Have you used Artifacts in your games?

[Plane Sailing]

Back in our 1e gaming days artifacts were quite common once characters had reached 16th level+

My ranger character had the Ring of Gax, my wizard character was able to obtain the sceptre of (whoeveritwas) and the crown that went with it - but never could locate the orb.

Other PC's of that level had other, appropriate artifacts.

This wasn't munchkinism; back in 1e these were, to all intents and purposes, epic characters doing epic adventures.

 

[Style]

Er, oh dear. Yes. Yes indeed.

The Hand and Eye of Vecna and the Sword of Kas, of course. Nobody wanted to so much as touch the Hand/Eye, but the Sword of Kas (being intelligent and telepathic and with a monstrous ego score) managed to tun the characters against each other in very short order. Nasty, messy business.

I also had a "Lost Sword of A Hundred Hearts" that was a cursed berserking sword that allegedly turned into a vorpal weapon once you had killed 100 people. None of the wielders ever survived long enough to fond out (this one guy's pyromancer has it now, for some odd reason).

I had the Throne of the Gods in one adventure, many many years ago (hmmm, same one that they got the Lost Sword of a Hundred Hearts, actually). Terrible, terrible decision. Once they figured out how to operate its wish powers, the party were hopping on and off it like some game of musical chairs, while I was dispensing curses and counter-effects with equal rapidity. The year-long storyline was derailed, in flames and coughing its last within moments, a steaming heap before we realised what we were doing. There was an uncomfortable silence. Then one player says "Look, I'll just get back on and wish that we had never found the damn thing, ok?" Fate was more than willing to comply with that and they left it well alone.

A high-level group went back to the Throne in the final phases of the campaign, about 15 real years later. They used it once, once only, and promptly cleared off. Thankyouthankyouthankyou.

It wasn't an artifact back then, but had numerous mishaps with decks of many things. As a rule, there is one in every campaign I run hidden away somewhere. I never learn where this one is concerned, I guess.

Ummm, lemme see... Oh yeah, the Sevenfold Torc (which was the Rod of Seven Parts as a big necklace, really). We were all much older and wiser and warier by the time this one cropped up, so it was used sparingly and with great paranoia. And once the Queen of Chaos put in a brief appearance, not at all ever again.

A long-term party in my games called Tsunami tried three times to tackle White Plume Mountain and nab Black Razor, Whelm and Wave. It defeated them three times over, to my eternal glee. Bloody lunatics. My own character did get Black Razor a long time before that in another game. The flippin DM made me give it back!!! And he wasn't subtle about it either (I rant about this in Quasqueton's thread on White Plume Mountain, so I'll spare you the repetition here...)

In my first few months of DMing I had this thing for magical artifact swords, one for each alignment (so I had three to begin with and then all of a sudden there were six more with AD&D, heh heh). Naturally, my buddy Colin's character got the Lawful one and my own character got the Chaotic one in a game I also just happened to be DMing at the time (Isle of Dread, in the kraken's cave). He was with this "NPC party" at the time - you know how it goes . The Lawful sword could shoot 20d6 fireballs and summon efreets and that kind of thing (it was a Fire sword, you know). The Chaotic one could shoot spheres of annihilation. No, really, it could. Not surprisingly, Colin organised the party to remedy this unbalanced situation and they all ganged up on my character and took his Chaotic Void sword and threw him into the sea. Then Colin gave the Fire sword to another player and gave the Chaotic sword to one of his other characters. So of course I made them lose the Fire sword in the volcano on the Isle of Dread and then made it erupt, forcing them to run away. Anway, like anybody cares. I ramble...

I had this other homebrew artifact thing that I cooked up for the last few adventures of my campaign, which finally featured deities manfesting on the Prime. Called the "Eye And Lens Of Tuvaanis", it is basically a big eyepiece that grafts itself to your head and replaces your eye with a gem-like orb. This allows you to see and target the divine chakras that gods use to maintain their divine state when manifesting in the Prime. Once targetted, you can then shoot laser beams out of your eye to destroy those chakras, degrading the gods power incrementally and allowing you to shmam them. You know the campaign is going to end when the DM gives you one of those. And now it won't come off .

Oh god, and then there was that flying mountain thing. For ages and ages it belonged to an uberNPC gold dragon, who laired there in a magical palace and used it to fly about the upper atmosphere, host PCs and generally be kewl. All the dragons died towards the end of the campaign and so of course the PCs got it. They were remarkably restrained, using it mainly for travelling to other planes and only really raining destruction down on the earth below once or twice.

Hey, wow they're really starting to come back to me now...

I had these three... swords... (yes, again!), one that was used to create the spirit world, one to create the material world and one to master the void between them. This last was never understood and was really only used to kill people, but the others featured and were used in a number of stories.

I had this big crystal mcguffin that was variously shattered, being reassembled or intact. It could do anything. The gods would do Really Awful Things to people who used it, but a couple of characters went ahead and used it anyway, one those occassions when a shard passed through the game. A plague got healed. People got raised en masse. The barriers of spacetime and continuity were forever breached. That kind of thing.

The Veil of Mugaal - a little, er, veil that made you invisible to everything and everyone, gods included. My girlfriend has that now.

The Black Staff of Charris/Manshoon/Billy - a killer staff of the magi that never seemed to run out of charges...

I could go on... Best not, eh?

 

[Gez]

Only one artifact is involved in the campaign I run, right now. A genocidal intelligent magic sword with an overwhelming ego and the power to turn those of its enemy race it slays into wights under its control.

The PCs filled a big huge box with earth and stones, and burried the sword within, so that it could not hurl lightning bolts and magic missiles at them. So, for now, it's just like a super-cumbersome One Ring.



And in a campaign in which I play, we just found the Wand of Orcus! W00t. Happiness. Joy. In the catacombs of Zhentil Keep. No, we aren't paranoid at all. No sir. Absolutely not.

 

[Vanuslux]

The only artifact that made its way into one of my campaigns was one of my own creation. Due to its nature, however, it was more of a curse than a blessing and once the party had it the focus of the campaign became "How do we get rid of it?"

As an aside, it was the aquisition of this artifact that lead the party's psionicist to utter the words in my .sig. Boy, did those words prove so true.

 

[Inconsequenti-AL]

I put an artefact magical dagger into one of my games - more of a super and troublesome magic weapon than a plot device. Created by a long dead cold blooded race in my freeport game. It's special purpose was to find out how the insides of mammals worked.

It suffered from 'size envy' of other weapons along with a host of mental issues. Was thoroughly homicidal. The PC owner decided that the funky powers were not worth the constant exortations (and mental prods) to do horrible stuff every mammal creature it met.

He swapped it with a friendly guard captain for a less troublesome weapon. When they came back to town, months later, the dagger was in charge. The captain had become a blackguard, siezed control of the town and institued a reign of terror and mutilation.

They got it back off him and threw it into a lava lake in the abyss... talk about not learning your lesson, if you ask me! Unfortunately the camapign ended before it could come back and bother them again.

 

[the Jester]

I've used artifacts many times over the many years of gaming. My very favorite was the ring of power. This was a ring that, when used, activated a wildfire effect- which is a 2e 9th level spell that was basically raw wild magic energy that the wielder can manipulate to do just about anything. It could be used at will and would last until the end of the 'current situation' (which was under the dm's control)- but everytime the wearer activated it, it drained one from each of his or her stats! It also automatically activated when it was put on, so once someone put it on they were very reluctant to give it up (they already got smacked by it but know it's extremely powerful). Also, it was a slippery slope- once a pc had used it a couple of times, all his stats were slipping away and it became easier and easier to keep on using it since there was nothing much to lose.

 

[Voadam]

How could I forget? I took over running our high level (15) campaign and two of the PCs have artefacts.

One is the Sword of Truth, a LG cold iron Sword +2 arcane bane, evil bane, longsword that gives its wielder true sight but does not allow him to lie. For thousands of years it was corrupted as the Sword of Lies an evil version of itself without the true sight but that could mess up any divinations on or by the wielder as well as twisting his words to lies. We got it out of the Banewarrens and our paladin's quest to qualify for his prestige class was to purify and restore it.

The other is the ShardHammer wielded by our dwarven Cleric, a magic hammer made from adamantine that once surrounded a buried druidic artefact the EarthShard. It is a Dwarven Warhammer (like the waraxe but blunt) +4 that can do crits on constructs and has a few earth based spell powers it grants its wielder.

And one of the PCs, a druid shifter took the druidic WaterShard and absorbed it into himself at one point in a wildshapeshift to prevent it being stolen. This permanently gave him the water elemental template from Book of Templates (plus an ECL). Later the Shard came out of him but the template is still there.

So that's what I inherited in taking over this campaign.

Right now they are chasing after the wielder of a demonic plague dagger that got released from the Banewarrens that could also qualify as an artefact.

 

[basaipete]

I love artifacts as story hooks

I have used artifacts a lot in my games. Over the past 15 years of running the same campaign world I have used one Orb of Dragonkind, the Sword of Kas, the Hand of Vecna, the Throne of the Gods, the Codex of Infinite Planes, Blackrazor, Wave, and Whelm. I also have placed the Crystal of the Ebon Flame but none of the players have gone to its location. There are also a number of other artifacts that I have homebrewed. That said, magic in my campaign trends along the lines of characters getting fewer but more powerful items. Also, my players do not do much item creation.

In my last campaign my players had to find the pieces of a magical artifact gem (sort of an Illearth Stone) but they had to turn those over to a powerful NPC wizard. Then they had to find the Throne of the Gods because they were told that when you sit on it you can see/know the answer to any one question. In this case it was to find location of the Codex of Infinite Planes. In the end they got to see these items and even use the Throne breifly but got to keep none of them. It was all part of a larger story arc that culimated in time travel (made possible by the Epic level NPC wizard using the Codex) to destroy/trap the evil gem in a timeloop.

Now I dont use the artifact descriptions or powers that are listed in the various editions of D&D rules, I give these items powers that are specific to the story and they usually have only one or two powers. I much prefer a game where the players have to go find the super-powered item to solve a particular problem but then have to give it back or are unable to use it due to the specific nature of its use. I take a lot of my inspiration from things like Jason and the Argonauts and their quest for the Golden Fleece. I dont mind using artifacts but I keep their use and availability closely regulated. I think the players enjoy interacting with powerful items, even if from afar. It adds to the wonder of the game.

 

[Prism]

Nobody wanted to so much as touch the Hand/Eye, but the Sword of Kas (being intelligent and telepathic and with a monstrous ego score) managed to tun the characters against each other in very short order. Nasty, messy business.

Ah yes, I remember one of my characters using that for a level or two - more like a curse than a benefit. The ego basically meant you were playing the sword with an attached character.

We ended up fighting our way through to the lair of Orcus with it and whilst one of the party left on the prime gated (could have been good old cacodemon) the big O in, my character attempted to steal the shiny wand he left near his throne. The sword was non to happy with the idea of sharing me and I rolled the ego check of my life to make sure I could take it. Quite fun that, standing on the throne of Orcus with the Sword of Kas in one hand and the Wand of Orcus in the other, surrounded by surprised liches and demons. Seemed like a good plan at the time - before I died!

 

[Prism]

I much prefer a game where the players have to go find the super-powered item to solve a particular problem but then have to give it back or are unable to use it due to the specific nature of its use. I take a lot of my inspiration from things like Jason and the Argonauts and their quest for the Golden Fleece. I dont mind using artifacts but I keep their use and availability closely regulated. I think the players enjoy interacting with powerful items, even if from afar. It adds to the wonder of the game.

Our group uses them in the same way. Over the years we have used several artifacts to do specific quests i.e we located and used the Codex of Infinite Planes to get to and from the Demi plane of Imprisonment (deck of many things) but we always ended up losing or getting rid of the things afterwards. They were simply too powerful or too specific to keep. A few of them had the ability to magically lose themself too