3.x - Intelligent Item Rivalries

[unseenmage]

Am contemplating building an Intelligent Magic Item centric character and am curious about this bit from the SRD,


"All magic items with personalities desire to play an important role in whatever activity is under way, particularly combat. Such items are rivals of each other, even if they are of the same alignment. No intelligent item wants to share its wielder with others. An intelligent item is aware of the presence of any other intelligent item within 60 feet, and most intelligent items try their best to mislead or distract their host so that she ignores or destroys the rival. Of course, alignment might change this sort of behavior."

How do you handle Intelligent Magic Item rivalries in your games as a GM?
As a player how would you go about sidestepping this restriction?

How far should Intelligent Magic Items go in this regard? Especially as they can activate their own superpowers?

Should they be flinging spells at each other and risking harming the wielder or just blowing the party's ambush with loud arguing?

Have you ever actually used/experienced this phenomenon in a real game?

[lylsyly]

Rule at our table "There can be only one."

Let me ask a you question (it's the first reason for the above rule). Who exactly is gonna role-play all these Intelligent Items? You, the player of such items/or the quite probably already overworked DM.

Let me ask you another question (it's the second reason). How much are you slowing down game play by having to role-play all these Intelligent Items?

[Nifft]

This sounds like a set-up for one of those harem comedy anime shows. (That's probably why I've never used magic item rivalries in a real game.)


If you wanted to do it, there are a few ways:

- Each item is played by one of the players. Their conflicts result in meta-currency which the players can use for their PCs. The struggle is real.

- All items are played by the player who owns them. Rivalries and struggles are just background flavor.

- All items are played by the DM. Rivalries and struggles are puzzles for the players to solve. This sounds like a lot of work.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by unseenmage
…or just blowing the party's ambush with loud arguing?

I so much want to do this now.

[Shalist]

I so much want to do this now.

Something along those lines (http://comic.nodwick.com/?comic=2002-03-14):

http://comic.nodwick.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/2002-03-14.png

[eclipsic]

Am contemplating building an Intelligent Magic Item centric character and am curious about this bit from the SRD,



How do you handle Intelligent Magic Item rivalries in your games as a GM?
As a player how would you go about sidestepping this restriction?

How far should Intelligent Magic Items go in this regard? Especially as they can activate their own superpowers?

Should they be flinging spells at each other and risking harming the wielder or just blowing the party's ambush with loud arguing?

Have you ever actually used/experienced this phenomenon in a real game?

I once played in a campaign where a significant portion of the background story was that I had been trained as a mystic blademage-y type warrior, and upon graduating from "boot camp" I was led down into the catacombs where I walked a long hall, stopping briefly at each burial niche, until, at one of the niches, a sword burst through its stone cover and leapt into my hand, and that was my "godsword". I didn't know what that meant at the time, but it was a pretty nifty magical sword, which seemed to gain powers as I gained levels (but not according to Legacy rules, as this was 2E D&D), so I was happy.

About 4 levels later, I was walking through a town and suddenly I was drawing my sword and charging across the street at this unknown guy, who was also drawing HIS sword and charging toward me. I screamed, "I am Feruun, slayer of the Wyrmbend Horde, Defiler of the Tomb of Arghut, Bane of the Lich-King Taernwynd, Lord of the Riftgiants! Hellstrom's brittle haft has fallen beneath my infinite edge! Gaerlon's mighty head has split asunder on my blade! Keerwoht has been cleft in twain with naught but an absent-minded swing of my pawn! Bow down in fear and I'll make your end quick, for your doom is upon you!" My opponent responded with a litany of his accomplishments, while I noticed my vision had changed so the stranger seemed, while visible, less significant, then the blade he bore, and the blade itself burst with importance.

The stranger and I just laid into each other, throwing everything we could at one another, blademagic and skill and strength and dirty tricks, and Feruun itself suddenly gained its own actions, and started tossing around high-level magic, but at the other blade, not the wielder. After a stunning battle that tore up the town and gathered a huge crowd, including town guards who wanted NO part of whatever the hell was going on, I sundered the stranger's weapon and it exploded in a burst of divine energy that was astonishingly large and garish and spectacular when viewed with my new vision, but I could tell the crowd could only see the blade itself being broken. The stranger sagged to the ground like a puppet with his strings cut, my vision returned to normal, and suddenly my blade was back in its sheath and I was in control of my body again.

This happened 3 more time over the next 6 levels or so, before Feruun actually deigned to address me directly, and even then he didn't really answer my questions or enlighten me or anything, but at least at that point, I knew I hadn't lost my mind, I'd just lost an Ego battle with a super-powerful godsword who was all about gathering prestige by defeating other godweapons and demonstrating its dominance.

To more directly answer your question, every time there was a duel between two godweapons, there was this chest-thumping thing when each would list its accomplishments, and sometimes it knew of a failure or two of its opponent, so it would bring that up, to rub salt in the wound and maybe gain a little bit of an edge over its opponent. During the duels, the godweapons would throw insults at each other and basically just verbally spar while they hurled spells at each other and their "pawns" fought it out. Only once did my godsword and two other godweapons combine forces to defeat a 4th, vastly more powerful godweapon, but even then, there was much rivalry and not-so-veiled insults and snide commentary on the competence of the other godweapons. The "pawns" were hardly even taken notice of, but occasionally, when I got to a high enough level, or accomplished some great feat, I'd get a grudging "maybe meatbags aren't entirely useless after all" or something similar, although another godweapon's pawn was never treated to this great honor.

After that first duel, during which I wad completely an observer, and which was amazing nonetheless (I never begrudged my DM taking away my agency for that one scene, because it was just so mind-blowing), I was "allowed" to control myself during following duels, although I could never get Feruun to allow me to command it to cast its spells (it had an entirely different spell list than I did, almost totally dedicated to defeating other godweapons). Oh, and that was another thing that was important. Defeating the pawn was considered gauche and didn't settle anything, so all we were really expected to do is make sure the other godweapon's pawn didn't "cheat" by taking out our godweapon's pawn, so there were a lot of sundering attempts and combat expertise tricks (this campaign started in 2E and continued into 3E, but not 3.5).

If the godweapon concept sounds familiar to anybody, it was totally inspired by Gregory Keyes's (?) "Fool Wolf" short stories from Dragon Magazine in the early 2000s (it took us a while to take this particular campaign from 2E to 3E).