The Deck of Many Things

[psilontech]

God, I think I hate the deck of many things now. Before Tonight, I had never dealt with it, or hell, even heard of it, and I made the major mistake of drawing 4 cards from it...

Hmm... well, apparently I have bad luck.
Card 1: Dread Wraith
Card 2: Random Celestial Taking note that he absolutely hates me.
Card 3: Lost 10,000 Experience, taking me from lvl 6 to lvl 3.
Card 4: Inprisonment at the center of the world.

-_- /sigh/

But the thing is... I think I took all of the unluckyness out of the freaking cards, because everyone else who decided to draw cards got freaking awesome stuff. Three people got several wishes, leading to mine being brought back from stasis dead and naked, then being bound to the master of death guy (I can't remember the name of the 3.0 class) as a slave via a wish, then, just for the hell of it, I am subject to complete inuyasha ripoff collar of "Sit boy!". Freaking sadistic women... :smalltongue:

So, in the end of it all, several characters got bumped up to lvl 12, got keeps, bundles of gold and some 'uber' weapons and generally good stuff, while I was... naked and without my former power.

Hmm... I don't think I like the deck of many things. Knew I shouldn't have been the first to draw while several of the more experienced players snickered.

"You find a deck of cards... you have the strange feeling that you want to draw a few cards from it."
"Knowledge arcana... /rolls/*
"It's a deck of many things, thats just about all you know."
"ok, I'll draw 4 cards!"
Other players "Eahahahah"
"What!?!?"
/dies

So yeah, Lesson Learned: Don't play with a deck of many things. I have bad luck ;)

[Swordguy]

Few things destroy campaigns like DoMTs. They usually appear when the DM is bored or wants the campaign to die.

It is virtually impossible for a full group of PCs to draw cards from the Deck without some sort of disaster occuring. This is why I have occasionally introduced a Minor Deck (removes the best and worst cards, so PCs don't get the instant-kill or equivalent results, but also don't get huge level/wealth boosts).

[Thomas]

Yeah, using the Deck of Many Things in a game is the worst mistake a DM can make. Say bye-bye to any balance in the game. Some of the PCs will be screwed beyond playability, and a few will be boosted so far it's ridiculous.

I think I ruined 2-3 AD&D campaigns with it before I got the hint. It looks fun, but it's not.

[purple gelatinous cube o' Doom]

I always have a blast with the deck of many things. Regardless if good or bad comes of it, it's always been a fun thing in my groups. Actually I have known a party to get through a deck of many things without terrible disasters happening. One of the guys in my gaming group in college knew a guy who took 6 draws from the deck, and they all turned out to be good.

[Swordguy]

I'm really sorry Thomas, but I've got to do this. It's been that kind of day.


Yeah, using the Deck of Many Things Magic in a game is the worst mistake a DM can make. Say bye-bye to any balance in the game. Some of the PCs will be screwed beyond playability, and a few will be boosted so far it's ridiculous.

I think I ruined 2-3 AD&D campaigns with it before I got the hint. It looks fun, but it's not.

See? After substitution, it's still true.

/I now return you to your regularly-scheduled NON-magic-bashing thread. :smallbiggrin:

[SpiderBrigade]

Yeah, I'm really glad I never played D&D back when some huge proportion of magical items worked like that. Nowadays we've just got the DoMT and the Rod of Wonder, maybe a few others. Those classic Gygaxian dungeons... ::shudders::

[Swordguy]

Yeah, I'm really glad I never played D&D back when some huge proportion of magical items worked like that. Nowadays we've just got the DoMT and the Rod of Wonder, maybe a few others. Those classic Gygaxian dungeons... ::shudders::

Aw, c'mon! Am I the only person who still pulls magic items out of the Encyclopedia Magica and updates them for 3.5?

[Turcano]

The Deck of Many Things is best summed up with the immortal words of Admiral Akbar:

"It's a trap!"

Seriously. I'm pretty sure Gygax came up with it because he was tired of screwing his players overtly and therefore decided to make an artifact that would make the players screw themselves. It's a form of gambling and, in the end, the house always wins.

[reorith]

my group had some fun with a rod of wonder the other night.
they found a dude nailed to a wall and failing all sorts of things, they resorted to rolling percentiles
darkness twice, covering the guy with leaves, then summoning tall grass and finally summming a mouse, the fighter shows up, lit. walking into the actual room, has the situation explained to him and then says "i remove the nails." dex check followed by a nat twenty and the guy is saved.

i can't wait to throw them a deck of many things.

[JaronK]

The Deck can be great for players who are smart, and know how to work with it (use of the Augery spell is highly advised for example... and yes, you can use divinations to help out with the Deck. There's even a feat that specifically mentions screwing around with the luck of the DoMT).

Of course, it's very very powerful that way.

JaronK

[Jade_Tarem]

Heh, or you can use it in conjunction with a high bluff check and some illusory magic to obliterate a minor foe in a formal non-combat situation.

"Why don't we settle this over a card game? You deal."
*toss* *toss* *toss* *toss* *toss* *BLAM*

[Swordguy]

Heh, or you can use it in conjunction with a high bluff check and some illusory magic to obliterate a minor foe in a formal non-combat situation.

"Why don't we settle this over a card game? You deal."
*toss* *toss* *toss* *toss* *toss* *BLAM*

BWAH-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!

I've GOT to try that in the next game I play! You've just given me a reason to play a Diplomancer Bard.

[crazedloon]

Well in one game we had it as the way we started the campaign. Needless to say i drew horribly taking a loss on int (maxed and i was the skill monkey) and getting imprissoned. However I ended up with the deck still so I made a random orphan draw from it in hopes he would draw something good an i would force him to give it to me. Well the orphan ended up being imprisoned 2 times and haveing an outsider hate him :smalleek:

[The Glyphstone]

God, I think I hate the deck of many things now. Before Tonight, I had never dealt with it, or hell, even heard of it, and I made the major mistake of drawing 4 cards from it...

Hmm... well, apparently I have bad luck.
Card 1: Dread Wraith
Card 2: Random Celestial Taking note that he absolutely hates me.
Card 3: Lost 10,000 Experience, taking me from lvl 6 to lvl 3.
Card 4: Inprisonment at the center of the world.

-_- /sigh/

But the thing is... I think I took all of the unluckyness out of the freaking cards, because everyone else who decided to draw cards got freaking awesome stuff. Three people got several wishes, leading to mine being brought back from stasis dead and naked, then being bound to the master of death guy (I can't remember the name of the 3.0 class) as a slave via a wish, then, just for the hell of it, I am subject to complete inuyasha ripoff collar of "Sit boy!". Freaking sadistic women... :smalltongue:

So, in the end of it all, several characters got bumped up to lvl 12, got keeps, bundles of gold and some 'uber' weapons and generally good stuff, while I was... naked and without my former power.

Hmm... I don't think I like the deck of many things. Knew I shouldn't have been the first to draw while several of the more experienced players snickered.

"You find a deck of cards... you have the strange feeling that you want to draw a few cards from it."
"Knowledge arcana... /rolls/*
"It's a deck of many things, thats just about all you know."
"ok, I'll draw 4 cards!"
Other players "Eahahahah"
"What!?!?"
/dies

So yeah, Lesson Learned: Don't play with a deck of many things. I have bad luck ;)

Yeah, you got doubly screwed there. Not only did you land the worst cards, but the "bad cards" shouldn't have been taken out of the deck by the DM - only the -10K XP card vanishes, the others get shuffled in...

[Beleriphon]

I still think for random fun my Wand of Unusual Results is fun. An artifact that a 1d100 random table of odd, but generally harmless, results. Things such as the person to the immediate left grows a grass from their ears. Funny when some poor peasant has grass spontaneously appear in his ears because none of the party was to the rogue's immediate left.

As for the DoMT it is either fun, or a total game breaker. I wont use it as a DM unless its a last ditch kind of effort.

[Illiterate Scribe]

There is a feat, 'Wild Touch', that allows you to take roll 2d100 and choose the one you prefer, for DoMT, Rogue's Dice, and the Rod of Wonder.

This thread reminds me of an old Gloura bard of mine who dual-wielded two greater rods of wonder. :smallbiggrin:

[InaVegt]

That's why I made a party deck of many things, the players all have one of the strings on the deck taken and after the cards are dealt the deck disappears. While still allowing for horrible screwage it's not as bad to party balance as the standard deck.

[Bryanna]

Well, my one encounter with the deck so far, my character had gotten ahead of the party. I like to throw my chars interesting situations... so what I was really hoping for was something that would cause a critical change, so when the rest of the party caught up with me it could be interesting.

My first draw was the Void card.:annoyed:
Waiting for the rest of the party to find my characters catatonic body _was_ quite interesting... not what I expected though. However still having a functioning body of my character allowed me to bring in a new character having his soul accidentally end up in someone elses body.:amused:

[Orzel]

The DOMT is the nice version of Falling Rocks. When the DM is bored not angry.

[Pvednes]

Aw, come on! The DoMT is awesome.

[Leon]

DoMNTw/SG, BNM is what it should be called

[Dark]

I like the concept of the deck of many things, but not the usual implementation.

Some changes I'd make:
- most cards affect everyone nearby, not just the individual. Getting a wish would still be individual, just to avoid one-hour arguments about wording :)
- instant-death and instant-win effects taken out
- experience effects scale by level
- saving throws for the worst effects; skill checks for the best
- some effects don't seem to do anything, but set up subtle "destiny" effects. Let the players wonder what it did.
- everyone draws just once
- you can't draw by accident, you have to do the right ritual to get any magic effect. This ritual includes proper shuffling!

Also, I'd definitely get a real Tarot deck for them to draw from, and make the effects match the pictures!

[AaronH]

Ran into the deck of many things (slightly modified version) in one of my campaigns, carried it for about five levels, finally tossed it into a sphere of annihilation (sortof sphere of annihiliation, my DM liked to make modifications to things)

Anyways, yah, wreaked havoc on the party. When all was said and done we lost like three characters, just about all of the party was changed in some way. Don't get me wrong, we had plenty of fun with it, but there comes a point where the risk vs. reward just isn't worth it. If I ever run across it again, unless we have somebody who can modify the effects or increase the chance of a good roll, I will probably keep it in a locked box the rest of the campaign.

[Viscount Einstrauss]

The Deck of Many Things is actually an important plot point for a major NPC in my campaign. The players found it, and that NPC allowed them to draw cards after being warned, explicitly, that terrible, terrible things can come of it (and cryptically hints that he's quite familiar with the horrors it can unleash). The players spent a good ten minutes debating over this deck. In the end, everyone decided to draw one card except for the warblade who drew two.

The warblade was especially lucky (and this deck gave him the experience boosts necessary to finally catch up with the top of the group) and got two good draws. Everyone else got a decent draw as well, with one exception- someone pulled the dread wraith.

But, that wasn't a problem. The players were at a pretty high level already, and the character with the wraith? She was the party cleric, after a full night's sleep.

[Umbral_Arcanist]

I've put this baby in quite a few campaigns (3 i think), the first one went well, only one player actually got a bad card ( he was imprsioned somewhere) which worked because he was just joining the campaign and it was a nifty plot hook. Of course most of the players don't draw anymore, except one player who is addicted, he got screwed, but he managed to reverse drawing the card with the "undo any event card" (which also saved the PCs the second time when a BBEG battle wasn't going well)

It's fun, but not much use in a very serious campaign

[Matthew]

Yeah, I'm really glad I never played D&D back when some huge proportion of magical items worked like that. Nowadays we've just got the DoMT and the Rod of Wonder, maybe a few others. Those classic Gygaxian dungeons... ::shudders::

I can't say I ever really encountered any. Most of the magic gear was fairly mundane.

[Scalenex]

In 2nd ed, one of our players got a Deck of Many Things at the start of our first super high level game (super high level for us anyway, we started at 12th after consistently starting at 1st or 3rd). He lost a chunk of exp, got a minor magical item, got the enmity of an extra planar being, got his Cha boosted to 18, and got a small stronghold. We tied it together. The minor magical item was a Decanter of Endless Water which was used to make a plumbing system for his stronghold with a Bag of Devouring taking the place of the sewer. The extra-planar creature that fed from the Bag of Devouring did not appreciate eating sewage so he came out of the bag, stole the Decanter and became his enemy until we had an epic showdown with the creature a level or two later.

No plot was derailed or destroyed, but the game was so high scale, it was hard to imbalance with a single item.

[SpiderBrigade]

I can't say I ever really encountered any. Most of the magic gear was fairly mundane.

Well, it's probably a bit of an exaggeration anway.

But I was talking less about magic gear, and more about stuff you're likely to find in dungeons. Like a fountain with gems around the edge, where you roll on a chart to find out what the gems do. I seem to remember most of it was stuff like Death, no save, or Petrified. One or two of the choices were good, like healing or XP. And then in the next room would be some kind of device with control levers/rods...which were also randomized, from a different lethal chart...etc.

I mean, after two or three dungeons like that, the players are either going to resign themeselves to the fact that they could die at any time, randomly, or just not touch anything, ever.

But again, it's not like ALL adventures were like that, or anything. But I do get the impression that this kind of "are you sure you touch the idol?" mentality was a lot more common.

[Matthew]

I see. I think you may be thinking of Tomb of Horrors and its ilk. Those dungeon crawls were built specifically to kill adventurers in a variety of horrible ways. Not the conventional way to play the game, as I understand it, but apparently a viable one.

[Viscount Einstrauss]

You don't win Tomb of Horrors. You also don't survive it. You just hope you live a little longer then your friends for bragging rights.

[Matthew]

Well put, Viscount.

[bosssmiley]

It's a truism that in D&D whatever increases randomness in a life-or-death situation is generally disadvantageous to the PCs.

Deck of Many Things = pure randomness. Draw your own conclusions.

[Felistor]

I fully agree that DoMT is completely broken, unbalancing, and usually destroys a campaign.

I completely disagree with those of you who think this is because bad things can happen.

While the "house always wins" may apply to most RL forms of gambling, with DoMT the probabilities lie in the opposite direction. Just read through the various effects, and number up the chances of each one occuring .... there are FAR more good effects than there are harmful effects, and even the harmful effects are generally only a danger to low-mid level PCs.

To a group of smart and/or high level PCs, DoMT is the biggest and most broken candy jar of awesome power that could possibly be imagined.

I've played in three campaigns where DoMT was introduced ... and in every single case the average party level went up by 4-6, party wealth at least tripled, and all party members ended up home free once the dust had settled. The problem was that the prizes were unevenly distributed, and we had some PCs who for a long time were vastly more powerful than the others in the same party.

The most ridiculous case happened when we had a party of already overpowered mid-high level PCs who came across a DoMT. One of the party members (ok I'll admit it it was mine and I was feeling munchkinish) was a 3.0 psion with that ridiculously broken power that let you travel back in time 1d4+1 rounds (I forget the exact name ... Time Regression or something like that) -- he even had two of those psionic shields that let non-psions use the same power. We pretty much kept drawing cards (and traveling back in time if we got one of the few bad effects) until the DM gave up all hope, and had to make the deck magically disappear.

I also remember a low-level campaign where the DM (due to temporary insanity) gave out a DoMT. In that instance, the players (obviously not paladins) decided to go for the wealth benefits only ... and forced a group of commoners to draw cards until they died or got items/wealth (those items didn't remain in the posession of the commoners for very long).

Moral of the story? Don't ever give your players a DoMT -- there isn't anything in the game more liable to abuse (especially in the hands of an experienced munchkin).

[Mewtarthio]

Lessee here...

Good Things:

Instant level up if you beat the next fight single-handedly (unless you carry a parapelegic kobold on your person expressly for this purpose, this will likely be CR-innapropriate)
Get out of one misfortune (likely another card)
50,000 GP
10,000 XP
Major magic weapon (worth 18,000-50,000 GP)
Fourth-level Fighter comrade (hello, Mr. Leadership! Lookit what I've got!)
1d4 wishes
+2 bonus to any score
Medium Wondrous Item (7,500-27,500 GP; always beneficial) + 50,000 XP (!)
Nice Diplomacy bonus plus a small fortress
Instantly figure out the solution to one problemBad Things:

Change alignment (I'm a bit confused on afterlives: Does a Paladin immediately get damned to the Abyss in this case?)
Lose everything you own and get imprisoned somewhere very difficult to free you from.
-1 to all saving throws
A guy on the Outer Planes decides to ruin your life
Lose 10,000 XP and draw again
Instantly get your Int decreased by 2-5 permanently (what happens if you get dropped below 3?)
Your best friend betrays you
Lose everything mundane you own
A CR 11 incorporeal monster challenges you to single combat; Lose and you can never be resurrected
Lose all your magic items
An outsider steals your soul; getting it back requires some sort of quest or difficult bargainA fun twist to put on this is not to manifest everything instantly. Make it appear as though these occurrences are coincidences. The Gem card only means that the user will stumble across a bunch of valuable gems in the next month. If Rogue is drawn, something happens in the near future that causes the comrade's allegiance to change. A Paladin who draws Balance will gradually become disillusioned, while a serial killer will gradually see the value of Goodness or Law. Now, there are a few things that are a bit trickier to deal with (such as Ruin and Talon), but it'd still be nice to be able to paint the Deck, not as a powerful Artifact that greatly alters the universe to give you what you want, but rather as a powerful Artifact that can accurately predict your future. As an added bonus, Augury becomes useless against the Deck: If it takes over two hours for the effects to manifest, Augury can't detect them. It also prevents the abuse of "give it to a first-level Commoner and take any good stuff he gets," since the Commoner's "good stuff" won't show up if the PCs kill him before he gets it, and if they stalk him, just don't roll out any "good stuff" until they leave.

[Turcano]

While the "house always wins" may apply to most RL forms of gambling, with DoMT the probabilities lie in the opposite direction. Just read through the various effects, and number up the chances of each one occuring .... there are FAR more good effects than there are harmful effects, and even the harmful effects are generally only a danger to low-mid level PCs.

The odds of getting a good card and a bad card are equal (if you'll notice, bad cards are black suites, good cards are red suites). Moreover, the two cards that allow redraws offer them under disadvantageous circumstances: the Fool requires a redraw (after a bad draw, I might add) with a 50% chance of getting a bad card, while the Idiot gives you a 75% chance of drawing at least one bad card (at the expense of gaining any benefit for a good draw). So the odds of getting a raw deal are slightly better than getting a net gain. And many of the bad cards are doozies to boot; for instance, Talons is going to hurt you no matter what your level is.

Edit: Additionally, two of the bad cards disallow any further draws, which is probably a blessing in disguise.

[Quietus]

Sounds like gaming with my friend Dave as the DM pretty much any day. Level 1 druid, level 3 cleric, and a level 5 cleric - he throws a freaking troll at us. Shortly after that (thankfully I levelled to druid2, and we picked up another druid2 on the way), he locks us in a 10x20 room with 12 people jabbing at us with longspears, and dropping flaming oil on us, through arrow slits/murder holes.

I sometimes get the feeling that we're less playing for our amusement and more so he can see how far he can push us before we snap and throttle him.

[Viscount Einstrauss]

"Awesome, the Vizier! That'll come in handy."
"You've got one more card to draw."
"Right. ...Oh crap! The Void?! Wait wait wait, I drew the Vizier first! So, how do I get out of this?"
"Don't gamble."