Deck of Many Things

The Deck of Many Things is up: Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (The Deck of Many Things)

Personally, I'm underwhelmed. The effects of the cards just don't feel... potent.

Of course, among the first cards is Balance, a "ruin" card which means it's supposed to be a bad card to draw... Except all it does is give the character a quest, with no penalty for not attempting to complete the quest.

Another card, The Comet, is completely useless if you don't use the quest system.

Yet another example, The Moon, gives you "one minute" to choose a ritual and immediately gain the benefits of it as if you'd gotten the best results on the roll. Picture actually drawing this card at the table. If the DM enforces the one minute time limit in real time, then it's completely useless. If the DM lets the players look around all they want... Chances are it's still really useless, since the vast majority of rituals are situational and you can't exactly "plan" to draw this card.

Those are just some off the top of my head... The whole thing just seems really... bad.

An actually potent and interesting deck of many things is probably one of those magic items that WotC can't publish.

I agree with your comments on the Balance, Comet and the Moon. The Balance should have added a small penalty (perhaps a -1 penalty to all d20 rolls) until the quest was completed, and I don't see why the Comet couldn't have just granted a flat gain in experience points like it used to. (Even this wouldn't have been useful to me since I don't track XP, but I recognize that the way I run my games is not the norm.)

As for the Moon, I think it's meant to simulate the effect of 1d4 wishes, to be used immediately. However, since there are no wishes in 4E, it grants the use of a ritual instead. Me, I think I will run it as follows: draw cards until you get two that do not have the Ruin descriptor. Choose one of the two to replace the Moon card.

EDIT: In a moment of self-reflection, I realised that I had also fallen into the balance trap with my suggestion for the Moon card ability. So, here's my re-revised version, for those experienced and/or brave DMs out there: Just let the player make a wish. Trust to your own judgement and campaign management skills to resolve it.

If you must have balance guidelines, look to the other cards for inspiration. A wish for money? 225,000 gp worth of gold and gems (Gem). A specific magic item? Anything 21st level or below (Key or Sun) or the closest item that is 21st level or below. Ability score increases? Mark of the star legendary boon (Star).

FireLance said:

As for the Moon, I think it's meant to simulate the effect of 1d4 wishes, to be used immediately. However, since there are no wishes in 4E, it grants the use of a ritual instead. Me, I think I will run it as follows: draw cards until you get two that do not have the Ruin descriptor. Choose one of the two to replace the Moon card.

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Hmm. If you want to change it, I'd just recommend saying that it's a "floating effect" that you can activate once, and then it's gone.

IOW, until you use it up, you basically have a power that takes a minute to "cast" and duplicates the effect of any one ritual. But you can use it whenever you want to.

I think they've done a very good job with this. It was predictable that the more extreme effects would be toned down, although there are plenty of Very Bad things on the table for your PC to choose from, including getting zapped immediately and with no recourse out of the game (twice). The idea of sating the Deck's appetites and thereby improving your chances of success when you draw is a great invocation of the Concordance idea as well.

moved to 4e discussion

FireLance said:

An actually potent and interesting deck of many things is probably one of those magic items that WotC can't publish.

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Wow. That blog post might as well be titled "Why 4E is Bad for Reynard."

The big question is, does the Deck of Campaign Ending still end campaigns as well as it used to?

I have extensively used the 3rd edition Deck of Many Things in my 4e campaign without changing a single rule, including Wish. There were no problems at all and it was fantastically fun.

DracoSuave said:

The big question is, does the Deck of Campaign Ending still end campaigns as well as it used to?

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It doesn't look like it, but you can certainly get rid of a few PC's if they draw poorly... the sidebar recommends letting them make equivalent level PC's to adventure with the remaining group to either a) find your psyche or b) find where you're imprisoned

Overall, I'm impressed.

It isn't as campaign destroying as it used to be, but mostly because it vanishes after you draw a card. My experience with the deck in previous editions is that the havoc really comes when players keep pulling cards after card.

The Donjon and the Void are still going to wreck someone's day. The Flames and Rogue card are still nasty too. I would've liked to see a unique solo Death to go with the Skull card.

The Moon is a disappointment. But I'm not sure that anything in 4E gives wishes, so its not surprising. It's also fairly easy to houserule.