Clever ways to hand out cursed items

[Dog Moon]

With access to higher level spells, analyze dweomer, I believe, you can tell instantly if an item is cursed or not. Our group never puts on items beforehand until we identify them, so we are pretty much safe from them. Although, an idea is that once they touch the item, whether they wear it or not, they become cursed. In the WLD, there is a sword, when picked up, even if put into the bag, immediately appears in your hand once combat starts. At that point, it is too late to try to figure out a way to rid yourself of the curse for that battle.

Also, I put in a cursed item that had a suggestion on it that caused the character to put on the tiara. A few hours later, the character's charisma increased. Then their natural armor went up 1 point. Then they turned into a female. Good versus bad effects continued to happen. Basically, it turned the character into a medusa. That character was definitely surprised when he (or she now) returned to their base and the first person the character saw was abruptly turned to stone. The character eventually took Narrowed Gaze. The character hasn't abused the powers, which is cool, but it was funny that when they came across a Mirror of Opposition, he was forced to fight himself and his clone turned him into stone. That was funny.

Anyway, I think that cursed items shouldn't really exist, but there should be items with some sort of drawback. The idea of making the player choose whether the good outweighs the bad is fun.

 

[Bigwilly]

Talking swords

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

Intelligent items can be real fun (for the DM). In my current campaign, the gnome ill/rog has a very nice sword that gives him a hard time cos he can't hit anything with it. In a previous campaign, the father of said gnome had a sword that could detect evil within a 60 ft radius and would regulalry announce this in a loud voice to the party as they were sneaking down a corridor.

Actually, one of the PCs in my current camapign has a cursed item that just hasn't come into play yet. Nyuk, nyuk. On this theme, cursed items that detect as having a beneficial effect can be a good trick, as the players will take them and use them until it starts doing nasty things to them.

Bigwilly

 

[Darklone]

Hmm. Most of my magic items in the campaign have one or more drawbacks without being really cursed... so it's not easy to evaluate for the players whether an item is worth it or not

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

Reminds me of a time years ago when the party came into possession of a golden idol of some forgotten god. It was a throwaway description; I'd not meant for it to be anything special. The bard decided he wanted to know more, so I made up some story about curse and all the terrible things that would befall those who would defile the tomb.

The party's like 'Yeah, right, cursed idol. Got it. Wonder what we can sell if for?"

So they continue their many day march back to civilization to sell their ill-gotten booty. During the journey, the proceeded to experience the most awful run of luck -- one of those periodic bubbles of warped probability that every gamer sees from time to time. They managed to stumble into every encounter, miss every chance to spot ambushes, roll critical failures left and right. This goes on for encounter after encounter, until they've finally had enought.

They turn around and return the idol to the tomb.

I never did anything in-game to represent the curse. I never changed a modifier, added an encounter, anything. And they never believed me.

 

[wedgeski]

I never did anything in-game to represent the curse. I never changed a modifier, added an encounter, anything. And they never believed me.

Good story! A salutory tale about the power of suggestion coupled with coincidence. Or maybe the idol *was* cursed, and you just didn't know it?

 

[Scider]

This whole thread reminds me of the time I let the BBEG, after having obtained intimate knowledge of the PC's by studying them for like a whole year, make a Simulacrum (as in the spell) of himself and stuff the 'lesser him' with cursed items, in order to stage an announced climatic final conflict for which the PC's mustered about ten NPC's. The purpose of the battle was of course that the PC's, greedy as ever, would loot 'his' body afterwards.

If you're curious, the simulacrum died in battle while flying over water and the PC's never considered looting the obviously magical stuff that fell in the water. As if they'd smelled the plot...