Fun "Temporary" "Overpowered" Items

[turbo164]

Backstory:

The country is in civil war. The King has been recalling supplies to the capital to aid the war effort; the party's first mission was escorting a chest full of platinum and very high level rings (they were level 6 at the time, and there were several hundred thousand gold worth of Wizardry and Spell Storing and such in there). They left the chest locked out of respect for the King and/or fear of traps. :smallwink:

They are now level 9, on a mission behind enemy lines. I expect them to soon encounter an enemy raiding party who successfully looted another caravan, and broke open the chest. Assuming the party defeats them, they will find themselves in possession of some similarly above-WBL-loot, which they'll be able to use until they finish their mission(s) and return to the capital (possibly being allowed to keep it, depending on how successful they are. "Hey thanks for winning the war, now give your stuff back to my 'elite' knights..." Yeah I'm more inclined to think it will turn into a "I can think of no hands more worthy to wield them than your own.")


So. I need a few items that are far too expensive for a level 9 (gestalt) party to normally have access to...that are fun without breaking the game too badly (especially if they end up keeping them). I have one weapon in mind that fits the history of the setting well; now I could use some wondrous items. I skimmed the DMG and MIC, but a lot of them either lacked splash ("Oh I'll replace my +2 with this +6, yay"; one of those is fine, but I'd like at least one with an activated ability), seemed to warp the game too much (warp anywhere, turn every encounter into save-or-die, etc), or had limited charges ("Here ya go king, here's your Staff of Epic Epicness. It was empty when we found it we swear!").

Also, party if it matters (universal stuff like Immovable Rods or Figurines would be preferred rather than trying to tailor one item specifically for each person, but I've considered something like the Vibrant Purple Prism Ioun Stone to allow the wizard to stock the melee'ers with Enlarge Person or something):

Paladin/Monk, Smite stuff with fists
Ranger/Rogue/Scout archer
Fighter/Ranger TWF
Wizard/Rogue/Spellwarp Sniper
(occasional) Cleric/Knight
(occasional) Wizard/Druid

Any ideas? :smallsmile:

[buttcyst]

something I did to the group I DM is I threw an always active wand of suggestion with a set DC,, that was sorta overpowered but fun and didn't break anything, they actually realized its "evil potential" and used it either jokingly or sparingly. DC was 14, it's almost irrelevant now, most will saves they come against are +12 or better, but for a while they had fun

[Deaxsa]

ooh, go with a deck of many things! or a rod of wonder!

erm... maybe give them a(ccess to a) flying boat?(or not, does not really fit inside a chest, maybe it's being kept inside an extradimensional bottle?) those are always loads of fun.

you could also give them a giant pot(cubic meter or more) of sovereign glue.(and NO universal solvent)

or a decanter of endless (insert fluid here)

a staff that has the power to raise a dead body as a random undead (anything from zombie to vampire here), but you would need a chart and knowledge that raising the wrong person as the wrong thing could break the campaign.

honestly, the stuff that's the most fun is the stuff that does NOT have a specific use.

[navar100]

A nifty item I had in one campaign was a Deck of Summoning. It's the same thing as a Deck of Illusions, but it actually summons a real creature or creatures instead of being an illusion. When I got it the beholder wasn't available, but it was certainly fun and important when I needed to summon the red dragon, lich, and medusa on separate occasions. When our home city was attacked I threw the rest of the deck in the air and summoned everything that was left to defend the city.

[nedz]

A Vorpel blade of some kind: Overpriced but not overpowered.
Hell, why not half a dozen ?

[turbo164]

something I did to the group I DM is I threw an always active wand of suggestion with a set DC,, that was sorta overpowered but fun and didn't break anything, they actually realized its "evil potential" and used it either jokingly or sparingly. DC was 14, it's almost irrelevant now, most will saves they come against are +12 or better, but for a while they had fun

That sounds pretty fun. I could also see them getting creative with a bunch of Minor Images or something!


ooh, go with a deck of many things! or a rod of wonder!

erm... maybe give them a(ccess to a) flying boat?(or not, does not really fit inside a chest, maybe it's being kept inside an extradimensional bottle?) those are always loads of fun.

you could also give them a giant pot(cubic meter or more) of sovereign glue.(and NO universal solvent)

or a decanter of endless (insert fluid here)

a staff that has the power to raise a dead body as a random undead (anything from zombie to vampire here), but you would need a chart and knowledge that raising the wrong person as the wrong thing could break the campaign.

honestly, the stuff that's the most fun is the stuff that does NOT have a specific use.

"Figurine of Flying Boat" could work, less spammable than some of the other transport options and could set up some Julio Scoundrel - style dramatic scenes :D


A nifty item I had in one campaign was a Deck of Summoning. It's the same thing as a Deck of Illusions, but it actually summons a real creature or creatures instead of being an illusion. When I got it the beholder wasn't available, but it was certainly fun and important when I needed to summon the red dragon, lich, and medusa on separate occasions. When our home city was attacked I threw the rest of the deck in the air and summoned everything that was left to defend the city.

Sounds cool! Would be a problem with the "hand an empty item back to the king" thing...but I could turn it into a Bag of Tricks (green and purple polka dots) that gives a few dragons/bulletes/flumphs per week.


A Vorpel blade of some kind: Overpriced but not overpowered.
Hell, why not half a dozen ?

Vorpal shurikens! ^_^

[Crake]

I gave my e6 group a set of intelligent, talking pegasi mounts as a temporary gift from a king, they were actually very useful to the party, speeding up travel immensely by having double the movement rate of a horse and the ability to ignore terrain impediments. That said, my game is a pretty open world game where alot happens outside of dungeons, so I dunno if that would be useful in your game.

[nedz]

Intelligent items are also fun — especially if they have annoying eccentric personalities — or strange purposes or powers.

[buttcyst]

Intelligent items are also fun — especially if they have annoying eccentric personalities — or strange purposes or powers.

I agree, I'm contemplating throwing one into my lvl12 game for a little fun, wand of suggestion pretty much long forgotten by now, it was months ago. although I do have a thread about a genie bottle, there is something interesting there, they got the king's djinn.


or for a fun plot twist, the kings efreeti

[Tvtyrant]

Cube of Force and Beads of Force are both cool and temporary.

Necklace of Fireballs is always fun, spamming fireballs fills a niche in many a caster's heart.

[TheStranger]

Throw them a whole pile of wondrous items with uses that are kind of situational, rather than adding raw power. Folding Boat, Well of Many Worlds, Eyes of Doom, Feather Tokens, Figurines of Wondrous Power, etc. All the things that, if you were making a 9th level character, you'd look at it and think, "Huh, that's kind of cool, but I get more out of my WBL if I make my sword +3 instead of +2."

So the only end result is that they've got a lot more situational versatility, but they're not necessarily overpowered, unless they get really creative - in which case, mission accomplished. (For bonus DM points, choose the items more or less at random, but get your players to try to figure out what plot-specific use they have.) One-use items like scrolls and potions are also nice, simply because they can't keep them forever.

[hydraa]

... One-use items like scrolls and potions are also nice, simply because they can't keep them forever.

There are a couple of wizards in the party, so some of those scrolls may be scribed into books and thus there forever. (unless they are artificier's scrolls and then they would have to be UMD'ed by the party to use them)

[kabreras]

I like TheStranger idea, after all its a full hcest...
Make it full of magic cheap but "can be usefull" items, lots of them.
It will fast break the VBL but its in no way OP.
Put in it a few items that the heroes can use themself all the time (like an int +4 circlet for the wizard stacked with a few int+2 ones)
Its quite fun to discover a treasure like this will be less fun to indentify everything and they will have to be cleaver to ID the important items first

[TheStranger]

There are a couple of wizards in the party, so some of those scrolls may be scribed into books and thus there forever. (unless they are artificier's scrolls and then they would have to be UMD'ed by the party to use them)

Ok, but a wizard having access to spells of a level he can cast isn't particularly broken (well, a lot of spells are broken, but getting them this way isn't what makes them broken). Or make them mediocre spells of a level or two higher than the wizards can normally cast. So they can use them for a one-time boost now, but if they scribe them they probably won't actually use them much when they get to that level.

[hydraa]

You could do a signet ring of knowledge (nobility and royalty) +30 and -10 to all or some other knowledges. Give it a 24 hour acclimation and perhaps a 24 hour cool down.

This way you can really impress the king but you don't know much about anything else

[NichG]

There's stuff like this fairly frequently in my games, but probably the power scale is too high.

The party has a bullet that basically can kill any one thing in one hit. At one point they had access to a box containing 'three lies': one truth that is false, one lie that is true, and something that is both true and false at the same time. Each of these they could use to alter a fact about the universe in the given way. Other things have been a mote of energy that will consume one thing and give its power to the user (e.g. eat the XP out of a crafted item or enemy or the like).

[nedz]

If you do end up giving them a pile of junk, do label it.

Identifying lots of items is very tedious.

Having a couple of labels missing is probably OK, as is making the labels slightly cryptic.

[navar100]

To keep the Deck of Summoning idea, a card can be used more than once but only once per user. When a new user has the deck, a "joker" card appears which summons the most recent still living previous user who hadn't been summoned yet.

[cerin616]

Mindblank Everywhere. maybe darkvision and stuff.

I'm a fan of things that keep me from getting caught with my pants down.

[Jack_Simth]

Let's see... stuff that might be fun & situationally useful, but that they won't mind giving up too much (they do something cool at-will or periodically, but... umm... not really overly effective for the most part, due to the save DC not scaling or for other reasons):

Rings:
Animal Friendship, Chameleon Power, Djinni Calling, Elemental Command, Friend Shield, Meld into Stone, Regeneration, Shooting Stars, Water Walking

Rods:
Alertness, Enemy Detection, Flailing, Flame Extinguishing, Immovable, Lordly Might, Metal and Mineral Detection, Negation, Thunder & Lightning, Viper, Whithering, Wonder

Wondrous Items:
Amulet of the Planes (nice escape button, and good for getting around a bit... but the off distance is painful), Apparatus of the Crab, Bag of Tricks (any), Folding Boat, Boots of Levitation, Boots of the Winterlands, Chaos Diamond, Chime of Interruption, Circlet of Blasting (either), Cloak of Arachnida, Cloak of the Bat, Cloak of the Manta Ray, Crystal Ball (Any), Cube of Force, Cube of Frost Resistance, Cubic Gate (you set the planes), Decanter of Endless Water, Dimensional Shackles, Drums of Panic, Efreeti Bottle, Eversmoking Bottle, Figurines of Wondrous Power (any), Gauntlet of Rust, Gloves of Arrow Snaring, Hand of Glory, Hand of the Mage, Helm of Telepathy, Helm of Underwater Action, Horn of Blasting (either), Horn of Fog, Horn of Goodness/Evil, Horn of the Tritons, Horn of Valhalla, Horseshoes of Speed, Horseshoes of a Zephyr, Instant Fortress, Iron Bands of Binding, Iron Flask, Lyre of Building, Mask of the Skull, Mattock of the Titans, Mirror of Life Trapping, Orb of Storms, Pearl of the Sirines, Pipes of Haunting, Pipes of Pain, Pipes of the Sewers, Robe of Scintillating Colors, Rope of Climbing, Rope of Entanglement, Golembane Scarab, Stone Horse, Well of Many Worlds, Wind Fan.

[Togo]

The first edition adventure 'white plume mountain' has a similar premise. Converting the unique items there into unique items for your game wouldn't be hard at all.

Ring of shooting stars is also good. By the time it's affordable, it's powers are almost obselete against CR approprate challenges, but it's got enough useful abilities that it's hard to justify making it much cheaper. There's also some weapons from complete warrior - a bow that fires through people to hurt the person in the next square along, a sling that shoots exploding ammo, and so on. They're not actually that good for their price, but for a lower level party they'd be golden.

[Ninja PieKing]

Prismatic burst enchant is fun but probably a bit to over powered.
Maybe an eternal wand of cure x wounds
throw in something both ridiculous and powerful too like +4 adamantine fortification armour emblazoned with a glowing pink bunny on the chest

[ArcturusV]

Thinking of some basic things that I might have wanted to find in a chest like that. Paper of Forms is another choice I'd include in such a chest. A Bow of the Solars is another. Starmantle Cloak, always a good choice. Particularly in a "War" scenario where someone might have to deal with large hordes of Mooks. Trumpet of Healing... handy if you're going for the "We don't need a healer!" shctick and are having trouble with things like Diseases, poisons, and similar conditions.

[unseenmage]

Apply the one-use magic item prices to some Golems. Have them remain immobile until a command word or a contingency-like trigger animates them.

Then, when either their purpose is fulfilled or a set amount of time passes, they crumble to dust.

[Flavel]

Why limit yourself to what's in the books?

How about a sword possessed by the spirit of a CE 17th lvl fighter?

The blade doesn't do extra damage but it almost always hits. At the end of each combat the wielder has to make a DC 12 will save or make a single attack on whoever is nearest him/her. If more then one target is available it picks whoever is most injured.