Giving Artifacts/Powerful Magic Items to Very Low Characters Can be FUN!!!

[Basement Cat]

So it's soon to be my turn to DM (my fe/male elven/human paladin/warlock is being put on the back burner to learn how to Trance after being reincarnated) and I've decided to bless/curse/wish-fullfill the solo-PC up next (1st level half-elf bard) with a family heirloom that possesses Artifact level powers. A magical short sword.

Of course it's sentient and occasionally irritating. The heirloom has been in the PC's human family for centuries. The reason she's become the new keeper is because of plot points but the catch is that--like Frodo--her family is largely immune to the Sword's ability to Dominate people.

Moreover she can't use it unless she's stupid enough (i.e. desperate enough) to give into the temptation: Not that that's always a bad thing. One downside is that the Sword becomes a chatterbox for a number of days equal to the number of minutes it gets wielded. That's when it really becomes annoying. :smallwink:

Giving or assigning a ridiculously powerful magic item to low level PC's (especially when they're soloing) can be surprisingly easy to deal with if you think about it before hand. This particular player knows his stuff and enjoys Role Playing challenges so this should be right up his alley. He could conceivably become the sword's master (minimum 3rd tier, though and doubtful we'll get that far).

How often to you break the mold and just dump a staggeringly powerful magic items onto your low level players? Have you ever had it happen to you? Combat wise you can merely increase the CR a bit to compensate depending on the item. We've found it a bit refreshing to do odd stuff like this when we're charging through the lowest levels with our latest characters.

[Rogue_1]

Oh god. I have this absolutely notorious reputation for being both a beloved and hated DM in my group because of my unnatural urgings, as a Dungeon Master, to hand out perpetually insanely overpowered magic items, homebrew spells, monsters with super-powerful abilities, and also traps. . .Yeah, lots and lots of traps. Now, the short sword sounds like a horribly devious way of bugging this poor PC to the point of no end, and I love the idea. Is there any catch to the weapon? Other abilities? And how will you demonstrate its communication methods with the player?
Would you lower yourself, from the mighty DM, to the role of roleplaying a pesky sword? Yes, I know I would. Sounds like an amazing idea Basement, and I sympathise for your character. Oh, and as for the CR, it honestly depends on whether you find the character absolutely loving the sword and using it on every possible occasion, or whether they shun it and lock it away in a room spouting the dreaded Tube of Flumphs. Good luck, though, and have fun DMing!

[JackPhoenix]

You're talking about solo game... the game plays differently in such case. You don't have to worry about overshadowing or stealing spotlight from other characters, the player has 100% exposure, and balance is out of window already. Right now, I'm considering running a solo game for my friend where he would get to play an angel... not aasimar, not some multiclassed character with angel-like abilities, an actual angel straight out of MM with some stuff on top to make it more interesting to play. Would I allow him to use such character as a normal PC in a normal group game? Hell no.

Imagine dropping artifact-level item (one that's actually useful, not "take this, now go throw this thing into a volcano") to one player in normal 4 player group. Does everyone else have fun while the guy with overpowered items deals with any problems, steals a spotlight because he's suddenly more plot relevant than the other characters and generally looks like the GM's favorite? I doubt that... that sort of thing works in a story, but not in a cooperative game. And while the alternative... giving everyone their own artifact... may solve some of these issues, it raises different concerns: if you want to make the game challenging and fun for a party with 4 overpowered items, you'd have to step up the challenge... but the aspects of the characters NOT improved by the items still hold them back. Yeah, it's great that the fighter does have a sword that allows him to stand up to the adult dragon offensively... but, you know, he's still got the durability of level 3 fighter and the dragon will murder him (and half of the party) in one action. Plus, "Look, my granddad left me this awesome magic sword!" "Well, what a coincidence! Mine too! Let's adventure together." "Hey, can I join you? I've overheard your conversation, and I have my grandma's Staff of Magi right here!".

Now, I don't subscribe to the riddiculous (to me) notion that the balance between characters is god (seen in 4e), but generally, you want every player to have fun, and keeping them vaguely on the same power level helps... most people wouldn't be content to play second fiddle to "DM's pet". Just looks how many "bad GM" stories include the GM favoring one character (regardless if they also ruling against other character(s) intentionaly).

[Gignere]

Yes I gave the paladin in my group at level 5 a holy avenger, and I balanced that by making the powers unlock as the paladin leveled. It was cool.

Gave the bard of the same game an instrument of the bards. No balance issues. Party of 5 PCs and no issue. Before the game ended I was going to let the fighter get Hazirawn too but gaming stopped for that adventure due to scheduling conflicts.

[Rogue_1]

That sounds like a great idea. Coincidentally, I'm running a similar campaign where the characters each start with down-powered legendary items whose powers slowly manifest as they travel around the world, channeling Elemental Altars to infuse their items. The party is a totally bogus, homebrewed motley crew, consisting of a Mind Flayer Shadowdancer, a Troll Cryomancer, a Human Wizard (thank god for this one blessed soul) and their party healer, a Dhampir (1/2 vampire) Soul Reaper. Crazy, but even though they were all homebrewed, the party's actually working out really well. They spent weeks upon weeks making these races and classes, and had to stand through my magnified scrutiny several times, but eventually, with a huge amount of balancing changes, I approved them and the adventure is actually working out pretty well. The M-Flayer's got a Cloak of Invisibility, the Troll's got Blackrazor (cough, hack wheeze *OP* hack wheeze), the Wizard picked up a Vorpal Greatsword (he's a Red Wizard-type) and the Dhampir's slinging around DC 25 spells with a sweet staff, I think. Still, only the Dhampir's got his item online. The Cloak functions sporadically, and Blackrazor has a thing where it randomly coughs up captured souls and reincarnates them when it scores crits. Still, we're having a blast, and in terms of 4-team party exposure and the show (and stealing thereof), I think that adding magic items that could be considered OP at their level is fine, as long as you can make long-term wind-ups work. Don't give your level 2 Evoker a Staff of the Magi. *shivers* I've tried.

[Sariel Vailo]

Legendary nunchucks the the nunchucks of the sun and moon it deals 1d4 bludgeoning 1d4 radiant and 1d4 necrotic its wielder may neither kil nor forgo the balance in ones heart basically dont shidt alignment and dont be lawful stupid. The more intune with ones self you are the greater the damage can increase meditate on your downtime to study with the very nature of good and evil say for balance within the world. A whip of the nine hells
With nine whips of varrying damage types. Also the nalfeshne chefs hat. The chefs hat of the piggy demons of the nine hells

[Scathain]

My buddy and I work high-Magic high-lethality campaigns and it is a perfectly reasonable style of play so long as everyone involved is on board.

An example: my level 8 Eldritch Knight has a +2 Chain Mail, necklace of fireballs (nearly gone after exploding a few buildings), and a freaking Sword of Answering. The barbarian in the group has a +3 Scythe(glaive) and a literal keg of healing potions on her back, and the rest of the party is decked out similarly.

This is all balanced by the absolute guarantee that half of us are dropped each combat encounter.
We're playing in a campaign based on the video game adaptation of Mordheim: our party is a highly trained, highly paid Warband that is sent into a ruined city to fight other Warbands vying for control of resources abundant in the city.

This also solves the "we all have Ashbringers!" problem. We aren't a group of "chosen one"s, we don't view our wealth in magic items as a divine gift from the DM, it's insurance from our very wealthy and very needy employers.

In the end, it's all about the taste and style of the adventure. I've played and DM'd no-magic campaigns and the above, and everything in between, and had fun with each.

[Kane0]

One guy in my group did this as DM, almost unintentionally.

Do you know the 'something happens' table on the DM screen? He rolled 'A door opens' in the middle of a forest, and so a door opened in the middle of nowhere that we could investigate.
The door led to an extradimensional chamber with a bunch of similar doors that in turn led to locations scattered about the land. We also found that we could take the doorknobs to move these doors around as needed, though we couldn't bring them into the chamber itself (the reason given was 'dimensional divide by 0').

So we found ourselves in partial posession of artifact level means of transportation. Some doorknobs we could take and move to locations of our choice, others were more hazardous (for example one part of a dragon's hoard, another was floating in outer space and one led straight to the first layer of hell. These became useful way to dispose of waste and criminals later on). In tandem with some sending stones this became a massive plot device for the game.
The problem was that there was no way to lock the doors, the only way to secure a doorknob was to place it somewhere it could not form a full sized door if turned from either side, such as inside a chest. They also lit up like fireworks to anybody detecting magic and acted like a beacon when used. More than once this broadcast to some extraplanar creature or other and we had to talk or fight our way out of it. At one point a hostile army even got their hands on a door knob and used it to assault a friendly city (though they stole the idea from us since we did exactly that to take their navy's flagship).

That one 'something happens' roll pretty much changed the entire campaign.

Edit: That same DM in another campaign gave our bard a flute that turned his inspiration into a d100 once per day and our paladin an animated arrow catching shield at level 4. Was freaking amazing.

[DarkKnightJin]

Animated Arrow-Catching Shield. You know, that makes sense. It moves itself into the oncoming projectiles' path to guard the wielder.

I'd personally love a similar flavor for a 'normal' shield for a Paladin or S&B EK. A conduit that sparks to life into a shield in combat(or when willed to), making for easy carrying and such outside of combat.

[Basement Cat]

Now, the short sword sounds like a horribly devious way of bugging this poor PC to the point of no end, and I love the idea. Is there any catch to the weapon? Other abilities? And how will you demonstrate its communication methods with the player?

When it goes unused for a long time it becomes dormant. Use it briefly and it becomes aware and can communicate with its keeper telepathically. Use it for more than an hour and it becomes vocally communicative.


Would you lower yourself, from the mighty DM, to the role of roleplaying a pesky sword? Yes, I know I would. Sounds like an amazing idea Basement, and I sympathise for your character. Oh, and as for the CR, it honestly depends on whether you find the character absolutely loving the sword and using it on every possible occasion, or whether they shun it and lock it away in a room spouting the dreaded Tube of Flumphs. Good luck, though, and have fun DMing!

Since the sword's been in the player's family for centuries they know all about it, so it's less a matter of getting blind sided and more a matter of not giving into the temptation to use it. Think of the family as keeping a Cosmic Cube safe: The best way to keep it safe is to not use it--but the temptation, oh the temptation at times can be staggering!

As for OP Magic Items to give to players:

One I've thought of is Bracers of Deflection: A monk can deflect/return as many missile weapons per round as he has Wis or Dex bonuses--whichever's highest.