D&D 5E Need help creating a cursed item for my campaign

[Paul Susac]

Hi folks,

I gave my party a blackened thumb that is a spell focus that also casts mage hand and Earthen Grasp once per day.

The thumb is part of a larger hand

The thumb is also a witches talisman (it's an Eberron Campaign and Droaam is probably going to be a place the party goes soon).

I want the thing to be part of an evil cursed item that is working to re-join with the rest of the hand (other fingers might also be found). The hand has some sort of oppressive power, and I can keep adding hand related spells to it.

But I want it to be EVIL. Something that gradually corrupts the players.

Any ideas? Thanks in advance.

 

[Tovrin]

This reminds me of the Hand of Glory. (Google it. It's a real world thing).

You might look at drawing inspiration from that.

Sent from my SM-G955F using Tapatalk

 

[Greenstone.Walker]

The item only recharges the 1/day features if it is immersed in blood. Sapient blood.

It's not much, it's only a thumb, it doesn't need much volume of blood, say a couple of hit points. You can handle that, can't you? Just a small cut in the morning and that nice paladin over there can heal you over breakfast.

But after a while, like a drug dependancy, it needs more.

The thumb looks bigger than it did before. It needs more blood. Also, the finger you found to go with it is a wee bit snobby. It refuses to recharge in the same blood the thumb is in. You'll need 5 HP from you and 5 HP from one of those nice party members. How can they refuse you? The earthen grasp saved the barbarian from falling into that acid trap! She's a barbarian! They are made of HP.

And gets more specific. And creepy.

Tomorrow is the summer solstice, the festival of Xarak the Unknown. On this one day only, the thumb and finger grant you the ability to do strong magic. Blast your enemies with lightning and thunder! However, strong magic requires sacrifice. The blood must be special, pure, young...

 

[Croesus]

Whenever the thumb (or other parts) are used, it inflicts harm on a random innocent somewhere. Mage hand might only cause someone to pull a muscle or lose some money they need. Earthen grasp could break a bone or inflict a minor non-fatal disease. More powerful powers inflict greater harm. At some point, reveal this to the characters then see if they rationalize using the powers. For example, they might decide that the price is paid by folks they don't know, so who cares? Or they are stopping greater evil, so the end justifies the means.

By keeping the initial "price" low, the item encourages the characters (and players) to ignore the harm caused. Then slowly increase the usefulness of the powers, while also increasing the cost to innocents. I know many players who would definitely end up corrupted by such an item.

BTW, here's an item posted by someone else that might give you some inspiration. The item was used in Lost Mine of Phandelver campaign:

For my cleric, a staff of magic missile that shoots four magic missiles instead of 3, but the fourth always misses the target and shoots off far into the distance. He thought he was being cocky when he said "ha, doesn't bother me, I still get to use magic missile without casting a spell." He would learn...
When they arrived at her home, she took them inside where they were greeted by a swarm of young children, she had turned her home into an orphanage for the victims of the ruffians. But over the past few days, something strange had been happening. Several bolts of pure arcane energy would shoot from the sky, at random intervals, each of them killing a child. She showed the corpses to the party and asked the cleric why their god was punishing them. Putting two and two together, the cleric realized these bolts had been sent from his staff of magic missile.

 

[Eltab]

The Hand of Vecna. Red herring!

When you find the palm of the hand, you get access to the Bigby's XYZing Hand spells.

If you have several fingers and leave them together overnight, they form a Crawling Claw which tries to sneak away from the PCs.
The hand knows where more of the body is located, but has no way to communicate this fact. Will the PCs follow it around for more than a few minutes? I doubt it myself.

The owner of the hand is targeted by a Command spell (or similar) that urges him to become a pickpocket.

 

[aco175]

You can create a story about a dictator keeping the nation "under his thumb". In the story the PCs can learn about how the dictator was gradually corrupted. The secret is that the hand that wrote the story was the original person the thumb came from and he created a 'backdoor' of sorts that leads to an adventure where the PCs think they can end the curse on the thumb, but it is planned so that adventurers come to their doom.

Some powers the thumb has include:

Divine Whispers- 1/day the PC can ask a question and have it answered. The whispers eventually start to come when the PC talks in everyday speech. Each time the PC asks a question the thumb reinforces the idea that the answers to the questions involve a quest to where the demon lord waits.

Green Thumb- 1/rest the bearer can grant +1 to any die roll after it is rolled.

 

[Yes]

Here are a list of ideas, mainly cosmetic. Some with real gameplay impacts.

The player who holds it gradually becomes left handed if not already.

The player's touch becomes unnerving to other creatures. They feel like a sting of pain at the slightest brush of his main hand.

Whatever the player cooks tastes like it's rotten. His touch makes small plants wither.

The player becomes greedy and fidgety.

The player develops a taste for collecting humanoid fingers.

Whenever someone is discussing options or a course of action, the player feels compelled to make a case for the worst possible way of resolving the situation. If his idea is unanimously rejected, he has no recollection ever voicing it.

The player likes to suddenly grab and hold other people's hand and smile creepily at them for no reason.

 

[RangerWickett]

It causes your own fingers to wither and fall off, but you can sense intuitively that the item is just hungry for fingers. You can feed it someone else's finger if you want.

That's not too evil, right?

 

[Imaculata]

The item uses its magic to steer its owner back to the hand, by any means necessary. This includes causing horrible things to happen to random bystanders in order to prevent the owner from straying away from the item's goal.

 

[Krachek]

Ring of exaltation.
Require attunement.
Give you the lucky feat.
Cursed : you are always last in the initiative order. Once per day you can swap initiative order with an ally by spending a luck charge. You can remove the ring at any time, that make you loosing the lucky effect, but you stay last in initiative order for 10 fights.

give a feeling of luck and invincibility, but when things gets harder provoke hesitation in the wearer.