Powering up Cursed items

[frostburn]

So SP is this thread helping you out at all? it seams that you have a good idea what you what to do. give the player(s) an item that creates a moral dilemma and let the player decide what to do. they should get a free use or two of this cool powers, then the bad stuff kicks in, bc the player knows how the mechanic works. so this item may be carried the whole campaign without the players finding a way to destroy it especial if it makes for some amusing fun.

So where you looking for examples/ideas for items or something else?

side note: IH was a 3.X var, it was cool bc ur character had more powers, and magic/MI were rare. so that very bothersome xmas tree item grab was not a problem. it also was 1 of the places were 3ed fixes showed up. i mentioned it bc we/you want to avoid the ho-hum trade off of the devil's bargain for something better with these cursed items.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

Sorry for the delay in my reply, been a busy little Easter Bunny.

SP: Thanks for the clarifications, I think I have a more solid idea of what you're talking about.

We were definitely talking tangentially at points.

A brief bio to help you understand where I'm coming from. I'm a low-magic sort of GM. Stingy on the items and a big fan of gritty and sword and sorcery style stuff. I insist on internal consistency in the games I play. I like action/fate/hero/drama points. I hate "Gotcha" situations.

What I was doing in my above post was basically listing different ways in which cursed items have been/can be used. Listing. Not suggesting one is better than another; merely saying that there are options available. What I did not say but should have is that the options I listed will work for some gaming styles and not others. The whole YMMV thing.

As to what others have said:

I liked the cursed swords Thirdwizard and Lostsoul presented. Both of them tie the positives closely to the negatives. And there are reasons for why the item is as it is. These are great cursed items with lovely fluff.

Whereas with what (it seems) you're suggesting is that there is a pool of fate points that bounce back and forth from player to GM as events are manipulated but without there being any in-game reason why the events (ie: the uses of the fate point) are connected. Extreme example to illustrate: Event 1: player uses a fate point and the Slayer sword kills the BBE Orc. Event 2: the GM uses the fate point and next week and a thousand miles away the Drow Cleric makes a saving throw against the wielder of Slayer's friend, the wizard.

This is totally Meta-game. And that's cool. It's one of the ways of running it. The suspense of "when is it going to come back and bite me on the arse?" does definitely add to the drama of the game. But it does in a different way from that of, say, Whitesteel, Bane of Khelzatis that Thirdwizard wrote up further up-thread. Whitesteel's disads are totally In-game.

Meta-game vs. In-game. (More bio: I personally much prefer In-game connections, it's part of that internal consistency thing I need.) They have different feels from one another BUT both fulfil the requirerments of a cost-benefit trade-off made by the player.

Please correct me if I'm wrong but is this the real meat of what you want? That the player gets to make a choice that has both positives and negatives?

I'll define this cost-benefit trade-off as this having three questions that need answering:
Does the item have benefits?
Does the item have costs?
Is the player free to choose whether nor not to use the benefits of the item and there-by incur the costs?

(yeah I know it's pretty obvious. Sometimes it helps to state the obvious.)

If the answer to all three is "Yes" then all good. One will get one's pound of drama from the situation. A "No" to any of them will kill the drama that the GM is trying to achieve with the cursed item.

A couple of examples.

A crap cursed magic item of the Gotcha variety:
Player: I, er, put on the belt.
GM: It's a Girdle of Sex Change! Now your a chick! Hah! A chick! Get it? You're a chick!

A good cursed magic item that lets the player choose and builds drama:
Player: I have the Cursed Berserking Sword. We are beset by foes and I must use it or we shall be slaughtered. But if I do I run the risk of killing my own friends! What shall I do? (OK, not exactly "To be or not to be?" but it's what I've got right now.)
GM and other Players: Nice.

And yes, I did deliberately pick a magic item that's been around for years. Just to show that a cost-benefit option has been available if one wants to play it that way.

Quote:
Originally Posted by DrunkonDuty
I'd like add a 4th type: those that have some useful abilities but also have built in draw backs when said abilities are used. For instance: a magic ring that makes you invisible to normal sight but at the same time makes you a beacon for the life-sense of undead, or even projects you partly into the plane of shadow where their unquiet spirits walk.

Again, it's a cost-benefit analysis deal. Anytime you set up something explicit like that, either it's an instant red-flag to a player that characters will need to start stock-piling undead stuff, or whatever. It means that you're making the game be about the _item_, not about the characters and the effects of their choices. If that makes sense.

True this can happen. But if the players decide the benefits of the magic ring are worth the costs of buying lots of anti-undead cream then that is a player choice. A player choice about the item. Is this not what you're after? I grant you it doesn't have a lot of drama about it. What drama it does have happens in the magic stuff supermarket between adventures. Kinda a yawn. But I don't have magic item super markets in my games so it works quite fine for me.

Anyway that's enough from me on this. I really should do some work today.

cheers.

 

[BriarMonkey]

I'm not sure that this falls into the category of what is being looked for, but may haps...

Mechanically, speaking within the confines of D & D, a cursed item is generally all bad, or has a serious hang-up (exceptions are out there though). Similarly, a beneficial magic item has all bonuses (again, there are exceptions).

Within my more recent games, I also noticed that within fiction and media, cursed items are not generally cut and dry - they run the gamut, and as has been mentioned, can fulfill many roles within a story. I noticed that as a whole, I didn't use cursed items. The players didn't like them, and I didn't like them.

So, being that often I can't see beyond the trees, I sought an alternative using the rules as they currently stood. That lead me down the path of drawbacks. In a nutshell, the creation of a magic item doesn't always have to be just about the good stuff, it can be about balance.

For instance, in my last campaign there was an orc warlord who wanted great power on the battle field. For him was crafted a mantle to wear into combat (it was created by some who had alterior motives). The mantle granted him +4 to Strength, +4 to Constitution, but -6 to Charisma. When this orc died, the mantle passed into history - until it fell into the PCs hands. When they found out what it did, there was a lot of discussion as to who could use it, and if they would use it.

Seeing that this was actually a successful experament, I rolled the idea of drawbacks into item creation. PCs, and others, could craft items with drawbacks in order to save construction costs. (The cost could not reduce the overall price by more than 50% however.)

This simple idea, working within the existing framework, gave rise to a lot of give-and-take scenarios where benefit and drawbacks and cost all had balances.

Needless to say, this form of item has seen much more play than any standard "cursed" item.

 

[steeldragons]

For something a bit insidious...

I'm thinking about the posters' stipulations for something that offers benefits and penalties...preferably unknown penalties. I heartily agree, the "fun" of cursed items is that the party doesn't know, at least not immediately, that they are dealing with a cursed item.

If you have a good RPer, then you could discuss with them separately, the curse slowly taking over their body...in my experience, players that enjoy character development and role-playing are generally quite open to this type of play...leaving it to the other party members to figure out what's going on.

That said...how about a headband/circlet/tiara/necklace...whatever you think the player/character will like...some lovely looking but simple item.

It is effectively a "headband of intellect"...say +1. It will raise the character's Int by 1. Offer them additional knowledge of some language that previously didn't know...they just automatically know it. Enhanced spell casting ability...maybe some Knowledge skill they didn't realize they had.

The down side, as will be learned in time, they suffer an increasing penalty, say a cumulative -1 per failed save/mental attack...Will saves and/or saves against mental attacks, saves against charm/compulsion type spells, etc.

They have a greatly "enhanced" brain...but with the increased "openness" of their mind, that brain becomes highly susceptible to outside intrusion.

The reasoning/history behind the item is up to the DM's imagination. Maybe a mindflayer created the item to enthrall the PC more easily. A lich who wanted the item to make a king (or powerful wizard) give up his secrets. A fey lord who wished to teach a mage a lesson in hubris...teach him, even with his heightened mind, he was still no match for the cunning and "charms" of the fey...just off the top of my head.

How's that?

-Steel Dragons