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Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Desdichado" data-source="post: 2189609" data-attributes="member: 2205">I prefer the "shock treatment" approach."OK, now we'll be running this Forgotten Realms campaign, but we're going to be using the Call of Cthulhu rules for magic.  Sure, anyone can learn to cast a spell, no matter the class.  Just don't do it very often.  Your standard spell probably costs you 1d6 or so Sanity points and does 2 Strength damage, and is equivalent to, oh, a 2nd or 3rd level D&D spell, maybe.  You don't just learn them automatically, you have to find some musty old tome like The Book of Eibon or The Necronomicon, take your Sanity damage to read it and learn the spells, and there's no guarantee that any of the spells found therein will be anywhere near as useful as, say Fireball or something like that, though.  And don't forget, there's no better way to get the attention of the Great Old Ones or their CR 21 shoggoth minions then casting spells..."Seriously.  It sounds like a joke, but it's not.  We're having a blast in a campaign I'm running using those rules.  One character said the most recent session was his favorite yet.  His character is down to Sanity in the 20s, his Wisdom is down to 3 and his Strength is down to 1.  A second character is barely alive after bursting into flame thanks to a writhing mass of eyes that blasted him with a spell.  The third character essentially saved all their bacons by dragging them away and running as fast as he could out of town.  They have no magical healing or restoration of any kind, they left their guide and all their supplies in town (where the angry mob will nail him to a signpost without his skin as a warning) and said angry mob will soon be scouring the hills for them as they try and hide and heal naturally over the next several days, enough so they can leave the town behind for good and hopefully forget they ever saw it.They did have a magic sword once.  The sword whispered blasphemous obscenities to anyone who tried to wield it (1d6 Sanity damage per round) and had daemonic little mouths that bit your hands and sucked out your life force (1d6 hit point damage as well -- but they needed it to kill the iron lich because it was the only weapon that seriously damaged it, and otherwise they were staring the strong probability of a TPK in the face).  Another of their favorite sessions.  They couldn't wait to give that to the Inquisition and swore never to touch anything like it again.Granted, we did have one player who apparently only enjoys playing an Elminster-style mage in a game where you level up every session and never are in any real danger.  He seems to have somewhat drifted away from the game, partly due to his schedule, but partly due to the fact that it wasn't his thing, but the rest of us haven't had so much fun in ages.And at worst, after playing a few sessions of that, even way toned down D&D magic seems like a luxury.</blockquote>

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