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<blockquote data-quote="Jer" data-source="post: 7008771" data-attributes="member: 19857">For many players this falls into the realm of &quot;cheap cop out&quot; as well.&nbsp; If those are your players then that would only make them mad.If I need to give my monsters/NPCs items that I don't want the PCs to have then I give them cursed items.&nbsp; And cursed items in my worlds are not &quot;-1 to attack and you can't get rid of it without a remove curse&quot;.&nbsp; No they're potent magic items that are better than a normal magic item but contain some horrible drawback that can only be prevented by giving the item what it wants.&nbsp; You want that +2 bonus to attack and damage?&nbsp; You have to give up a piece of your soul every day to the item.&nbsp; Represented as some loss of hit points at the start of every day or maybe a recovery die or maybe a temporary drop in Strength or Con for a day.&nbsp; After a few weeks of use the item starts demanding more - maybe double the recovery dice or hit points to get the same bonus.&nbsp; Or a drop in two stats.&nbsp; And then the nightmares and the whispering voices start to kick in...(This will not work for all groups.&nbsp; My players want to play heroes and so are very averse to using magic items that have a wiff of evil around them.&nbsp; And I don't use this tactic much anymore because I realized its just much easier to raise the stats of the creatures directly to what I think they should be than it is to mess with the numbers by portioning out magic items.)</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Jer, post: 7008771, member: 19857"] For many players this falls into the realm of "cheap cop out" as well. If those are your players then that would only make them mad. If I need to give my monsters/NPCs items that I don't want the PCs to have then I give them cursed items. And cursed items in my worlds are not "-1 to attack and you can't get rid of it without a remove curse". No they're potent magic items that are better than a normal magic item but contain some horrible drawback that can only be prevented by giving the item what it wants. You want that +2 bonus to attack and damage? You have to give up a piece of your soul every day to the item. Represented as some loss of hit points at the start of every day or maybe a recovery die or maybe a temporary drop in Strength or Con for a day. After a few weeks of use the item starts demanding more - maybe double the recovery dice or hit points to get the same bonus. Or a drop in two stats. And then the nightmares and the whispering voices start to kick in... (This will not work for all groups. My players want to play heroes and so are very averse to using magic items that have a wiff of evil around them. And I don't use this tactic much anymore because I realized its just much easier to raise the stats of the creatures directly to what I think they should be than it is to mess with the numbers by portioning out magic items.) [/QUOTE]

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