Cursed items?

[werk]

The Cursed Dagger thread gave me an idea!

What are some of the cursed items you have given to your party (or received yourself) over the years?

I remember that in older editions when making an artifact, you could pick the curses that came with it, and everyone always picked the ones that gave you white hair or bad breath or stuff like that because it didn't have much an impact on the overwhelming usefulness of the item.

I figured ENWorld would have some whoppers.



I only really remember two items that I gave out that were uniquely cursed.

1. A pair of gloves of dexterity that, when worn, constricted and broke most of the bones in the hand without causing any damage. Once the curse was removed, along with the gloves, the hands (and dex penalty) remained. My player got around this by finding a high level cleric that cut off his hands and regenerated them...it was very traumatic.

2. I once gave a character an artifact named The Staff of Whining becasue he was whining too much about not having a 'special' magic item despite having more wealth and items than anyone else in the party. It was an amazing weapon, but it was embarrasing for him to use so he sold it (much under Mfg Suggested Retail Price).

What are some of yours? ...or am I the RBDM?

 

[Lanefan]

There's been a few...

The Ring of Unfree Action - sold to a PC as a Ring of Free Action but not field-tested, whenever this ring would normally allow you to avoid being bound or held, it instead ensured you would be bound no matter what (i.e. auto-fail any save, etc.).

Various "homing" or remote spying devices - party think they have a useful item (and sometimes, they do) but it's been tweaked to be a scrying focus, or keyed to a locating device, or whatever, so the enemy knows what the party is up to...

Boots of Grounding - sold as a device of lightning resist, and it is, sort of...any lightning that strikes the wearer goes straight down through the boots instead of carrying on in a straight line. Unfortunately, it has to go through the wearer on the way to ground...

Lots of old classics such as berserking weapons, '-' weapons or armour PCs think are '+' instead, necklace of strangulation, etc.; there's been more odd ones, but I just can't think of them right now.

Lanefan

 

[Slife]

The Ring of Unfree Action - sold to a PC as a Ring of Free Action but not field-tested, whenever this ring would normally allow you to avoid being bound or held, it instead ensured you would be bound no matter what (i.e. auto-fail any save, etc.).

I should totally stat up a ring of expensive action, which makes you succeed whenever you make a check to avoid being bound or held, but charges 10 gp per point you missed the check by.

 

[Aaron L]

Only two that I ever remember, and on e of them wasn't really very much of a curse. I had a grey elven Wizard who found a ring of protection +3 that made him nearsighted, giving him a -2 to spot checks and ranged weapon attacks. Fortunately it was accompanied by a pair of spectacles that corrected the nearsightedness and gave had a permanent arcane sight effect

The other was a Ring of Contrariness back in a 1E game. I had a high elven Cleric who found it. It gave him an 18/00 Strength, but, well... was a Ring of Contrariness. It was weird to roleplay. We had it removed before very long.

 

[Drawmack]

Two items that weren't really cursed just not a good idea to carry around together

In a party with an elving tank and a dwarvish tank they both acquired talking weapons. The elf's weapon had the personallity of a jouvanile elf and the dwarf's weapon had the personality of an elderly dwarf. It was decided that both weapons would be gotten rid of when the party was awoken in the middle of the night by the elfs swaord screaming for its dad as teh dwarfs sword was threatening to kill him.

 

[Thurbane]

Helm of Blind Faith - functions like Incense of Meditation, but also blinds the wearer (item I created for 2E, haven't updated it for 3E yet...).

 

[paradox42]

I've done a few.

I used a Crystal Hypnosis Ball in one adventure, or to be more precise I used 13 of them- all both attention-foci of and phylacteries for a 30th-level lich. The party had a field day trying to gather all of them up once they figured out what they really were- fortunately they had the occasional help of a 40th-level mage on their side so they didn't have to face the lich by themselves.

Had fun with some Far Realm books inserted into adventures, like Madreus's tome from Gates of Firestorm Peak, or Rhyll's spellbooks from Quadripartite (Dungeon #99). Oh, and a certain little tome called the Carcosa Codex, from And Madness Followed (Dungeon #134, though the characters didn't actually acquire it from that adventure). I just love making players squirm with insanity-inducing goodness (badness? Chaosness? or just squishiness?).

More recently I did a Ring of Evasion that was made using the power of an Anti-God, a being made of energy directly opposed to normal divine energy- this meant that the ring was painful for any actual divine spellcaster to wear or use, and basically just "wasn't there" for any spell effects they tried to use on it. Arcane casters, and non-casters, could use it just fine though. No loss in function, just painful to use and would also cause a drain on spell potency (represented by a penalty to the save DC of any spell cast by the wearer if a divine caster). Of course, the party was more than a little annoyed with this item, since the character who actually wanted it was a paladin-type.

 

[Slife]

Two items that weren't really cursed just not a good idea to carry around together

You mean like a bag of holding and a portable hole?

 

[Michael Morris]

Did someone say Cursed Items? I like "cursed" items which clever players might find ways around their drawbacks

The Girdle of Masculinity / Femininity is a classic though not in the 3e roster.

Shield +5 Spell Lodestone (if the bearer of the shield can be a target of a spell the spell MUST target him. Party figured out the cursed part the first time the wizard tried to throw magic missiles)

Null Rod (This thing does nothing -- No, that's the point - it DOES nothing -- No non-artifact magic item functions within 100' of a null rod).

Amulet of Limited Resources - The spells cast by the wearer of this cursed amulet are cast at their minimum possible caster level, so fireballs become 5d6, Magic Missile for 1d4+1 and so on.

Chaos Sphere (All spells cast within 100' of a Chaos sphere pick their targets at random from among eligible targets).

Ring of Aging (Character ages 1% of their lifespan / day -- 1 year per day for humans).

Bracers of the Ox (-4 Dex, +4 Con)

And that's just off the top of my head. I love to give out the occasional cursed item - especially when my players start getting greedy.

 

[demiurge1138]

Two that jump to mind are...

A ring of nine lives (heals the wearer nine times when reduced to below 0 hit points) that turned the wielder into a cat-like humanoid. It also had the side effect of making its wearer cockier (although this wasn't a mechanical benefit), and the character proceeded to do such intensely stupid things as tackling a ghost floating over a huge pit.

A set of bracers of armor that got a random curse rolled on it (as the players were looting a warehouse that had been exposed to the Mourning, in Eberron) turned out to change the wearer's gender. The druid took it, turned into a woman, and asked the (female) cleric to cast remove curse the next day. Her response? "Oh, so being a woman is a curse now? Forget it. It's time you learned a lesson about sensitivity."

Demiurge out.