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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rils" data-source="post: 7186358" data-attributes="member: 78768">I don't have a tweet or interview to cite, but as far as "WotC precedent" goes, there's an example from Perkins' DCA game where removing a curse required more than just "cast convenient spell".  I'd say spoilers, but the episode is like a year old now, so whatever.  One of the characters made a deal with a Dark Power - perk, they got a couple free uses of Raise Dead; con, they slowly turned into a ghoul.  Per RAW, a Remove Curse should have fixed it.  When the players tried it, he said "didn't work".  However, on the fly, the players tried using a dead saint's ashes mixed in a healing potion to try and heal him.  After a couple rounds of saving throws and taking several d10s of damage while he puked black ichor, the curse was removed.  I believe this was a completely spontaneous ruling; Chris was clearly surprised by the character's plan and, because it was a cool plot idea, made it work.I borrowed that idea for my own CoS campaign, where a couple of my players picked up "Dark Gifts" ala the AL death rules.  One was turning into a Creature from the Black Lagoon fish-man - scales, fish funk (disadv on Cha checks) and all.  The other was turning into a ghost.  Again, RAW a "remove curse" should have fixed that.  Inspired by Perkins, I instead created scenarios where the curse could be removed but at a cost.  Step 1, only the hags have the magic required, so you have to make a deal with them (always a losing proposition).  Step 2, the cures involved flavorfully taking a ton of damage, which if you survive, you're cured.  (Side note, there are lots of other things I could have done besides damage, but next stop was Strahd's castle, and I wanted them to have to choose between burning healing resources or living with the downsides of the curses - offering both IC and OOC considerations because I know my players think that way).So, all that to say - actual gameplay evidence shows WotC staff changing curse rules on the fly to make for a better story.  Not to be trite, but if the Curse rules don't work for you, don't use them.  As mentioned above, madness is an interesting system you could use for it.  Or, just make it work the way you want it to - that's entirely your prerogative.  I'm with [MENTION=20323]Quickleaf[/MENTION] in suggesting play the alignment change "under the table" with that player.  Take LotR as inspiration, and use the cursed item as a character plot development arc, rather than just a mechanical thing.  Maybe the character doesn't even know about the downside of the dagger at first.  After a few uses, he gets hooked on it - and then you tell him in private that its weird, he's finding he enjoys killing things, and the rush of the power that comes with it.  With that warning, a few more uses later, it's affecting his judgement, and he moves an alignment square.  He tries to get rid of it, but it's not that easy.  Some sort of cost (quest, atonement, bargain, whatever) needs to be paid to be rid of the item.  But does the character (not the player) even want that? Etc.If your players are the rules-legal types who won't just play along with your story, just tell them it's not a "cursed item", its a property of the item that it causes the alignment shift and therefor remove curse doesn't work on it.  The joy of homebrewed magic items, can't argue with that.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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