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View Full Version : Help needed: Campaign with amazing starting item



Starlight1978
2012-05-24, 09:08 AM
Hi,

since our current campaign is coming to an end, i was thinking of a new campaign. One of the ideas i have come up with is (regardless of the story) a campaign where the players receive a legendary item at the start of the campaign.
Out of character i am going to give them a choice of two items (of which they can pick one), in-game there never was a choice.

What i want to know is if the power-level of these items is about equal and if this idea will work out....the players will start at level 3.

The names i give to the items are all they know when they start dividing the items (a game in itself, but that is not important for this discussion):

Offense: A +5 weapon of choice, the weapon enhancement bonuses can be traded in for Weapon Abilities of equal strength.

Defense: A +7 Armor or Shield of choice, the armor enhancement bonuses can be traded in for Armor Abilities of equal strength.

Arcane: A Staff (can be a quarterstaff or mace of choice) with which an amount of spells can be cast once per day. The spells are chosen by the player at the start of the campaign.
1 level 0 arcane spell from the wizard/sorceror spell-list
2 level 1 spells
2 level 2 spells
2 level 3 spells
1 level 4 spell

Divine: Gloves of healing with 12 charges/day each charge can do the any of the underneath mentioned actions, a maximum of 3 charges can be used as one standard action. The target must be touched:
- Heal 10 damage
- lesser restoration (not 1d4 but just 1 point)
- remove poison
- remove fear
- remove curse
- remove disease
- remove blindness/deafness

See: Helmet of Detection that gives the wearer continious See invisibility, Darkvision 120 ft, Detect Magic and +10 on Spot, Listen, Search.

Unseen: Ring of Invisibility and Freedom of Movement combined

Mobility: Cloak gives +10ft Movement, Fly (good) equal to landspeed, Swim speed equal to landspeed.

Immunity: Immunity to critical hits, poison, sleep effects, paralysis, stunning, disease, death effects,....haven't really worked this one out...

Protection: Spell Resistance equal to 10+HD, Resistance 5 to all energy types, DR 2/-

Friend: An Animal Companion as druid of your level+3.

Kyrthain
2012-05-24, 05:17 PM
One thing to keep an eye out for is with the weapon/armor, is abilities with limited uses per day. Could the player exhaust a particular ability, then swap it out for a different one, exhaust that, and so on?

7RED7
2012-05-24, 07:40 PM
Don't give them something they can predict and exploit, instead give them something YOU can predict and exploit.

One of my players wanted to buy a magic item but wasn't sure what he wanted. After searching the market he ended up in a small out of the way shop (totally not the one from Gremlins /s) where a mysterious stranger offered him a ring for free along with a magical parchment and pen. The deal was that he would wear the ring and receive 100 gold every time he discovered a new quality of the ring and reported the resulting effects in detail on the parchment.
He accepted, and the ring turned out to be magically bonded so he couldn't remove it (a little cliche, but we like to think of that as a feature instead of a bug). The way it works is such...
Every day (if the player in question reminds the addled DM of it's existence) a small hieroglyphic(s) appears and replaces the previous symbols. He has to guess the effect of the ring from the hieroglyphics every day. If he successfully guesses the effects then he usually has a helpful trick he can use for the day, but if he doesn't guess it (or he's been lucky for too long) and just tries using it without thought for a target or relevant command then something unfortunate usually ends up happening (this generally counts as a hint and he figures out how to put it to use afterwards). I forget all the effects it's had because I usually forget he has it and have a few seconds to imagine a new effect every time he brings it up. Sometimes he can use it to swap the locations of any two people (not including himself), sometimes he can jump very far, etc.
Most recently the symbol was a lightning bolt with a skull below it. Whenever he was outdoors he would occasionally be struck by lightning, and if he went indoors random misfortunes would befoul him. My favorite misfortune that day was when the party reached the boss fight (the end of the first act of the game) which happened to be a room full of mindflayers and their mutant servants who were using the junction of sewage and nutrient transport pipes to spread their aberrant progeny throughout the city. The newest misfortune tripped upon entering this room and we flipped his character on it's side and the flat battlemat became a mario/metroid-like sidescrolling environment as his gravity was now relative to the wall. Every round the gravity rotated by 90 degrees and a new wall or pipe became his floor (like one of those little toys with the clear plastic maze and the small steel ball that rolls around). Sometimes he took falling damage, and sometimes he would end up falling down (for him) through a melee and smashing the participants sideways (for everyone else) into a wall. Much fun was had by all.

Remember, magic items can be magic items... or they can be adventures.