Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="MrMyth" data-source="post: 5335538" data-attributes="member: 61155">So, my experiences with artifacts in 4E:  1) As a DM running Pyramid of Shadows, the party encounters the Head of Vyrellis - an eladrin spirit trapped in a magic orb, with connections to the Pyramid's history. Was an excellent roleplaying tool and way to connect the PCs to the background of the adventure. One charismatic tiefling was the bearer of the Orb (and made good use of its powers) and eventually followed Vyrellis into the Feywild when I allowed the party, post-adventure, to restore her to life.  2) Following that, a friend started a home-brew campaign at level 1, which I eventually took over at Epic levels. From levels 1-20, we saw the following artifacts:  -A magical dragon-hating longspear with orcish connections, which our half-orc fighter occasionally wielded (but preferred his Spiked Chain), and eventually turned over to a young orc hunter whom we helped with his 'coming-of-age' dragon hunt. It was an interesting item, but not really appropriate for our party - unless he was fighting dragons, using the weapon was just worse for our Fighter than using his normal weapon, and so he was pleased when we gave it away and it offered him a fancy new weapon instead.  -The Jet Black Ioun Stone, which our creepy blight-beast druid was very happy about for flavor reasons, even if some of its abilities didn't quite work for her - and, in character, helped explain her descent over the Paragon tier into a more death-loving character eventually devoted to the Raven Queen. When it eventually moved on, several of its relevant abilities for her lingered, which remained useful through the rest of the game.  -The Immortal Game, a magical Chess-board which we found while trapped in the depths of the Shadowfell, which let someone play against the spirit of Death. My Warlord chose to do so. Checks were randomly based on Con, Int or Cha - I was good at Cha, average at Con, and weak on Int. Over time, I made occasional headway in the game, slightly upgrading my powers from it, but it was pretty much inevitable that it would end in stalemate and move on.  I introduced 2 artifacts during the Epic tier, both of which I designed stats for on my own:  -A Shard of the Sun, which I introduced as part of a plot involving Vecna trying to play Pelor against the Nine Hells and cause chaos in Hestavar. A Deva Avenger in the party, at the conclusion of that adventure, decided to switch from the worship of the Raven Queen to the worship of Pelor ('remembering' past lives in service to Pelor), and gained the artifact. I felt like I did a good job with the concordance table for it, since it very much rewarded him for trying to keep his companions alive and heal them up, and so his character went from a solitary fellow who always fought by himself, to someone in the thick of the party helping everyone else out. It eventually moved on halfway through the tier, leaving a lingering final power he unleashed in the last battle.  -A Staff of Zehir, which was devoted to the art of silent killing and assassination, which our death-loving druid again claimed, and made good use of the powers. It eventually moved on - when they were trapped in a Domain of Dread, it helped them find a way out, and then remained behind to claim a place of power within the realm.  Overall, I like how they've done Artifacts in 4E, and I feel like its been very easy to bring them into a game and have them influence it without dominating it. The Concordance approach is a great way to really show its influence on PCs without having the item outright take control of them. My big complaint is that they are so hard to find in the Compendium - many aren't in there, many don't show up when you search for 'Artifact', and the full rules usually aren't included. Boo!  But I think 4E has had a decent number of them in various places - both old favorites, and new ones with a lot of flavor to them. For example, 'the Immortal Game' above wasn't a very useful item for our group, but was still a lot of fun to break out and engage in spectral chess with the spirit of death!</blockquote>

Verification