Curses, Foiled Again!

[diaglo]

i get around the cursed items being removed thingie by not refereeing the newest editions.

 

[ThirdWizard]

There seems to be a definite trend these days to adding bad things to good items in an effort to not see them discarded.

Yeah, after years of playing D&D, no one I play with will use an item unless it is identified first. That means that purely cursed items just get trashed, making them not very interesting. You never see a PC use a sword -2 and fall under its curse. It just doesn't happen. Far better to give them an item with a curse that they at least might use (sometimes to hilarious, if only to the DM, effects).

 

[Abraxas]

I had a character who kept a -1 cursed sword because everytime he got into combat it would appear in his hand. He could never really be disarmed.

As for Items I've put in

In the AoW in Eberron campaign I am running the Mind Flayer in the Hall of Harsh reflections had cursed bracers - they worked as bracers +4 until the wearer tried to shape change/wild shape/polymorph or teleport/dim door/plane shift - then the prevented you from changing your form or using some form of interdimensional movement. He had just recently acquired them and it gave me a reason for having the mind flayer stay and duke it out instead of just cutting and running. Of course the party druid/shifter chose them and had a bit of a surprise in the Champion's Belt adventure.

Long ago in 2nd edition I placed a cursed Frostbrand longsword in a game. The sword could be used to heal the user while damaging his opponent, but doing so slowly turned the wielder into a wight.

 

[Rystil Arden]

Saves are failed on a natural 1. Tie them up, and then

Helm goes on, helm goes off. Helm goes on, helm goes off...

That's weird--the text says both that if you keep taking it off and putting in on that you have to keep saving and also that if it triggers once it loses all magical properties. Methinks someone tried to make a change to the old item without removing all the necessary text

 

[Raven Crowking]

I am, and always have been (since the Blue Box) a fan of sparingly used cursed items and adding quirks to otherwise "good" items.

IMHO, magic should be mysterious, possibly dangerous, and somewhat unpredictable. The occasional cursed item helps players to "get" that just because it says "Healing Potion" on the label, it doesn't always mean that the potion will heal you. Potions of delusion, IMC, are simply poorly made potions that offer a seeming effect, but actually do nothing.

Likewise, I enjoy meaningful choices in a game, and where something has both benefits and drawbacks, characters gain meaningful choices. If the sword does some neat things, but the wielder becomes a werewolf on nights of the full moon, is it worth the risk? Can't we just lock Fighter Joe up three nights a month? That's just fun stuff.

Quirky things, like possessing an item that slowly turns you into an albino, is also fun. There's no mechanical drawback, but there is a real WTF moment, and some decisions to be made. Again, fun stuff.

It also makes the straight "good" items more valuable, and adds that little bit of doubt about what a given item can really do, or really does, that is (IMHO) necessary to making magic items more than simply equipment.

YMMV.

RC

 

[Shane_Leahy]

I can remember using two cursed items since 3rd edition.

The first was the Rug of Smothering in the Forge of Fury. It was created not to work on dwarves. The dwarven fighter finds it, rolls it up and sells it, not knowing it is cursed. The next time they are in town, they here about a series of murders from a cursed rug and they are looking for the dwarf who sold it.

The second was the helm of opposite alignment in the Caves of Chaos. The Neutral Good Cleric put it on and quickly became Lawful Evil. The best part was he did not go EVIL right away, he became a bit more mean, short with the other characters and slowly changed into his evil. Luckily the other players realized something was up and dealt with it before he could kill them all or whatever he had planned. The player had fun with it so I guess its all good.

 

[MrFilthyIke]

The first was the Rug of Smothering in the Forge of Fury. It was created not to work on dwarves. The dwarven fighter finds it, rolls it up and sells it, not knowing it is cursed. The next time they are in town, they here about a series of murders from a cursed rug and they are looking for the dwarf who sold it.

Awesome.

 

[Slife]

That's weird--the text says both that if you keep taking it off and putting in on that you have to keep saving and also that if it triggers once it loses all magical properties. Methinks someone tried to make a change to the old item without removing all the necessary text

Basically, it's magical until it changes someones alignment. After that it's just a normal helmet.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

That I can remember, we've only seen two cursed items in play.

One was a basic shortsword - 2 that magically made its way into your hand, no matter what weapon you actually wanted to wield. It couldn't have happened to a more deserving person. The PC was a min-maxed fighter that took great pleasure in trying to prove how much better he was than the other PCs. He found it in Undermountain and whined incessantly about it until he managed to get rid of it.

The other one was a backbiter that only manifested its curse on a roll of 1. The PC took the risks of using it.

 

[Umbran]

I haven't used cursed items in my campaign... yet. We don't play often, so there are still too few magical items in play to have them go over well.

The most fun of cursed items, to my mind, is justifying the curse. Rarely are spellcasters going to go through the trouble of creating such an item on purpose, and I've never liked the "spellcaster made a mistake" justification. Luckily, may campaign background has wonderful hooks for curses...