ENWorlders: Reward my players with Magic Items

[Rel]

Keep in mind that the barbarian/bard couldn't use it as written because it's a spell completion item. I actually have it as a use activated item (usable by anyone) in my own game, but I weakened it somewhat in this writeup. The balance for a lower lvl party is that the wizard can use it, but then has a 50% spell failure chance!

Other than that, I'd say sure, the sword can be picked back up. Your best bet is to make the item subtly cursed *if* it seems to you that the group is over-using it. When the barbarian finds that his skin is slowly turning gray and that healing doesn't help, he'll probably save use of the item for real emergencies, and voila' - your problem largely disappears. You can even give him a method for completely removing the curse (like placing the necklace on an iron golem before slaying it) which he won't be able to do for a few levels.

And my, do they run when they see those rust monsters....

Thanks for the feedback, PC. As it happens, the Barbarian is actually a nightmare, hodge-podge of classes and he's got a level of Sorcerer in there somewhere, making him technically an Arcane Spellcaster.

I dropped a 1/week restriction on it and I figure that he can't be healed by regular healing spells (instead having to use the spells that heal Constructs) while it is in effect. The threat of damage from spells will probably keep it from being abused too much.

And, like I said before, this campaign in heading into the home stretch and I've put them up against some extremely nasty opposition (let's just say that a certain god of destruction is walking the earth and they're expected to stop him). I doubt they'll be able to do anything too abusive in the time they've got left.

 

[Rel]

Just wanted to give a big thanks to everyone who contributed to this thread. The game tonight was a big success with the dragon fight being fairly harrowing and intense. And of course the treasure was popular.

I started to read off the contents of the hoard and the players kept saying things like, "Aw, that's cool." and "Dude, I need that so bad it hurts." and such.

The Sword of Softness and Necklace of Iron Body were both in there and among the more talked about items. They also thought the floating throne was unique and somewhat useless. I beg to differ as I essentially made it into a floating, throne shaped Immovable Rod. Million and one uses...

Thanks again to everybody and especially Piratecat.

 

[Piratecat]

My pleasure. Glad it went so well!

When my group identified the throne, they learned that it was a throne where the first emperor of the Dead once ruled from, and that anyone who sat on it and who wasn't struck dead on the spot would be destined to slay his best friend to steal power -- or something ludicrous like that. Of course, that's just a psychic echo that's utterly false. I really like the idea of making it an unmoveable rod.

Want to share with us what your final hoard description was, or at least any unique items you came up with that aren't already in this thread? I'd love to hear them.

 

[Thanee]

I'm not a big friend of tailoring treasure, usually my players have options to swap or buy/sell treasure they cannot need and I often choose treasure randomly (altho I do reroll some of the results to have at least a little control ).

One thing you could try, if you don't want to specifically invent new stuff, is to roll up treasure and redo some, that would be utterly useless or would be favoring one PC more than another based on the previous rolls.

Or just put one nice item in for each of the PCs then roll up the rest.

Anyways, the hoard shouldn't consist of only items, that are nicely useful for the PCs, have at least some items in there, that might be used, but are hardly tailored for their specific needs.

Put in some nice general stuff (like bag of holding, or the aforementioned folding boat), which is just cool and generally useful, as well.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Thanee]

Oops, should have noticed there is a 2nd page, I guess...

Bye
Thanee

 

[Darklone]

Woah, nice list PC! Kudos.

Rel: One of my favorites (and already rather often used) is the batdagger... a slightly curved bonedagger with a handle shaped like a bat (or made from a bathead).
These daggers usually came in pairs... as +1 keen daggers which caused 1d4+1 damage (+1 point negative energy damage see below).

The effect mirrored one of these old level 1 spells; Larlochs Minor Drain... each hit, you gain one temporary hitpoint. These stack.
Confirmed critical hits result in a small explosion who cause 1d12 damage to anyone within 5 ft of the wielder (and grant him the same amount of temporary hitpoints). These hitpoints go away after 1 hour.

Hitting undeads cause 1 negative level on the wielder and heals the undead for 5 points due to backlash.

Wielded by an undead creature, the dagger increases their level draining ability by one ... if they had it.

 

[Rel]

Want to share with us what your final hoard description was, or at least any unique items you came up with that aren't already in this thread? I'd love to hear them.

I'll post something tomorrow when I e-mail out the Loot List to the players so they can fight over the stuff. I mostly used your list with some omissions and minor modifications but I tossed in one or two other original creations and a couple DMG items that I thought appropriate.

 

[Eccles]

I know I'm a bit late, but I only just noticed this thread...

The only one I'd like to add is this:

The Helm of the Drake (Strong Abjuration, Alteration, Divination, Conjuration)

This dragon's head-shaped helm has no eye slits or holes for breath to escape. It is coloured to suit a particular dragon (ie. black, red, etc).

Once placed on the owner's head, however, they find that they can breathe normally, and can see perfectly. The helm works even when the wearer is blinded, and allows the wearer to breathe in gasses (and possibly underwater), but not in a vacuum.

The Helm also provides total immunity to a single energy source, dependent on the colour of the dragon involved.

The catch is that the helm has a subtle curse. Once it has protected the wearer from a set amount of dragon's breath weapon, the wearer starts to change into a Dragon-Kin. This damage can be split over several breath attacks, or even between several different dragons (of the same type)!

Worse still, if the wearer has any levels of sorceror, they will instead change into a Half-Dragon. In either event, unless the wearer passes a Will save (DC equal to the last breath weapon used), they will turn evil, and probably become an NPC.

---

The red dragon who's plaguing my group has been using it to manufacture dragon-kin (and the occasional half-dragon) to help him. The party doesn't know that yet, though!

 

[Rel]

I'm not going to re-post the whole hoard since it is very similar in many respects to the one that Piratecat posted earlier (though I did tone down many of the items so that this teasure hoard was only moderately Monty Haul). I added two "unique" items below. The second one is derivative of an item called The Ring of Bone that I read about in the Small Beginnings Story Hour (which is apparently going off of hiatus so you should check it out):

A finely carved bow with a broken string. It has writing upon it in an unfamiliar script but has two carvings of cacti on it. It barely protrudes from a pile of silver coins.

“The Long Needle” +1 Bow of Sure Striking – Does an extra 1d6 Piercing damage to any target struck.

A pair of rings, apparently carved from bone. They have many small, pointed protrusions that make them look as though they would be uncomfortable to wear.

“The Bone Shield of Senecio” – When both rings are worn, they cover the wearer in a layer of sharp, barbed bone. This inflicts 2d4 damage on the wearer every round and gives him a Natural AC Bonus of 4. It also causes any creature that attacks the wearer with an unarmed attack to suffer 2d4 damage.

As I mentioned before I also modified the Throne somewhat into:

"The Floating Throne" - When the command word (“Ulastogir”) is spoken it will hover, weightlessly in the air (as though Levitating) and can be moved about through normal methods (though with difficulty - it still retains its inertia). When the command word is spoken again, the throne becomes “fixed” in space wherever it is. Either way, it can support 8,000 lbs in addition to its own weight.

I keep thinking of strange uses for this item. I think you could build a small airship of sorts with it if you used light construction materials and rigged it with sails. It would also make a hell of a baricade.

Thanks once again for all the neat ideas for items. I cut and pasted all of them so that I can use them in later games even if I didn't use them this time around.