Clever ways to hand out cursed items

[Xaov]

I am looking for clever ways to hand out a cursed item or two to my players. The mode of distribution I use now is a 24 hour delay on the effect taking place so the players don't know right off the bat that they are cursed items. I have them give minor bonuses then once they've worn them for 24 hours the bad effect will come into play.

what are some other interesting ways you can think of to distribute them.

 

[Hand of Evil]

Off and on items - what I mean by this is that the item has dual functions, during the day it is a good thing but at night it is a bad thing.

Honor and duty - the players follow a code or an order from the king, players have to take the item or face issues such as being called a coward!

But on me it looks good - play to the players vainity, what do they like, what do they want and taylor your item to fit that.

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

In a similar vein, one tactic I've used in the past is to make cursed weapons a negative on damage rather than to hit. The players will do the math in their head and zero in on a critter's AC and then deduce that there is some penalty affeting their hit chance. But since they never know how many hit points their opponent has, I can deduct 1-4 points in my head, and it takes them a long time to figure out the weapon is cursed.

 

[rbingham2000]

Let's see...

You're talking about PCs getting hold of cursed items in ways other than finding them as treasure?

Maybe some less-than-trustworthy person gives the PCs something that turns out to be cursed as part of the reward for a successful adventure, or they are hired to deliver something that turns out to be cursed to some important person, setting up an "accidental wrong" scenario.

Cursed items can make for some damn good story ideas without the PCs ever getting their hands on them -- maybe someone has replaced the lavishly-made cloak of a well-known artisan bound for some important personage with a Cloak of Poisonousness (which kills anyone who puts it on), and now the artisan is wanted for murder and the PCs must find out who replaced the cloak and why.

 

[AuraSeer]

If you can figure out a way to justify it, you can attach a new curse to one of a PC's existing items. For instance:

After the fighter strikes the killing blow against a powerful demon, his sword becomes tainted by the evil essence of the fiend. Over the next few days, a black rust-like growth begins spreading over the blade, weakening its magic powers (-1 enhancement point per 48 hours). Cleansing with holy water will remove the growth, but it always comes back.

This is far more interesting than just having the characters randomly find a cursed sword lying around, and since the fighter may be attached to his weapon, he's a lot more likey to hang on to it despite the curse.

 

[ElvishBard]

I have merchants sell cursed items all the time, but fail to mention it. It makes sense to me because that's part of why magic items are so costly, the merchants keep selling bad ones as well as good ones, so the good ones have their prices skyrocket because they do what they are supposed to do. I also do the 5% chance of having any item they find while adventuring be cursed, but maybe I am just a weird DM .

 

[Psion]

Don't hand out cursed items. Hand out beneficial items with drawbacks.

(I joke not. I am about to drop an item into my game that will let anyspellcaster spontaneously cast chaos and greater chaos spells. Disadvantage... once you use it, you are a wild spellcaster.)

The other peice of advice here is that you can make it random, and don't make the source of the problem obvious. My players misidentified the source of a curse on them the other day. (That said, as much as I would like to say it was amusing, having the players sidetracked over it was sort of frustrating.)

 

[bluemoonfalc]

When my party was having too many characters dying (and thus looting their comrades bodies constantly), I decided to have the possessions of one of those dead comrades become cursed. We were playing through Spider Queen, and the death was the result of some serious necromantic events...so the items ended up being cursed. The rest of the party snatched up the items real quick, and only later came to realise the problem. For example, the armor with Light Fortification still worked as light fortification...but had an equal chance of increasing the damage done by a critical!

They weren't happy to discover the curses, but everyone agreed that it was very appropriate given the character's death, and thought it was a cool twist to throw in.

 

[Xaov]

these are some good ideas people. I'll have to make use of them, I ecspecially like the one about the item becoming tainted.

 

[The Amazing Dingo]

Just remember, whenever you hand out a cursed item, you must also say:

"It comes with a free frogurt!"

Honestly though, I have no ideas to add to the pot off-hand, but I do like the Necromantic energies leading to cursed and the "On/Off Curse". I was already thinking of introducing a magical item that only functions during the day or night (have a PC who worships a LG Sun god and one who might soon be worshipping a NG Moon goddess). Using this idea, the item wouldn't so much be cursed per-se, but would incur a drawback when in its opposite environment. I wouldn't have the "You can't remove" penalty on it, but I would probably have the "you must wear it for so long to allow it to adjust to you" rule so they couldn't just take it off when it was hurting them. I also wouldn't have the "curse" equal to or outweigh the "benefits of it".

LIke I said, it isn't cursed, but it almost is...