D&D 5E Campaign defining magic item

[Charles Rampant]

Hey all,


Inspired by a discussion in the Worst Spells thread (it’s a fun read), I got to thinking about magic items. Namely, the idea of letting the party find a powerful magical item at low levels; the equivalent of Bilbo finding the One Ring. My thought here is that by finding such a powerful thing so early on, it becomes a focus for the story. The players can regard the item as helping to define the party (‘we’re the guys with the sword of striking!’) and the magical item then becomes something that you can write plot around, so that powerful wizards keep harrassing the party for it, rival adventuring parties offer to buy it, monsters flee when they see it, bad guys change their schemes to include it, that sort of thing. Now, the real question is: what kind of item would suit this?


My suggestion in the other thread was a Ring of Three Wishes:

I think Wish is now a great utility spell. For a 9th level slot - or, more interestingly, a Ring of Three Wishes - you can get any save-my-bacon spell you want. It makes the Ring the sort of thing that I think would be fun to give to a party at level 2; they'll always have that ace up their sleeves, and you can watch them be inventive with something that powerful so early, without it undermining the whole campaign since they need to be really careful with it.

Is there a more exciting option? Something like a Vorpal Sword has the drawback that really only one character has it, whereas a Ring of Wishes - due to casting powerful spells - tends to be something that benefits the whole group. A Folding Boat is fun, and I love the imagery of it, but it’s so utility that the players will probably forget about it. The Apparatus of Kwalish just sounds like a good way to turn your campaign into Robot Wars. A set of matching magical armour has a certain charm to it - everyone gets a uniform! - but I wonder if it'd make the players paranoid beyond all measure to walk into a dungeon room and find five perfectly suited sets of armour...


Thoughts?

 

[iserith]

All of the figurines of wondrous power except for the obsidian steed which is held by a terrible fiend that lives at the heart of a volcano.

Completing the set is worth a lot of XP.

 

[Charles Rampant]

Oh, that's a nice idea. Seeding the lot of them around the place after they find the first one; like a lower power and less epic version of the Rod of Seven Parts.


Sent from my iPad using EN World

 

[MonkeezOnFire]

A powerful weapon or set of armour would be really neat, but it will place emphasis on the PC that gets to wield such item. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but some would probably require the group to agree on it before hand having a "main character" type of group dynamic.

Flying carpet, folding boat (I think it can become galleon sized) and Daern's Instant Fortress are all interesting choices that the whole group can use. I'm not sure if I would call these campaign defining though.

Cubic gate is clearly meant for a planar campaign.

 

[Soul Stigma]

All of the figurines of wondrous power except for the obsidian steed which is held by a terrible fiend that lives at the heart of a volcano.

Completing the set is worth a lot of XP.

Funnily enough my wife's Sorceress found one, and has made up her mind to find them all. I like this idea!

 

[MonkeyWrench]

I let the Axe of the Dwarvish Lords and Blackrazor into my OotA campaign. Both weapons, but Blackrazor in particular, came to have a major role in the course of the game. Possession of the Axe allowed the duergar Oathbreaker to seize control of Gracklestugh in a coup. A drow Immortal wielded Blackrazor and the demands of needing to "feed" it led to the character basically becoming a serial killer who stalked the Derro on Gracklestugh. Later on, multiple groups from the surface sought to thwart the character as they saw him as a menace; eventually the Doomguard started making overtures of acquiring the sword. Ultimately, the player elected to give up the sword.

 

[steeldragons]

Problem, in general, with this scenario for a D&D game...Bilbo found the ring. It was Bilbo's. Bilbo got to use it and have all of the wild n' crazy stuff happening to Bilbo because Bilbo had the ring.

Unless you're interested in doing a Saturday morning cartoon D&D, where everyone gets their own special signature item, then this is really a near impossible thing to pull off without complete player sign-on beforehand. And even with initial "buy in," there will still likely end up being some resentment and fatigue with the game/story/concept after a time...humans being humans and all.

Things will inevitably continue to circle back around to whomever "Bilbo" is and "Bilbo's special do-hicky" while the rest of the party is reduced to background/supporting character type roles. Not fun for many people.

 

[cbwjm]

A set of rings, A set of magical broaches, a set of magical weapons.

Any one of these could have belonged to an adventuring group of ages past. Perhaps the rings allow the players to use the message cantrip to send messages to all other ring wearers in range. Perhaps they are one of each of the elemental rings, not enough rings for each player? Create a new one, perhaps one controls wood and summons shamblers (perhaps their power combined summon... no, no, let's not go there).

A set of magical pins or broaches that protect the wearer.

A set of magical weapons. A sword, a staff, a dagger, a bow, an axe, a hammer. Whatever you need, each tailored to a small group of classes so that any one of those classes can make use of it. Otherwise, just tailor them towards your team. You could even allow the weapons to have powers which unlock as the heroes advance or as preset conditions are met (Bathe the blade in the tears of the moon to unlock its radiant power).

I think you'd definitely want either something for each of the heroes at the same time or have them questing for the rest of the items so that each player will have that feeling of receiving an item which the group has invested in finding. If searching, I think having rumours of the weapons abilities would help drive the quests.

 

[aco175]

I like the idea of a party meeting the royal wizard in the final days of the kingdom. They are given each a magic item, like the cartoon, but become frozen in time before they can have a chance to save the kingdom. Now 10 or 50 years later they are freed and need to make their way. Most likely they will try to do something about the old kingdom or remnants of it.

 

[Croesus]

...Daern's Instant Fortress...

Change it to a fortress that randomly moves among various locations. Roll 4d10 (or whatever) to determine how many hours it stays in a particular location. The characters obtain the key allowing them to enter the fortress. As they level, they learn more about the fortress, eventually learning how to summon it to their location, to choose which locations it travels to, and so on. Of course, others are searching for the tower and want to gain control for themselves, so the characters will have to protect the fortress and its secrets.

 

[Croesus]

Doh! Duplicate post.

 

[steeldragons]

Change it to a fortress that randomly moves among various locations. Roll 4d10 (or whatever) to determine how many hours it stays in a particular location. The characters obtain the key allowing them to enter the fortress. As they level, they learn more about the fortress, eventually learning how to summon it to their location, to choose which locations it travels to, and so on. Of course, others are searching for the tower and want to gain control for themselves, so the characters will have to protect the fortress and its secrets.

Shades of the House of Mystery meets/mixed with Castle Greyskull.

Me likey.

 

[ccs]

Cubic gate is clearly meant for a planar campaign.[/QUOTE]

Sure, as written.
But there's no reason the DM can't simply assign other, non-extra-planar, destinations to the various sides.
Wich is exactly what my DM did.

I have a 1/2ling barbarian who at 1st lv has a Cubic Gate. Messing with it is how they arrived at the start point of the campaign.
It's represented by a real life Rubics Cube.
The DM has gone & assigned a different destination to each side & combination of sides. (How many combos is that btw?) He's stated that very few of these lead to other planes.
And there's great incentive for me to try & solve it as 1 result will take my character home (wich they really really want).
(I'm terrible at Rubics Cubes so I envision bouncing around alot)

 

[MarkB]

If you go with the Figurines, you should make them able to combine with each other Voltron-style. That way, the more they have, the more special combos they can unlock - and have a rumour that gathering the full set unlocks an ultimate form with unique capabilities.

 

[hastur_nz]

Rod of Seven Parts springs to mind, there was even a 2E adventure written all about it. Not sure finding a piece at 1st level is really appropriate, but hey if you want the Bilbo analogy, it's not too far off if a piece is stumbled upon around say level 3... it could be the 7th piece, meaning whoever has the 6th piece comes looking for it, and so on...
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?521483-the-rod-of-seven-parts-help

The other is a Moonblade variant, where it gains abilities as the campaign progresses; that doesn't really fell like something to build a whole campaign around though, especially as only one PC can use it...

 

[pogre]

I think it is a fun idea. I would echo a couple of thoughts:
1. It should be a set, so everyone is involved (the five signet rings of the Elector Counts); and
2. Using the items should come at a cost. A cost I would use is something that would mean the PCs are unlikely to use the items except in dire circumstances. Naturally, these dire circumstances would be the climaxes of the campaign.

 

[pogre]

It just occurs to me that my current group already has a campaign defining magic item - we ride around and maintain an exceedingly rare airship. We are learning new things about the airship as we use it. Similar to the fortress idea above.

 

[Goober4473]

I straight-up gave a level 1 party a Ring of Invisibility, complete with a Choker that coveted the ring and followed the party around. It was a short-lived pickup game, but it worked very well. They also ended up with a Mace of Terror at level 2, though the game didn't progress far enough for them to use it.

 

[TheNoremac42]

In my campaign, the team of BBEGs has a set of legendary McGuffins. These McGuffins are the keys to an Old God's prison (who the bad guys are trying to free) and the PCs have to recover them in order to keep the Old God from escaping.