Everyday Magic Items

[Heathen72]

Illusion people

Originally posted by Incenjucar
Permanent Unseen Servant combined with Permanent Illusion.
Actually, I really wonder sometimes.. Permanent Illusion People...

That's a great idea in itself. What if everybody in the town were permanant illusions. The powerful magic society on which this society is based could have died out long ago, but the "illusions" - the servants of the old society- live on, having never been turned off. Maybe after a thousand years with no one giving them directions they have evolved their own society.The players wouldn't have to know at first, they would slowly figure it out (Player 1: "why are their no toilets in this town?" Player 2: " I don't know - maybe they are too advanced to need toilets."

For something a bit more insidious, Maybe all the beggars I mentioned earlier are the descendants of the original rulers....

Something about this idea feels very familiar. Maybe they did something like this on Dr Who once or Star Trek.
I can't place it though.

Some these ideas in this thread are really good. I might steal a few for my game!

 

[Kilmore]

One common item in our campaigns is what we call "the flashy cube". Kinda like a camera, it takes an illusionary picture and is able to broadcast it.

Another favorite is the levitating brassierre.

 

[Psychotic Jim]

I like that idea of using magical beings and elementals for various functions. Like using fire elementals for heating and cooking or air elementals for air conditioning. Heck, one 2E D&D module had the cloud giant owners of a cafe use an ice toad to cool their food cellar.

 

[Castellan]

Illusory "Ghost" Town

While the concept written about earlier with illusory people does not fit into what I plan to do in the next couple of weeks, I do think it's a pretty interesting concept that would make for an incredible "mysterious happening" adventure.

Imagine entering a town/city where there are lots of people "going about their daily chores." But these people don't interact with, or seem to see, the PCs. It might take the PCs a long period of time to figure out that these people aren't even real.

This smacks of lots of Star Trek TOS episodes where Captain Kirk and crew dealt with holographic people who had been given extraordinary powers by a long-since-dead race of people (who always looked surprisingly like humans, and chose their holographic "people" to look like supermodels). Of course, that could be a lot of fun, especially when the thief begins to realize that he can steal items from shopkeepers' shelves and they won't do anything about it. Of course, when he leaves the town, the stolen items vanish!

Heh heh... I think I have a potentially eviiiil plot brewing...

 

[John Crichton]

Re: Illusion people

That's a great idea in itself. What if everybody in the town were permanant illusions. The powerful magic society on which this society is based could have died out long ago, but the "illusions" - the servants of the old society- live on, having never been turned off. Maybe after a thousand years with no one giving them directions they have evolved their own society.The players wouldn't have to know at first, they would slowly figure it out (Player 1: "why are their no toilets in this town?" Player 2: " I don't know - maybe they are too advanced to need toilets."

For something a bit more insidious, Maybe all the beggars I mentioned earlier are the descendants of the original rulers....

Something about this idea feels very familiar. Maybe they did something like this on Dr Who once or Star Trek.
I can't place it though.

Some these ideas in this thread are really good. I might steal a few for my game!

This was an episode of Enterprise (and I believe Next Generation as well).

An abandoned ship only had 2 surviving members, the rest of the "people" were holograms. Pretty good episode.

I did something like it in a one-shot I ran one time. It translated very well into D&D. Could also work very well in a horror setting.

 

[MavrickWeirdo]

Permanent Tenser's Floating Disk,

replaces wheelbarrows and carts, but it doesn't get stuck on rough terrain, and leaves no trail.

 

[Humanophile]

C'mon people. I see a lot of things aimed at using high magic to replace technology, but the real boon to the common man will come from lower level spells. Purify food and drink will make magical refrigeration pointless, and prestidigitation is the ultimate comfort spell (it's air conditioning, heating, labor saving, cleaning, lighting, and a great many other comforts of the modern age, all rolled into one simple little spell). By the time you get to your flys and your teleports, you start getting up into rarer and rarer classes of people. Not unimaginably so, but even a Fly spell would be the equivalent of a nice car, and where does that leave the junker people?

Also, keep in mind magical protections. Charm Person is a first level spell. Scry is third. Mind Blank is eighth, but there will still be a huge demand for capable items or casters. And even lesser people will provide a very strong market for will save improving items. Dispel Magic capabilities will be virtually required in this society, so even the people who couldn't naturally cast it would have to buy a wand with a few charges left.

Magic mirrors or crystal balls with some kind of mutual scrying spell as videophones I could easily see for long-distance communication. For anything more local, there's no need for magical cell phones when a familiar and a sheet of notepaper (or even a cantrip-created note that'll only last an hour) will do just as well. And I could see raven familiars being *very* common in such a society.

Travel would be mostly by foot over short distances, simply because flying carpets come with their own dangers when the skies are crowded and even high level sorcerers would be pressed to use a fly spell every time they wanted to head out for something. Longer distance travel would be by flight for those who could afford it, but really long distance travel would be by a system of teleport gates, to keep travel time from lagging news and orders.