Ad Lib magical effects

[On Puget Sound]

My players tonight were in Dungeon Delve 8, but I had placed it under a potion shop instead of a "curio shop". So I decided the wine rack was instead a shelf of potions and potion ingredients, and when it got knocked over it created a thick cloud of mixing magical vapors.

For anyone starting their turn in that vapor, I rolled a d20 and a d6 and consulted the Conditions list on PHB page 275. There are 16 conditions, so 17-20 was no effect. If the d6 was even I applied the condition listed for that turn, or some approximation using that condition as inspiration; if it was odd I reversed the condition (reverse-dazed granted an extra action, reverse-dying meant an automatic 20 on any saving throws including death saves for that round, etc.)

Great fun, so I thought I would share it.

 

[eriktheguy]

So random. Did you plan it out ahead of time?
I find that things I do on the spot tend to be more fun than the ones I spend the most time preparing. The carefully laid out encounter is ho/hum, while the village elder's Chinese accent has people laughing for about 10 mins...

 

[On Puget Sound]

No, totally unplanned. The whole night went kind of off the rails from the start; we had cancelled because 3 players were going to be absent, and planned for board and card games instead. Then 2 of the missing players found they could come after all, but I had not prepared encounters, not expecting a game. So I grabbed Dungeon Delve and waited for the characters to do something that would lead to trouble - never a long wait. The mixed potion fumes was totally off the cuff; with more time to prepare I might have made it something more consistent and tactically useful. But this method proved to be a lot of fun.

 

[LostSoul]

I think that's a great idea.

I once had an encounter with a "random events" chart; the area was tied to the feywild so strange things would happen, like vines grabbing you or mists suddenly appearing in random areas. Another entry on the chart was wandering monsters attracted by the fight.

I think random things like that can add some spice to an encounter.

 

[RangerWickett]

Sounds cool.

Tonight my players decided, No, that adventure you planned can wait 'til later. I had an NPC who had been cursed with an antimagic field, and left bleeding out of her guts. My plan was to have the PCs head out to a known source of intense life magic to get enough power to overwhelm the antimagic and heal her. I had a whole metaplot hook set up where they'd run into lots of stuff that will matter later in the campaign, wherein the PCs would have to team up with unsavory allies in order to get what they needed fast enough to save their friend.

Instead, they went the A-Team approach, got all their allies to pool resources together, and used a much closer and safer source of intense radiant energy, combined with a couple magic items they'd found to create a sort of lens. Or arcane sunglasses. Basically, with a bit of roleplaying, ingenuity, and skill checks, they blew up two magic items in order to tint one type of magic into another, and use that to heal her.

So time to find a new way to hook the party into the metaplot, but hey, they blew up their own magic items to save an NPC. How cool is that?

 

[Amaroq]

That isn't just cool - that characterizes a group I'd love to play with .. if only the commute from California weren't quite so long.

 

[Garthanos]

So time to find a new way to hook the party into the metaplot, but hey, they blew up their own magic items to save an NPC. How cool is that?

Awesome give them bonus experience points for that as well as serious intangibles they will appreciate like allegiance and fame (since they get it!) Have somebody saying --- Wow you are the ones who saved "insert name here" and similar reminders...and of course use these to pull them in to more meta plot.