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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Li Shenron" data-source="post: 3297525" data-attributes="member: 1465">Many of the effects of the DMG Deck of Many things (don't know about the Green Ronin version) equal death. Some of them equal irrecoverable death.If losing your PC is terrible for you, just don't draw cards!I usually don't like losing my PC, so I have never drawn any card when a DM has decided to drop one Deck into the game.But death is not the end of the game! Sometimes your PC dies... so what? Sad to lose a character you love, but it's just part of the game -> roll another PC and restart the fun!Other negative effects - change alignment: some players even like doing this on purpose, without any compulsion, just to develop a dramatic history of their PC- permanent Int drain: you could have just rolled low Int since the start, this is only a threat for Wizard characters (in the worst case, retire the character and it's as bad as death)- permanent ST penalty: -1 is not a big deal really- lose 10000 xp: if you allow this to drain more than 1 level at once, it could make the PC useless, and IMO you can consider retiring it (if the DM doesn't allow retiring it, wait 1 more battle and he will be dead anyway if it's really unplayable); but at high levels this is at worst 1 level loss, and at very low levels this means death, so the real problem is IMO between levels 4-8- lose equipment: this is possibly worse than death, especially at high level; either the party is going to help you buy new gear, or you may die next encounter- enmity of an NPC/outsider: this just means more adventuresSo the worst thing that could happen are:(a) you need to make a new character... doesn't this happen also for natural causes?  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> (b) you've lost important gear: either the DM adjusts the adventure to compensate or the game gets more difficult; I hardly think that it gets impossible and in that case the DM should really step in and do somethingPositive effects include- gain a level: what's the problem if a PC is higher level than the others? it happens all the time to us, that our PCs are 1-2 levels apart for many reasons [it's debatable whether the deck can give you more than 1 level: I think there's a rule that says you can't level up more than a level at once from the same encounter, and the excess XP is wasted, so it depends whether you consider this an encounter or not]- gain 50000gp: at low level it could really be a huge boost, but I don't think it's going to be easily gamebreaking- gain 1d4 wishes (use within MINUTES): at low level this could be gamebreaking only if you use it to gain magic items or cast permanent spells, but it could be argue that you're still required to spend xp for those (not the 5000xp for wish itself)So overall I don't think it's unbalancing enough to "ruin a game", although it could become too much if every PC draws several cards (which may also cause a TPK).Eventually it's much less problematic the higher the party level (except for the equipment loss). If the Deck was not an artifact, it would have a price and characters below a certain level would simply not be an issue at all, but alas as a priceless items some DM may just think it's fine at level 1...  <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/paranoid.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":uhoh:" title="Paranoid    :uhoh:" data-shortname=":uhoh:" /></blockquote>

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