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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Prism" data-source="post: 6792025" data-attributes="member: 9501">So far each of the three released modules after the starter set have contained at least one very powerful magic weapon with some serious undesirable side effects. I am interested to know if DM’s of these adventures have played up these flaws or generally ignored them.There are some item spoilers for all three adventures in this post so best not to read further if playing these…Hoard of the Dragon Queen contains a powerful yet evil intelligent great sword. Probably due to the early release of this adventure we are not given the swords charisma attribute but its easy enough to allocate one. So checking the DMG to see what an intelligent item can do to mess with its wielder it can make all sorts of demands of them to follow its alignment or goals. If the wielder refuses it can withhold some or all of its abilities, or prevent attunement or even cast charm person once per day on the wielder. All this stuff can seriously screw up a party and probably should considering the nature of the sword. I know when our party found this we dropped it immediately.In Princes of the Apocalypse you can find and wield the four elemental evil weapons. Now these are more subtle influencers as all they do is add a character flaw to the wielder. So either the player has to role play this flaw voluntarily or use the inspiration mechanic to reward the player. Did any players do this in your game or did you let the characters use them unhindered?In Out of the Abyss the party can find a goodly intelligent sunblade which comes with its own side effects – mainly that it wants to glow constantly and creates some serious issues for sneaking around the underdark. It has a reasonable charisma and is therefore quite hard to resist if it wants its own way. I could also see some problems interacting with many of the would be allies, like drow, when its in the party. Would you as a DM ignore those aspects or do you make the adventure harder for the players (like shining at inopportune times) to compensate for its in combat benefits. Oh and as a final thought the same adventure contains the wand of orcus. How harsh are you when choosing the detrimental effects – disadvantage on saves vs spells plus aging up to 30 years? Something a bit more lenient?I ask this because our group has often included intelligent items and artifacts in our adventures but rarely have they been entirely beneficial to the party and sometimes have been downright problem items, leading in the worst cases to character death – usually after being charmed to dominated by the item. Basically are intelligent items more trouble than they are worth?</blockquote>

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