"How did your character reach such a high level and acquire so many magic items?"

>"How did your character reach such a high level and acquire so many magic items?"

>"Just last week, they drew from a Deck of Many Things and repeatedly drew the Sun card. They turned into a great hero overnight."

Would you accept this as a character's backstory?

>Would you accept this as a character's backstory?
If the player can replicate the feat.

If everyone else is at the same level, sure.

I might do, depending on whether they were actually going to roleplay the zero-to-hero theme, and on the campaign tone.

>Deck of Many Things
That piece of hot garbage has ruined every game it's ever touched. I want to find the idiot who created that shit and stab him in the neck.

>I misused an artifact and ruined my game
>better get mad at the author of the splat it's from for some reason

Probably. Though I can't see it working well unless they're a good roleplayer.

Unless of course you mean that they're starting stronger than the rest of the group.
In which case they can fuck right off.

>I cast Wish to get a Deck of Many Things! xD
There's that problem though.

>letting PCs have wish
>the deck is the problem
Sorry, that ship was already sunk

Allowing wishes to just randomly warp artifacts into a players lap makes the DM just as bad in that case.

>player gimps himself by getting a random amalgamation of potentially useless items and forgoing the adventuring process that would otherwise build relationships and social clout
I mean I guess, but he's not allowed to complain when the rest of the party is actually important, experienced, and cohesive both in their equipment and in the world and he's just "that shmuck who got buff overnight"

It's a useful tool for resigning as DM. The Veeky Forums equivalent of shitting on your boss' computer, as it were.

>it's the DMs fault if he plays the system as designed
Nice spin.

It wasn't my misuse, it was the GMs fault for using it in her games. The first time I was a new player and thought we were having fun. It resulted in half the party at grossly overleveled, the other half dead, and a massive argument that ended with two people storming out and never coming back. The second time, the same GM got the brilliant idea of of taking all the "Bad" cards out, giving us a million wishes, epic levels, and more money than we knew what to do with. So, everyone said, "Golly, no point in this anymore." The third time was a different GM and all six players ended up banished or dead. What fun.

D&D is a toolkit, not a singular setting. You include the parts of it that are appropriate for your game and no more.

Your anger is still misdirected. Your GMs were shit.

> Be me 14 years ago
> be playing NWN roleplay survival server
> Asshole with tons of equipment and shit, few levels on a bunch of players gets a deck from a DM quest chain 'for the lulz'.
> Guy loses 5/6th of his stuff, half his levels and gets a disease that persists through everything, inclusing death that basically crippled him.
> Die laughing

I dunno user, sometimes there is justice in the world.

Just teleport them to a flooded ancient temple where a deck of many things was locked millennia ago. Wish granted.

So what kind of crazy things have you guys seen happen with a Deck of Many Things? I've only seen it come up once.

>be attacking a stronghold of vampires
>my character (wood elf rogue) dies
>get reincarnated afterward
>party finds a deck of many things in the loot
>don't really give a shit about more random shenanigans after I just got reincarnated as a random race
>RP it as my character still getting the bearings of the new body while everyone else deals with the deck
>party's cleric ends up with something like 5 INT after drawing a card (I don't know what any of the cards are named), so he wanders off and the player rerolls
>party alchemist gets the one that forces your soul to inhabit a random item somewhere in the world while your body falls lifeless
>party sorceress is half-drow; in this world half-drow are basically a servant caste that are used by the full drow to run surface errands
>apparently they have ways of tracking her down; wishes to be free above all else
>ends up drawing multiple times
>gets two wishes and an "undo something recent" card
>uses the undo card to undo something minor, can't even remember what it was
>wishes to have the alchemist's soul returned to her body
>turns out that card specified that it can't be undone by a wish, but the wish does allow the caster to know where the soul is located
>"undo" card could have been used to return the soul but we didn't know that beforehand
>sorceress now knows where the soul is but hasn't told anyone else in the party
>uses second wish
>"I WISH I WAS QUEEN OF THE DROW"
>poofs away as history is rewritten so that she is now a full-blooded drow and the queen
>no one remaining has any clue where the alchemist's soul went to
>3 players have to reroll

Reminds me once in a game we all got a single draw from the deck as a reward.
First player pulled the Throne card.
We were all looking at the deck so the DM mentioned we could see the replacement card come forth.

That was how the Valley of Seven Forts came to be.

Yes, I've seen one. Curse of the Crimson Throne has an evil assassin from the Red Mantis who stalks the players and keeps trying to kill them.

The Paladin drew that one card that had this effect:

> The GM chooses one of the character’s enemies. This enemy has a complete change of heart and now favors the character.

So this Chaotic Evil assassin had a complete change of heart, and was now madly in love with him. It was unexpected, but fun.

Heh, I remember that assassin. Given that the adventure as-written basically forces her into combat with an NPC the first time she's met, I never quite got the point of giving her so much backstory; always glad to see moments where she gets to see actual use.
I'll admit, Decks of Many Things seem like Random Encounter Tables - it's probably best if you build your own, to the results you're comfortable with.

It's a backstory. If they're the level that their backstory suggests what's wrong with it?

It'd be an interesting concept, especially if they were completely unprepared to deal with their newfound strengths. I.e. Early superman style

Under 3 conditions
1) everyone is at that level anyways
2) it fits the tone of the campaign
2a) they can explain why they had access
to such a powerful artifact.
3) they understand that means they're going to have to rp it a character that has no idea how to control they're new powers.

What if you used a Deck of Many Things to construct a campaign? Give the party the deck right at the start and have them each draw like three cards, and use the effects of those cards to decide their characters and the world around them.

There's an adventure built around the deck for 4e which is pretty good.

They have some variant Decks in Pathfinder, including an intelligent one that sucks a party into a demiplane. You fight the "bad" cards, which are interpreted however the DM wants, and surviving through the challenges lets you pick from the good cards and the effects they want.

I could get behind this idea.

The key isn't to put it in the players' hands. After all, cautious players will know that it's a massive risk to fuck with it, and the less cautious might fuck themselves and everybody else.

You have the rival NPCs chasing it, and if the players fuck up, they get to watch their rivals draw from the deck, for better or worse.

So educate us. What's the "right way" to use Deck of Many Things? Because it seems to me that it's DESIGNED to be misused.

Had a villain in a recent campaign whose main schtick was trying to trick everyday folk into drawing a deck of many things. The PCs were chasing her to try and put a stop to the chaos. Honestly it was pretty good fun, would recommend.

>Would you accept this as a character's backstory?
Abso-fucking-lutely.

They have the skills, but they don't have the experience, which makes an interesting character disconnect.

Imagine a slot-chip junkie who overdosed on learning chips (you know, like the ones in the Matrix, yknow, the whole Neo "I know kung-fu" schtick).
He can't differentiate reality from a dream, he knows how to do stuff, but he can't explain how he does it, his knowledge isn't acquired, but rather ingrained into him.
Imagine a man who is a walking encyclopedia, but who is completely unable to learn new stuff. That's this guy.