Inteligent Items

[Whisper-Kitten]

I actually enjoy having them in a game. They ae a nice way to add some flavor to the game imo. One time I got the book of the devourer, and the interaction between the book and my character talking in his head was one of my favorite parts of that game. Anway, any time that I try to add them to my games I get a lot of resistance from all but one of my players. They either refuse to use the item or throw it away， (like the singing key). How does everyone else feel about them? Love them? Hate them? Ambivilent?

 

[R_J_K75]

As a DM I like adding them to games, but usually only for short periods of time. I don't see an intelligent item wanting to stay with one person or creature for a long period of time unless there are extenuating circumstances or it has asserted some control over its "owner". As a player I don't really remember ever getting any.

 

[Arilyn]

I love them and so do the players. Lots of potential drama. In 13th Age, all magic items have at least a spark of sentience. If you carry more than your limit, you start taking on the personality quirks of the item. The designers also suggest that the right item might sacrifice itself to save a character from death. Player loses a precious item, but keeps their life.

 

[500 Toads]

I'm inclined to find it perfectly reasonable that players would be apprehensive about using, or especially depending upon, items that may have their own agenda and which might have means to manipulate the user's behavior to effect that agenda. There's a fair amount of fiction featuring malevolent weapons which drive their wielders to additional violence, in particular.

 

[aco175]

My items do not talk. A bit like Dr Strange's cloak. I just gave the Pcs a flying sword sidekick that can point or maybe droop and look a bit sad, but not talk or telepathy. It always leads to asking it questions to solve things and the DM talking to myself.

 

[Richards]

A couple campaigns ago I had a "telepathic sword" inform a ranger PC that she was destined to wield the sword and would one day save the planet with it. What she didn't know was that it was actually an incubus trapped in sword form, and the only way he could revert to his true form was to convince his wielder to slay a good-aligned person...which he did, by informing her their NPC healer, a dwarven cleric of Moradin, had been replaced by a doppelganger while she was on guard duty and the safest way to deal with the situation was to slay the "doppleganger" while it was sleeping. The ranger got quite a surprise when she slew the dwarven cleric and found out she was really the dwarven cleric, and then her sword became an incubus....

Johnathan

 

[Gorgon Zee]

I love them and so do the players. Lots of potential drama. In 13th Age, all magic items have at least a spark of sentience. If you carry more than your limit, you start taking on the personality quirks of the item. The designers also suggest that the right item might sacrifice itself to save a character from death. Player loses a precious item, but keeps their life.

One of my 13A players had some very nice daggers who loved opera. If the daggers didn't get at least some operatic singing or entertainment over a few weeks, they'd get sulky and eventually refuse to be magic. At one stage the players were in the wilderness desperately capturing bandits and interrogating them about Wagnerian singers that might exist anywhere in the wastes.

 

[Whisper-Kitten]

One of my 13A players had some very nice daggers who loved opera. If the daggers didn't get at least some operatic singing or entertainment over a few weeks, they'd get sulky and eventually refuse to be magic. At one stage the players were in the wilderness desperately capturing bandits and interrogating them about Wagnerian singers that might exist anywhere in the wastes.

Did you attempt to sing? I think that‘s what killed my singing key. Along with my singing blacksmith now that I think about it.

 

[Mannahnin]

I like them quite a bit in theory but sometimes get concerned about talking ones being another NPC I have to remember to RP. I keep meaning to put more talking weapons in my games to get more experience with them.

 

[bsss]

I like them, but having to play them as distinct identities is usually a lot of heavy lifting. I like it more when they show up as a logical integration with the character's roleplaying, either as an occasional surprise or quirk (e.g. 13th Age style) or as something ingrained with the character (e.g. "part of my identity is bound to this demon sword"). I also liked 4e's artifact rules, where the weapons weren't (or usually weren't, IIRC) playable unique identities, but influenced their bearer through the concordance score.