-
NOW LIVE! Into the Woods--new character species, eerie monsters, and haunting villains to populate the woodlands of your D&D games.
The Most Powerful Item
- Thread starter Mark CMG
- Start date
Cerebral Paladin
First Post
A medium-sized empire? 
(I know it's not really an item in the way that the thread is about, but having an army, high-level characters loyal to the throne, and a large treasury complete with many magic items is much more powerful than any item any of my other characters have had.)
(I know it's not really an item in the way that the thread is about, but having an army, high-level characters loyal to the throne, and a large treasury complete with many magic items is much more powerful than any item any of my other characters have had.)
Mystaros
First Post
Oh, back in the day during the "Awesome Campaign" (late Middle School era, 1E core three only) our party had, all told:
Baba Yaga's Hut (complete with a magical, talking plate that could make any food if you could describe it; it spoke with a terrible French accent, though);
Most of the Teeth of Dahvel-Nahr;
The Invulnerable Coat of Arnd (it had that weird liquefy power, very cool);
Two or three other minor artifacts;
Returning Javelins of Lightning (four each, IIRC)
Plus, my character had a vorpal sword, a returning axe, and a dozen other minor magical weapons (needed a sword caddy, really).
At some point we killed Bahamut and his seven gold dragon friends.
I have memories of awesome feelings for the campaign, though after more than 20 years, exact details have long faded...
Baba Yaga's Hut (complete with a magical, talking plate that could make any food if you could describe it; it spoke with a terrible French accent, though);
Most of the Teeth of Dahvel-Nahr;
The Invulnerable Coat of Arnd (it had that weird liquefy power, very cool);
Two or three other minor artifacts;
Returning Javelins of Lightning (four each, IIRC)
Plus, my character had a vorpal sword, a returning axe, and a dozen other minor magical weapons (needed a sword caddy, really).
At some point we killed Bahamut and his seven gold dragon friends.
I have memories of awesome feelings for the campaign, though after more than 20 years, exact details have long faded...
celewritor
Explorer
As a DM I have given out an some artifacts before:
. staff of the power that was intelligent and regenerated charges (very very slowly)
+6 keen great axe that did +2d6 fire or electricity (chosen when drawn) plus some sun related spells used 1/day
. An orb (2nd Ed) that create disasters (earthquake, meteor swarm, trip to hell) across a 1 mile radius region, centered on you
. Artifact Engine (spelljammer)
I also once rolled a mirror of life trapping once as a random item. Needless to say the monster made use of that item.
As a PC, I've seen some powerful items weilded but rarely got to use them, these are the ones I did:
. Excalibur (2nd Ed): holy avenger sword of sharpness, almost shattered on a demilich's phylactery
. Sword that could kill a god (single use) but that was a plot specific item
. A staff (also 2nd Ed) containing a single casting of every wizard spell in the PHB, accidently touched to a rod of cancelation
. Deck of Many Things (also 2nd Ed): the horrid thing never went away, my alignment switched 4 times! I fought Death 3 times!
. The Deck of Chaos (DM custom artifact): not quite as bad, but still not good
Very few powerful items I got were purely good. Most were rather chaotic. The nicest 3rd Ed item I got was a amulet that game +4 Strength, +2 Con, +1 natural armor, and +5 jump. The DM had a thing about frogs...
. staff of the power that was intelligent and regenerated charges (very very slowly)
+6 keen great axe that did +2d6 fire or electricity (chosen when drawn) plus some sun related spells used 1/day
. An orb (2nd Ed) that create disasters (earthquake, meteor swarm, trip to hell) across a 1 mile radius region, centered on you
. Artifact Engine (spelljammer)
I also once rolled a mirror of life trapping once as a random item. Needless to say the monster made use of that item.
As a PC, I've seen some powerful items weilded but rarely got to use them, these are the ones I did:
. Excalibur (2nd Ed): holy avenger sword of sharpness, almost shattered on a demilich's phylactery
. Sword that could kill a god (single use) but that was a plot specific item
. A staff (also 2nd Ed) containing a single casting of every wizard spell in the PHB, accidently touched to a rod of cancelation
. Deck of Many Things (also 2nd Ed): the horrid thing never went away, my alignment switched 4 times! I fought Death 3 times!
. The Deck of Chaos (DM custom artifact): not quite as bad, but still not good
Very few powerful items I got were purely good. Most were rather chaotic. The nicest 3rd Ed item I got was a amulet that game +4 Strength, +2 Con, +1 natural armor, and +5 jump. The DM had a thing about frogs...
Ralif Redhammer
Legend
That a PC of mine had? Sadly, I've no stories of artifacts to my name, but a cleric of mine in the 1e/2e era had a +5 Warhammer with a bunch of detection abilities that was pretty powerful - not continent shaking, but it came in very handy, and was certainly the most powerful weapon that a PC of mine ever wielded.
A PC in one of my old campaigns had a homebrew artifact called Gradothacus, the Dragon Sword. It was a shortsword with a variety of dragon-based abilities, like the ability to fly, mimic breath weapons, detect treasure, and more that I can't even remember. The abilities were ranked into tiers, with each tier having a corresponding drawback. The lesser ones were pretty minor, like briefly transforming the appearance of your eyes into that of a dragon's, while the major ones would run the risk of drawing very irate and covetous dragons to the wielder.
Another player once asked to guest-DM a session, so that he could kill off the character that had the sword and his PC could steal it. Suffice to say, we overruled the whole adventure.
A PC in one of my old campaigns had a homebrew artifact called Gradothacus, the Dragon Sword. It was a shortsword with a variety of dragon-based abilities, like the ability to fly, mimic breath weapons, detect treasure, and more that I can't even remember. The abilities were ranked into tiers, with each tier having a corresponding drawback. The lesser ones were pretty minor, like briefly transforming the appearance of your eyes into that of a dragon's, while the major ones would run the risk of drawing very irate and covetous dragons to the wielder.
Another player once asked to guest-DM a session, so that he could kill off the character that had the sword and his PC could steal it. Suffice to say, we overruled the whole adventure.
blargney the second
blargney the minute's son
LUXURY! In my day the best items we had were a wand of cure light wounds to attack our enemies and a kleenex -5 with a target painted on it to defend ourselves!
And we liked it!
-blarg
And we liked it!
-blarg
Our DM once made a Mirror which could Scry anyone at will just by thinking of it. You couldn't dispel the scry effect or detect the user of the mirror in any way.
It had a very short existence in our campaign. We were all very interested in this mirror and we saw a hell lot of fun thing. But it accidently broke!
The Ranger wanted to see his master. He saw him as a slave abused by a dwarf.
The Rogue (me) wanted to see his deity - Vecna - and I saw him, trying to dispel and detect. Vecna freaked a bit out because of that. A scry he couldn't do anything about?
Then our Cleric thought it was a good idea to see his God, Boccob, and he said he wanted to see boccob and looked into the mirror. The mirror was splitting! Simply because you can't srcy a God on their plane.
The mage who invented it took his magical +3 musket with the 3d12 damage and shoot of his knee. After that he got a tree-leg and couldn't run probably (-15 speed and -8 balance the DM decided).
It had a very short existence in our campaign. We were all very interested in this mirror and we saw a hell lot of fun thing. But it accidently broke!
The Ranger wanted to see his master. He saw him as a slave abused by a dwarf.
The Rogue (me) wanted to see his deity - Vecna - and I saw him, trying to dispel and detect. Vecna freaked a bit out because of that. A scry he couldn't do anything about?
Then our Cleric thought it was a good idea to see his God, Boccob, and he said he wanted to see boccob and looked into the mirror. The mirror was splitting! Simply because you can't srcy a God on their plane.
The mage who invented it took his magical +3 musket with the 3d12 damage and shoot of his knee. After that he got a tree-leg and couldn't run probably (-15 speed and -8 balance the DM decided).
Upper_Krust said:Hey all!
There was a sword in our 1st/2nd Ed. campaign called Carethian (sp?) (don't think it was related to the elven deity) which was an intelligent +660 longsword. However, each time you used a '+' to deal damage the power of the sword was reduced by that amount, and you had to power it up again by slaying things*. Also if you used more than +60 worth in one strike, the sword had a chance of breaking (it would deal the damage, then break).
*I think the power up was 1 HD slain equal to the next highest '+' for every restored '+'. So the darn thing took ages to power up, but could even scare demon princes and deities.
Not sure off the top of my head if that was THE most powerful item, but it was probably among the most powerful.
Wow, I was the GM and I totally forgot about that! All I could recall was the Sword of Kas which was trivial by comparison... It was Corethion - it held the spirit of an elven hero by that name, and was a Power Sword per a White Dwarf article; created by their rules which gave maybe 1 '+' per certain number of years; I don't think it was intended for 18,000 year old weapons though...
Similar Threads
