Return of the Cursed Magic Item?

[DandD]

And now, we're going to learn about cursed magical items in 4th edition... In some months, anyway...

 

[Exen Trik]

A few other possibilities for cursed weapons:

-Made only to work for the original wielder(s): Either out of pure spite or some strategy, it is meant to penalize if you try to kill them and take their stuff. Like an army that equips their advanced squads with magical weapons, that if captured by the enemy can only put them at a disadvantage.

-Not meant to be effective: Consider a -5 sword, used for spectator combat. Makes for more exciting match ups in a gladiator arena, whether the audience knows of the handicap or not. May or may not also have the Merciful quality, depending on the kind of contest involved.

-As part of a challenge: Whether for general training, or part of a more involved test of ability. Give a ranger student nothing but a -2 handaxe and set them off into the wild to track down and kill a certain beast.

 

[TwinBahamut]

Cursed items, as they exist in 3E, and presumably earlier, just serve to annoy players, and they don't really have any benefit to the story that can't just be replicated with some random spell.

I would like to see cursed items in 4E, but as others have said, they should actually have benefits that make the curse worthwhile. In fact, cursed items should probably be more powerful for their cost than an equivalent uncursed magic item, with an appropriate drawback. Essentially, the curse results as a cost for the weapon being ore powerful than it should be, a penalty for item-crafters and item-users who try to shortcut the laws of the universe and get more than they paid for.

Weapons that drain the life from their user, curse him with misfortune, or refuse to hurt certain kinds of common enemy are all interesting, useable, and can be used as part of the story. A weapon which is just useless, or only serves to hurt the user, is just a way for teh DM to punish players for doing what they are supposed to do (which is pretty illogical, if you ask me).

 

[IceFractal]

The problem is that a purely cursed item is more like a trap than an item. Either you avoid it entirely (successfully identify it), or you use it and then get hosed by it the first time its "trigger" comes up. Then you break it into pieces, or, if you're able to, remove the curse from it and sell it.

The point is that no-one would keep using one unless it was indestructable and immune to remove curse (or they were too low level). Which would put it in the item class of "plot-device". You may as well just have someone put a curse on the PC directly if you want a "find how to remove the curse" hook.


Now on the other hand, if it has actual usefulness, then it becomes a tough decision, especially if it's beyond what the character could normally obtain. Like the strength boost from those bracers? Then learn to live with the fact that your forearms are now troll-like - or try to find a way to outwit the curse.

 

[wedgeski]

I kind of agree that random cursed loot in a pile of treasure pretty much blows... however a '-1 sword' only sucks in exactly the same way that a '+1 sword' sucks, because they are both flavorless. "The black-sheathed blade that turned on its master and cost him his kingdom" could easily have just been a -1 sword that tipped a hit into a miss at exactly the wrong moment. It's the legends around the item that make the curse, not the mechanics.

Plus, this thread has generated some excellent hooks in and of itself. I love the idea of a cursed weapon that infects other items it touches. I'm already mentally chewing on an adventure where the PC's must locate and destroy the 'prime' curse which has since caused the downfall of a noble house by virtue of blighting their most prized weapons and armor, kind of like killing a progenitor lycanthrope to free those it has infected.

 

[el-remmen]

I kind of agree that random cursed loot in a pile of treasure pretty much blows... however a '-1 sword' only sucks in exactly the same way that a '+1 sword' sucks, because they are both flavorless. "The black-sheathed blade that turned on its master and cost him his kingdom" could easily have just been a -1 sword that tipped a hit into a miss at exactly the wrong moment. It's the legends around the item that make the curse, not the mechanics.

emphasis mine.

Thank you! You said it much more succinctly than I did.

 

[DandD]

In D&D, the dark legends around the items become truth by the game mechanics. It's magic, after all. Or else, you could as well hand out mundane swords and give them nice backstories as well, and give it a day.

 

[el-remmen]

In D&D, the dark legends around the items become truth by the game mechanics.

Not necessarily. It all depends on the flavor of the game you are running.

There is nothing about D&D that has to make this the case.

 

[DandD]

How do you mean by flavor? If it's only about the background story, you can as well just give out a normal mundane item, like I said.
In the end, it's only a worthless mundane item.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Lets not forget that cursed weapons, once upon a time, magically found their way to your hand when the fighting started. This was, originally, to prevent PCs from simply not using the -2 sword without a Remove Curse, but allowed for some neat scenarios ("I'll accept the -2 penalty to have the sword pop into my hand when I attack the Duke.....").


RC