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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 6173223" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 331: May 2005part 5/7Bazaar of the Bizarre: Another array of cursed items and mixed benefits this month. The ideal format for the sadistic DM to stretch their muscles. As usual, whether you can turn them to positive ends or not is largely up to you. Ready with those remove curse spells. Arrows of Bursting explode in your face just before you shoot them. This is more painful and less pleasant than in the cartoons. Tee Hee. Ghost Mantles make you into a ghost. Take them off pronto or you'll become one permanently. You probably won't enjoy this, no matter how awesome being a ghost may seem at first. Masks of the Sun's Radiance empower you while in sunlight, but weaken you out of it, and cant be taken off. A pain, but one you could probably live with. Rings of Breathing Water let you breathe water, but prevent you from breathing air. This will likely put a crimp in your social life. Same old story here. Rods of Animated Dead raise 'em, but don't let you control 'em. Have fun trying to turn this to your advantage. I suggest flight and a planed escape route. Rods of Delusions are one of those items that makes you paranoid by delivering false positives along with detecting actual enemies. You'll be attacking your buds thinking they're dopplegangers in no time. Oh the shame. Singing Ioun Stones are near impossible to get rid of once you put them in orbit, and totally distract both your rest and spellcasting. Amusingly nasty, these are another rather likable cursed item. A Spellbook of Dissolution not only wastes your time scribing, but also ruins other spellbooks left near it. Just the thing for if your wizard has a few too many broken options to choose from. Walking Staves have plenty of useful movement related powers, but also give you rather high odds of being struck by lightning. This isn't too bad for experienced druids, as they'll probably have the HP to soak it up, but let the buyer beware, as usual  Spellcraft is going desert themed. Surprised they haven't done that before, particularly since Athas and Al-Qadim were so desert centric. They were too busy obsessing over the elements to really spend time on the nuances of the prime material environments. I suppose releasing environment books has alerted other writers to this exploitable niche. Camel's Tenacity is the typical spell allowing you to survive without food/water for a bit. We've had plenty of variants on this before and deservedly so, for food is an important concern for people. Desert Burial traps people in the ground with only their head exposed, leaving them helpless unless rescued. Not quite as nasty as the one that sucks you down to suffocate, but I guess this one prefers a lingering death. They also point out a bunch of ways it can synergise with preexisting conditions. Muahahahaha, etc. Dust Storm is the now obligatory ongoing damage + environmental penalty inflicter. They do seem to be becoming fond of those lately. I suppose it makes for more interesting fights than when villains wipe out your party first round with quickened maximised double fireball whammys. Crown of Dispair is the old mummy standby, paralysis via terror. With typically nerfed 3.5 duration. Sand Spiral is another, more rapid effect AoE damage + penalty inflicter. You don't want that sand in your lungs, no siree bob. Screen of Heat gives things on the other side concealment. You can make it one-sided, giving you a big advantage in missile bombardment. To victory! And all the enemy's beer! Touch of the Pharaoh is another one that allows you to imitate mummies. At this level, it may well be more practical to simply become one, if you want this regularly. After all, immortality is always in vogue. Unlike the dance style, which is so out by now. This is made even more the case by an interesting bit of setting building, whereby these spells are cursed, and using them may attract the attention of their disseminator. This is an interesting trick by Mike Mearls to make magic more mysterious and dangerous that feels like it's cut from the same cloth as Iron Heroes magic items. On the whole, I think this is a particularly good, and well tied together collection.</blockquote>

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