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Accersitus
2011-06-27, 07:30 PM
How often do you get an item early on in a campaign with a powerful but limited effect, and promptly go on to forget you ever got that item.

In our current campaign, I'm playing an archer, and a few months ago I got an undead slaying arrow. My character has been walking around with this arrow for ages, and I only remembered I had it because I had to sacrifice one of my items to undo a rather nasty curse my character got inflicted with.
Later that session we were escorting a wizard through some undead infested tunnels, and then protect him while he preformed a ritual.

Towards the end of the ritual, we were rather beat up, and low on pretty much everything when a Dragon appears. As everything else down there had been undead, my character looks for signs that the dragon is undead too. Getting confirmation, he draws his undead slaying arrow and confidently aims it at the dragon. As he releases the bowstring, the dragon sees a smile appear on the little archer in front of him, before the arrow hits it squarely between the eyes and starts pulsing with a bright white light.

Our DM/GM/Storyteller (who had also forgotten about this item) just looked down at his notes for a little while before continuing. This was not the first place in the campaign where he thought we were going to die, but he is really good at improvising and dealing with unexpected events (we manage to roll dreadfully at times, botching everything we try).
I felt sort of bad after, since he showed us all the work he had done to make this an interesting fight.


That's my story about how I used a forgotten item to get out of a bad situation, please share if you have similar stories about the item everyone forgot.

dsmiles
2011-06-27, 07:35 PM
I gave my players a plain, silver ring, once. Probably about three months before I planned on running a specific adventure that required the use of a plain, silver ring to disarm a trap on the entrance of a dungeon. I won't mention the specific adventure, in case anyone here plays it.

Just_Ice
2011-06-27, 08:41 PM
I started out with a ninjato in a japanese-esque campaign (I was a strange ninja class the DM had made, natch) and used its sheath for this that and the other thing (spyglass, ladder rung, etc), but never actually used it. I instead dual-wielded tessen (and I had a str of 9). This character was honestly horrendous and could have really used the extra damage, but I basically survived on ingenuity (I eventually took Master of Masks).

The last fight involved the lord that originally hired us and a lich. The lord blocked magic and would have disabled our wizard if not for me dealing with him. He was a level 11 monk with a special custom spell blocking ability, and I was a level 5 d4 hp ninja with crap stats and no good weapons, so I basically abused the geography of the strange dungeon we were in. I eventually got on his back and crit stabbed him in the neck with the ninjato as a sneak attack. It wasn't how I single-handedly killed him (I drowned him in acid while simultaeneously pouring lava on him by using an iron golem I'd commandeered as a spout) but at 32 damage it didn't hurt, especially since I had 24 hp to his 150 or so.

It was mostly great because I'd expected to die much earlier in the campaign. This was after a year and a half of playing, and the ninja-to finally struck home.

Yukitsu
2011-06-27, 09:36 PM
My DM's have stopped letting me accumulate potions, books, bottles and trinkets ever since the time clone thing, so I haven't done anything like that in a while.

vartan
2011-06-27, 10:32 PM
I gave my players a plain, silver ring, once. Probably about three months before I planned on running a specific adventure that required the use of a plain, silver ring to disarm a trap on the entrance of a dungeon.

I know that adventure! It's just so EVIL, I dunno how you can read it without GRINing. I even copied that particular puzzle- if not the whole trap.

Totally Guy
2011-06-28, 01:24 AM
In one campaign a player wanted to be the first player to get a magic item. He bought a pair of Cat-Dog Dice. One die made the sound of a cat when it moved the other barked like a dog.

For a long time this doodad was forgotten. But at the end of the campaign they saved our ass when we placed them into the dragon's ears to distract him!

Drakevarg
2011-06-28, 01:38 AM
I once had an enchanted katana in an AD&D game that I carried around for about five years and three separate campaigns before daring to actually use it. It's because the enchantment only worked once, and I always felt that I might need it later.

So finally one day we're fighting some giant crabs or something, I don't remember why, and one of my party members was cornered and about to die. I was on the other side of a fairly large room fighting my own baddie and had no way to get to her on time. So in desperation, I pulled out the katana and activated its powers on the wild hope that it would help.

Next thing I knew there was a flash of blue light and both the crab I was fighting and the one she was were lopped cleanly in two, and I was standing directly in front of her. I doubt that's what the sword was originally intended to do, since I'm almost positive the DM had forgotten it'd even existed. So, awesome, I saved the day and intended to just use the thing as a normal weapon from then on.

A few sessions later, I'm in a fight with a frost giant or something, and right as I'm about to make an attack the DM says I notice a small button on the handle of the katana. I press it, and promptly cut the giant in half lengthwise. Apparently after the initial effect, it had become a Chainsaw Katana that dealt +20 damage. It was by a considerable margin the most powerful weapon in the party from there on out.

Garwain
2011-06-28, 02:21 AM
Ha, I remember when I was playing with my younger brother my adapted version of the DnD board game. At the start of the story, he was just living with his mother, who had some fun magic items: a broom that sweeps on its own, a doormat that would walk out and smack itself against the wall, and a pair of slippers to hover an inch above solid ground.

Much later (in fact 2 years later) his first PC walks into a room and I tell him that the floor is covered in glue, so movement is only 1 square. Walls are closing in, but the lever is clearly visible on the other side of the room. Of course unreachable in time without decent movement.

He was supposed to step back, out of the boots and when the walls collide a secret path is revealed. But no, he just puts on his slippers...

Lady Moreta
2011-06-28, 02:55 AM
We got given a Wand of Shatter really early on in the game, which my bard faithfully carried around (as the only one who could use it without needing a UMD check). She carried the darn thing for ages, we kept it because we're all hoarders but no one ever thought it'd come in handy. Til we had to rescue some captives who were chained up, while fighting the bad guys. Cue my bard hightailing it over to the captives and using the wand to free the captives and get them out of the way.

CodeRed
2011-06-28, 04:15 AM
Playing an Eberron campaign focused predominately around Sharn. Very early on I think at around lvl 3 we were given some Feather Fall one use tokens. (An Inquisitive payed us to launch a sneak attack from above on a Thieves Guild that had gotten uppity by robbing those of "too high society".) Everyone in the party used their token to do so except the Spellthief who snuck his way in through the front door by pretending to be a member.

Flash forward 13 levels and we are still in Sharn and we are absolutely stumped as to how to steal this current plot hook's McGuffin from a High-Ranking House Lyrandar noble. Our Spellthief, being the absolute kook that he is, decided to try and steal it all by himself in the dead of night. He managed to sneak into the guy's manor, past all of his non-magical and magical security, to get the McGuffin. It however was of course trapped. This set of an Alarm spell hidden by Nystul's Magic Aura. It was assumed the magic coming from the item when Detect Magic'ed was from the item itself.

Having nowhere to run against a lvl 16 High Noble of a Dragonmarked House and his personal guard, the Spellthief just jumped out the window. In a 300 story high tower. In the tallest part of Sharn. With no flying magic. The DM was like, "Ok % dice, ouch, 100, You fall all the way down to the ground with no bridge to land on in between." Insta-death except he still had the Feather Fall token back from 13 levels and a year and a half ago. Technically, the token wouldn't have worked the whole time as its caster level was like 5 but since he had kept the damn thing for so long, the DM just decided to Rule of Cool it and let him escape unscathed.

dsmiles
2011-06-28, 07:08 AM
I know that adventure! It's just so EVIL, I dunno how you can read it without GRINing. I even copied that particular puzzle- if not the whole trap.
I used that same puzzle just to open a door, no trap, in another dungeon with another group. It took them 6 real-life hours (8 hours in-game) to figure it out. The first time, in the original adventure, it took that group only 2 hours (but it was 3 in-game days).

Leon
2011-06-28, 09:38 AM
I was contemplating using the 1 shot teleport item that my PC had to escape from the Amazon jungle, but then i'd have to workout how to get down out of the swiss alps alone.

Elyssian
2011-06-28, 09:55 AM
I got a Rod of Cancelation early on in one of my first games and never used it for years untill faced with a lich, I was able to chunk the rod and hit with a natural 20(Had to avoid a Prismatic Sphere). So the lich has to roll to save on every item he was carring which included his phylactary he had just taken back from one of our party. Fails with a 1 on his phylactary loses every magic item to a series of bad rolls panics makes a wish to escape and do to poor wording after a failed moral check manages to KO himself for us. We were just glad it was finally done, (this being the 6th time we had to face the same lich who leveled up just about everytime he screwed us over)he had even followed us to the other side of the world as part of a vendetta for us having killed all of his pet dragons...:smallamused:

Jay R
2011-06-28, 10:38 AM
I once had a completely useless item - a bag that would make a non-functional copy of anything you placed into it. The item would look good, but a sword copy would be poor metal that wouldn't hold an edge; food would taste bad and not be nourishing; copies of gems would be obviously paste (so you couldn't sell them), etc.

The DM had two parties in that world -- primarily because we couldn't meet at the same time. My character heard that the other party had all been killed. So I found the spot, recovered their bodies, took them in for resurrection -- but first I copied all their magic items, and left them with all the copies.

They spent many sessions trying to discover why all their magic had stopped working, but they never suspected me of stealing it, because they knew they still had their stuff.

LibraryOgre
2011-06-28, 11:02 AM
My players defeated a vampire with bagpipes the paladin picked up on a whim.

Well, they beat it severely with violence, and then picked up the bagpipes that the paladin carried (and had actually mentioned that morning for something entirely different), sucked up the gaseous form, then had the monk run like mad into the sunlight to play out the vampire.

Terazul
2011-06-28, 11:11 AM
I mostly do this with mundane items. Like one time after leaving a dungeon that we had mostly cleared with dynamite and caltrops (don't ask), I ripped the "Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Enter Here" sign off the wall on the way out, confusing the DM but he didn't seem to mind.

Months later we faced an incredibly stubborn man who refused to assist us despite our group having saved the city twice over. I used the sign in a diplomacy check as a bargaining chip, and convinced the aristocrat official to give us his airship to assault a castle. Now he has that hanging over his door to scare all his employees. There was also during that same campaign where we got a bottle of wine somewhere early on, and we used it to get a Judge to pardon us.

Traab
2011-06-28, 11:18 AM
My players defeated a vampire with bagpipes the paladin picked up on a whim.

Well, they beat it severely with violence, and then picked up the bagpipes that the paladin carried (and had actually mentioned that morning for something entirely different), sucked up the gaseous form, then had the monk run like mad into the sunlight to play out the vampire.

Totally a ripoff from The Chaos Curse. But still hilarious. :p

LibraryOgre
2011-06-28, 11:36 AM
Totally a ripoff from The Chaos Curse. But still hilarious. :p

I can't remember how they beat the vampire in that. I've been considering rereading the series. Have to rebuy it, though, since I gave my hardcover omnibus to a waitress as a tip.

dsmiles
2011-06-28, 03:33 PM
I can't remember how they beat the vampire in that. I've been considering rereading the series. Have to rebuy it, though, since I gave my hardcover omnibus to a waitress as a tip.
2 things:


IIRC, they sucked up the bad guy into a bellows.
HOLY CRAP, BATMAN! That was either really good service (if you know what I mean) or a really hot waitress! :smalleek:

DeadManSleeping
2011-06-28, 03:45 PM
2 things:


IIRC, they sucked up the bad guy into a bellows.
HOLY CRAP, BATMAN! That was either really good service (if you know what I mean) or a really hot waitress! :smalleek:


Or he forgot it at a restaurant :smalltongue:

LibraryOgre
2011-06-28, 04:29 PM
2 things:


IIRC, they sucked up the bad guy into a bellows.
HOLY CRAP, BATMAN! That was either really good service (if you know what I mean) or a really hot waitress! :smalleek:


I make it a point to tip well; my rule is $5 or 20%, whichever is greater. In an IHOP I frequent, I once had to explain to a manager why someone was only getting a 20% tip, and the manager took it for the rebuke that it was. I've had that waiter several times since, and he keeps my water glass full and gets the food to me quickly. The senoritas at my local taqueria love me because I regularly tip $5 on a $5 check. I eat out frequently, like good service, and have had my share of crap food service jobs. A place whose waitstaff treats me well gets my continued business, and a good tip.

In this case, it turns out we went to high school together (I never knew her at the time; this was 10 years after the fact, and we had like 400 people in our graduating class). She admired the book, admitted that she and her husband had wanted it but didn't have the money, and I could afford it. So, on top of a monetary tip written onto the check, I left her the book.

dsmiles
2011-06-28, 04:47 PM
~snip~
I'm a bit of a large tipper myself, but I've never tipped a book. That's actually pretty impressive. Well played, sir, well played.

randomhero00
2011-06-28, 06:22 PM
I gave them the old, invisible ring that has a wish. So I waited, and waited for one of my players to say "I sure wish...." They never did :P They eventually came across someone powerful and finally remembered about the invisible ring, so it eventually got identitified, about 3 months down the line :D