funniest thing that's happened because of a cursed item?

[Pinkie Pyro]

So, currently, in my most recent campaign, one of my players came across a medallion of thought projection, and everyone in the game knows exactly what it does other than him, and has been playing along by supplying thoughts that would make sense when he read the mind of their characters, while still reacting slightly differently than what they had been thinking. he knows it projects his thoughts, but he doesn't know that it makes up the thoughts, nor do any of the other characters. Due to this, they have attacked city watchmen who they thought were actually agents of the thieves guild, and are now locked in a conflict between both the thieves guild /and/ the city watch, and with how this has been going, It seems like it'll end in a coup upon the lord of the city, and the death of the leader of the thieves guild...

the best part, of course, is the player with the cursed item loves it, and doesn't know the extent of the trouble it's causing him, poor thing...

[Enguebert]

Not really a cursed item, but an intelligent sword with strong personality (and low wisdom)

The inteligent sword had ventriloquism, illusion spelland had a phobia from spiders.
It was in AD&D, and the group was all-thieves

The sword like to use his ability to project image and use ventriloquism to make stupid jokes (ever seen a speaking carrot who pretend to be a polymorphed princess)
Or when group try to be sneaky and the sword shout because there is a spider (size : 1 cm)

But best moment was when the group was doing a burglary. They guessed there was a secret passage at one point, but couldn't find how to open it.
The dwarf has the idea to talk in dwarf to the wall. They didn't know that the sword was able to speak dwarf, so 'the wall" replied that they need to give a gem to open the passage.
They offer a gem to the wall and ask "now what"
They only understand the joke when the wall replied :"put the gem on the sword"

[Bloodgruve]

A buddy of mine played in a campaign. His cursed item was The Golden A$$... Every 1 that he rolled got messy... if you know what I mean.

[Fouredged Sword]

There was a great cursed item, the irremovable rod. It looks like an immovable rod, but it has a tiny reservoir of sovereign glue on the button. Once pressed, it can't be unpressed, and your hand is attached.

Hilarity ensues.

[Captnq]

It was a ring of wishes that granted your wishes, but teleported someone you loved in front of you and consumed their soul in the process so they died screaming your name, and only a 50% chance that they will survive being true resurrected.

Of course, if you are evil, you die horribly, because if you are evil, you don't love anyone else more then yourself. Thus your wish is granted, but you die screaming.

That's as funny as my cursed items get.

[Naanomi]

I had a necklace of strangulation once. We knew it was cursed, but not specifically what it did. I carried it for a long time, trying to find a use for it (artificers existed but were rare).

In some filthy thief town we visited people picked our pockets a million times, and one of the times we heard choking and dying of the thief who targeted us as he put the necklace on after filching it. Item identified and thief dispatched all in one!

[Hamste]

It was a ring of wishes that granted your wishes, but teleported someone you loved in front of you and consumed their soul in the process so they died screaming your name, and only a 50% chance that they will survive being true resurrected.

Of course, if you are evil, you die horribly, because if you are evil, you don't love anyone else more then yourself. Thus your wish is granted, but you die screaming.

That's as funny as my cursed items get.

...that's a bit presumptuous to say. Evil people can love others just like anyone else. Some of the greatest stories have the villains loving either other villains or neutral people (or good people, but then the story usually takes a turn where the villain becomes rehabilitated)

[KnotKnormal]

A dagger that when touched would cause you to start arguments with anyone else who had touched it previously about random thing (sky is not blue type of random). Our Pally realized what was happening to the party and decided it would be a good idea to use his hammer to golf swing the dagger away hopefully breaking it. the dagger firmly embedded itself in the skull of the person I was arguing with and was about 6 inches away from... I won the argument.

[Nettlekid]

I did a one-shot pirate campaign that was sparked off by using a cursed doubloon as a guide on a map. When the name of the past pirate king Captain Steele was spoken, it would glow red-hot and the holder would take one point of fire damage. The party was meant to get the doubloon from a squid-headed sailor named Billy Boneless (forevermore to the party known as Squidbeard.) He was a drunk and would tell the stories of Captain Steele, and had the PCs picked up the coin lying right in front of them, they would have seen the scorchmarks and known something was amiss.

They didn't. Instead, they decided they needed to find where the police who may have acquired the doubloon from 20 years prior had gone, and to find who had amassed the largest amount of wealth in those 20 years. Totally unprepared for this, I had to improv a wild goose chase involving a portly and disagreeable mayor and one player, a tall gangly shy gay guy, to act the part of his saucy wench character and seduce a young sailor.

When they finally went all the way around that chase and ended up back at their tavern, it was on fire (the latest in an apparent string of arsons in the town.) Among the rubble they found a not-too-uncomfortable Squidbeard, and the cursed doubloon. I explained that what kept happening was Squidbeard would (completely unknowingly) find the doubloon, spend it on rum, get drunk and start telling the tales of Captain Steele, the doubloon would heat up and start a fire, and in the wreckage afterward the rummy would scrounge along looking for scraps and stumble upon the very same doubloon. It was an entertaining interlude for both me and the players, since no one knew where the story was going.

[iceman10058]

i had made an intelligent sword that once belonged to a great dragon slayer, but after he retired was hung on a wall. well when one of the pc's stole it, fun insued cause he suddenly thought is was a great idea to go to this cave he heard of and try to pillage the dragons loot.... the party didnt know the rogue was taking orders from the sword cause it got bored

[Bullet06320]

cursed dwarvin thrower
I was playing a dwarvin battle rager, dm decided it would be funny to stick me with one, the type that throws the dwarf, until I decided to turn it into an advantage, and use it to throw my dwarf into combat, spiked full plate, spiked helmet, spiked gauntlets, blade boots, it was hilarious way to start combat, I just throw myself at the enemy, lol

[12owlbears]

The best cursed item I have encountered was a quiver of 6 magic returning crossbow bolts. The twist was that each bolt was sentient and could telepathically communicate with the owner of the quiver. They each had a distinct personality one was a coward that would try to talk it's way out of being used, one was a psychopath that was always trying to talk us into killing random people, one was an existential philosopher, two of the bolts were in a relationship and would through a fit when they got separated, and one had the personality of a dog.

[Beldar]

We were fighting a tribe of Kobolds, and in one skirmish, we took from them a magic axe which was intelligent, had a very high ego (ie, it was likely to control anyone who used it) and had the special purpose of defending Kobolds & slaying all who opposed Kobolds.

Its ego was high enough to count, in practical terms, as a curse. The DM saw it that way too - since he later said that he had planted it to see what happened as a controlled party member now had to defend the Kobolds from the rest of us.

The first party member to pick it up successfully fought off the control & threw it down.
Then the hilarity started - the Paladin of Freedom (immune to all mind control types of things) picked it up. He used it to slay Kobolds, while it wailed about doing so.
The axe soon committed suicide by deliberately failing its save against some acid the Kobolds threw at us.

[Beldar]

We've had a lot of fun with a Bag of Devouring over the years.

It started with a friend who would hang out in taverns known to be frequented by pickpockets. He would buy drinks or something using a small gem, or at least a platinum piece, so that he would get a lot of change.
He would then chuck the change 'casually' into the bag of devouring he had carefully secured to his belt. He would leave the mouth of the bag invitingly open, as if he had simply forgotten to secure it.

He had gone through some elaborate setup time beforehand, to try to make sure the bag could not be removed from his belt, nor slit etc.

He was trying to set up a situation where thieves would see where he tossed his money, and see that the easiest way to steal it was simply to sneakily reach into the open mouth of the bag.

This worked a number of times - thieves would try to steal from him & get sucked in and devoured.

He then got whatever loot the thief had (at first by upending the bag, then later by sending in a simple cheap construct to get it, after the DM wondered if you could upend an extra-dimensional bag to empty it).

Several players since then have followed in his footsteps & done the same.
***
You can also have a lot of hilarity with helms of alignment change - put them onto Demons, evil dragons or whatever & get very unusual results :)

[Magesmiley]

I had a player who thought that it'd be funny to have his character constantly hitting on the PC of one of the other players. The player running the PC who was the subject of the affection got a bit tired of it, so she convinced the party's artificer to make a girdle of masculinity/feminity. Which she left in the other character's room, with the note 'a gift from an admirer'. Naturally the original player put it on, much to the amusement of the rest of the players.

[rollforeigninit]

My Rakastan Wild Mage got hit with a Girdle of Femininity back in 2nd ed. It would have been ok but he was Married to the Gold Elf Thief and they were expecting AND on their way to meet her parents. It was awkward. Questing ensued to get things straightened out. The parents tried to make me into a male elf instead of a Rakasta. Didn't work out.

[sideswipe]

I was playing a chaotic evil spell scale warlock, and my friend was playing a chaotic good pixie rogue.
level 5 campaign. we are privateers for a navy, we were sent to obtain a powerful magic item, we did successfully. however it was pseudo cursed and was a ring. the ring mind controlled the pixie into putting it on.

an identify and other means showed it as a CL 20 ring of gate. with 5 charges.

we tried everything including remove curse to allow the pixie to take it off. but nothing would work. an enemy attacked the pixie and the ring activated and summoned a pit fiend to defend him. powerful ring.

then, waiting for basicly an antimagic field to arrive we adventure a bit.

we find a commoner going haywire with another pseudo cursed item, this time a holy bow, getting him to kill all evil things.

he attacks me. and i defend myself.

we take the bow from him and he is free to go. an innocent mind controlled commoner.

i don't care he is innocent. that b*stard shot me! so i blast him into dust.

the pixie takes this to heart and goes quiet for a while. we play on for another 5 minutes with my friend in silence.

He then! from nowhere shouts. "Ring! I command you to imprison (my character) forever!"

then a pit fiend, in the middle of a city comes into being and casts imprison on me. boom, end of character.

I thought it was hilarious!

[zephyrkinetic]

I've got a Cursed Lantern of Revealing coming up in my next session, actually. It reveals the user, and if they're not invisible, makes them especially easy to spot. All their armor squeaks and clangs, they glow and their skin glitters, the lantern sounds a klaxon. I'm hoping my thief takes it.

[Flame of Anor]

...that's a bit presumptuous to say. Evil people can love others just like anyone else. Some of the greatest stories have the villains loving either other villains or neutral people (or good people, but then the story usually takes a turn where the villain becomes rehabilitated)

If anyone knowingly activates the item, though, without a compelling save-the-world reason, I'd rule that this proves they in fact love themselves most.

[Calimehter]

A couple of years back we had a player who discovered a cursed ring that identified as a Ring of Feather Fall.

Sure enough, the curse was discovered in a very detrimental way. We were fleeing . . . crud, something nasty, I don't recall exactly what . . . and he decided that jumping off the nearby cliff was the best way to escape.

It ended exactly how you think it ended.

[Socksy]

Oh, gosh. I tend to invent my own cursed items, and the last one I made up got taken by my brother's psychic warrior.

The belt looked and acted like a Belt of Giant Strength, but whenever he did anything lawful, or whenever it got bored, he had to roll a Will save to avoid taking Strength damage. It also laughed at him constantly, although it couldn't speak.

After a while, his Strength is 5 (every group has that one d20 determined to kill its' user, and he was the one stuck with it that session), the lowest value it would take him to, and the rogue, psion, and hexblade are dragging him along in a cart. Kobolds ensue, and the rogue grabs the belt off him hoping he'll be able to fight, and it latches onto her instead. Everyone is surprised, as nobody managed to remove it until now.

Suddenly the rogue muscles up from 12STR to 26STR, and the psychic warrior gets a song in his head which he can't recognise. The psion tries it on after the battle, her STR goes from 6 to 20, and the song gets louder. At the first opportunity, the belt re-attaches itself to the psychic warrior, who promptly fails his will saves and gets stuck with the rapidly lowering strength again, and the song won't go away.

They eventually get him to a cleric willing to remove the cursed belt for good (In our campaigns, psions... Well, think medieval witch-hunt at best and Homestuck at worst).

The cleric spends ages studying the belt before he finally removes it, and invites the party up to his lab to find out what it is.

Almost as soon as he gets up there, the belt starts projecting its' song out loud.

"Trololololol, lololol, lololol, trololololol..."

"That ain't a Belt of Giant Strength", the cleric says.
"That's a Belt of Troll Strength!"

Needless to say, I got a handful of dice chucked at me.