How impolite is it to change a PC with a cursed item?

[blargney the second]

He's a pretty cool guy. I suspect that he'd roll with it pretty well.

 

[fanboy2000]

As someone who has been on both ends of a cursed magic item (DM and player), I say go for it, so long as it's not malicious, and you don't always single out one player.

I agree 100%

Fanboy's 3 Rules of Cursed Items (YMMV):

1. Make them nasty.
2. Make them reversible.
3. Make them rare.

Of course, I don't usually give out cursed items that players would actually want. For example, my group of greedy, evil, power-hungry munchkins thought an item in a dragon's hoard was a pair of Boots of Striding and Springing. Every one of my six players wanted them. Dividing up the treasure took an hour in real time, and attempts to speed it up only made it worse. The guy who eventually got them gave-up most of his treasure and paid other PCs off.

Then he strided and springed across a large room to attack an Ogre....half-way there he started to dance. One of my players, thinking it was pixies, because I had used them in the past, insisted on making all kinds of checks for invisible people and attacks.

Oh what glorious fun!

He was a good sport about it. He probably knows I'll pay for this with increased paranoia about treasure hoards in the future. But it's worth it.

 

[delericho]

I'm going to disagree somewhat with the prevailing opinion here. The DM has control over 99% of the game - the NPCs, the settings, the challenges, XP, treasure... The only thing players have control over is their characters. So, you shouldn't go messing with those.

That said:

I'd likely put in a clause that break enchantment or similar would reverse the effects so he's not hosed forever.

That makes it fine. As long as the player has the ability to reverse the effect, go for it. But if it was actually a permanent change, then that would be a no-no.

 

[FunkBGR]

Definitely ask them first.

Most of my players would be fine with it, but I have one who's notoriously bad at handling any kind of perceived change to his character. Forced class change, even if it's just giving him a class level for free, or domination (through dominate person), or whatnot - he hates it, and is very vocal about it.

Some players are just like that though.

 

[Arkham]

He should count himself lucky that the item hasn't burrowed into his chest and eaten his heart.

Cursed items shouldn't be happy froo-froo rainbows and ponies.

 

[Doug McCrae]

He's a pretty cool guy. I suspect that he'd roll with it pretty well.

Shows the downside to being cool.

There's a big incentive to be a whiner - bad stuff is less likely to happen to your PC.

 

[Slife]

He should count himself lucky that the item hasn't burrowed into his chest and eaten his heart.

Cursed items shouldn't be happy froo-froo rainbows and ponies.

I love cursed items! The cursed item list in the SRD has some of the best deals in the game!

"Oh no, we're being followed. Quick, Melchior, use the dust of sneezing and choking so they'll be stunned, letting us make good our escape"

"Oh no! They've imprisoned us! Good thing that Rupert the Wizard can never lose his adamantine sword -2. It's not like he'd be able to deal more than one point of damage in combat anyway. We'll carve our way out of here in no time!"

"Oh no! We've captured the evil Lich, but he's the only one who can stop the meteor! Helm goes on, helm comes off, helm goes on helm comes off..."

"Oh no! Orcus is attacking us! Quick, show him the mirror of opposition"

"Well, as a peaceful village blacksmith, I'm completely willing to bet I'll never enter life-or-death combat with these gloves on! 1300 Gp plus 750 gp for a potion of remove curse is still much less than 4,000 gp for an uncursed pair!"

"Hey, mister fisherman, would you like a net of snaring?"

"Well, since you're going alone on your mission, and retreat is not an option, you might as well take this Berserking Sword, which will give you the rage of the mightiest barbarian. It's also +2!"

"What are we going to do with all this garbage? Oh, wait a second, bag of devouring"

"This ring of clumsiness works just as well as a ring of featherfalling, except it costs less than a fourth as much. Sure, I take a -4 to dex when I'm using it, and have a 20% chance of arcane spell failure, but climb is based on strength, so this is a great bargain to get the party over the Mountains of Death without worrying about falling"