What's a good source for *magical* magic items?

[Harr]

So I'm designing this adventure/quest for my group (we play 4e), where they will be going 'Locke Lamora' style* into a magical-item museum heist, trying to handle some extremely tough traps under a time limit and keeping whatever they can pry out and get away with.

Now, immediately I'm set upon with a problem... the magical items in the game... aren't really *that* magical :/ I don't really want to end up with, say, a high-security display case with invisible tripwires and 12 separate layers of necromantic and evocation glyphs... that holds a sword that is +2 and pushes the enemy back a square once a day. I want *magical* stuff, like stuff that feels like it should be waaay out of your league (and I don't mean 'it's +5' )

What I mean is, like maybe a sword that when bathed in the blood of a truly innocent person explodes into flames and calls down random lightning from the heavens for 2d6 rounds. Or a ring sculpted from little green vines, which when activated instantly grow, snare and completely immobilize whatever target the wearer is pointing at, but always has a 10% chance of turning and snaring the wearer himself. Or gloves that turn everything they touch into chocolate. Stuff like that.

Of course my first instinct is to look at old-school adventures, 3.5 third-party stuff, Dungeon magazine maybe, etc., but I figure maybe the collective wisdom of ENWorld can help me like it's done before, and if there is by any chance a nice book out there which has a bunch of this kind of stuff in it, it would really save me a ton of time that I could use to actually work on the game.

I'm already looking through 3.5's Magic Item Compendium and it kiiiinda has what I want, but a little too slanted towards the combat stuff... I'd really like a lot more "wild magical crazy" stuff.

Thanks for any help.


* If you don't know who Locke Lamora is, stop everything you're doing and read Scott Lynch's "The Lies of Locke Lamora". Now .

 

[Inyssius]

Artifacts! Artifacts artifacts artifacts! There are several in the Dungeon Master's Guide, some in the Draconomicon, a berjillion in Open Grave, some "minor" artifacts in the Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide, and a wealth of nifty things in Dragon Magazine. If you want, mess with the concordance tables to make them really mercurial.

More thoughts later. Love this sort of thing.

 

[Harr]

Artifacts! Artifacts artifacts artifacts! There are several in the Dungeon Master's Guide, some in the Draconomicon, a berjillion in Open Grave, some "minor" artifacts in the Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide, and a wealth of nifty things in Dragon Magazine. If you want, mess with the concordance tables to make them really mercurial.

Huh, right... artifacts. I wonder why I didn't think of that... good one.

Let me rephrase the question then, because I still want as much inspiration as possible here, not just for this game but for later ones too: What "Big Book of Artifacts" are there, that are really good and pack a whole lot of the suckers in 'em? Something like a "big list of artifacts of all shapes, sizes and alignments" is what I'm (now) looking for.

Any edition or even any game system is fine really, I just want the ideas.

More thoughts later. Love this sort of thing.

Yeah, you know that more I think about it the more I realize that the points I love most about the game are the really weird magic items ('artifacts' I guess) and the really weird traps. Thing is I already have the "Grimtooth" books for traps, but I've never been able to find their equivalent for artifacts for some reason.

 

[Woas]

Read books. When I was running a regular D&D game I got 95% of my unique magic item ideas just from various fantasy and sci-fi novels I read.

Just off the top of my head, reading The Once and Future King, there is a scene very early in The Sword in the Stone where young Wart must go into the wood to fetch Kay's stray hawk. While in the wood he gets turned around and lost for a moment. *THUNK* An arrow from an unseen assailant hits a tree between Arthur's fingers! The arrow is described as banded yellow and black, like a wasp and driven three inches into the solid wood of the tree.

Those yellow and black arrows found there way into my game. It's been awhile so I can't remember what they turned into. But that's basically how I do it.

 

[MichaelSomething]

This [ame="http://www.amazon.com/Artifacts-Dungeons-Dragons-Fantasy-Roleplaying/dp/1588469352"]product[/ame] should be what you're looking for!

 

[Callistoga Kid]

While it may not be exactly what you are looking for, there's a book made for EverQuest RPG called Al'Kabor's Arcana which is totally stuffed full of magic items. It's d20 friendly, but the items aren't all artifacts. There are some nifty powers on some of the items, such as something called a process effect which gives the item a chance to cast a spell every time you use it/swing it/whatever. Some of those nifty powers probably won't mix very well with your game, like mana preservation (EQRPG uses mana instead of spells per day). The vast majority of the items provide bonuses in the form of boosts to ability scores, chance to hit, damage, stuff like that, and every item has a brief description. Like I said, might not be what you're looking for, but it is in fact a book dedicated solely to magical items.

 

[Harr]

Those sound pretty interesting, thanks... I'll definitely be checking them out.

I also had an epiphany and went to RPGNow and wound up with AD&D 2e "Book of Artifacts", "Unusual Magic Items" and "Marvelous Magic", which should hold me over for a good bit thanks again for all the help.

 

[jdrakeh]

Apothecary on the Street of Dreams is a collection of some of the strangest, most unusual, and downright awesome magic items that I've ever seen.