Cursed Items

[Crothian]

you're not going to be able to get away with that for long. the first time a party discovers that an item is cursed, whether that is lethal or not, the party will then be forever paranoid!

(all Cols thread?)

Paranio is a good thing for a party to have. Especially ones that identified the item and failed to find the curse. Curse should not be lethal, just a pain in the ass. Although I am happy we haven't run across any cursed items in either game.

All Cols threads rock.

 

[LrdApoc]

I agree, but I would hope it was a learned response.. not a rote one.

Boy this is strange.. Do I know you two??? You sound like two guys I game with!

DOH!

 

[Mr Fidgit]

i should've worded that differently: you're not going to get away with that more than once

player 1: a magic item!
player 2: do remember what happened the last time we got a magic item?
player 1: we lost half the party....
...
...
...
player 2: so can i have it?

 

[Crothian]

Looking at the section in the DMG on cursed items doesn't help either. Cursed items can be accidently made, and the creator has no way to figure it expect to use high level spells.

And, I do believe that while players may become paraniod they still will want the items and they will take their chances. I know I would.

 

[LrdApoc]

Okay, to summarize..

Identify would not detect a curse..
Analyze Dweomer would.

Remove curse can't rmove the permenant curse from an item, but can remove it from the cursed person..

I'm starting to regret I though of using cursed items at all..

Class requirements: lvl 11 Wizard to detect, level 5 Cleric/7 Wizard to remove cursed item from victim.. lvl 1 fighter to destroy it.. sigh.. oh well.

 

[Crothian]

By the rules, yes that seems to be correct. But we are in the House Rules Section!!

I'd allow identify to detect cursed items, but only if the caster was specifically looking for it. And then using the spellcraft DC above would be fine.

For clerics having a Detect Curse spell would not be out of line.

 

[Mr Fidgit]

well...if we go back to the 'house rule' part of this thread...

i don't think the 'detect curse' phase of the identify spell is a bad idea. of course if you go by caster level of the item, the lowest in the DMG is 6th, which would give a low level identifier a chance to detect it. but most cursed items are caster level 10+....

 

[Mr Fidgit]

I'd allow identify to detect cursed items, but only if the caster was specifically looking for it.

after one cursed item, a wizard would always try to detect curses....

at least i would!

 

[Crothian]

after one cursed item, a wizard would always try to detect curses....

at least i would!

Butt that would cost an additional pearl and even more time. And people only identify items they find, not items they make or buy.

 

[LrdApoc]

So a 6th level caster would have a DC 21. If you are a 1st Level mage with Identify and Spellcraft of 4 ranks and Int of 18 (+4) d20+8 vs DC21.. yeah that's not too bad.

However the 12th level item is DC 27.. not likely.. and if the creator was an artificer add +5 to the DC to get 32.. yeah that might work.

The Detect Curse spell has already been house ruled in one of the games I play in, just looking for ways to do this without adding new spells per se.