D&D 5E How cursed are cursed items?

[TheCosmicKid]

Today, for no real reason, I was thinking about the girdle of masculinity/femininity and how it's often been said that transgendered characters would kill for this supposedly "cursed" item. What would happen if such a character actually put it on, though? Is the item's effect simply to change the wearer's biological sex, meaning this character has cleverly found a beneficial use for something most characters wouldn't want? Or is it a true curse, pernicious and cruel, with the purpose of causing suffering in the form of gender dysphoria for whoever puts it on -- meaning a trans character would find themselves unchanged or even masculinized/feminized in the wrong direction?

There are some cursed items for which this sort of question doesn't really make sense. I doubt there are many potentially beneficial uses for the -2 sword (other than the basic "get the enemy to use it" that's valid for all cursed items). But many others seem open to this double interpretation. Can the bag of devouring be used to dispose of inconvenient items and bodies, or does it perversely only devour that which you want to keep? If you put the headband of ogre intellect on something less intelligent than an ogre, like your animal companion, does its Int go up or does it get even dumber?

I'm of two minds here. On the one hand, it seems appropriate from a gameplay standpoint to reward players for thinking outside the box about how to use the magic they find. But on the other hand, it also seems appropriate from a narrative standpoint for it to be bad idea trying to get the better of a curse. You rarely hear stories about how the king is cursed with ass' ears, but figures out how they can be helpful to him and lives happily ever after. So what would you do?

(Side note: I wouldn't put the girdle of masculinity/femininity in a campaign with a trans player at all unless I knew them really well and were confident they'd be okay with it. In fact, I probably wouldn't put the thing in any campaign, period. There are plenty of other cursed items that aren't simultaneously so petty and so potentially explosive. I'm musing about the design philosophy behind these items here, not plotting a cruel trick.)

 

[flametitan]

Personally, I would allow players to use dirty tricks using cursed items-- One person's trash is another's treasure, after all. Besides, I like to encourage creative thinking. Having players take advantage of what's usually a bad item is perfectly fine. Besides, I know a number of paladins who would consider a shield of arrow attraction a boon over a curse, and it'd be rude to take away something they were stoked about.

(Good call with the girdle. It's one of those "cruel joke" items, but unlike most of them can probably lead to out of game friction.)

EDIT: From a versmilitude perspective, I consider magic to follow what could be considered a "UNIX philosophy of spells." A magic item/spell does exactly what it says it does; no more, no less. This is because spells are already highly versatile. So while you can use a spell/item in novel ways, it cannot be used in ways the spell doesn't support (No ice rafts from Ray of Frost, no setting fire to Grease, etc.) I assume most tables are like this for magic.

 

[Ed Laprade]

For myself, if the players can find a beneficial way to use a cursed item, more power to them. This is part of the 'just say yes' mindset that I prefer.

 

[Sunseeker]

DM's call really. Unless the item actually ascribes a mechanical penalty, I wouldn't actually call it a "cursed" item. I think it's perfectly fine to portray a Girdle of Opposite Gender (as Pathfinder calls it) as simply a "magical item" and let players make some lore checks to determine if people have generally had a positive experience or a negative experience. Some more open-minded folks (like monks or druids or clerics of gods of change) may find the belt to provide nothing more than an interesting experience, those living in a more gender-defined society or occupying a gender-specific position in life may find the belt to be a cruel joke.

Perhaps adding an optional Wisdom check to the belt to help determine the inclination of the character towards its effect. Perhaps ascribe an alignment component to the belt, depending on your sense of humor, where the good become beautiful/ugly and the evil become ugly/beautiful. Things that transform the players I tend to take were designed by a tricksters mind, the end result is humor. It's really up to the DM to determine if that humor is malign or not. I would definately say that, if it is a possible item to appear thanks to random item charts or purposeful inclusion, the DM should immediately decide if the belt has any intentions at all (it may not) and if it does, what those intentions are. Maybe toss in a component that the unwitting wearer can get turned back within 24 hours if they play a trick on someone else and get that person to wear the belt. Victim must both be unwitting and unwilling (and of course, fail their save).

I think that, aside from "simple" cursed items which incur some sort of mechanical penalty, "thematic" cursed items are designed to be fun. So that's what I think a DM should do with any such item, have fun with it.

 

[Mouseferatu]

If an item is intelligent or an artifact, I might be more inclined to grant it an innate malevolence that causes it to be more perverse and to take the intent of the user into account. But for your "average" cursed item, I'd say it's purely a mechanical effect that does what it says on the tin, no more and no less.

 

[Imaculata]

Cursed items in my campaign are never useless items. But they may be magical items that have unintended side effects, that still make them valuable despite their negative effects. But more often, they have effects that are intentional, but nasty. For example, a rug that always trips people that walk on it may be cursed. But when used against intruders it is quite useful.

They can also be items where something went wrong during the crafting. The cursed item can be a failed crafting experiment, that has the opposite of its intended effect. For example, a ring of luck that actually draws bad luck to its wearer. Or a sword that cannot be disarmed, but it also refuses to leave its owner's hand, even if he wants to put it down.

 

[Hawk Diesel]

I'm of the mindset that as a DM, I definitely want to reward creative thinking. However, if I put a cursed item in the game:

1) It's for a reason. I'm either trying to teach a lesson, move the story forward, or provide opportunities to make things interesting.

2) I'm unlikely to set out specific mechanical elements of the curse into stone. Just like how the Lady of Pain from Planescape never got stats specifically because once something gets stats, it can be killed, a cursed item with stats just becomes a magical item that you don't use as often (or only in specific situations).

 

[MarkB]

I'd tend to take design intent into account to some extent. Some 'cursed' items were indeed created with specific ill intent and may be designed to maximise the delivery of that ill intent. Others may have been designed to produce an effect that was beneficial or desirable to a specific intended user, but which would be considered detrimental to most others. And some are simply magical accidents, failed experiments which turned out to have different properties than intended.

 

[Ath-kethin]

Unless the item actually ascribes a mechanical penalty, I wouldn't actually call it a "cursed" item.

Beat me to the punch. The term "cursed" I think comes from the fact that back in the day, the effects of these items were the reverse of what a character might believe, and additionally most of them were difficult to be rid of. Most were created by accidents while trying to fabricate the normal version of the item.

But even in those days, clever players could find uses for such items (the example the OP gave for bags of devouring being a common example). Calling a portable garbage disposal 'cursed' seems short-sighted at best. Though the guy who just tried to store a staff of the magi in one might disagree.

Some items, like the girdle of ha! ha! you're a girl now, you loser! had more of an impact in the days when 1) almost all players and therefore characters were male and 2) female characters actually had stat penalties just for being female. Nowadays such a gotcha! item seems rather out of place.

 

[Sunseeker]

Beat me to the punch. The term "cursed" I think comes from the fact that back in the day, the effects of these items were the reverse of what a character might believe, and additionally most of them were difficult to be rid of. Most were created by accidents while trying to fabricate the normal version of the item.

But even in those days, clever players could find uses for such items (the example the OP gave for bags of devouring being a common example). Calling a portable garbage disposal 'cursed' seems short-sighted at best. Though the guy who just tried to store a staff of the magi in one might disagree.

Some items, like the girdle of ha! ha! you're a girl now, you loser! had more of an impact in the days when 1) almost all players and therefore characters were male and 2) female characters actually had stat penalties just for being female. Nowadays such a gotcha! item seems rather out of place.

It would be a highly sought-after item in societies that were highly gender stratified, but I would imagine the use of one (if you were found out) would be very punishable. Take Drow society, women are almost always of higher caste by simple fact of them being women. A Drow male of low standing may seek out a belt of gender switch in order to "jump ranks" in Drow society. The item may likewise be used as a form of punishment by Drow females of high standing against women who have failed society in some way.