Deck of Many Things

[RodneyThompson]

Except all it does is give the character a quest, with no penalty for not attempting to complete the quest.

You don't think losing a +5 implement with d12 crit dice and better properties and powers than most (if not all) other paragon-tier magic items to be a penalty?

The Deck vanishes after you draw a card, so all of those Ruin cards that leave you with a quest are giving you a way to recover some reward for having thrown away the party's best magic item.

 

[Uber Dungeon]

ugh, the deck of Meany things. this is like a hardcore energy drink of D&D; it makes for real good game play. But i think it's a contributing factor to ending a game. after awhile the high dies down, becomes unbalanced and unravels.

I came out of a deck of Meany things with a large kobold Monk, +5 to my status, 2 levels and defeated a dread wrath. I could grapple a dragon. lol

 

[MrMyth]

Actually, that's the problem I have with it. It's just too good. Why would someone give up their awesome magic implement just for a draw from the deck? Especially since it is labelled, oddly, as a Paragon level artifact, despite its base power being at least a level 25 item. Up until now, artifacts have generally been powerful, but at least reasonably tied to the tier in which they are intended for. This item would remain a solid choice at level 30 - having it potentially available at level 11 is a terrible call on WotC's end.

The actual elements of the deck itself? I'm a fan, in general. It seems like a good way to maintain the flavor without allowing it to unbalance things. And, as mentioned earlier - anyone who wants the more powerful version of the deck from past editions? Can pretty easily just port it over directly, if you already aren't concerned about the consequences.

While the idea to portray the deck as an implement is an interesting one, I think it was the one fatal flaw in this article. Having it as a Wondrous Item that encouraged drawing? Maybe allowed for a round of draws from the party before it vanished? That's cool.

Having it as a super-powered implement that discourages the bearer from ever drawing? Yeah, not a fan.

 

[Asmor]

You don't think losing a +5 implement with d12 crit dice and better properties and powers than most (if not all) other paragon-tier magic items to be a penalty?

The Deck vanishes after you draw a card, so all of those Ruin cards that leave you with a quest are giving you a way to recover some reward for having thrown away the party's best magic item.

If that's the metric you want to use, then every card should have the ruin descriptor. There's literally nothing there which seems better than having the deck of many things. The only ones that are even questionably worth it are the Comet and Knight, and even then... I'd rather not. As you said, it's probably the best magic item in the group. It's certainly better than a level 21 magic item (e.g. a vanilla +5 armor/weapon/implement), and the best tangible rewards you can get are all based on a level 21 item.

The Deck of Many Things exists to be drawn from; it's like Chekov's gun. The problem is, in most cases its horribly anticlimactic. And of the interesting possibilities, most of those are *bad* results (Knight's the only good one which I wouldn't find anticlimactic; the others being Donjon, Flame, Rogue and Void). In other words, the most logical thing for a PC to do is to *never* draw, unless the DM hints that the deck is getting annoyed and might just leave of its own volition. Then, draw only if your concordance score is high enough that you can take multiple draws in hopes of getting your consolation prize.

 

[Shroomy]

While it may be a powerful implement, it also actively penalizes you if you gain other magic items while its in your possession, and since its an artifact, its continued presence is more or less subject to the needs of a DMs campaign (though it should probably be added that it is intended for PCs at the higher end of the paragon tier). Act recklessly (screw others with card readings), pump up that concordance, and enjoy the ride before you will inevitably gamble!

 

[Asmor]

For what it's worth, I made my own Deck of Many Things for 4th Edition in January of last year. The design intentionally strayed from the idea of the DoMT as a world-altering artifact, instead being designed to be used during combat and used frequently.

 

[renau1g]

I kind of liked the high risk, high reward aspect of it. It was used twice in my home games as a near endgame item and the campaign was more just a story-lite game when we wanted to have a less serious game than our usual fare. I lost all my magic items, gained 50k xp (but could only gain 1 level so lost most of it) and got the avoid 1 event card which saved me from being pulled into the Abyss later on in the campaign.

We all had fun with it and the Keep one led us on a fun quest that once we cleared out the keep became the focal point for the rest of the campaign and we established a town there that is still in our version of the Forgotten Realms...Timmins...named after Tim the cleric of Selune who earned the card.

 

[The Human Target]

Yeah, not liking that at all.

And for reference, I'm not a fan of the old school style "deck of campaign screwing up."

Those cards just ended up being kinda boring overall.

The only one that seems really blatantly horrible is the one that melts your items into residuum, which makes you pretty much worthless unless you have an item crafter in your party.

And none of the good ones seem that fun in the long term.

I do really like the art for the cards, and it was great that they included it. I think I'm gonna make my own deck now. Fun!

 

[Squire James]

Well, at least it appears not to screw up the campaign like the other Decks did. It is also wide open to modification - you can change the cards you don't like to something you DO like. You can adjust the level of the effects to the level of your game (the level-based cards based on party level +3 or +4 seems about right). You can adjust the enhancement bonus of the implement if you wish.

I think it's pretty cool.

 

[On Puget Sound]

I think its enhancement bonus should vary with its concordance score, starting at +3 for "normal". It should also have a time-based concordance decay for every week in which a card is not drawn. That way the loss of its value as an implement will scale with the chance of drawing a good card, and the holder will have a strong incentive to spread chaos.