Help me create a more wicked Book of Vile Darkness artifact

[Oryan77]

My PC's randomly found a minor Book of Vile Darkness in a single session module I ran. After getting this loot, I came up with the idea to have an ongoing adventure based around this book. So the PC's find out it's actually THE Book of Vile Darkness and not a minor copy. But I want my version of the book to be much more unique than the original version.

An evil NPC has stollen the book and the PC's will try to hunt her down and recover the book so they can have it destroyed. I'm trying to think of ways to make the book more unique so there's a bigger reason the PC's would be trying to recover the book and destroy it. I want something better than just that it will raise the levels of evil readers. I was thinking that after periods of time, it corrupts good things that surrounds it. Stuff like that would be interesting.

So does anyone have any ideas to make this book better for this adventure?

 

[darthkilmor]

Make it draw evil to itself if in possesion of good characters?(ie, "Hey, why do drow keep attacking us?")
Make it so its always at the center of an unhallow?
Make it summon 1d4 devils every week/day/1d10hours if it wants to?
Make the method of destroying it really hard ?
Give it the ability to dimension door 30 ft to an evil character ? ("Hey, what the, HEY! where'd it go!?")
Have celestials come assault the party for being in possesion of it ?
Have your good cleric(if you have one) unable to cast spells within 30 ft of it ?
Have it contain the recipe for the destruction of a good god? preferably the one your cleric of the group worships? And already some other nefarious npc has almost all the ingredients needed? (1000 tears of a solar, 100 slain members of that gods clergy(at least 5th lvl, etc etc)
Make it so an evil person reading from the book can spend a week and gain some evil template(half-devil, etc)?

and best of all:

Have someone offer them a great big ol' huge reward for destroying it.

 

[Pyrex]

Give it some minor but very useful abilities to tempt your PC's.

Have the book communicate with the character who's carrying it and have it offer them power when they need help.

Ex:
A wizard is carrying the book and has used up his spells for the day but the party is suddenly jumped by <insert monsters>. Have the book offer the character the ability to cast another <appropriate combat evocation>. When the spell is cast (perhaps with the book automatically applying one of the vile metamagic feats) describe the spell as producing particularly gruesome/painful wounds.

Ex2:
If it's a ranger carrying the book, have the party attacked by <favored enemy> and have the book offer to boost the characters FE damage bonus (by, of course, adding Vile damage...)

 

[Corlon]

I've always wanted something like this. I guess you could always make it just an intelligent item with a whole bunch of powers that has its own motives set up by its ancient creator (some perhaps dead deity or somesuch).

I've basically got that in my campaign except it's in a "slarcerian muse." The muse is a human head that only talks to humans, and it can divine the answer to any "yes or no" question per person per day. I can also influence peopel to do stuff and knows a bunch already.

 

[ARandomGod]

Give it some minor but very useful abilities to tempt your PC's.

Have the book communicate with the character who's carrying it and have it offer them power when they need help.

Ex:
A wizard is carrying the book and has used up his spells for the day but the party is suddenly jumped by <insert monsters>. Have the book offer the character the ability to cast another <appropriate combat evocation>. When the spell is cast (perhaps with the book automatically applying one of the vile metamagic feats) describe the spell as producing particularly gruesome/painful wounds.

Ex2:
If it's a ranger carrying the book, have the party attacked by <favored enemy> and have the book offer to boost the characters FE damage bonus (by, of course, adding Vile damage...)

Be sure to have it ask for minor, "favors" as well.

 

[Bryin]

Give them a spellbook that has only evil spells from levels 6-9 and lots of epic as well from your creation or from books. Give the holder of the book a caster level of 15-40. But make the drawback 3 celestial ancient gold wyrms and 8 solars with about 30 other weaker angels. Add whatever else you want onto it and play with it in a solo game to maximize its capable powers.

 

[arscott]

Bah. All of that is too complex. I'd say the book just contains the three words of power, which, when spoken, unmake the universe.

 

[Jdvn1]

Bah. All of that is too complex. I'd say the book just contains the three words of power, which, when spoken, unmake the universe.

Which words?

... What? Nooo!

 

[arscott]

I'd write them here, but unicode isn't up to it. And if I tried to transliterate, I'd have to pronounce them out loud.

 

[UltimaGabe]

Give them a spellbook that has only evil spells from levels 6-9 and lots of epic as well from your creation or from books. Give the holder of the book a caster level of 15-40. But make the drawback 3 celestial ancient gold wyrms and 8 solars with about 30 other weaker angels. Add whatever else you want onto it and play with it in a solo game to maximize its capable powers.

Um... if that were a drawback, why don't the PCs just chill at home and let the current owner be killed by all sorts of good creatures? And besides, that isn't even a drawback of the item itself- the book isn't summoning the gold wyrms or solars or angels, they're coming after it.