Eh, just stash the glowing orb of celestial might in your backpack.

[Warehouse23]

The trick to making an impression on players is not to try too hard. The big bad evil guy is never as big and bad, the mighty fortress is never as mighty as it could be, and the sacred artifact is never as powerful as it could have been. Instead, infuse mundane things with interesting details. Small discriptions, curious personality traits in NPCs, and rapid interaction between the DM-controlled world and player activities make for "awesome" experiences, rather than "super-ultimate-magical-whatevers-of-doom."

Players will remember the village populated by gnomes who all share the same last name (ylech...inbreeding) much longer than they'll remember the uber-gewgaw you left in the dragon's horde.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

I'd have thought that something like that would've caused an adverse effect BEFORE he used it to summon undead..... like it burning in his hand.... feeling weaker (the level loss) or something.....

I can't recall if I got any burning sensation - but it wouldn't have changed my actions at the time. There was an army of undead attacking the city I was using as a base, and our party decided to do a commando raid on the leader of the army - somehow we got him to drop the wand (we had no idea what it was, just that he seemed to be directing the army with it) and I grabbed it and commanded the army to retreat.

It did.

And I couldn't lay on hands for some reason.

A little atonement got that all sorted out, and I made a false, lead-lined bottom for my back pack, stuck the wand in there, and carried it around for a few months, while we worked to get it destroyed.

Good times.

 

[Psion]

Ever have something really cool in an adventure (item, person, event, other), and when the PCs see it (take, meet, experience, other), they don't realize what it is, and are not curious, impressed, awed, or even aware of its imporatnce, power, or coolness?

Some PCs in one of my games garnered some pretty nifty magic items... like a staff made of force with lots of nifty force effects.

They proceeded to not use it once.

So I started to crank up the heat a bit on them... after the players expressed their releif at surviving a few close call, I'd drop candid comments like "well, if you had an item that could make a wall of force, it wouldn't have been so bad."

 

[painandgreed]

In the Keep on the Borderlands. the thief picked up the cursed pewter bowl and chalice and put them in his backpack. Three weeks of game time later, it comes out that the (halfling) thief is having trouble carrying everything because of the 40# (I was being mean) of pewter in his backpack. They chased him for a bit trying to take them away from him for a few rounds and then gave up, letting him keep the cursed items for the rest of the adventure.

 

[Sejs]

DM: Alright, you work the door back and forth a few times and break the crumbling wax seal on the door. Looking in, the room beyond looks pretty much like the other three sealed vaults you've examimed so far. (~ in the basement levels of the ruins of a particular grand library~)

Druid: We'll do like we did with the others - give the room a nice, through search. Any other exits aside from the one we came in?

DM: Nope, no other exits. You do notice that while most of the front bookshelves' contents are intact, some of the books and scrolls on the rear shelves show signs of wear. The paper seems rather frayed and 'boof'ed out at the edges.
*rolls a few d20s and consults the DM cheat-sheet* Spirit Shaman, you spot something out of the ordinary as you go about the room. Under one of the writing desks, you spot three scarab beetles, slowly scuttling about.

Spirit Shaman: That's strange, there was a distinct lack of anything living in the other vaults. Do they seem any different with second sight (~detect spirits class feature~)?

DM: *rolls a covert, rather high dc knowledge check, and again consults the sheet* They're possessed of an odd sort of spiritual presence. Diffuse, almost. Nothing you're familiar with, though

Spirit Shaman: Huh, okay. Say, do we have anything I could scoop these little guys up in, like a mason jar or the like?

Spellthief: What about from that alchemy lab? You know, from the necromancer we just killed the sh*t out of.

DM: Yeah, there's definitly something from there that could fit the bill.

Spirit Shaman: Cool! Okay, I scoop the beetles up, make sure they've got some air-holes, and put the jar in my pack. Neat, I've got me some spirit beetles.

DM: *nods and shuffles his notes a bit and thinking to himself... let's see... ah, there we go. "We"; cerebrum scarab hivemind that retains the knowledge from all written materials consumed. And now they're carrying some around with them. This could get interesting.*

 

[Arthedain]

Yep, I've got one of those .

In my Forgotten Realms campaign (set in the Dalelands), the players help rescue Randal Morn and free Daggerdale from the *evil* Zhents (dramatic music). One of the players, an aasimar fighter, got The Sword of the Dales, a +3 silvered bane [magical beasts & constructs] longsword, with some additional nifty powers (like reflecting lightning bolts and polymorph magic + opening chains). HOWEVER, the aasimar fighter had his mind set on a character that would wield a two-bladed sword.

So as of today, some 2 years (both in-game and in real life) later, he still usually uses a two-bladed sword. The Sword of the Dales has been used on occasions, like when the players where going *in disguise* to Voonlar (a small village north of the Dalelands where the *evil* Zhents rule behind the scenes) and the caravan they were traveling with were ambushed by orcs. Now, if you look like an average traveling minstrel and draw a sword that glows blue, and display impressive fighting skills...I wonder if someone tells about it when they come to Voonlar....

To add insult to serious injury, the aasimar has grown wings (Outsider wings feat from Races of Faerun), and always wears full plate. Me and one of my players have been mocking (in a friendly fashion, of course) the player for ages because of his high "cheese-factor". Our latest idea was to try to promote his character as a prospective new King of the Dalelands. Cheesuz I, or something like that..... But probably not as long as The Sword of the Dales stay in his sheeth for 98% of the time.

 

[KenM]

Identify is a pain in the butt to use, so unless you give a big hint, it might end up in the backpack.

The way my old, long time group dealt with Detect Magic/ Identify is this:
1. One we cleared the place out of bad guys and we know all the secret places, ect., the magic user's walk through the place with a det magic.
2. Anything that glows magic is put into a room, over time we ID the magic items.



We accually had kind of the same situation come up. We we go so many +1 weapons when we were getting high enough to have +2, ect. We wanted to keep the other magic weapons as spares, just in case. So we just said "We put the + 1 sword on the pack mule." With all the magic that pack mule had, it was one bad ass pack mule.

 

[kigmatzomat]

Identify is a pain in the butt to use, so unless you give a big hint, it might end up in the backpack.

The best way I have BBMD weird out identify is by stating nothing more than their name. My PCs found one of a set of magic daggers, identify returned "We are the Blades of Sembala." Utter confusion but lots of interest that's lasted several years. They still haven't found all the blades yet.

Another time they were handed a magic axe by an ancient dryad (think an older Lauren Hutton) that was supposed to be "O'Tarr's Key." See, there's this odd metal pin embedded in the head that doesn't match the rest of the fairly exotic weapon. If you pull it out, it's a very distinctive key. .... They toted that axe around for nearly 3 years before I finally got fed up and had an NPC pull out the key at the first opportunity.

I try to avoid describing things as "the biggest/largest/shiniest/adjective-est in the world" so things don't lose their impact. I say things are the "biggest they've ever seen" if they find something huge and try to use the descriptions to indicate magnitude.

They once followed a gaggle of apparently passive and non-threatening undead to a ravenloftian fogbank that sent them to an extradimensional graveyard of immense proportions. The party was unwilling to enter the walled area containing the tombs, despite the total lack of interest shown by the undead, and decided to circle it. After they'd spent about a day ridining around this two-foot high stone wall the mage decides to try calculating the size of the wall. While his math is questionable, the party is still shaken by the notion of a graveyard well over a hundred square miles that would require several days to circle. The unending rows of simple headstones outside the wall gives the a deepseated feel of unease.

Of course, when they encounter the BBEG trapped within the graveyard they insult it and get into a fight with it, nearly getting killed themslves and finding a way to help it escape when *my* only intention was for it to irritate the players for a bit before telling them what they wanted when it grew bored.

A lich did give them the willies when he gifted them with a powerful staff he described as "useful for clearing out brush or eliminating infestations." They later figured out it was chock full of quasi-epic spells (intensified, widened spells at frighteningly high caster levels that did 200-300 damage with painful saves). The risk of accidentally killing eachother with its AE made them decide to sell it to the king; the only one they could think of who could afford it and wouldn't be likely to use it unwisely.