So, Veeky Forums, have you guys come across any good cursed items in your games? Run of the mill sex-switching armor is cool, but have you guys run across anything else?
I tried out the "Door of Thunk" the other day. The first time someone tries to open it, it switches to opening the other way. So go to push, and it's a pull door now.
Didn't go well. Players thought the door was locked and we ended the session after a half hour of searching.
I hate it when a lot of problems are fixed by a player saying "I inspect the lock"
I hate the fact that OP thought he was being clever for wasting his players' time when they're completely reliant on him to describe the details of the situation.
idk, in my daily life I'm not super aware of any little changes that happen with a door, so I wouldn't expect my character to notice any small details.
On the other hand, in real life if a door that worked suddenly didn't work I would inspect that door.
It's important for the GM to provide details, but it's also important for the GM to obfuscate tiny details
that would have been hilarious but most people, upon pushing a pull door, will then go to try to pull it, even if they thought it was a push door all along, and they won't put any conscious thought into this. since it's not the sort of thing you think about consciously, nobody's gonna think to say it out loud.
nice concept but ultimately just the result of some wizard trolling people and not good for much.
A wizard trolling people is good fun and makes the world feel more lived in. It's a neat concept and has the chance for making some whacky encounters if you establish the door is unbreakable or something.
The point is that OP is a retard for thinking that the PCs would spend thirty minutes investigating the door and not realize they needed to pull on it.
You should re-read the OP.
Well I being a dick comes with the territory.
Anyway, anyone got any good cursed items?
...
>Rescinded Glory
A shield that once contain a powerful aura which would block all magical attacks on the wielder. The knight that carried the shield was killed by a particularly deceptive wizard, who then cursed the knights soul and placed it in the shield. The cursed soul hampers the magical aura, sometimes blocking damage as normal, but other times it allows the magical attack to pass as if the shield weren't there at all and deal full damage to the wielder
>Plague Emerald
A mundane-looking emerald which is currently buried deep within the earth. The plague contained within the emerald slowly radiates outward, in this case spreading disease across the land surrounding it. When handled directly flesh will begin to bubble and rot within minutes and, even if dropped, the plague will continue to spread throughout the victim.
>Mind Numbing Ring
A simple silver ring with a small sapphire embedded within. When worn the user will suddenly feel smarter (without actually being smarter), however anyone within 10 feet of them will be stricken with a mind numbing curse that prevents them from thinking properly or clearly. The longer the user wears the ring the smarter they will believe they are until they are convinced they are the smartest person alive.
The rusty spoon. Best when it cannot be disenchanted with remove curse.
I'm making a few magical/cursed items for a possible-future-to-be-made-soon campaign, I posted one of them yesterday on the 5e thread, but I will just dump a few of the cursed ones here for opinions (and so anyone interested can add them to their games). I haven't really decided at which level these should be used, as for now they're more concepts than anything, so any ideas you can give will be great.
For the items:
>Melissa
A longsword that was infused with a with the soul of a woman. This woman, in particular, named Melissa, was a psychopath, and her bloodlust was driven into the sword. The wielder of the sword becomes it's owner, and ownership can only be transferred through death. The owner can see and communicate with Melissa's spirit, and even sense or accurately locate the sword even if it's miles away.
The sword deals +5 dmg on the first hit, and +3 after drawing blood. The catch is, once drawn, Melissa cannot be sheathed if it doesn't taste blood. The owner has to actively harm someone to be able to put her away. If they want to force her, they must succeed on a Athletics roll to sheath her, and then on a Wis saving roll to not get possessed by Melissa. If they fail the first roll, they still need to roll the Wis save. Failing the Wis saving means their character will get possessed and attack the nearest person, and they will only return after being knocked out or after a 1 hour after Melissas kills a person.
Sentient, Chaotic Evil, her sense are the equivalent of an average human. She has a natural good perspective of the owner, but this can change if she is forcefully sheathed too many times, or if the owner refuses to use her in combat. It will be an special problem if the owner uses another weapon instead of her.
>Double-edge ethereal cutter
The name seems more of a description than a proper way to call it, thought it's what one should expect from a wizard obsessed in collecting and cataloging cursed items. This name, however, doesn't talk about the blade itself, but the curse it carries. The sword was created to be able to cut through plains of existence, yet, it was the ultimate failure of it's original creator. A failure so big it left a curse. When connecting to a target, the curses infects them, rotting away their heart, no matter where it hits. For every hit, the target must take a Con saving throw, or take 3d12 of necrotic damage. However, for every missed attack, the wielder must take the saving throw, or suffer equivalent damage.
>The Blade that Pierced the Elven King's Heart
A rapier that does not exist. Truly, this blade does not exist, rather it's a lie perpetuated by old beings. A legend so old that it gained a physical form. This rapier cannot be seen or interact with anyone with Wisdom of 20 or higher. Due to not being truly real, it's steel has special properties, allowing it to traverse physical objects, and interacting with the immaterial world. It has no real weight despite feeling like an ordinary sword, and it's attacks create no physical wounds, nor do they draw blood. Instead of piercing damage, it deals 1d8 Psychic damage, it can go through shields, armor and cover, and anyone hit by it will be vulnerable to it's damage, thought this does not transfer to other forms of psychic damage. If the target is already vulnerable to it, then this effect does not apply. If the target has a resistance to it, then they negate each other (thought, again, it does not transfer to other sources of damage) (not exactly cursed but counts).
>Igmah
The item manifests itself as an amulet with a blade on the bottom. By taking the amulet of and piercing yourself with the small blade, one can summon the true form of Igmah: a chariot lead by two demonic horses. The horses and the chariot are a single existence. While in this form, the amulet disappears. The chariot, and horses, cannot be damaged by physical attacks, however it counts a demonic being. While summoned, Igmah is in full control of it's owner, and will only disappear if they die, if the chariot is destroyed or one of the horses is killed, if the rider dismounts it and leaves it for more than 1 minute, or by choice of the rider. Once it disappears, the amulet reapers in the same place where the chariot was.
Igmah has a speed of 100ft, and can carry up to 600lbs.
God bless GURPS, this is the exact kind of thing I love it for
I played in a magical school campaign that was a bit slice of life even if there was a new overarching plot for every school year, and the Weasley twins ain't got nothing on us. We delved DEEP into black magic and forbidden lore just to be able to more effectively troll people. Creating cursed items and cursing things and places in the school to troll other people was our favorite thing, we basically stared a magic gang war of slightly cursed items.
My favorites were cursing other girls makeup by using a magic combination spell to make our potions a natural part of it without changing its appearance. If the effect is only very minor you can ruin their life without them even noticing. Fun potions to put in there:
>A potion that makes you notice all the little things you hate about yourself
>a purposefully misaligned heating potion, instead of making you comfortable it makes you just warm enough to break out into sweat with any ever so minor work
>a potion that breaks concentration
>a potion that makes you forgetfull
>etc.
We basically mindbroke the boss bitch by telling her about all her faults and all her shallowness, then mixing potions into her makeup and engineering situations in which her new magical curses would lower her social standing and destroy the relationships she used to elevate herself and lower others. I was really taken aback by how sinister it all was when I thought about it afterwards, but essentially we just used magic and planning to do to her what she did to others. We felt bad enough about it afterwards to use the same tricks to make her a better person and build her up afterwards. Didn't want her to kill herself and have it be our fault.
After that we mostly stuck to making more extreme, but ultimately harmless cursed stuff. We put all sorts of enchantments on a trainingdummy to make it essentially a "no u" dummy. Try to make it fly? It will make you levitate instead, try to disarm it and your wand flies off. Since it was a faux Hogwarts setting but with magic actually making sense instead, we were deducted 50 Points for pranking a teacher and awarded 40 Points for how good and complicated magic we used to make it.
Other favorites:
>Cursing Wardrobes so that even though they appeared to be full of your clothes, you could never seem to find what you are looking for at first glance. Cue the other kids in our dorm franatically searching for their fucking socks for half an hour.
>You know how in Hogwarts, everything seems to change place all the time and everything seems to be against you, i.e. Stairs that only appear on Tuesdays and Steps that only "act like they are solid"? We made a whole lot more of that. A doorway that turns into portals to the opposite side of the castle if you aren't paying attention, but only if you don't intend to go there, got us detention and 10 points each after our furious house teacher missed two classes after being teleported to the highest tower when trying to reach a basement classroom TWICE in a row.
>We developed a curse that, when put on a notebook or parchment, would slowly start to replace and insert words written on it with another if you overused it. One girls diary was 17% "literally" at one point
>We cursed statues all over the the school to snark at you and make weird noises when they observed you bullying people. That one backfired massively as what we did to poor bossbitch was caught on by a few of them. You basically couldn't go past them talking anymore, because they would read your mind on what your next word was going to be, and would then say them slightly before you with a parody of your own voice.
>All the classics, tablespoons that become snakes, soup bowls that created the illusion of something disgusting and small floating in them when full, that would seem to escape your attempts at fishing them out, leaving rakes lying around cursed so you don't notice them unless you are looking for them, stuff like that
>Made a statue of misfortune that would laugh at you when you fumbled something
>Invented a curse to be placed on things that would make them randomly weight almost nothing. Best placed on a stack of books. Some unsuspecting student has been carrying them around all day, put a few on the table, now he wants to pick up a whole stack of heavy books and whoosh they go flying because you picked them up with WAY too much force. Since it randomly triggers, you can get away quite far and might not even be suspected.
It's been a long time, I can't remember all the specifics. Most of the really good stuff is also really specific and would require entire walls of greentext to understand the context. We spyed on the charms teacher every week so we could curse the supplies we were going to use next week to troll students trying to learn with them.
look to be perfectly honest this would make me want to run the following character:
>Neutral Good
>highest stat is Wisdom, followed by Charisma and Int
>role is the Party Diplomancer
>avoids killing if at all possible, crazy good at disarming
>Melissa redemption arc when
Would be interesting to see it play out. Specially if you fail a Wis roll and after an hour your character is in jail and has to find a way to cope with having slaughtered innocent people.
Personally i like my cursed magic items in two flavors.
1)it has both a good and a bad traite, the bad traight will probably hit the players once, but if they are careful they can turn it around and make it useful.
2)a setting where all magic items start cursed akd its through use that they purify into good magic items. Basically the players earn better items by putting up with the cursed items for a while
>the silver tougue
You put it in your mouth and replaces the real thing, it makes everyone trust you and believe everything you say but after a day of not speaking with you they become paranoid and distrustful of you to the point of ploting to kill you
If you talk to someone to often they become adicted to you
>Cursing Wardrobes so that even though they appeared to be full of your clothes, you could never seem to find what you are looking for at first glance. Cue the other kids in our dorm franatically searching for their fucking socks for half an hour.
Imagine a wardrobe with two sections. Each section has an enchantment that makes you forget that you already looked into other section.
Victim would just open and close sections for hours, because these socks surely are in the second one.
>A potion that makes you notice all the little things you hate about yourself
Jesus Christ that's evil.
What is a cused item
Ring that makes you forget your dominant hand, and forget left from right.
too clever - had a magical contingency set up so that if they get possessed they immediately get knocked out cold. pretty sure there's a spell combo that can do that.
>Cursed Cloak of Displacement
While you wear this cloak, it projects an illusion that makes it appear to be floating in a space near you. You are otherwise unaffected.
I know, right? Especially in the makeup. The more you put on, the more you notice that weird nose of yours, it was geniously sinister. It cost my char almost all of her yearly allowance in potions ingrediants we had to magic mail order.
use the nearby floating cloak illusion to hide another party member. laugh.
>Cursed Cloak of Displacement
Upon donning this cloak, and every 1d4 hours thereafter while it is still worn, you are magically teleported to a random position within 1 mile. If you would occupy the same spot as a solid object or creature when this happens, you are immediately shunted to the nearest unoccupied space that you can occupy and take force damage equal to twice the number of feet you are moved.
Now I want to run a magic school game, what system did you use for this?
Wand of Secrete Door
We ran a homebrew made by the GM, we are all game design students and we all made and GMed a system for fun and experience. While decidedly different, the GM did however heavily draw from pdf related and from GURPS.
Diamond of False Worth - It appears to the person cursed to be of extreme value, in reality, it is valued at 2 coins and made of glass. The diamond of false worth attracts thieves, including PC characters who are thieves, calling them by name in a soft repeating voice.
Black Iron Sarcophagus - It appears to be a normal sarcophagus of magical mummification, but instead of simply preserving the body, the Black Iron Sarcophagus changes those placed into it into an evil aligned undead mummy, or evil aligned mummy lord if they are a prince or wizard. The change to an evil undead is the curse.
The Book of Forgetting - Any spell written down in this book is removed from a magic user's list of known spells, the text changing to a language the magic user doesn't speak. Conversely however if the curse can be broken, a Book of Forgetting is a treasure trove of spells.
The Ruby of the Abyss - The user gains 3 experience points per hour regardless of any and all other gains or activities, this includes hours spent asleep or otherwise inactive, however, 5 extremely powerful demons will absolutely definitely one day come to claim you, and when they do, you are taken to parts unknown and never seen again.
Black Bile of Ashrek'lah - Anyone who drinks a vial of this material becomes a level 10 necromancer from then on, but begins to melt down after the 7th day, and is always dead by the 20th day. The curse is that all magic users feel extreme thirst around it. It is said to taste like painful death (though drinking it doesn't damage HP).
>Broodwich
>This mysterious object from hell cannot be deconstructed or taken apart except for when it can.
>It is the most delicious sandwich in the world except for that it lacks bacon and has sun-dried tomatoes. Which might be a bonus to some but others might think it's kind of annoying.
>Anyone who consumes the broodwich is instantly taken to an alternate dimension where Jerry shows up.
>Jerry is always about 10 levels higher than the PC who eats it and he has an axe.
>If the PC's merely taken a bite of the broodwich he's only teleported there long enough for Jerry to threaten him.
>If he eats all of it then he's teleported there permanently.
>If the PC deconstructs the broodwich a mysterious voice will force him to either marry a skeleton or have brain surgery where he (in his lobotomized form) will obey all of the voices commands which will mostly be to finish off the Broodwich so Jerry can kill him.
>The Session ends before Jerry can do it.
How does that work? Did they explicitly say "I push the door open"? Did you ask "do you pull or push the door?"
COME TO ME
AND TASTE
THE FUTURE
I had a cursed sword with a bound daemon that wanted to get out. It pretended to be an elven maiden, cursed by a powerful faerie. Wielding it makes you less resistant to daemonic magic, and the daemon can create minor illusions.
>The Grimoire of Questionable Spells
An old, dusty tome that contains a variety of questionable spells ranging from the mundane to the insane to the downright silly. Everything from summoning useless items and inflicting annoying, minor ailments, all the way to (supposedly) tearing a hole in space and time itself to bring forth an incomprehensible being of pure omnipotence, the tome is mostly discarded by anyone unlucky enough to stumble upon it.
For anyone that decides to keep the tome it will have some side effects. If the user is a spellcaster and they fail/fizzle a spell (via whichever method is implemented in your game), they will instead reroll and automatically cast a spell from the grimoire based on their roll. If the user is a non-spellcaster and tries to cast a spell from the grimoire they will instead roll for wisdom. If they fail the roll then the spell will cast with diminished or negative effects on the caster (i.e. summoning a flower pot instead summons a pile of clay, but an affliction spell would land on the caster). If they pass the roll then the spell is overcharged and effects are doubled, but if the spell is an affliction it lands on both the intended target and the caster with normal effects (i.e. summoning a flower pot summons TWO instead, etc)