I'm curious, Veeky Forums...

I'm curious, Veeky Forums, what are the most creative magical items you've encountered or have incorporated in your campaigns?

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not very interesting but i can start so we get it going!

>my own system
a gauntlet that when equipped blesses any item held for 4 rounds (if you hold an item and let it go then the bless lasts for 4 rounds) bless is a paladin based spell that gives the wielder +1d6 holy damage upon dealing damage and bless also grants +2 to hit with the blessed item.

> pic related
Not mine, but I thought it appropriate for this thread.

They were called "Whispers", enchanted bottles that when one breathed into, learned your voice and something of your personality.

They were usually given as gifts to departing soldiers or adventurers, for when you uncorked the bottle, it would talk to you in a soothing manner of the individual imprinted upon it.

All of the mental succour of a message from home, with the added pleasure of hearing your loved one's voice. Some simpler versions just recorded a single message.

Not entirely original I know, but still nice.

damn thats pretty good

I can only imagine

>help up, Obi wan, ur are only hope

What a shitty GM

Why?

This is why there should be a cap or limit on the abilities of magical items.

not user but i think its because he DM destroyed the item pretty much after he saw the true power of such a magical artifact

I made a sword that's a gateway to heaven, AKA the Ark of the Covenant in weaponized form. The person who draws it from it's sheath has to roll their willpower to keep it from obliterating the nearby area of all life.

All the storm sorcerers have access to a staff which detects the weather within 100 miles.

Why? That doesn't seem fun.

This has always been a mindset that has confused me. Whenever I'm building a character and see a potential of "Oh, this combination of abilities would be fun!" I immediately find that the rules are written specifically to prevent it.

New poster here. I think he's a very good GM to be able to adapt to an unexpected factor and incorporate it as a heroic moment in the climactic battle. This is the shit players remember.

I like the whispering bottles too. It's the kind of clever item that it really puts the player IN the game as they wrap their imaginations around it.

Protip. Lose the name. People with names aren't looked fondly upon here.

FUCK YOu

wait, what?! the DM unintentionally created an absolutely badass moment for one of his PCs, and the group as a whole. wish I had been there in this campaign.

well the dm was to stupid to relise what he created and when he knew he took it away

Portable holes.

Fill it with traps and poison, lay it out in prime trap area, cast an illusion over it.

Or fill it with grabby monster loyal to you of any variety, fill it poison, or water, drown/suffocate shot.

Mount a ring gate on a fighter's shield, have the other nearby a spellcaster, have the spellcaster cast through it.

An axeblade that allows someone to negate any blow that does more damage than they have maximum hitpoints.

The guy that wielded it had max HP in the negatives.

Butthurt DM detected

how?

Negative levels and a trashed constitution score. We always interpreted the HP penalty from negative levels to mean maximum HP. In hindsight we probably had it backwards but it made for an interesting fight.

Ever have to heal a boss before you can even hurt him?

What if you just cast a Save or Die?

We didn't have any, otherwise we would've.

I've always been a fan of giving fluff for +1 weapons and the like.

That is a very stupidly written item. I mean, how could anyone have written it down and not thought at how easily exploitable it would have been?

Very nice indeed.

And now I'm imagining a broken adventurer sitting in a corner and sobbing over the whispers of their lost family - a bittersweet token, a cursed fragment of memory, a delusional mockery of life.

Here are some of mine:

>A cursed sword that was actually pretty good in combat, but once wielded the bearer would refuse to ever let it go, their hand would remain forever clenched on its handle and they wouldn't see reason about it and refuse to consider it a problem. Also it prevented the bearer from sleeping (but also prevented them from dying of sleep deprivation - after a while they'd become permanently nervous and stressed but suffer nothing worse than that).

>Compass-like devices that would come up in pairs and each always point towards the other, no matter the distance.

>A machine that could 'bottle' spells. A spellcaster could be connected to this device and cast a spell, and the spell would be instead imprisoned inside a bottle; opening the bottle would unleash the spell as if it had just been cast. Anyway, the caster would not recover the power spent to cast the spell until the bottle was used.

>A couple of golden rings, large enough for an open hand to fit through them. Anything passing through one ring would appear through the other instead, Portal-style. A character used them as bracelets for a while, so his hands were actually inverted.

the penitent blade
whenever the user is dealt damage, the attacker is dealt that much damage
whenever the user causes damage to another being, the user is dealt that much damage

>whenever the user causes damage to another being, the user is dealt that much damage

Be creative.

Sounds OP on a healer.

Or a cool cursed item.

>fighter instinctivly blocks an arrow
>wizard dies

The Flame of Inspiration

They haven't actually encountered it yet, but they've heard all about it. I'm not entirely sure how it'll work mechanically, but it's a "flame" that essentially lets the user burn off years of their life for visions and ideas.
It is a legendary artifact given to the great orc leader Gruzrud upon his ascension to demonhood that allowed him to expand his empire to the four corners of the world. Demons live forever. Unlimited inspiration.
The Rodrom empire was the most advanced civilisation in the world, far surpassing the engineering of the dwarfs, simply because their leader became a hyper genius.

The problem with it was that Gruzrud became obsessed with it. He retreated into his fortress at Demon's Rock and made fewer and fewer appearances in public. His empire began to crumple.
And still he stared into the Flame.

When the great hero Marnag Golden-Foot, fresh from watching his best friend die, sought a way to bring him back, stormed Demon's Rock during the famous Seven Man Siege. Marnag and six of the most powerful adventurers of his age fought the Rodrom hordes, each breaking down a gate. They fell, one by one, and Marnag descended into the catacombs to do battle with the Demon Emperor. Victorious, he took the Flame and learned that he might return his friend by venturing into the Underworld. Why the idea never occurred to him is a mystery.

And so he did, and tore a hole in Death's Gate, fashioning a shield out of the sundered plank, and pulled his friend's soul through.
His friend was changed by Death and Marnag fled in horror.

The breaking of the gates destroyed the land for hundreds of miles around, creating the Shadow Realm and turning its people into living dead.
Marnag, flame in hand, ran from the destruction and set sail for the land beyond the sunset, the greatest hero of his age.

And now he returns 700 years later, still holding the flame, to end the world.

>have BBEG a distant entity corrupting the world
>mage player finds one of his books
>It's a conduit for his magic
>it slowly seeps evil around itself
>player gradually goes from CG to NN to NE
I didn't even fudge it, just the promise of power is corrupting a great roleplayer
>if he's not stopped i intend to either make him overthrow the evil's throne or have his soul crushed and his body become the BBEG's form
It all depends on his determination

>what are the most creative magical items you've encountered or have incorporated in your campaigns?

Bras and corsets enchanted with a minor form of levitation that allowed women with an exceptionally large bust to remain fit and active without getting aches or back problems.

It was my solution to situations where you've got women with E-Cups just running around casting spells or swinging swords like they're nothing for days and weeks.

One item we used in a game a long time ago was influenced by 8 bit theatre. It was a healing shiv. Did 1D4 Damage with 1D4 healing. We ended up losing a player's character becuase we were desperate for healing in a dungeon one time and used the Shiv to keep stabbing him back to health. He didn't make it.

Another item that my Brother actually used on his current game made me laugh. The players came across a suit of armor that was designed to look like a lion. It was gold masterwork, beautiful, full plate, etc.

Paladin puts it on. Turns out it's intelligent, and cursed so you can't take it off.

He essentially gave the Paladin a sentient metal fursuit.

That's cool.

F-fuck you man. I didn't chose to have a name, okay?!

you, I like you.

First one happened while rolling some random loot. What I intended to say was "Manual of Dexterity +2." What came out was "Manual of Sexterity +2." The players demanded that it actually be a Manual of Sexterity, so I figure what the hell and say sure. But I made it a cursed item that caused the reader to grow a horn on his head in the shape of a huge purple dildo. They ended up having to go on a quest to remove the curse that involved going to a demonic brother full of succubi and murdering a hooker. But she was a demonic hooker, so the paladin who did it was in the clear. It wound up being pretty excellent.

Second was a run of the mill Nine Lives Stealer that popped up while rolling random loot. I improved some history explaining some of the non-magical art objects that were also in the random loot as the possessions of the former governor of the nearby town who died in battle. The Nine Lives Stealer was what killed him, but he killed the orc wielding it at the same time. The evil magic of the sword coalesced into the abomination they just killed. This evolved organically into a huge, epic quest to put the governor's spirit to rest by dispelling the evil of the Nine Lives Stealer and reforging it into a weapon of good. The governor was a dwarf, so he and the other spirits of the dwarf lords of old materialized to lend a hand with the final forging process, and manly tears were shed by all.

Raiment of the Stormwalker in D&D 3.5

This silk robe roils with the colors of storm clouds, constantly shifting in shade and hue.
Each of these wide, faintly glowing bracers is
made of four thin, rectangular quartz crystals
joined by narrow silver bands.
This ring of faceted clear crystal contains a faint blue-white glow.

The fluff alone was sexy enough to make me glad I made a druid

An adamantine gauntlet found on the skeleton of some long dead cultist in an ancient underground temple. When put on it attaches itself to the wearer like flesh and forces the hand into a clenched fist, unable to unclench. The process is extremely painful and by the time its done the character has what is essentially an adamantine metal fist. Increases strength and allows another attack to be made on top of a regular attack at a -4 BAB penalty, but restricts the use of the hand for as long as it is on. Can be removed with a remove curse spell.

I know this one may be a little boring, but each and every member of a particular inter-dimensional mafia family in my campaign wears a crystalline earring that has built-in casts of Word of Recall, set to the family's base of operations. Although it is usually manually activated, it also activates when the wearer is killed/knocked out. Basically, it's practical and somewhat fashionable jewelry unique in design to that specific mafia family.

I came here to steal magic item ideas, not to feel

"Do me a favor, boy. This scam of yours, when it's over, you erase this god-damned thing."
ROM Construct "Dixie Flatline"

I read some 3.5 fuckery about being able to inflict negative levels via scrying, so I gave my party a telescope that creates a wide-area negative level effect - not enough to do much more than bother powerful NPCs, but enough to kill any commoners in the area and raise 'em as wights and zombies and such.

The catch is that they've got to point the telescope at a map of the area. They'll wish they'd paid attention to my worldbuilding now, the bastards.

>attack
>attacker and target immediately take all of the damage and die
I can find a use for this but it clearly does not work as intended.

well, it's one of the few ways to one-shot tarrasque. give it to farmhand and send him to fight the damn thing.

>A couple of golden rings, large enough for an open hand to fit through them. Anything passing through one ring would appear through the other instead, Portal-style.

24/7 fucking sounds awesome.

>reach the BBEG
>BBEG does his monologue
>partway thru it, player goes, "Hang on a sec. UHHHHHHHHHHHHHGG... Okay, what were you saying?"

it wasent that bad i liked it and as this user said

LOL

So if you prick yourself with it do you die?

It would be very painful.

>A machine that could 'bottle' spells. A spellcaster could be connected to this device and cast a spell, and the spell would be instead imprisoned inside a bottle; opening the bottle would unleash the spell as if it had just been cast. Anyway, the caster would not recover the power spent to cast the spell until the bottle was used.

evil king sends raids to capture low-level wizards all over neighboring lands and forces them to pour all their magic into the machine
he then sends them to work in mines or something.

uses bottles of spells to outfit his best soldiers

One of my original characters was a gnome cleric and specialized in mass healing. After many years of alcoholism, healing, PTSD, living in the half orc's backpack (functioning as a healing battery) and adventures his God decided he had done enough. His body was turned into a stone statue that when alcohol was poured over him and if you rubbed his belly would heal you a certain amount. His name was forgotten in the setting of future campaigns but he lived on as the incredible "Backpack Gnome."

sounds pretty cool.
1 question: Gruzrud could gaze upon the flame for so long because he was an immortal demon.
Why was Marnag capable to hold the flame for 700 years?

That's pretty fucking dark souls. I like it.

mace of healing

deal 1d8 damage and 1d10 healing, ignore armor

This story is bullshit on so many levels. Since I can't confirm homebrew rules of editions I'll just point out the obvious one.

What kind of moron Archer doesn't exploit that item in a normal fashion. You don't need the big Nova. You don't need to switch to melee (what the fuck) because your ranged isn't working out(???) When all you need is another quiver, which he apparently had, just fucking use ten arrows every battle for fucking 10x. Arrows are cheap. Store all your arrows in the normal quiver ans move them 10/20/5/whatever at a time to your broken bullshit magic quiver every attack. He could afford it. They're clearly not low level by any measure of any edition.
Also I agree that DM sucks. Broken magic items aside, I've never had a player plot and work towards something for a solid year. If any of my players put forth that kind of effort they don't need any crit or anything, if he wanted to wipe out every last orc I would have let him. If he wanted to spend another year to wipe out another army, fucking hell yeah do it.

Also who the fuck takes crit feats on bowd

bmup

This is really cool, dude

I gave my party a severely gimped Flameskull companion in 5e on their first adventure. It was originally the head of a shitty yodeling bard that the villain killed and tried to make a genuine Flameskull out of, but he fucked it up. All it could do was cast the Dancing Lights cantrip, bite things, and yodel. And regenerate in an hour after being destroyed.

But the players kept thinking of so many awesome things to use him for, I had to use some of them.

First off, it turned out that his Yodeling could give Bardic Inspiration once a day, since he used to be a bard.
Then, after an incounter involving some mummies and a stolen canopic jar, you could cut a hole in the skull and fill it with brains, giving the Flameskull some of the personality and memories of the brain's previous owner. However, each time the skull was destroyed (which occurred often), some brains would be lost or mashed up, making the personality more and more insane.
After that, they found out that if the Flameskull was split into relatively equal pieces, it had a chance of regenerating into two complete separate skulls. However, each duplicate always wound up being permanently destroyed, stolen, traded away, or leaving.
It's newest ability has been dubbed the "Lagann Impact": if faced with a skeletal enemy with no head, it can make a Dexterity contest and a Charisma contest; if it wins both, it takes control of the skeleton as its new head. It's never pulled it off yet, but the party keeps trying. One guy in particular is obsessed with getting a brand-new flaming skeletal yodeling horse as his steed.

...

blump

i believe it's called the 'halberd of enumeration'.

it's a halberd of course, and whenever a player wielding it gets a critical hit it causes an exact duplicate of that character to appear in an unoccupied space next to them. until the end of their next turn they can control that character in addition to their original character. at the end of their next turn they choose one of their characters and the other disappears.

however, as long as this duplicate exists both the original character and the duplicate roll 19-20 for critical hits instead of 20 and if another critical hit is rolled before the end of the players next turn the duplicate stays for another turn.

if the player has two characters and one of them scores a critical hit it causes both of them to duplicate and if more than one duplicate exists the critical range grows correspondingly (4 characters would give the player a critical range of 17-20 and then 8 characters would give them all a critical range of 13-20).


so basically the movie multiplicity with micheal keaton. the players haven't gotten it yet, although they are growing close.

>>A couple of golden rings, large enough for an open hand to fit through them. Anything passing through one ring would appear through the other instead, Portal-style.
great
>A character used them as bracelets for a while, so his hands were actually inverted.
even more amazing

You're alright, you and your reference

Not that user, but it's bad DMing because it removes all challenge from the game. Arrows are cheap, there's not reason for a PC not to put thousands of arrows into the quiver and use it as an instant win button whenever an encounter goes south.

So if he fails the roll it's a TPK? That's a shit item, but one every disruptive player would love to have.

A rakshasa could make good use of those.

I try

>it's a halberd of course, and whenever a player wielding it gets a critical hit it causes an exact duplicate of that character to appear in an unoccupied space next to them. until the end of their next turn they can control that character in addition to their original character. at the end of their next turn they choose one of their characters and the other disappears.

This is 10/10 right here. I don't know about the rest of it but this part alone is being stolen.

>mace of undead slaying

yeah the rest of it is just for the really unlikely situation in which the character rolls a crit and then on the next turn they roll another crit and the whole thing gets out of hand. maybe i'll remove the expanding crit range.

i like the idea that the player would have to choose one of the characters to disapear, meaning they could eliminate their original character in lieu of keeping the duplicate.

phantom lancer is that you?

no, what's the reference?

Probably not too appropriate for this board, but he's a DotA 2 character with some very similar mechanics, sounds like it'd be really cool on the tabletop though.

I'd say Kimahri Ronso, but I'm sure that's wrong

Boots of Doom
Three times per day, this footwear can transform into heavy, clanking, spiked iron boots for 5 rounds. While transformed, pointing at a target and walking slowly toward them (5 feet per round only), the target perceives you growing larger, darker, and more terrifying . Each round they must pass a DC ? Will save or progress toward the next stage of fear. (Shaken, frightened, panicked.) If you end your movement beside a panicked or cowering target affected by these boots, they are considered helpless to your attacks, so terrifying you appear. Subjects immune to any spell listed in the creation section are also immune to the effects of these boots.
Creation: CL ?, doom, cause fear, phantasmal killer

The Stygian Blade. A black, ice-crystal like sword that stole the memories of those that it killed.

Once the ceremonial blade of an elf tribe, the tribe had however dwindled in power and relevance, and after many years, dissolved the tribe, leaving the blade at their old grounds.

Later, the site would be plundered by Neanderthals (This was a frostfire D&D setting) and the leader took up the blade as plunder. The sudden influx of so many lifetimes of thought drove it insane, and the constant memories of death and the pain of dying caused its body to react, constantly shredding its muscles and repairing them in grotesque manners. The new batshit insane neanderthal went on to slaughter many other tribes, bringing them to a huge, disorganized horde that descended upon the northern kingdoms.

>when ya druid be pimpin

depends on the setting/system

mine are only damaged by resurrection

The Bifocals of Darkness.

+2 CHA
+2 called shots

Thanks! The amusing part came since I ruled that the orientation of the rings was somewhat important, so the guy wore them in a way that made his hands come out upside down - so, basically, the palms would still be oriented inwards in a resting positions, but the thumbs would be on the wrong side; the same way as if you crossed your arms and pointed the palms towards each other. So, people wouldn't notice the oddity at first but be a tid bit unsettled without grasping what, and only after a bit they'd go "Wait, your hands are weird".

Which ones? Also I'm not extremely familiar with rakshasas, so I'm not sure I'm getting what you mean
[I think I remember something about being hedonistic and decadent, so weird sex I guess?[/spoiler]

A drunk wizard made a never-ending bag of horses, he was never heard from after it got caught upside down hanging from a tree.

Wings of Iron Angels. It's an artifact weapon, a relic from one of the ancient empires of the setting for their royal guards.

Basically Flying Hussar wings except the feathers are FIN FUNNERU

I intend to have the NPC who has them yell "THESE WINGS AREN'T FOR SHOW" before he starts fucking shit up.

he has a passive chance to spawn illusions of himself when he attacks, and so does his illusions

a set of ring that kills the owners when they put them on

it's how I managed to end our cancerous excursion into 3.5 and go back to superior 4e

I say keep it, at least until you inevitably end up with one player controlling twenty halberdiers maniacally chopping away at a single guy.

Except it wasn't an artifact, it was an enchanted item. It probably wasn't designed to fire five billion arrows at once, just a few handfuls at most.

And that's why the enchantment broke, along with the reason above.

Let's look at this another way: the GM gave his player a cool item to try and help him keep up with the casters. He thought it was a rather simple item, and didn't think much about it. When the situation came up, he didn't limit his player's creativity, allowing him to, one time only, use this 'storm quiver' as a fuck-off huge siege-breaker weapon. It allowed for an epic and memorable moment with a ranger in the spotlight. And I think that's okay.

Head of an animal and wonky hand orientation. Spellcasters mostly. Rakshasas hands are reversed in exactly the manner you're describing your players hands. The rakshasa could use it to flip em and be all normal-y.

>a clitoris piercing that turns your clit into an 8 inch barbed penis complete with dog knot

LMAO, that was fucking ingenius!

Hello Satan.

>i like the idea that the player would have to choose one of the characters to disapear, meaning they could eliminate their original character in lieu of keeping the duplicate.
youtube.com/watch?v=yRozarc1kSo

Not all magical items are good. Cursed items are magical too. The specifics of it is that it begins draining the health of all creatures within it's radius of one point of HP per turn until it has drained a certain amount or until there's nothing left to drain.

A spear that accelerates rapidly towards it's point of creation when released. Mechanically it's a really hard to aim one shot nuke but I like the concept.

I actually like the shiv idea. It sounds kinda retarded and backwards, but it makes sense if it was a broken piece of like, a staff of healing for example.

>portal rings
>character used them as bracelets

How would be take them off? Like assuming they're not so loose to just fall off, he'll need to use a hand to do it, but in taking it off, he'll lose that hand.