Deck of Many Things

[Arakune]

How to properly abuse the Deck?

[RMS Oceanic]

Divination spells might help.

The best foolproof way to do it is get the card that lets you get a straight answer and ask "how many cards could I draw without getting a negative effect?"

[Morithias]

Divination spells might help.

The best foolproof way to do it is get the card that lets you get a straight answer and ask "how many cards could I draw without getting a negative effect?"

Problem with that is you to have to declare how many cards you're drawing BEFORE you pull the first one. You can't go "I want to draw five cards" draw that card, get told you'll get something bad on the fifth card, and then go "I meant four".

[RMS Oceanic]

Problem with that is you to have to declare how many cards you're drawing BEFORE you pull the first one. You can't go "I want to draw five cards" draw that card, get told you'll get something bad on the fifth card, and then go "I meant four".

I was assuming you procured the card in a previous draw and applying it to a new draw.

[OracleofSilence]

The spread of positive and negative is fairly even, so divination will nt help much. At best, you are likely to get 2 or 3 cards. However, it also depends on whether or not you are using an actual deck, or DM rolling. 'cause if its an actual deck, things get tricky, and if the DM roles, then no one knows.

[Morithias]

I was assuming you procured the card in a previous draw and applying it to a new draw.

I thought the deck of many things vanished once you were finished drawing? Or am I thinking of a different artifact?

[Agent 451]

The Book of Infinite Spells disappears once all the 30ish pages have been turned.

[hydraa]

put it in a haversack so you can choose which card to draw

[Mikeavelli]

Have a backup player you've always wanted to play in case of a cataclysmic draw (Donjon, the void) - but otherwise draw a LOT of cards (5+), most of the good draws counterbalance the bad draws.

Edit:

Alternatively, draw ALL the cards.

- Use your Wishes to escape from Imprisonment and bring your soul back from the Void (or, if you only rolled 1 wish, use the avoid one situation card to avoid one of them)

After this, you've got:

- Change alignment: Role-playing challenge and flavor thing.
- Defeat next monster you meet to gain one level. The next monster you meet is going to be a Dread Wraith from the Death card. Kill it, gain a level. You just gained 50K xp, so you should be good to go to defeat it on your own.
- -1 on all saving throws sucks a bit.
- Enmity between you and an outsider just gives the DM another plot hook, no biggy.
- Lose 10,000 xp and draw again, countered by the "gain 10,000 xp and you may draw again.
- Choice of jewelry or gems, nice, but eh.
- Lose 1d4+1 points of int. Hopefully you're not a wizard.
- Gain the services of a 4th-level fighter. Pretty worthless, maybe you can make him dance for you?
- Gain a major magic weapon: Doesn't matter, you're losing all your stuff.
- You are granted 1d4 wishes! Hopefully at least 2, that makes all of this worthwhile.
- One of your friends turns against you: Another role-playing hook for your DM, this is a bonus.
- Immediately lose all your wealth and real property, nullifies all the property gains.
- Gain beneficial medium wonderous item, and 50,000 xp,
- Immediately gain a +2 inherent bonus to one ability score.
- All magic items you possess disappear permannetly, sucks.
- Gain +6 on diplomacy checks, plus a nice keep. This actually disappears along with all your real property.
- Know the answer to your next dilemma.

--------------

On the whole, you lose all your stuff, lose whatever material possessions you gained from the deck, lose some int, gain 2 points in some other ability score, have to kill a dread wraith, and gain 50K xp.

This should put you several levels ahead of the rest of the party.

Best class to do this is probably Sorcerer, or a similar innate caster, due to not depending on items as much to kill stuff, and being able to launch enough magic missiles to kill the Dread Wraith before it kills you.

[Marnath]

Alternatively, draw ALL the cards.

On the whole, you lose all your stuff, lose whatever material possessions you gained from the deck, lose some int, gain 2 points in some other ability score, have to kill a dread wraith, and gain 50K xp.

This should put you several levels ahead of the rest of the party.

Best class to do this is probably Sorcerer, or a similar innate caster, due to not depending on items as much to kill stuff, and being able to launch enough magic missiles to kill the Dread Wraith before it kills you.

That's not how it works. The cards are determined randomly when you draw them, you can't draw "all of them" you can only pick a number of cards to draw. You could draw 5 cards and get dread wraith 5 times, for example.


put it in a haversack so you can choose which card to draw


You can't put the deck into a bag of holding and pull out the card you want, because the deck is a single item and even if you could take one card out it would still be random.

*edit: To abuse the deck, grab a bunch of civilians and have them draw from the deck out in a sunny field in the daylight. Take any nice loot in between draws, and any wraiths will be powerless. Once the person who drew them dies/is imprisoned, they should either lose interest or be killable normally by you without triggering the whole "get your own wraith if you help fight" thing. No negative effects for you.

[Agent 451]

Don't all the cards get magically returned to the deck as well, except for a specific few?

Edit: nm, you basically just said that :P

[Marnath]

Don't all the cards get magically returned to the deck as well, except for a specific few?

Edit: nm, you basically just said that :P

The jokers can only be drawn once, yeah. Statistically speaking, unless the deck was just created by whatever god is in charge of that and then handed to the PC's, it's been around for decades or centuries and probably doesn't have the jokers anymore. So depending on DM you may never get to draw those two at all.

[Morithias]

The jokers can only be drawn once, yeah. Statistically speaking, unless the deck was just created by whatever god is in charge of that and then handed to the PC's, it's been around for decades or centuries and probably doesn't have the jokers anymore. So depending on DM you may never get to draw those two at all.

You know...I never considered that....and I've used the Deck of many things in Three different campaigns. One of which actually had the joker drawn!

[Dimers]

Not to be a boring old stick-in-the-mud, but ... how about three levels of Wild Mage PrC? For each draw, roll twice and choose.

I like the Heward's Handy Haversack idea :smalltongue:

[panaikhan]

I agree that the Haversack wouldn't work.
The cards are essentially blank (i.e. identical) until you 'draw' one, so there is no way to distinguish between them.

[FearlessGnome]

The feat 'Wild Touch' from Dragon326 should let you draw two cards and choose which one to keep. Only once per day, though. And it's a 'Chaotic' feat, 'requiring the character to be as dedicated to Chaos as an Exalted character would be dedicated to Good'. And since a Chaotic+ character would have to draw oodles of cards anyway, it becomes less useful than if you had drawn only once.

[SimonMoon6]

How about having a Vow of Poverty? After all, you'll probably lose all your stuff anyway...

[ScionoftheVoid]

Stick it in a dungeon somewhere and "let slip" to your rivals that there's a powerful artifact there, and you're headed off to get it when you're done with your week-long break. :smalltongue: Let some other suckers draw from it.