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mgrinshpon
2014-05-11, 06:57 PM
What are your most creative uses of items beyond their on-the-face obvious intended usage?

For instance, a month ago, my party acquired a ring of water breathing. Last week, we had to get someone to sign some documents. We kidnapped the NPC and proceeded to waterboard him using the ring of water breathing, chopping off one finger each time he refused to sign (party of mostly CN/NE characters). That took the DM by surprise and allowed me to not roll my non-existent intimidate dice.

Alex12
2014-05-11, 07:16 PM
I've gotten so much use out of my Eternal Wand of Prestidigitation that I'm seriously considering upgrading to an item of constant-effect Prestidigitation.

Trying to use an (unidentified) Deck of Transformations in a card game. That one backfired and turned the PC to stone. Fortunately it didn't disintegrate him.

Gildedragon
2014-05-11, 07:32 PM
a) that is a horrifying use of an item.

b) my morphing sizing poison ring into a colossal++ shield to hide under into a similarly shaped sword (blade burried in the ground) to be able to look out of the tree canopy.

Jay R
2014-05-12, 08:42 AM
The game was original D&D.

The DM gave some players (not mine) a useless item. It was a Bag of Duplication. If you put something inside it, the bag would make a useless duplicate - food you couldn't eat, money that was clearly counterfeit, magic items that looked like exact duplicates but that didn't work.

The players were killed, but their bodies were recoverable, and I was playing an ex-paladin who had been turned chaotic (evil). But they didn't know it yet.

I recovered the bodies, and all their magic items, and took them to a priest. But I copied all their magic items in the bag, and left them the copies. I took the real items with me.

They never figured out why their magic items no longer worked, but they never suspected me of stealing them, because they knew the items hadn't been stolen.

Mastikator
2014-05-12, 08:47 AM
Leave it to the PCs to find a way to turn a benign magic item into a torture device. :smallsigh:

Starbuck_II
2014-05-12, 07:52 PM
The game was original D&D.

The DM gave some players (not mine) a useless item. It was a Bag of Duplication. If you put something inside it, the bag would make a useless duplicate - food you couldn't eat, money that was clearly counterfeit, magic items that looked like exact duplicates but that didn't work.

The players were killed, but their bodies were recoverable, and I was playing an ex-paladin who had been turned chaotic (evil). But they didn't know it yet.

I recovered the bodies, and all their magic items, and took them to a priest. But I copied all their magic items in the bag, and left them the copies. I took the real items with me.

They never figured out why their magic items no longer worked, but they never suspected me of stealing them, because they knew the items hadn't been stolen.

What would happen if you put the bodies in? Dead bodies that don't do anything: they never did!

Geostationary
2014-05-12, 09:49 PM
For instance, a month ago, my party acquired a ring of water breathing. Last week, we had to get someone to sign some documents. We kidnapped the NPC and proceeded to waterboard him using the ring of water breathing, chopping off one finger each time he refused to sign (party of mostly CN/NE characters). That took the DM by surprise and allowed me to not roll my non-existent intimidate dice.

I seem to be missing something, but how do you waterboard someone with a ring of water breathing? It doesn't seem like it would make a difference.

TuggyNE
2014-05-12, 10:40 PM
I seem to be missing something, but how do you waterboard someone with a ring of water breathing? It doesn't seem like it would make a difference.

Let's … not get into that, shall we? :smalleek:

Seerow
2014-05-12, 10:42 PM
I seem to be missing something, but how do you waterboard someone with a ring of water breathing? It doesn't seem like it would make a difference.

Yeah, the whole awful part of water boarding is how it simulates the feeling of drowning in the victim. The ring of water breathing completely removes that factor, so what's the point?

Slipperychicken
2014-05-12, 11:11 PM
Technically, they should have been rolling Intimidate for that, as per BoVD torture rules. But I guess you could roll Diplomacy instead if you count waterboarding as "Enhanced Interrogation" :smalltongue:


Yeah, the whole awful part of water boarding is how it simulates the feeling of drowning in the victim. The ring of water breathing completely removes that factor, so what's the point?

Wikipedia tells me that waterboarding victims are "at extreme risk of sudden death due to the aspiration of vomitus". I guess, by a liberal interpretation of "water", you could read a ring of water breathing as letting you safely inhale vomit.

Either that, or the PCs know that they're amateurs and might well have drowned the NPC by accident.

Also, I assume the GM ruled that the water breathing spell doesn't remove sensations of drowning caused by water torture.

Jay R
2014-05-13, 12:11 AM
The waterboarding treatment as described included chopping off fingers. I assumed that the finger with the ring was chopped off while the client's head was under water, causing a sudden change in conditions.

mgrinshpon
2014-05-13, 03:27 AM
The game was original D&D.

The DM gave some players (not mine) a useless item. It was a Bag of Duplication. If you put something inside it, the bag would make a useless duplicate - food you couldn't eat, money that was clearly counterfeit, magic items that looked like exact duplicates but that didn't work.

The players were killed, but their bodies were recoverable, and I was playing an ex-paladin who had been turned chaotic (evil). But they didn't know it yet.

I recovered the bodies, and all their magic items, and took them to a priest. But I copied all their magic items in the bag, and left them the copies. I took the real items with me.

Did the other players have OOC knowledge of this, or did they not know IC and OOC, i.e. was this done while talking to the DM in secret?


The waterboarding treatment as described included chopping off fingers. I assumed that the finger with the ring was chopped off while the client's head was under water, causing a sudden change in conditions.

Precisely. We would start drowning the NPC, put the ring on his pinky to change the NPC's ability to breathe in the water, removed the ring, etc. He couldn't see us removing or adding the ring causing more... suspense? Eventually, we pulled him out and then asked him to sign. He said no. I chopped his pinky finger off with the ring still on it and explained calmly "Make sure you sign before we get to your writing hand." Then put him back in the water. We repeated the ring on/ring off-in-water cycle using his ring finger and lifted him up again.

He signed.

Jormengand
2014-05-13, 06:53 AM
Flooding a castle with three wands of high-CL create water. UMD rogue is the bane of my existence.

Jay R
2014-05-13, 11:47 AM
Did the other players have OOC knowledge of this, or did they not know IC and OOC, i.e. was this done while talking to the DM in secret?

This was very early D&D, and you're asking a question we weren't asking yet. Puzzles were solved by the players, not by rolling on a skill. We routinely used our knowledge to do so.

The players didn't know.

Tetraplex
2014-05-13, 04:48 PM
This was what my Warlock, my first and most defining character with my current group, thrived on.
Sure, as an Eldritch Theurge he could launch double-barreled Spellblasts with grease and fireball attached, but using a cursed shield of deflection like a hoverboard, using a Decanter of Endless Water as an anti-riot firehose, and crippling the big spectral charioteer boss fight with a Rod of Ropes is so much more fun!

Gildedragon
2014-05-13, 04:50 PM
This was what my Warlock, my first and most defining character with my current group, thrived on.
Sure, as an Eldritch Theurge he could launch double-barreled Spellblasts with grease and fireball attached, but using a cursed shield of deflection like a hoverboard, using a Decanter of Endless Water as an anti-riot firehose, and crippling the big spectral charioteer boss fight with a Rod of Ropes is so much more fun!

I can see the Decanter, but how did the shield work. it sounds awesome!

Tetraplex
2014-05-13, 07:59 PM
I can see the Decanter, but how did the shield work. it sounds awesome!

I believe originally it was an on the spot creation of the DM, part of a pile of treasure within an ancient temple's catacombs. Our Dragonborn paladin pried it from the corpse of a knight and at the next battle discovered that whenever he tried to block with it he had to make a check or get shoved back a square or two along with the foe. He had to March back to the tomb through skeletons and give it back to rove it, at which point I took it when no one was looking. Later on I was lagging behind the group and they needed the blaster so I convinced the DM that aiming the shield angled at the ground under me provided enough lift for a halfling to hover on it. Cue mode of transport becoming blink dog powered hover chariot as I rode in to help. Of course mid fight someone reminded me I could fly, so it was largely pointless, but it was Cool, and that's the only rule Hobbes lived by.

Afgncaap5
2014-05-13, 11:06 PM
In order to get a powerful plot item out of a villain's hand (we later learned that the villain wasn't just outclassing us by a couple levels, he apparently had something like forty class levels) my rogue once used sleight of hand to rapidly wedge an inflatable raft between his palm and the item. Before he could fix that problem (or even figure out just what I'd done) I activated it and the raft's rapid inflation (probably helped by the element of surprise) popped the crystal thingie out of his hand, letting me grab it and run.

Defiled Cross
2014-05-21, 08:25 AM
There may have been some mini-golf with the Eye of Vecna...

:smallwink: