in love with the gourd home from Tomorrow Must Burn. It's basically a gourd that houses a small cottage, and it seems like a perfect halfling magic item.
I was super excited when a librarian character of mine found a bookmark of deception. I bought a blank journal, tucked it in the back, would read the illusory story then remove and replace the bookmark to generate a different book.
*reads up on bookmark of deception*
Oh wow, awesome! Blank notebook and a stack of bookmarks of deception is basically a Golarion e-book reader and a stack of usb sticks. :O How aren't those sold in thousands?
I was super excited when a librarian character of mine found a bookmark of deception. I bought a blank journal, tucked it in the back, would read the illusory story then remove and replace the bookmark to generate a different book.*reads up on bookmark of deception*
Oh wow, awesome! Blank notebook and a stack of bookmarks of deception is basically a Golarion e-book reader and a stack of usb sticks. :O How aren't those sold in thousands?Because it doesn't actually work like that,
https://aonprd.com/MagicWondrousDisplay.aspx?FinalName=Bookmark%20of%20Dece ption"The apparent book is determined when the bookmark is crafted, and is usually an especially boring or commonplace book such as a legal or religious text."
You only get the same fake book every time...
Hm yes, the crafter decides what book the bookmark contains, that was clear to me. The crafter makes a bookmark of "The adventures of knight Fightsalot", then they could write the book title on the bookmark and sell it as "InstaBook - just stick into an empty notebook to read!" If they craft bookmarks with other contents, those create other books.
So its more like a DVD - read only.
I was super excited when a librarian character of mine found a bookmark of deception. I bought a blank journal, tucked it in the back, would read the illusory story then remove and replace the bookmark to generate a different book.*reads up on bookmark of deception*
Oh wow, awesome! Blank notebook and a stack of bookmarks of deception is basically a Golarion e-book reader and a stack of usb sticks. :O How aren't those sold in thousands?Because it doesn't actually work like that,
https://aonprd.com/MagicWondrousDisplay.aspx?FinalName=Bookmark%20of%20Dece ption"The apparent book is determined when the bookmark is crafted, and is usually an especially boring or commonplace book such as a legal or religious text."
You only get the same fake book every time...
Drat, I'm glad we didn't notice this. It wouldn't make a difference, but it does make the item less interesting (even if it makes more sense).
More weird but exiciting treasure: I'm always delighted to find a rod of wonder. It's rarely useful, and I only use it when I'm reasonably sure the worst of the effects won't screw the party, but it's fun to have a wild card from time to time.
I dropped a wondrous figurine (obsidian steed) in a game expecting the party to sell it off because they had better ways of doing everything the steed did. Instead the character with Beyond Morality grabbed it and used it at every opportunity hoping it would drop them to hell because (direct quote) "it might be a fun vacation".
Another treasure was Baba Yagas Mortar in Reign of Winter. ...it could fly and change size from handheld to vehicle size. They used it to run over a monster attacking an NPC, shrunk it, inserted it into the tripped monsters behind.... and commanded it back to vehicle size. Fun times.
I suspect all of your subsequent characters now keep a small collection of feather tokens on in their inventory.
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This is more "kids say the darndest things" than "weird treasure" but in the very first adventure I ran for my kids, they were riding in a wagon when a zombie threw a spear and killed their horse, crashing the wagon.
A few dead zombies later, they find a scroll, a map (the hook for their next adventure), and some gold. They've earned the friendship of a valuable ally, got a new horse, and rebuilt the wagon.
But what my older son really, really wants is to pull the spear out of the dead horse so he can reuse it.