How common are your cursed items

[Man-thing]

I love cursed items. We campaign in Mystara and true to the old B,E,C, and M series of adventures their seems to be a couple cursed items every mission. My players are used to things and are noticable carefully about grabbing treasure.

Some are simple items like beneficial rings that were poorly made so that the character's skin turns orange when worn and others are more sinister like Bargle's Coin.

What cursed items do you use in your games?

 

[RithTheAwakener]

In 7 years of playing, ive run across 2 cursed items as a player. they are very few and far between.

 

[Dragonboy]

One of my first D&D groups had a character with a cursed axe. It would appear in his hand any time he wanted to use a weapon. It was a lot of fun during bar fights, when he'd pick up an improvised weapon like a bottle or dwarf. Ah, good times.

 

[Crothian]

In the year and a half of the current game there has been none and I don't forsee using any.

 

[VirgilCaine]

First...Bargle's Coin? Coin that you can never get rid of? Coin that curses you to be killed?

Second, not really, at least, not right now. Maybe if I figured out some minor effects that could happen instead of "bathing in blood" or lava or whatever.

 

[Man-thing]

I believe it was the "Forsake all other treasure" Bargle coin in "The Dragon's Den" box.

 

[IronWolf]

Very rarely for me, but they are out there. Just often enough to keep the players wondering... I also prefer my cursed items to be more annoying than extremely detrimental to the character.

 

[Darkness]

In a high-level evil campaign my players made a lot of use of helms of opposite alignment to brainwash powerful paladins and such.

First, they'd kidnap them.

Then, they'd hit them with lots of debuffs to reduce their saves (3 x successful - and they just used it multiple times to make sure - bestow curse: -6 Wis, -6 Cha, -4 to all saves reduces a paladin's saves by a lot).

Lastly, they'd use the helm on them.

They also used Enchantment spells at that point.

 

[Captain Loincloth]

I used to love to give characters extremely powerful items with extremely nasty drawbacks, just to see if the player would try to keep the item or get rid of it. One I used was a wand which used the character's ability scores as charges. I forget what the attack was, but the mage who got it was willing to permanently lose an ability point or two, until it cost him a point of Int, then he sold that wand so fast it would make your head spin.

 

[Ibram]

Actual full fleged cursed items rarely turn up in my games, however any magical item of significant power always seems to have a drawback of some sort. Most often its that the item has a fate of its own (because no wizard would waste his time to greate a magic item just to create it), a fate that can clash with the wielder (or at least appear to clash with the wielder).

I dont see that as a penlty, just that it is a risk that one takes when dealing with powerful sorcery.