Artifacts!

[Nerdynick]

So I'm going to be tossing an artifact into my game and I was curious what stories people had to tell concerning artifacts in their own games.

The floor is yours...

[Fouredged Sword]

Make it something that doesn't just go to one player. The staff of magic superbuff is all fine and good, but leaves the fighter of the party out in the cold and makes the cleric wonder who the main character is. The artifact needs to be something that the party uses together, or at least has enough of a cost to make the party think really hard about using it at all.

[Doc_Maynot]

I was playing a campaign with a DM who runs strictly rules are exactly as they are written. Needless to say, we had a person using the shapesand>artifacts, and the haversack deck o' many things pull. We all became epic levels fast. Ended up defeating the campaign after three sessions when that happened. And now our characters from that campaign mark an official in-house pantheon of deities.

[Fax Celestis]

Don't use the deck of many things, unless you plan on ending your campaign that session.

[Azoth]

I have used them a few time. Really have to agree with the team use suggestion. Otherwise prepare for your group to quest for artifacts until everyone has one so they all feel special.

Another thing to keep in mind is the power of the artifact you let loose into your world. Alot of the stock ones in the books aren't too bad, but some can be nasty when players use them unexpectedly.

[kellbyb]

Also, remember that artifact =/= powerful. It doesn't have to be an infinity+1 whatever, it just needs to be something that is unique or unable to be reproduced by the magic item creation rules. A good example of this is a artifact pouch in Epic Level Handbook that creates 25 gold pieces each day.

[johnbragg]

An idea that helps mitigate the impact of giving the PC's an artifact (Warning: May also reduce the fun of the PCs having an artifact)

Make the artifact is something that is most useful on a national scale. Using medieval Europe as an example, you find the Roman Emperor's rod of imperial command, lost at the Battle of Adrianople or in the Sack of Rome.

Let's say it's a +5 weapon, d6 base damage, +6 to bearer's Charisma, but most of its powers--like geas, --are only unlocked when carried by someone with political office. Stuff like true seeing, holy aura, zone of truth could be either "anybody holding it" or "official business only." Beyond that, let's say it creates a limitless duration bless, longstrider and endure elements effect on everyone in the army after some sort of ritual of loyalty and obedience is carried out using the rod.

That way the party will have a very tough time keeping the artifact out of "the proper hands"--and may have some decisions to make about what hands are the proper hands.

[Starmage21]

Depends on what artifacts you use in your campaign, and who gets them. At the end of the day, an Axe of the Dwarvish Lords is just a magic weapon with a big storyline behind it, and its ability to summon the elder earth elemental 1/day is actually its most powerful power, because the rest is +6 to attack and damage, with the Goblin Bane property. Artifacts which will broaden a character's powers or strengthen the powers of an already Tier 1 or Tier 2 class are what you have to worry about taking over a campaign.

I could hand that to a Warblade or a Fighter or a Paladin on any day not worry one bit that a Wizard or Cleric couldnt keep up.

All you've really got to worry about is how your group and the rest of the world reacts to said artifact. Just because you walked into town wielding the Axe of the Dwarvish Lords doesnt mean you'll meet anyone who will recognize it, and if someone does, will they even care?

[Toliudar]

I really like artifacts that power up through quest completion and the acquisition of player knowledge/power. Sort of like the Ancestral Relic mechanic, but more plot-driven.

[Manly Man]

I usually only introduce artifacts as plot devices, though I'll usually give out an artifact weapon and/or piece of armor or two if it's a solo or duo campaign. If I do include them, it's usually as something immensely powerful that everyone has a chance to use (and be horribly maimed by). One of my favorite is The Machine of Lum the Mad; you wouldn't believe how much fun that thing is. It's like a deck of many things with ten thousand cards that each produce different effects.

[Magesmiley]

I introduced the Rod of Seven Parts to my campaign by giving the players the smallest piece. It spawned a LOT of subsequent adventures (multiple RL years) as they tried to obtain (and assemble) the other pieces.

Multi-part artifacts can make for a very fun campaign, particularly if you introduce rivals who are also seeking out the same thing.

[Manly Man]

I introduced the Rod of Seven Parts to my campaign by giving the players the smallest piece. It spawned a LOT of subsequent adventures (multiple RL years) as they tried to obtain (and assemble) the other pieces.

Multi-part artifacts can make for a very fun campaign, particularly if you introduce rivals who are also seeking out the same thing.

Kind of like the teeth of that one saint from the First Edition stuff. Thirty-two artifacts to get in total.

[Hangwind]

I had one called The Standard of the 42nd Legion. Wielding it would give your weapons a magic aura and a +1 bonus on all saves. The real power was when you gave up a legionnaire's laurel to it. It would either give you an amazing bonus (chosen from a list) or enough XP to get half-way to your next character level.

The trick was getting a laurel, which would only be awarded for heroism in service of the legion. (Basically a medal of honor, but magically attached to your aura.)

Of course, personal side quests wouldn't be "in service of the legion", so you almost never got one from those, and it had to be a truly heroic deed. (No calling an easy kill 'heroic'.)

It made for interesting RP even from the LG and CE characters.

[Lord Vukodlak]

Hand of Kalar

In an age long sense past the god of Justice Kalar did battle with the god of slaughter Garthos. During the titanic clash, Garthos severed Kalar's hand and seize it as his trophy. Kalar then sought out Moradin god of the forge and the Dwarves. The dwarf lord made for him a hand of the finest, silver, adamantine and mithral.

At the dawn of this age when Kalar faced Garthos in battle again he emerged victorious an slew his rival before taking back his lost hand from around the blood god's neck. The hand Moradin forged for him fell to earth as the formally maimed god was reunited with his lost hand.

Equipping the artifact requires removing your own right hand. Once attached it grants the following abilities(aside from functioning as a hand).

Any weapon you wield deals an additional 1d6 damage vs evil creatures and counts as good aligned for the purpose of overcoming damage reduction.(this stacks with the holy property.) In addition the subject, gains the aura of menace and magic circle against evil abilities of the archon subtype.

Only the most righteous of individuals can use the hand, willfully committing an evil act causes the hand burn off the subjects arm forever, at which point no mortal magic can restore the subject's lost hand until they truly atone for their actions. Even spells such as reincarnate, clone or true resurrection that completely recreate the subjects body do not restore the hand.

[Fosco the Swift]

I created an artifact called "The One of Mindless Rage"
Badically at first it seems like a great amulet, bonus to stength, damage and constition- even a free bonus feat. But the second you fight someone you have to make a will save (DC 15+# of oppenets) or start attacking random creatures, including your teamates. And because the Fighter took the amulet because of its damage boosts he failed alot and had to stand in the back or be swinging at his own friends sometimes. It was a lot of fun as it was a plot item in a campaign so they couldn't just get rid of it.

[Averis Vol]

Basically don't give some stupid powerful artifact to the caster and you're golden. Most legendary items or either immovable, to large to maneuver properly or are weapons and armor of great warriors. Because honestly, and it really hurts to say this, most warriors are no real threat to things of world ending power alone; they need the assistance of divinely granted items, normally ones that prove they are the chosen of said deity, to takes down said beasties.

This is not as much of a problem for things and people who were blessed with a different type of gift (Read: Magic) by those very same gods. So artifacts, at least to me seem to just be the different powers giving to those champions of body rather than mind.

EDIT: As for myself, I once found the hammer of thunderbolts, and while it increased my damage a bit and my utility more, the CoDzilla and straight fighter still outperformed me and I could never use any of its special abilities because there never really appeared to be a chance to.

[JoshuaZ]

In my 3.5/PF campaign there are seven deities of witchcraft (named after the Pleiades except for Maia who I doubled with Hecate). One PC is a witch that has a circlet which is tied in to her patron goddess, but has also slight abilities granted by the other six goddesses. I constructed this as a combination of plot specific reasons and that although the player was playing a the Pathfinder witch (which is T1), the player's actual practical optimization was well below that of most of the party.

The players will soon (possibly) run into a cauldron of ancient power that has setting specific history. For most purpose it simply makes potions slightly stronger and allows people without the Brew Potion feat to make level 1 and level 0 potions. But, when used by a trio of mages, one of whom is a witch or a hag, it gets a lot of other abilities, functioning like a scrying device, as well as able to peer into the past or possible futures (with a fair bit of difficulty and some DM fiat for the future thing), and able to do a few other fun things (like be used to animate dead placed inside the cauldron, Loyd Alexander style.)

One of the other PCs is a wizard descended from a magelord from long ago. In setting, magelords are titles of nobility that can only go to a descendant who is a mage. It turned out that when they went to recover her ancestral land, that the central tower of her castle is an intelligent tower that isn't completely mentally balanced, with a mix of Hogwarts and Castle Heterodyne. It is heavily in need of repair, so practically can't do much other than occasionally give plot relevant information, and contain a very large arcane library. In retrospect, giving a player who is aware of how effective wizards can be access to a large library of spells may have been a mistake in terms of the number of headaches it induces for me. To some extent though, the tower exists as a holding place for an ancient orb, which is also intelligent, connected to the Far Realm, and comes along with its own many problems.

One of the other PCs is magus interested in his draconic heritage (mechanically, has gone into Dragon Disciple), and they may end up getting an artifact which improves aspects of that.

[Baroncognito]

I introduced the Rod of Seven Parts to my campaign by giving the players the smallest piece. It spawned a LOT of subsequent adventures (multiple RL years) as they tried to obtain (and assemble) the other pieces.

My friends still complain about "The Rod of Seven Parts" because it become "The Rod of Plot Railroading" and the character who carried around the parts was kind of destroyed in that his personality and whatnot was altered by it.

[JoshuaZ]

My friends still complain about "The Rod of Seven Parts" because it become "The Rod of Plot Railroading" and the character who carried around the parts was kind of destroyed in that his personality and whatnot was altered by it.

This is a major reason not to add in an artifact unless you've thought through very carefully how it will interact, and not to have one that modifies PCs without careful consideration (and probably some amount of talking to them).

[Story]

That way the party will have a very tough time keeping the artifact out of "the proper hands"--and may have some decisions to make about what hands are the proper hands.

Or they might just try to become "the proper hands".

[JoshuaZ]

Or they might just try to become "the proper hands".

Yeah, if my PCs got their hands on that they'd very likely try to do that. Of course, one of my players is playing a PC who intends to eventually take the imperial throne, and is willing to do so peacefully by marrying the young emperor. But I think a lot of PCs would respond that way. Heck, if I were in a campaign where we got something like that, my metainstincts might even wonder if the DM wanted us to try and do that.

[johnbragg]

Or they might just try to become "the proper hands".

Depending on the setting, that can be an option. If you're in Tarquin's Western Continent, you could pull it off--people more-or-less expect the "lawful authorities" to have been bandit murderhoboes within living memory. So "Me and my friends here are the Dukes of the Realm, because we are the biggest badasses within scrying range" is a legitimate basis for political authority. It might work in Greysky City--I don't know if we ever got a picture of their *legal* power structure as opposed to the actual power of the guilds and mobs.

Harder to pull off in a place like Gobbotopia, or pre-Gobbotopia Azure City.

Cliffport has a functioning Police Department, not to mention a School of Wizardry, and enough spellcasters to support steampunk-level tech. Although I guess that's more a practical issue than a political issue--Not-Dumbledore coming out and whupping your butts just means that you weren't the biggest badasses around in the first place. (Now gimme that artifact.)

My taste, I think the artifacts' more fun in a setting where it's not really feasible to carve out your own kingdom by brute/arcane force, and the PCs have to decide between supporting the Neutral Evil king of a Lawful Neutral society, the Lawful Good king of a LAwful Evil society (sheltered upbringing, you know), or the Chaotic Neutral king of a Neutral Good society.

EDIT: A PC marrying the young, naive king can be an option there. Especially if the PCs are willing to get their hands dirty and do some things the King doesn't need to know about.

[NichG]

I tend to have a lot of 'lesser artifacts' in my games. These are just items that don't follow the normal rules, things where the method of their creation has been lost long ago (they're not particularly resilient or anything and many are just one-use items).

One that comes up as a favorite is basically the Un-gun from Neil Gaiman's Un-Lun-Dun - its a gun that shoots whatever is loaded into it, creating an attack based on that object. Another popular one (out of combat) is anything that behaves like a Deck of Many Things in any way - draw a card to achieve X random effect.

One of my players ended up with 'the sword that cuts suffering'. One edge lets you cut away a person's ability to experience suffering for the thing that is currently bothering them the most; the other edge lets you actually cut the cause of their suffering. They wanted to find 'the sword that cuts ignorance' and make it a pair.

[JoshuaZ]

I tend to have a lot of 'lesser artifacts' in my games. These are just items that don't follow the normal rules, things where the method of their creation has been lost long ago (they're not particularly resilient or anything and many are just one-use items).


Yeah, I think a lot of people have those. I've had a few in my campaign. One issue I've run into with them is that figuring out their effective pricing is tough.

[NichG]

Yeah, I think a lot of people have those. I've had a few in my campaign. One issue I've run into with them is that figuring out their effective pricing is tough.

Well they don't have one. They're each objects that cannot be replicated by any reliable method in the setting, so 'price' is based on individual need/desire and not some sort of economics. One person might pay 100gp and someone else might pay 100kgp, but it'd be a matter of finding the person who knows how it can really be used to greatest effect.

That said, I've had 'auction hall' kinds of things for these, but then the price is generally driven by what the PCs are willing to pay for it in the first place.

[JoshuaZ]

Well they don't have one. They're each objects that cannot be replicated by any reliable method in the setting, so 'price' is based on individual need/desire and not some sort of economics. One person might pay 100gp and someone else might pay 100kgp, but it'd be a matter of finding the person who knows how it can really be used to greatest effect.

That said, I've had 'auction hall' kinds of things for these, but then the price is generally driven by what the PCs are willing to pay for it in the first place.

The problem is A) when the PCs then try to sell them and B) when one is trying to estimate if any PCs are too far off each other in terms of relative wealth (although the second I generally just eyeball).

[Red Fel]

The trick with homemade "lesser" artifacts, though, is that they shouldn't need a sell price if you do them right.

Ideally, they should either be:
1- So useful that players will want to keep them,
2- So plot-related that players should hold onto them, or
3- So plot-related that players may be required to hand them off to someone.

If any of these is true, then retail value becomes irrelevant.

And if #1 is true, then congratulate yourself: You've made a fun toy!

[johnbragg]

The problem is A) when the PCs then try to sell them and B) when one is trying to estimate if any PCs are too far off each other in terms of relative wealth (although the second I generally just eyeball).

It's not the kind of thing you can sell in a medieval fantasy setting. The king, or the dwarvenlords, or the Archmage makes you an offer to barter for other magical items or future services. An exchange of gifts creating or reneweing bonds of mutual obligation and trust.

The DMG magic item price list is good for calculating how much it would cost the PC's to make an item, and maybe is good for pricing commonly-made items (potions, low-level scrolls) that you could make and expect to sell sooner or later, assuming that people with hundreds of gold pieces are semi-common. But I still have problems with the idea that someone's going to enchant a +3 keen battleaxe on the off-chance that someone with dozens of thousands of spare gold pieces happens to come through and need a weapon upgrade.

[Emperor Tippy]

It's not the kind of thing you can sell in a medieval fantasy setting. The king, or the dwarvenlords, or the Archmage makes you an offer to barter for other magical items or future services. An exchange of gifts creating or reneweing bonds of mutual obligation and trust.

The DMG magic item price list is good for calculating how much it would cost the PC's to make an item, and maybe is good for pricing commonly-made items (potions, low-level scrolls) that you could make and expect to sell sooner or later, assuming that people with hundreds of gold pieces are semi-common. But I still have problems with the idea that someone's going to enchant a +3 keen battleaxe on the off-chance that someone with dozens of thousands of spare gold pieces happens to come through and need a weapon upgrade.

It becomes a lot more believable when you realize just how vast the D&D multiverse is and just how easy dimensional travel is. The market isn't just one city, one nation, one world, or one plane. It is tens of thousands of cities across thousands of nations, hundreds of worlds, and dozens of planes.

You place the order for the +3 Keen battleaxe and the local agent drops a message to his supplier and it is delivered to him within 24 hours courtesy of an entity with at will greater teleport and knowledge of a planar portal between say, Sigil and the prime material plane.

It's not just the local magic shop, its an entire multiplanar network of shops and fronts that move inventory to the buyer.

[johnbragg]

It becomes a lot more believable when you realize just how vast the D&D multiverse is and just how easy dimensional travel is. The market isn't just one city, one nation, one world, or one plane. It is tens of thousands of cities across thousands of nations, hundreds of worlds, and dozens of planes.

You place the order for the +3 Keen battleaxe and the local agent drops a message to his supplier and it is delivered to him within 24 hours courtesy of an entity with at will greater teleport and knowledge of a planar portal between say, Sigil and the prime material plane.

It's not just the local magic shop, its an entire multiplanar network of shops and fronts that move inventory to the buyer.

And in a setting (metasetting?) like that, maybe gold pieces function as a fiat currency, with the Supremely Secret Service dropping the interdimensional hammer on anyone who starts playing around with infinite-loop gold-creation chains?

[Azoth]

The DMG magic item price list is good for calculating how much it would cost the PC's to make an item, and maybe is good for pricing commonly-made items (potions, low-level scrolls) that you could make and expect to sell sooner or later, assuming that people with hundreds of gold pieces are semi-common. But I still have problems with the idea that someone's going to enchant a +3 keen battleaxe on the off-chance that someone with dozens of thousands of spare gold pieces happens to come through and need a weapon upgrade.

This is why in my settings you rarely find more than a +1 weapon in a shop. You have to go to the "custom order" section when you want an upgrade. A +3 keen battleaxe found in the field just so happens to be what some poor dead soul had made for himself when he wielded it, or scrounged off a different corpse.

[Eurus]

I admit, I kind of broke the rules on this one. In my 4e game, the party found an ominous tome in their first adventure. It quickly became apparent that a lot of people wanted that book, and were engineering plots, using blatant force, or politically lobbying to get it. Eventually the central peace-keeping organization, a sort of mage academy (the Runeterra Institute of War, actually, if you're familiar with League of Legends) got involved, and the players knew they wouldn't be likely to keep it.

Well they figured out that the book was a binding/anchor for a powerful magical rune that would greatly empower anyone it attached to, amplifying their physical, magical, and mental traits. It would also tax both body and mind to their limit, usually resulting in death or madness within months or years. And of course, it can't be removed without the host dying.

So the party decides they would have a better position to negotiate from if one of them was the rune's host. One of them gets voted in, and reluctantly accepts it.

That particular PC happened to have a backstory that they had been prone to wild and unpredictable magical manifestations as a child, and they were possibly a fey changeling of some sort, swapped at birth and raised as human. So the rune actually ended up weaker than it might have been on someone else, filtered through the warped lens of her magic. It basically made it so that every time she hit something or got hit, she would get a roll on a custom wild magic table.

So far, the party has been focused on parlaying this new rise in personal power into political security, with decent success. But the political game is always complicated, heh.

[NichG]

The problem is A) when the PCs then try to sell them and B) when one is trying to estimate if any PCs are too far off each other in terms of relative wealth (although the second I generally just eyeball).

I'd suggest eyeballing the first too. I mean, the point of having a tabulated price is basically so players can take care of buying gear/etc on their own without having to ask the DM about everything. But if we're talking about highly individualized idiosyncratic items anyhow, they're going to have to ask the DM either way. So it might as well be something you just assign on the fly when it comes up.


It's not the kind of thing you can sell in a medieval fantasy setting. The king, or the dwarvenlords, or the Archmage makes you an offer to barter for other magical items or future services. An exchange of gifts creating or reneweing bonds of mutual obligation and trust.


Thats also a way to do it. Another way to do it is to consider that 'gold' is actually a pretty crappy monetary resource in planar markets. Gold is effectively unlimited out there in the cosmos. What isn't unlimited is xp. So you could figure out the xp value of an item and have trade be in terms of portable replacements for crafting xp (liquid pain and the like).

[JoshuaZ]

It becomes a lot more believable when you realize just how vast the D&D multiverse is and just how easy dimensional travel is. The market isn't just one city, one nation, one world, or one plane. It is tens of thousands of cities across thousands of nations, hundreds of worlds, and dozens of planes.

You place the order for the +3 Keen battleaxe and the local agent drops a message to his supplier and it is delivered to him within 24 hours courtesy of an entity with at will greater teleport and knowledge of a planar portal between say, Sigil and the prime material plane.

It's not just the local magic shop, its an entire multiplanar network of shops and fronts that move inventory to the buyer.

This is extremely setting specific. In low magic setting or settings that just don't have much planar travel this isn't going to be a thing. Not every setting has this sort of thing at all.


I'd suggest eyeballing the first too. I mean, the point of having a tabulated price is basically so players can take care of buying gear/etc on their own without having to ask the DM about everything. But if we're talking about highly individualized idiosyncratic items anyhow, they're going to have to ask the DM either way. So it might as well be something you just assign on the fly when it comes up.


That's probably the best solution.