Artifacts!

[Mercurius]

I love me some artifacts but 4E seems particularly lacking in them. What's up with that? And what are the best sources for artifacts, any edition? the 1E DMG comes to mind, as does the 2E Book of Artifacts (which I never owned).

So a few questions:

1. Comments on 4E artifacts, or lack thereof.
2. Your favorite book or source for artifacts.
3. A list of all D&D related artifact books.

(The reason I ask is that my group is currently 9th level and I'm thinking about what Paragon Tier will bring and I'm wanting to integrate a major artifact at some point, possibly sooner than later).

 

[MrMyth]

So, my experiences with artifacts in 4E:

1) As a DM running Pyramid of Shadows, the party encounters the Head of Vyrellis - an eladrin spirit trapped in a magic orb, with connections to the Pyramid's history. Was an excellent roleplaying tool and way to connect the PCs to the background of the adventure. One charismatic tiefling was the bearer of the Orb (and made good use of its powers) and eventually followed Vyrellis into the Feywild when I allowed the party, post-adventure, to restore her to life.

2) Following that, a friend started a home-brew campaign at level 1, which I eventually took over at Epic levels. From levels 1-20, we saw the following artifacts:

-A magical dragon-hating longspear with orcish connections, which our half-orc fighter occasionally wielded (but preferred his Spiked Chain), and eventually turned over to a young orc hunter whom we helped with his 'coming-of-age' dragon hunt. It was an interesting item, but not really appropriate for our party - unless he was fighting dragons, using the weapon was just worse for our Fighter than using his normal weapon, and so he was pleased when we gave it away and it offered him a fancy new weapon instead.

-The Jet Black Ioun Stone, which our creepy blight-beast druid was very happy about for flavor reasons, even if some of its abilities didn't quite work for her - and, in character, helped explain her descent over the Paragon tier into a more death-loving character eventually devoted to the Raven Queen. When it eventually moved on, several of its relevant abilities for her lingered, which remained useful through the rest of the game.

-The Immortal Game, a magical Chess-board which we found while trapped in the depths of the Shadowfell, which let someone play against the spirit of Death. My Warlord chose to do so. Checks were randomly based on Con, Int or Cha - I was good at Cha, average at Con, and weak on Int. Over time, I made occasional headway in the game, slightly upgrading my powers from it, but it was pretty much inevitable that it would end in stalemate and move on.

I introduced 2 artifacts during the Epic tier, both of which I designed stats for on my own:

-A Shard of the Sun, which I introduced as part of a plot involving Vecna trying to play Pelor against the Nine Hells and cause chaos in Hestavar. A Deva Avenger in the party, at the conclusion of that adventure, decided to switch from the worship of the Raven Queen to the worship of Pelor ('remembering' past lives in service to Pelor), and gained the artifact. I felt like I did a good job with the concordance table for it, since it very much rewarded him for trying to keep his companions alive and heal them up, and so his character went from a solitary fellow who always fought by himself, to someone in the thick of the party helping everyone else out. It eventually moved on halfway through the tier, leaving a lingering final power he unleashed in the last battle.

-A Staff of Zehir, which was devoted to the art of silent killing and assassination, which our death-loving druid again claimed, and made good use of the powers. It eventually moved on - when they were trapped in a Domain of Dread, it helped them find a way out, and then remained behind to claim a place of power within the realm.

Overall, I like how they've done Artifacts in 4E, and I feel like its been very easy to bring them into a game and have them influence it without dominating it. The Concordance approach is a great way to really show its influence on PCs without having the item outright take control of them.

My big complaint is that they are so hard to find in the Compendium - many aren't in there, many don't show up when you search for 'Artifact', and the full rules usually aren't included. Boo!

But I think 4E has had a decent number of them in various places - both old favorites, and new ones with a lot of flavor to them. For example, 'the Immortal Game' above wasn't a very useful item for our group, but was still a lot of fun to break out and engage in spectral chess with the spirit of death!

 

[MrMyth]

So a few questions:

1. Comments on 4E artifacts, or lack thereof.
2. Your favorite book or source for artifacts.
3. A list of all D&D related artifact books.

(The reason I ask is that my group is currently 9th level and I'm thinking about what Paragon Tier will bring and I'm wanting to integrate a major artifact at some point, possibly sooner than later).

Also, I realize I didn't really actually answer any of these questions, so...

1) There are definitely artifacts there, but they are floating about in various places - Dragon Articles, DMGs, setting books, planar books, monster books, etc.

2) There have been some cool ones in Dragon articles and in various adventures. They also ran a contest to see fan versions of Blackrazor, as seen here, and the first entry there is pretty awesome. Still, my advice would be to figure out what artifact or type of artifact would best suit the plot of the game in the Paragon tier. If you know a bit about what elements the game will involve, people might be able to steer you towards the most appropriate choice. Or, worst case, help you stat out something unique for your game.

3) Ok, probably not comprehensive, but... (Paragon artifacts in Bold):
-DMG: Axe of the Dwarvish Lords, Hand and Eye of Vecna, Invulnerable Coat of Arnd.
-DMG2: Adamantine Horse of Xarn, Amulet of Passage, Cup and Talisman of Al'Akbar, Emblem of Ossandrya, Rash and Reckless, Rod of Seven Parts, Standard of Eternal Battle.
-Open Grave: Orb of Light, Mirror of Secrets, Jet Black Ioun Stone, Soulsword, Tome of Shadow, Whelm, Silver Mask of Kas, Von Zarovich Family Sword,
-Plane Below: Crystal of Ebon Flame, Plastron of Tziphal, Wave.
-Draconomicon - Chromatic Dragons: Unconquered Standard of Arkhosia, Ilthuviel’s Blackened Heart, Blue Orb of Dragonkin, Spear of Urrok the Brave.
-Draconomicon - Metallic Dragons: Blood of Io, Seal of the Lawbringer.
-Dragon Magazine: Deck of Many Things, Arrow of Fate, The Immortal Game,Sun's Sliver, Helm of the Madman's Blood, The Deluvian Hourglass, Seed of Winter, Faarlung's Algorithm, Spear of the Skylord, Broken Blade of Banatruul, Figurine of Tantron,
-Adventures: The Ashen Crown, Head of Vyrellis, Wand of Orcus, Skull of Sartine, Nightbringer, Ruinblade, Eye of the Old Gods, Audaviator.

There might be some more out there hidden about in adventures or articles, though many of those are specifically tied to the plot of the adventure.

 

[grodog]

Artifacts first appeared in D&D in Supplement III Eldritch Wizardry; those were expanded up and added to in the 1e DMG. There was a 2e Book of Artifacts published as well.

I've cataloged Greyhawk-specific artifacts on my web site @ The Origins of Greyhawk Artifacts and Relics and that served as part of the basis for the two Living Greyhawk Journal articles published in Dragons #294 and #299 (and co-authored with Erik Mona). I published some of the material left on the editing room floor from those articles over on Canonfire! @ Canonfire! - Artifacts of Oerth Article: B-Sides and Errata

Hopefully that helps?

 

[Jhaelen]

So a few questions:

1. Comments on 4E artifacts, or lack thereof.
2. Your favorite book or source for artifacts.
3. A list of all D&D related artifact books.

- Yep, 4e artifacts are pretty much boring. However, that also means you can actually hand them out to pcs without worrying they'll overly unbalance anything.

- 3e Weapons of Legacy. While WoL are not actually artifacts, they're unique items dripping with flavor. I found them a lot more inspiring than any actual artifacts I've seen so far. Since you'll be using them in 4e you can ignore the admittedly very bad game mechanics (which is the only argument against getting WoL that I agree with).

- There aren't that many that focus on artifacts, really. They're all over the place and the more interesting ones are usually the ones in adventure modules that are actually about getting or dealing with the artifacts.

 

[Orius]

The Encyclopedia Magica did compile all the artifacts that had been published up to that point (1994), but that's all in 2e and naturally doesn't include stuff that's been published since. It does include everything from the early sources grodog mentioned as well as the artifact power tables from the Book of Artifacts (I would say the EM makes the BoA largely redundant for a classic game).

I don't have any experiences with 4e artifacts myself, but I would surmise some of the design decisions on internal game balance that started to arise in 3.5 would probably rein in the powers of artifacts. Obviously 4e hasn't done away with artifacts altogether, since MrMyth's list included a number of classic iconic artifacts, though I wouldn't expect them to work the same way they did in the past. Even in the original 3e rules, the artifacts in the DMG were toned down a bit from the 2e forms.

Remember that artifacts are supposed to be campaign MacGuffins and not merely another magic item. That's why they're never included on treasure tables (and presumably treasure parcels).