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View Full Version : Cool ideas for major artifacts/relics that don't give any one personal power?



randomhero00
2010-12-26, 04:09 PM
Such as, a relic that when placed on infertile ground makes the area around it for miles around fertile year around.

Another, funnier, one would be, a relic that is basically a DC 5 or 10 will save, fail it once and you have to party hearty for the entire night :)

Another one might play the most beautiful song, heard for miles around, that attracts all non-hostile creatures to come and listen.

Basically world building relics for the players to have fun with. So they can say, make a shrine to the partying god by building a giant bar and using the party relic.

After all, you'd think gods would make such relics as what they are known for, not just artifacts/relics that give one individual power. In real life lore that was a more common myth (having a relic that helped the entire town, not just a single hero).

TalonDemonKing
2010-12-26, 04:18 PM
How about a moon shaped amulet that makes all interactions with lycanthropes peaceful, regardless of form? Good for Seluneites

Or more specifically, since you asked about world building, why not a personal diary or journal that one of the gods kept, detailing how the world was really built?

Edit: Now that I think about it, there was some sort of sphere artifact that was the center piece of some town, and it granted them good luck. When it was stolen, it turned them all into werewolves who hunted whoever carried the orb. I think as apart of the city, it gave them good crops, protected them from disease and other natural disasters. Individually carried it was a +1 to all saves. Can't remember that campaign, except it came out of a pamphlet.

randomhero00
2010-12-26, 04:23 PM
How about a moon shaped amulet that makes all interactions with lycanthropes peaceful, regardless of form? Good for Seluneites

Or more specifically, since you asked about world building, why not a personal diary or journal that one of the gods kept, detailing how the world was really built?

Well the first would give someone too much personal power. But expanding on that, a relic that made all animals friendly in a 20 square mile radius could be cool.

The second, well how would that work mechanically?

TalonDemonKing
2010-12-26, 05:26 PM
Knowledge is power. Dunno what you would have in a diary, but it could prove to be useful when planary anything ing or anything about deities, providing its more useful than "Today I answered prayers." - Thor

gbprime
2010-12-26, 06:25 PM
In a previous campaign, my players had to assemble 3 lost orbs of power to unlock an extradimensional dungeon under a pyramid. The Orbs had been mounted there because they made the otherwise totally hostile landscape livable. (And people lived there because of the fantastic mineral wealth afforded by an overlap of the plane of elemental earth.)

The Orb of Law - it stabilized the landscape and swells of raw magic around it. In a seething environment such as this it made for normality... but anyplace else it imposed a bit TOO much order. After a generation in the same city, all children were born on the same 3 day period each month, for example. Getting that one was comparatively easy.

The Orb of Storms - this one alters weather so that it rains. In a barren desert, having a rainy day or two each week is a blessing. But the guardian on a tropical island constantly lashed by sheeting rain... he doesn't think it's such a grand idea. He did fight to the death to keep the thing, though.

The Orb of Life - this is the most mundanely useful. Everyone within sight (yes, horizon to horizon) of this orb gains Fast Healing 2, Immunity to Disease, and ages at 50% their normal rate. It was mounted high in a tower overlooking a prosperous island paradise... and they definately didn't want to part with it. (I love giving players this kind of scenario to work through... Save the world by destroying a civiliztion. Somehow their promise to bring it back later fell on deaf ears. :smallwink: )