 January 11, 2013 - 2:00pm | I always thought that cursed magic items that I first encountered playing Basic D&D were fairly lame. cursed sword -1 and etc but why not make the cursed item something that a player might want to hold onto and use like the One Ring in LotRs; who would not want an Invisibility ring? Skip the lousy -1 and give a cursed item a valuable ability but also give it a goal like the one ring- a desire to do something, find someone, etc and for a curse something like evil creatures of a specific type constantly drawn to it or something else. Naturally you start develop a story for it and work it into the myth a milieu of your setting which is always better then a cursed sword -1 Well just random thought that hit me today. EDIT: So what about a weapon that when the bearer of his walks past a grave yard or any where there is bones zombies and skeletons start to animate. Naturally the local necromancer wants to get a hold of it and its got some fairly powerful abilities that make it useful and it has an objective connected somehow to its abilities like its mission is to stop a great evil and the curse is that the power of evil and darkness has caused it so that where the weapon goes skeletons and zombies animate if they are in the area. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 January 11, 2013 - 5:01pm | Lawrence Watt-Evans has a great book named The Misenchanted Sword about a magic sword that protects the owner from dieing at an enemy's hand but can't leave his side and has a limited number of times that it will protect him. After it's limited number of protection cycles it is destined to kill him. The army loves the sword so much they make the guy an assassin. -iggy |
January 11, 2013 - 5:33pm | Yeah I read that one, it was great the sorreress that enchanted the sword mistook a brass ring for a gold ring during the enchantment because of the gloom as the sun was going down. Very cool book. I think I read it at a time when there were no other books set in that setting and have heard since there is now a whole series. But that is a great curse and he gets to kill 100 men but the next owner only gets 99 and so on. That would suck to be the guy who gets the sword with only 3 or 4. So this would be a screw up in the enchantment process with unexpected consequences you could call it a curse but I like the category of "Misenchantment" to go along side "Cursed" thanks Iggy for reminding me of that story. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 January 11, 2013 - 6:45pm | Cursed items should be fun things to keep the players from getting to cocky and thinking they are running everything. Best to have the cursed be delayed. Sounds like a great job but where did you say we had to go? |
 January 11, 2013 - 7:44pm | Yeah, the old -1 cursed sword of sucking dose not do much for me ether. Plus, I like to make magic items rare, unique and unusual, so I would rather have enchanted items be treated like iffy artifacts, then the more useful magic items found in the books. The items would a little more powerful then what is found in the books (e.g. swords that cut like lightsabers, wands and staffs that boosts spell-casting), but to use it, you have to tolerate the side-effects. In that, I would have all magic items effect a character in some way - change their behavior, have it whisperer things into your mind, possess or alter your body in some way, and so on. Naturally, such complications would bog-down the game if you dole them out in a typical fashion, but since I make them vary rare (I'm talking about "WOW! My character is an 11th level Fighter, and he finally finds a magic weapon!"), that would not be an issue for me. Although, I can see this system being used in normal magic item, if the side-effects are simple (e.g. a +3 ring of protection that makes you a nudest, a +2 sword that must draw blood before it can be put away or discarded, or a simple +1 sword that makes the wielder think its a +5 vorpal sword or +5 holy avenger). If you want random alteration - including behaviors - then I highly recommend a free little book mutations called the Metamorphica. |
 January 11, 2013 - 10:59pm | I treat the cursed items as enchantments gone wrong. Somewhere a wizard botched the process or skimped on the rare ingredients etc and the result was less than splendid. And things get really interesting whenthe cursed sword is an intelligent one..."I have a tough time hitting the broad side of a barn but this baby detects secret doors and when I do hit something it inflicts quadruple damage!" One of my faves was a character I was running in a lower level AD&D adventure and he found a cursed +1 sword. It was the only magic weapon in the group and we didn't learn about the curse until he tried to take possesion of a +2 sword three or four levels later. |
September 24, 2015 - 9:33am | Cursed torch: when lit it releases the imprisoned entity within: undead spectre/ wraith or elemental being (fire) or swarm of scarab or other insect nastiness. In this case it's stimply found as one of six in a bundle and when a PC adds them to his equipment list the GM roles randomly exery time a torch is lit to see if its the curesed one. Alternately the cursed torch could could begin to emit a choking black cloud that begins to expand and fill up an area. Only solution is to drop it and back away. It will fill a certain cubic volume and even seep around a shut door, though the shut door will slow to y down. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 September 26, 2015 - 8:05pm | The Wand of Wonder... great chaos magic fun that. "Never fire a laser at a mirror." |
September 27, 2015 - 1:12am | Thinking of how reality just handed us a cursed item: The Cursed Polluting Vehicle of Smog Death Works fine at testing and then the cursed software kicks in and it tries to kill you in a cloud of death smoke. Sounds like a great job but where did you say we had to go? |
September 27, 2015 - 5:41am | Thinking of how reality just handed us a cursed item:
The Cursed Polluting Vehicle of Smog Death Works fine at testing and then the cursed software kicks in and it tries to kill you in a cloud of death smoke. Actually the cursed Polluting Vehicle of Smog Death would work the other way around: it works perfectly fine for eleven months and when you get the registration renewal it starts puking the cloud of death when you get the smog test performed. Death by wallet draining is always the most effective way to go with D&D curses.  |
