Unique Magic Item Properties/Quirks

[Lord Pendragon]

I enjoy flavor magic items a great deal myself, though I tend to custom-make them, rather than randomize them.

One of my most successful was a belt which increased one's strength, but for purposes of encumbrance only.

Assuming you enforce encumbrance, you'd be surprised how pleased this can make certain players.

Adding "Increases Strength by 10 for purposes of calculating encumbrance" might be a fun addition to your list.

 

[Stormonu]

Hmmm, let's see if we can make this into a fairly useful chart:


1) Item has a distinctive smell
2) Item reduces the volume of all sound within 15' by 50%
3) Item can change appearance to anything of generally the same volume
4) Item's touch can transform non-living material into another specific material
5) Item can transform into a small creature for a short time
6) Item is invisible while held
7) Item can be called to owner's hand by word or thought
8) Item glows in the presence of a certain creature or emotion
9) Item triggers a specific emotion on those within 15' when concentrating
10) Item can produce food or drink 3x/day
11) Item can produce a small quantity of worked material that lasts for an hour
12) Item can produce a mentally-controlled illusion that can be maintained with concentration
13) Item can divert attention away from the owner (like a Sanctuary spell)
14) Item can point in the direction of a desired item once a day
15) Item appears non-functional/broken in others hands
16) Item can operate as a mount for short periods
17) Item can ignite fires by means of extended contact with an object while concentrating (1 full round or more)
18) Item can generate a fog cloud once a day upon command
19) Item can allow user to burrow through the earth for a short distance
20) Item allows limited flight per day when held/rode (requires concentration to maintain)

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

GREEN MAN'S WEAPON

When an opponent is slain by a weapon with this enchantment (via damage or any other property or power the weapon may have), the weapon creates 1 natural 1HD animal (suited to the local envrironment) for each HD the creature originally had. If the creature was undead, the number of creatures created by this enchantment is doubled.

Druids, Clerics, Shamen and other devotees of nature divinities can elect to have it create similarly suitable plants instead of animals.

("Hey Rocky, watch me make a rabbit out of this wererat!"
~ the Minotaur, Winkle, master of the magic axe known as Hasenmacher)

 

[IstraRaugir]

The trick to creating magic items like this is to completely and utterly break your players' expectations (it helps to keep the mechanics of the item to yourself). Some personal examples are: an item that attracts a species of tiny creatures, an rusted dagger that continually drips blood, a useful item that sings/hums/vibrates/etc., an intelligent item that can only communicate via murky dreams. You can just about take any regular (magic) item you like, add something vaguely unsettling and throw it to your players. My fighter had a great time trying to figure out why his longsword would suddenly start muttering ominously (fyi: it had a grudge against silk).
Other good advice (if not entirely on topic) is to hand out items that appear nonfunctional (or simply parts that need to be attached). My players were pretty hyped when they found out that their headless arrows could blast through platemail

 

[Celebrim]

I have extensive tables a whole system for generating these with hundreds of possibilities most of which have some minor or circumstantial mechanical effect.

I like the system in theory; it certainly makes for more magical feeling items. And it was designed to work with a crafting system to ensure that any magic item of any signficance was also unique.

But in practice, it has some serious problems.

The chief of which is that if everyone of the players 5-6 magic items (and I'm being conservative there) has 1-6 minor quirks and abilities, it can quickly become overwhelming to keep track of everything. Equally bad is that as the DM, you find that in order to make these things real, you must remember what the 120 or so minor properties of all the treasure you've handed out are. That proves impossible, so most or all of this color gets lost in the shuffle in the long run. It might possibly be mentioned once, but it quickly goes down the collective memory hole and ultimately doesn't add a lot to the gaming experience, takes up space in the adventure description, and the player's character sheet, and in time at the table to communicate the quirks and doesn't I feel add nearly as much to the game as I'd like.

 

[Sialia]

Piratecat once gave me a dead rat for a piece of treasure. That was memorable. When I threw it at something and hit, it would animate and attack. I don't remember all t he details. the point was, he knew my character was the sort of person who would pick up a dead rat and try to hit someone with it later. SO he found me a special one. Nobody had to wonder who that particular piece of swag belonged ot when we picked it up. nobody else but me would even have regarded it as part of the hoard.

so, keep the special items few in number,a dn cutomize them to what your PCs prize. Neither of you will forget color that colorful.

Also, Piratecat ran that group for long enough that evenutally stufff like this would pile up in people's inventories,a nd hten when he really at last had us over a barrel in a tight space between the devil and the deep blue sea--this time for certain--we'd pull out some unexpected thing he'd granted us years ago that would turn out to be the perfect tool for hte job. which meant we were forever catchign him off guard with stuff.. We loved doing this to him. We treasured the look on his face every single time. No matter what he dmight do to us later in retribution--it was worth it, just for that moment. It also led to some of the most memorable scenes ever, and took the plot in some truly unexpected directions.

I it's not just colorful, but also mildly useful, someone will remember to use it when you get them in a really hard spot and they start scannign their character sheets for "ohmigoshI must have somethign left! anything!" Or not, and then you cna mock them later.

aftere they've lost the encoutner and are tied up on the bandsaw with whirling death slowly working it's way up towards theri legs, feel free to let your villain monologue about how the only thing she ever feareed was that dumb piece of color text they threw away last session . . . .

I'm sure it won't happen twice.

 

[Reverend47]

The chief of which is that if everyone of the players 5-6 magic items (and I'm being conservative there) has 1-6 minor quirks and abilities, it can quickly become overwhelming to keep track of everything. Equally bad is that as the DM, you find that in order to make these things real, you must remember what the 120 or so minor properties of all the treasure you've handed out are. That proves impossible, so most or all of this color gets lost in the shuffle in the long run. It might possibly be mentioned once, but it quickly goes down the collective memory hole and ultimately doesn't add a lot to the gaming experience, takes up space in the adventure description, and the player's character sheet, and in time at the table to communicate the quirks and doesn't I feel add nearly as much to the game as I'd like.

Thankfully, I'm not generating every magical item through this method, it's just a way of enchanting the player's items on a case by case basis. At the moment the idea is it's an enchanted stone which is basically being used as a reward by one of their contacts instead of just normal gold. This means that by the end of the game everybody will have up to about 5 or 6 of these random magical effects.

I actually ran the game Sunday night with a fair bit of luck. The players thoroughly enjoyed it. One person ended up with armor which can be summoned to their body as long as it is within a mile (It's a city campaign, so a useful trick.) Another ended up with a scroll case that, when a piece of paper with writing is put inside of it enchants it with explosive runes 1/day.

 

[SeprenMaelstrom]

I implemented this idea in my campaign in last week's session. Sadly, people's rolls for the most part yielded a couple of doubles, and nobody ended up with either of the more fun / useful enchantments I'd come up with. I'm going to figure out a way to incorporate the stone again [described it as a solid, shiny black statue that looks like essentially Joan of Arc], as it was hidden in a villain's lair. Public figure too, so it will be taken into the treasury since there's no mage tower in this particular city.

Some good rolls of note, though - our Warlord put up a silver locket I came up with on the spot during an NPC dealing before, and it became Distracting - +2 to bluff and diplomacy checks. Our Warlock made his armour Amplifying, giving a +1 to Charisma checks.

Two of us got weightless weapons, our paladin has a shield invisible to all but him, and the shaman's spear is also invisible to all but him. Interesting for flavour, but I wish there had been some more variety.

 

[Reverend47]

I implemented this idea in my campaign in last week's session. Sadly, people's rolls for the most part yielded a couple of doubles, and nobody ended up with either of the more fun / useful enchantments I'd come up with. I'm going to figure out a way to incorporate the stone again [described it as a solid, shiny black statue that looks like essentially Joan of Arc], as it was hidden in a villain's lair. Public figure too, so it will be taken into the treasury since there's no mage tower in this particular city.

Some good rolls of note, though - our Warlord put up a silver locket I came up with on the spot during an NPC dealing before, and it became Distracting - +2 to bluff and diplomacy checks. Our Warlock made his armour Amplifying, giving a +1 to Charisma checks.

Two of us got weightless weapons, our paladin has a shield invisible to all but him, and the shaman's spear is also invisible to all but him. Interesting for flavour, but I wish there had been some more variety.

Yeah, that's what I was trying to go for is variety. Though I will say I intended this more for cool utility items than anything else. Try and make it useful for them! Pull out some rules on the spot that work well. For example, the weightless weapons, now that they are weightless, I bet they can be thrown pretty easily. Not like they are too heavy right? So the moment they left the owner's hand they would gain it's weight back, and it's momentum. Maybe they get a throw range of 10-20 feet, and deal str damage.

I also had a few rerolls honestly, things that just weren't cool. The point of the stone was to be memorable for me. I ended up with a few rolls that looked to be "Oh, you get a +x to y stat/skill" and I just had them reroll. Not memorable or fun!

Please keep me updated though on how it works out in your campaign.

 

[SeprenMaelstrom]

Hmm... A good point! I may, at our next session [sadly next week as this one didn't work out], have people reroll before we get into things to get cooler effects. I honestly really like some of the ones I made up, particularly Warding, Runed, and Novel [Novel lets you make basic attacks with the weapon using whatever ability mod you wish, chosen at outset; there are situations in which this really can be handy!] for weapons [Warding for armours as well; a couple others too]. Part of it is I want them to have more useful items... Part of it is I want them to see the cool enchantments I made up, hahah.