Immovable Rod or Robe of Useful Items?

[EvanescentHero]

I'm about to give my party their first magic item tomorrow. I was considering the Immovable Rod because I wanted to see what clever stuff they could do with it, but when I was idly browsing the magic items, the Robe of Useful Items caught my eye. Now it has a lot more practical uses, obviously, and I'm intrigued more or less by the hilarity of it all. I may end up just giving them both of them, but I was wondering if you had any input or even just fun stories about either.

[Yuki Akuma]

The Immovable Rod is one of the most useful items in the entire franchise. Yes, more useful than the Robe of Useful Items.

[EvanescentHero]

The Immovable Rod is one of the most useful items in the entire franchise. Yes, more useful than the Robe of Useful Items.

Guess I look like an idiot then. The Robe looks more practically useful than situationally to me, at least, but that's good to know!

[Chadamantium]

Our group had decided that the button on immovable rods was on the tip and came up with an anti big monster weapon by making it into a javelin with barbs on it so that when some big monster(in our case a dragon) came swooping in we could launch the immovable javelin and when it hit, it would fix into place and a dragon passing through would have that javelin tear through their body.

and that's the story of how we killed our first dragon.

[EvanescentHero]

Our group had decided that the button on immovable rods was on the tip and came up with an anti big monster weapon by making it into a javelin with barbs on it so that when some big monster(in our case a dragon) came swooping in we could launch the immovable javelin and when it hit, it would fix into place and a dragon passing through would have that javelin tear through their body.

and that's the story of how we killed our first dragon.

That's pretty horrifying!

Personally I'm a big fan of the ability to pull mastiffs and portable rams and rowboats off the robe. My personal favorite is the pit though!

[kaoskonfety]

In my experience you give them:

The Robe of Useful Items: if you want to give them a list of nifty tricks and cute toys with mostly clear uses

The Immovable Rod: if you want to be horrified and entertained by the wacky crap they come up with

[darkscizor]

Hearing this, I remembered one campaign I was in. The DM rolled an immovable rod off of a random items table, and the group gave it to me for a small part of the treasure we found. I never really used it, except for once when I barricaded a door. I kept it though, and it was useful later. The DM didn't like my character, a tiefling fighter, and tested out his homebrew Ogre Cheiftan on me. I was knocked off of a cliff. But just before the DM told me to roll up a new chatacter, as my level-six fighter was falling hundreds of feet onto sheer stone, I had a flash of inspiration.
"I sit on my immovable rod and activate it"
And it worked.

The DM later killed me off with a Storm giant attacking our level-eight party.