Today's Encounter with the Deck of Many Things

[Desril]

Our current DM loves the Deck of Many Things, and I knew before hand that it would be introduced at some point in the campaign. We were level 6 today, about 2/3 of the way to level 7.

Our party:
Gestalted Human/Almost Vampire Hexblade 4/Crusader 2//Vampire 6 (of 8), LE, Player; me
Gestalted Werepanther (but due to plot, only looks like one, stats of human) Bard 6//Barbarian 6, TN, Player; E
Druid 5/Shifter 1 with Bear AC, Player; C, who was absent
Gestalted Ranger//Scout (who hasn't been around for about 3 sessions and wasn't here when we found it), Player; R, also absent
Gestalted Warlock//Swordsage 6, DMPC

So far, we'd fought our way through a hidden dungeon, battling through ~30 or so zombies and skeletons that exploded on death doing 2d6 negative energy damage. Thanks to a good supply of healing potions we were doing quite well. Ran into an illithid, and recognizing what it was, used our surprise round to hit it as hard as we could and eliminate it before it became a threat. Then we encounter a wizard and a succubus. The succubus summoned a vrock. That means a party of 4 level 6s (our familiar and animal companion were on guard outside) were up against a level 7 caster, CR 8 and CR 9 demon. I managed to convince the succubus it was in its favor to work with us against its master and kept it from entering the fight, and the vrock was disabled by use of Shatter to collapse the ceiling above it, pinning it for most of the fight while the rest of us dealt with the caster. It ended with a fireball to my pyrophobic character's face, but that's unimportant.

At the back of that room was a row of 7 different colored vats of alchemical liquid. Using a combination of my alchemical knowledge and the sociopathic/eat any and everything Druid's trial and error, we quickly found out that the green potion was Heal, blue was a sort of barrier, indigo was lightning breath, and purple was something that I knew was bad and that completely devoured the glass vial that I tried to get a sample with. Orange and Yellow completely eluded my understanding thanks to poor rolls. And then Red.

Red, I was told, was a "double-edged sword" in the sense that I knew it was potentially helpful and harmful. Wanting to know what it does, I suggested to the druid that it was safe, and he naturally drank it, (We had his player on phone) and he ended up losing 2 int. Permanently. He drank from it again, this time with a more visable effect. A Titan Maul (giant stick that works as a +3 Greatclub and deals 3x damage to inanimate objects) appeared in his hand and he gained 50,000 xp (well, in reality he gained just enough to be 1 xp from level 8). Due to back story plot, I recognized the effect and was able to figure out that the Red potion was a Potion of Many Things. I informed the group of this, and here are the results:

C elected to not test his luck further, and DMPC knew it was dangerous and withheld from drinking.

E had been planning to kill off his character anyway, and was in fact plotted to die during the upcoming battle, so he decided he'd drink until something killed him.

I thought about it for a while, torn between sanity and knowledge of the power that it could give me (my character's master was a character from a previous campaign which had a character that gained an absurdly powerful weapon from the deck, and I knew the story in character), and decided to take a drink too.

E's result was that he gained the deed to a small keep.

I was immediately stripped naked and lost all non-magical posessions, and while I wasn't aware of this in character, was terrified OOC due to the fact that I'd spent most of the level brewing Liquid Night potions in preparation of when the Sun stops causing migraines and starts making me die. As it was, I held onto my mechanical arm, essentially a graft but purely asthetic, my family sword, and my bag of holding. My armor was mithral full-plate and non-magical.

E drank again, as did I though in more of a "I need booze and this is good enough" way.

E's soul was ripped from his body and locked away by the most powerful in universe evil entity. I got an alignment change to Neutral Good (inadvertently curing my pyrophobia).

With my now good alignment, I decided to "help" E and try to force feed him the potion until the same effect happened in the hopes that it would "imprison" his soul back into his body from its current location, and drank again because what the hell.

E got Imprisoned, locking his body somewhere near the core of his planet, pretty much guranteeing that he'll never be revived, ever, and I got a Cloak of the Bat and, like C, just enough xp to be 1 away from level 8.

In a futile attempt to try to make up for the loss of the majority of my supplies, I drank one last time, this time joined by the DMPC.

Both of us gained a Major Magic Weapon. We rolled for both of them, though mine later got changed by DM fiat and player being very happy about it.

DMPC's roll: A +6 Vorpal Scythe of Mighty Cleaving
Mine: +2 Holy Disruptive Nunchaku.

We all decided that giving the currently nude, Good, soon to be vampire holy disruptive nunchucks was just too much, and he had me roll for another weapon.

My replacement weapon: +5 Keen Brilliant Energy Longsword


We ended the session after that due to time constraints, but we're going to try to pick up tomorrow, after some of us rethink our characters.


Anyone else have any stories of how the Deck broke (or made awesome) other campaigns? We may be horribly overpowered now, and with the only casualty being a character that was about to be killed off, but at the very least, the day was hilarious.

[Alleran]

My current character in the only 3.5e game I'm playing in (Mystic Ranger 7 / Dragonslayer 1 / Nar Demonbinder 2 at the moment) drew from a Deck once. I was fairly lucky at first, and wound up with a +6 bonus to Diplomacy checks and a small keep (currently working to get a town developing around it). I then drew another card, and successfully defeated an enemy alone to gain a level (the creature was a red dragon, so I took the dragonslayer level as a result to keep it in-character).

I then tried drawing for a third time (pushing my luck, I know...) and picked up an enmity with a powerful outsider. The DM hasn't told me who the enmity is with, but since it hasn't shown up and there have been numerous demon-related issues in the landscape surrounding my new keep over the past couple of sessions, I strongly suspect that it's a powerful demon of some sort. Perhaps a demon lord.

[Velaryon]

My first experience with the Deck of Many Things was a Forgotten Realms game about 6 years ago. The DM had a powerful NPC on hand that was giving us a quest and offered us the chance to draw from the deck as a reward. He was doing it purely with the intent of powering us up, and the NPC was curing us of most of the negative effects, which I thought sort of negated the point of the whole thing.

My character was a ghostwise halfling Favored Soul of Shaundakul, who I wasn't having much fun with. My very first draw had my soul ripped out by some powerful outsider. The DM was about to fiat it away with his NPC but I decided to just roll up a new character instead, and made a spiritfolk Ninja who chose not to draw from the deck.


My second and much more awesome experience with The Deck was a seafaring campaign set in a homebrew world. My character was a pirate captain with some horribly unoptimized but fun as hell build with about six classes, who was also the party leader. We found the Deck of Many Things as treasure once, though I forget whether it was from looting a ship or just found on the body of someone we killed.

I don't remember most of my draws, but the one that stuck out was the +6 Diplomacy bonus and becoming the owner of a keep. The DM ruled that the Deck magically created the keep and allowed me to choose where it appeared. I chose a random deserted island in the sea and placed the keep there.

Since we got to keep the Deck after all the PCs finished drawing from it, my character offered the chance to all of the ship's crew. At least six or seven of them drew the keep card as well, and I talked them into making their keeps adjoin mine. Later on in the campaign my character was killed and reincarnated. The DM ruled that he was technically a new person and so was allowed to draw again... and of course I got another keep! The Diplomacy bonuses didn't stack but I added the keep onto the huge complex we already had.

We left a token force on that island to guard our massive castle (some of the keeps had even appeared underground, so there was a huge subterranean area to it) and used it as our secret home port for the rest of the campaign.

[navar100]

The Deck of Many Things is a trap. It offers nothing you can't get otherwise at a cost you can't afford.

Defeat the next monster to gain one level = adventuring getting XP

Avoid any situation you choose once = playing smart and making use of spells such as Augury, Divination, and Commune

Gain jewelry or gems = adventure treasure hoard

Gain 10,000 XP = adventuring getting XP

Gain a magic weapon = adventure treasure hoard or Ye Olde Magic Shoppe

Gain the service of a 4th level fighter = Leadership feat's Cohort

Granted 1d4 wishes = A DM who would use this artifact usually means don't make any wishes whatsoever because he will use it as an excuse to screw over your character but otherwise what you would wish for safely you often can get adventuring but PCs can cast Limited Wish, Wish, and Miracle

Gain +2 bonus to ability score = Levels 4, 8, 12, 16, 20, ability enhancement items, and buff spells

Gain wondrous item and 50,000 XP = adventure treasure hoard and adventuring getting XP (granted 50,000 XP is a lot)

Gain +6 Diplomacy and a castle = Putting ranks in Diplomacy, Skill Focus, Leadership's Followers

Know the answer to your next dilemma = Augury, Divination, Commune, Contact Other Plane, Legend Lore, Vision, adventuring for clues

[Alleran]

Gain +6 Diplomacy and a castle = Putting ranks in Diplomacy, Skill Focus, Leadership's Followers
Not strictly true, because that +6 is an untyped bonus and thus would stack with maxed out skill ranks and other modifiers.

[NichG]

So this isn't quite a story about the Deck of Many Things, but rather its closest analog in a campaign I'm running. The PCs had an artifact that had originally been in another campaign that I had yoinked, called the 'Warpzone Tarot'. Basically, you drew a Tarot card and it planeshifted you to a location associated with the card. The advantage was that generally you'd get interesting locations and you'd cut right through barriers, so you could use it to escape.

Cue another system that exists in my campaign, an item that lets you do 'A+B=C' sorts of combinations with pretty much anything. Out of some sort of moment of insane inspiration the PCs decided to combine the Warpzone Tarot with a pretzel, creating the Gourmet Tarot.

The Gourmet Tarot - a gastronomic Deck of Many Things. For the card you draw influences the next thing you eat.

The PCs drew several cards, with the following results:

Phobos, the living embodiment of fear, drew Wheel (get to know the history of the thing that reincarnated into what you next eat), Hanged Man (get a piece of insight or a small permanent skill buff based on what you next eat), and Death (gain a severe and incurable allergy to what you next eat). The first was amusing, the second he used to solve another problem created by the deck (see next PC), and the third nearly made him deadly allergic to the only foodstuff he was capable of eating, though he eventually figured he could 'eat' something that he couldn't get nutrition from to discharge the card, and is now allergic to suet.

Alice, young heiress to a merchant empire drew Magician, which gave her a permanent power to either telekinetically manipulate, mentally locate, merge into, or create the next food she ate. She can now spontaneously create bananas. She also drew Lovers, which made the next thing she ate or drank act like a love-at-first-sight love potion. She realized this and contemplated using it to make herself happy with her arranged marriage, but then took an out when Phobos accidentally used Hanged Man to figure out how to thwart the card. He also drew Devil, which makes you addicted to the next food you consume.

Lily, shapechanging dragon, drew Empress (which makes your next meal 'fit for royalty' in its preparation), Justice, which makes you experience the cooking process applied to the main ingredient of your next meal. She also drew Lovers, and finally Hanged Man (which was good for a point of Knowledge(Religion))

Walter, sculptor, architect, and mecha-pilot drew World, which replaces the next thing you eat with non-poisonous analogous cuisine from another world (unfortunately, the next thing he consumed was a powerful magical substance, so he ended up getting a very different substance than what he was going for).

Not nearly as campaign-destroying as the DoMT...

[Sneaky Weasel]

Deck of Many Things...boy, that brings back memories. It ended a campaign I DMd once. This is how it happened.

It was an Epic level Campaign, where everyone had Leadership and were playing two characters. One of them was a Sorceror who had an Efreet cohort, so we got free wishes every day. And what do you wish for, when you get free wishes? You wish for magic items, in an attempt to break WBL, of course. I just decided to give them the most powerful artifacts I could find, because who knows, could be fun. One of them got a suit of armor that effectively turned him into an iron golem, another got the Sword of Kas, and the third got the DoMT. It went downhill from there.
The first player decided to draw two cards. He got enough experience to get him to the next level, and a small keep. All well and good.
Player number two got the enmity of an evil outsider, and then had his soul imprisoned in a far away plane. He didn't get to finish drawing, obviously.
Player number three drew three cards. First one made him lose all non magic items. Second made him lose all magic items. Third card gave him the ability to solve the next situation he was in. He took it pretty well, considering he just lost everything. He only threw one book at me.
And then the cohorts drew cards. This is what really screwed up the game. The efreet drew 50'000 in jewelry, lost 4 points of Intelligence, and had to kill a minor Death, which was easily done. The second drew three cards. The first one was to know the answer to your next dilemma. The second was to avoid any situation, once. The third gave him two more draws. He took them, got another answer to his next dilemma, and then got to draw two more. He got the same exact cars again. Then he got yet another dilemma answer, and an avoid situation once. It was ridiculous.
The last cohort drew an alignment change. Going from Chaotic Evil to Lawful Good. He proceeded to attack the party, killing our sorcerer and finally being beaten by the efreet. Since he specified he was drawing two cards, I just decided to make them turn up after the battle. He changed back to Chaotic Evil. Everyone quit at that point.:smallbiggrin: