Friendship is Dragons
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While they clearly picked the right ones, how about some stories about picking the wrong artifact. Like a sword that causes pain to the user or a sweater that you can never take off and is super itchy even by sweater standards.
Not so sure about 'picking', but what about 'making'?
In a Pathfinder game with the Dynamic Item Creation rules, my Sorcerer decided to make a hat to improve his UMD skill. Unfortunately, with Dynamic Item Creation, if you get poor rolls your device can come with some significant drawbacks. It did give the required bonus to UMD, but along with that:
- The hat was addictive. If my Sorcerer was without his hat, he started taking a number of negatives to his attributes.
- The hat made him lazier, requiring him to sleep twelve hours a night to regain his spell slots (and overriding anything that would cause someone to be able to sleep less)
- No-one but the owner could use the Hat inside the borders of a city (this was irrelevant, because he refused to let anyone else use it; see 'addictive' above)
- The Owner could cause the Hat (once a week) to turn into a small bird which could be used as an Animal Messenger (again, unused, because that would require taking off the hat and it was Addictive).
The result was that my character spent way too much time asleep, and there was a mini-arc in which the other characters eventually destroyed the hat while he was asleep, along with sufficient curative magic to destroy his addiction. (He has since made a non-addictive, non-Slothful replacement).
In a Pathfinder game with the Dynamic Item Creation rules, my Sorcerer decided to make a hat to improve his UMD skill. Unfortunately, with Dynamic Item Creation, if you get poor rolls your device can come with some significant drawbacks. It did give the required bonus to UMD, but along with that:
- The hat was addictive. If my Sorcerer was without his hat, he started taking a number of negatives to his attributes.
- The hat made him lazier, requiring him to sleep twelve hours a night to regain his spell slots (and overriding anything that would cause someone to be able to sleep less)
- No-one but the owner could use the Hat inside the borders of a city (this was irrelevant, because he refused to let anyone else use it; see 'addictive' above)
- The Owner could cause the Hat (once a week) to turn into a small bird which could be used as an Animal Messenger (again, unused, because that would require taking off the hat and it was Addictive).
The result was that my character spent way too much time asleep, and there was a mini-arc in which the other characters eventually destroyed the hat while he was asleep, along with sufficient curative magic to destroy his addiction. (He has since made a non-addictive, non-Slothful replacement).
Not so much much "wrong", but my GM once got a bit tired of the somewhat unbalanced method the party tended to use for divvying up unknowns. At least, as the GM ran it, the only way to determine if something in the loot was cursed was for someone to /use/ the article while those with any ability to detect curses did their bit.
Thing is: if cursed, no one wants it and the one who tested/used it is stuck with trying to get rid of it. If not cursed, whoever wanted it had to put in its estimated value into the pool (which, then gets split so they get some of it back).
GM planted a suit of splint armor (as I recall). My ranger volunteered to be guinea pig. Determination by others is that the suit registers as cursed -1. BUT (as GM passed to me in a note) it contained a secret pocket, and somehow, so long as the suit was worn for about a month, generated 50 platinum per year*. Obviously it confused the party for some time as I refused to dispose of this armor. It was also effective as +2 armor.
* This ranger reached the stage of not carrying silver or copper coins; his smallest coins are gold pieces. Due to the campaign becoming a bit of a Monty Haul, the GM created an Ivory piece unit. 1Ivory => 100Gold#. My ranger normally carried 50+ ivory, 50 Platinum, and a few gold. (and 47000Gold equivalent in miscellaneous gems)
# Had one encounter were the party had to pay a ferry to cross a river. In a fae mood, the ranger paid with an Ivory piece -- and told the ferryman to keep the change. Not to be outdone, one of the other richer party members decided to match me.
Visualize a low-level worker holding two coins (total value 200 gold) to his eyes, and falling over backwards in a faint.
We could have bought the ferry for that much.
Thing is: if cursed, no one wants it and the one who tested/used it is stuck with trying to get rid of it. If not cursed, whoever wanted it had to put in its estimated value into the pool (which, then gets split so they get some of it back).
GM planted a suit of splint armor (as I recall). My ranger volunteered to be guinea pig. Determination by others is that the suit registers as cursed -1. BUT (as GM passed to me in a note) it contained a secret pocket, and somehow, so long as the suit was worn for about a month, generated 50 platinum per year*. Obviously it confused the party for some time as I refused to dispose of this armor. It was also effective as +2 armor.
* This ranger reached the stage of not carrying silver or copper coins; his smallest coins are gold pieces. Due to the campaign becoming a bit of a Monty Haul, the GM created an Ivory piece unit. 1Ivory => 100Gold#. My ranger normally carried 50+ ivory, 50 Platinum, and a few gold. (and 47000Gold equivalent in miscellaneous gems)
# Had one encounter were the party had to pay a ferry to cross a river. In a fae mood, the ranger paid with an Ivory piece -- and told the ferryman to keep the change. Not to be outdone, one of the other richer party members decided to match me.
Visualize a low-level worker holding two coins (total value 200 gold) to his eyes, and falling over backwards in a faint.
We could have bought the ferry for that much.
@wulfraed My go-to question in cases were a commoner/peasant needs to be paid off is "how much do you make in a year?"
I've forgotten the exchange rate in AD&D, but I believe the GM normally priced ferry services at something like half a silver per person and one silver per horse... With our typical party of six (three players, two characters each) this would likely have cost less than a gold piece total.
Does it count if it's an entire hoard and that's the point of it?
In one dungeon my DM had a room filled with shiny coins, fancy-looking weapons and cloaks, and treasure chests lining every wall. Almost everything that wasn't a coin or gem detected as magical and it was really tempting to stop there and start scooping up loot.
Turns out that was the trap. The coins were all copper pieces just polished to look more valuable than they were. The magic items all had powers, but they were fairly useless like an "Everclean Robe" (Magic robe that immediately cleans itself of all stains), and the gems were just bits of polished glass or quartz. As for the treasure chests and the point of this: Most of the chests were either empty or contained another useless magic item.
Some of the chests, however, were actually mimics which were responsible for the entire hoard and liked to eat greedy adventurers who didn't stop to look at what they were gathering. Lucky for my team we had a summoned monster from a previous fight following us and enough presence of mind to send it to open the chests instead of doing it ourselves.
In one dungeon my DM had a room filled with shiny coins, fancy-looking weapons and cloaks, and treasure chests lining every wall. Almost everything that wasn't a coin or gem detected as magical and it was really tempting to stop there and start scooping up loot.
Turns out that was the trap. The coins were all copper pieces just polished to look more valuable than they were. The magic items all had powers, but they were fairly useless like an "Everclean Robe" (Magic robe that immediately cleans itself of all stains), and the gems were just bits of polished glass or quartz. As for the treasure chests and the point of this: Most of the chests were either empty or contained another useless magic item.
Some of the chests, however, were actually mimics which were responsible for the entire hoard and liked to eat greedy adventurers who didn't stop to look at what they were gathering. Lucky for my team we had a summoned monster from a previous fight following us and enough presence of mind to send it to open the chests instead of doing it ourselves.
Nice work making up your own lore for the legendary artifacts! I was also slightly disappointed that we never got more info on them! XD
the most fearsome and powerfull of all the sesame street characters, really
With the right loadout he can be a pain in the ass in Paladins too.
Add to "things GMs do that bug me a lot"--
When artifacts are introduced in the scene blindly, they do their thing, and then are never heard from again. Like, I wanna know where it came from and how the current npc using it got a hold of it. So many interesting questions!
Maybe I'm just old school, where an artifact was often the centerpiece point of a campaign.
When artifacts are introduced in the scene blindly, they do their thing, and then are never heard from again. Like, I wanna know where it came from and how the current npc using it got a hold of it. So many interesting questions!
Maybe I'm just old school, where an artifact was often the centerpiece point of a campaign.
I always figured the Amulet of Mirage wasn't made by a changeling at all, but rather was made by some manner of non-changeling wizard to contain and harness stolen changeling magic.
But a defector making it would also make sense.
But a defector making it would also make sense.
"Easy, this is mine"
"Okay, the trap is activated and everyone fall... Easy, right?"
"Okay, the trap is activated and everyone fall... Easy, right?"
DM: Which just leaves the Crown of Grover, about which is said–
Gallus (RD): Easy pickings.
DM: Yep, that's pretty much what King Grover said when he found it.
I couldn't find any specific lore for a couple of these, so... I made some up! You know, like that DM I sometimes claim to be! Hope it all makes sense.
In other news, we're coming up on the finale of this arc, which means now is a good time to open up a call for guest comics! I'll be taking a small break at the end of this month, so if you'd like to fill that break with your own content (I'll have something inbetween as well), feel free to give it a shot! Details are, as always, on this page.