Curses, Foiled Again!

[Ghostwind]

I'd like to see what you have written up for this. Sounds intriguing. I love anything that uses a deck of cards as a game mechanic.

 

[Mark CMG]

Is this winding its way into becoming an aligment debate?

 

[Wystan]

I also would like to see this 'Jesters Deck'

 

[Ghostwind]

Is this winding its way into becoming an aligment debate?

Hush you. You'll jinx it.

 

[Twowolves]

I recently threw in a +1/+1 quarterstaff of spell storing (each end), that was "quirk cursed" so that the weilder couldn't cast any spells. You had to lay it down, cast the spells to be stored in it, then pick it up to use it. Even at a substantial price discount, no one wanted it, but I think that was more because no one in the party was built toward the fighter-mage archetype and not because they didn't like the item.

 

[Rystil Arden]

Is this winding its way into becoming an aligment debate?

Looks like it--and like many good alignment debates, it lacks all the context of the original case--in this case, the NPC was the result of the fallen soul of a good mortal taken by the Abyss in a demonologist's soul sacrifice and twisted to evil. She was quite ecstatic to be returned to good alignment by the Helm, but apparently it was "Evil" of the characters to go out of their way to do this--if they were "Good", they would have destroyed her or something.

 

[Slife]

From this standpoint, one might easily claim that the poison-helm scenario falls more within the Lawful alignment than a violation of it, in that Chaos presumably holds the rights of the individual as more important than the rights of the group.

In fact, this behaviour sounds to me rather like

Lawful Evil, “Dominator”: A lawful evil villain methodically takes what he wants within the limits of his code of conduct without regard for whom it hurts. He cares about tradition, loyalty, and order but not about freedom, dignity, or life.​

RC

The BOED disagrees with you. There's a spell in there that acts like a Helm of Opposite Alignment, which can only be cast by good people.

 

[Umbran]

If Identity Crisis is any indication, BTW, Batman agrees with me.

Well, aside form the fact that WotC has no license to do batman's stats, he's too often an obsessed monomaniac for me to take seriously as a moral or ethical guide

And, with that, I'm not taking part in the hijack any further

 

[IcyCool]

The BOED disagrees with you. There's a spell in there that acts like a Helm of Opposite Alignment, which can only be cast by good people.

I believe it also states that poison use is evil. That's why there are "Ravages" in that book, which are pretty much just like poisons, except if you use them, it isn't evil. :\

I hate that book.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

My problem with cursed items has always been the "why?" Why would anyone create a cursed sword? As a trap? I guess somebody could be so darn evil that they are willing to sacrifice time gold and XP to creating something dastardly, but it just doesn't seem to make sense most of the time.

What I would like to see is a method where cursed items can be created by accident - a very low chance, of course. Perhaps where the creator can shorten the time, reduce the costs, or even be allowed to work on more than one item at a time at the risk of a mishap. So, the greedy wizard, churning out a bunch of magic swords messes up occasionally and gets something unexpected.