Deck of Many Things shenanigans

[SpectreCatcher]

In the long running game that I play in, one of the other players came across a brand new Deck of Many Things. I was the only player familiar with this item as I had considered adding to a game that I am running, but ultimately decided against it. He is quite curious and all he knows is that it can either grant great benefit, great disaster, or somewhere in between.

In my opinion, it landed with the perfect PC as he is one of the few of us that would be tempted by the potential power it comes with. He actually had one of the minor NPC's draw a card from it to see what would happen and the Rogue card was drawn, which gave the NPC a very powerful enemy in the form of a Devil (I think), the NPC caught a glimpse of this Devil and immediately began begging for help The PC that has the deck ended up killing said NPC to prevent him from following us around for protection. The rest of us were upset by this, but not surprised as this is in line with the PC and said NPC also recently tried to swindle us for a large sum of gold.

So, I'm curious about what types of things you have seen happen in your games around the Deck of Many Things. I'm both excited and nervous for any future cards drawn.

[Foxydono]

There are many good and bad cards and I've drawn from the deck many times over the past few years. The best thing you can draw in my opinion, is a 5th level character, because it is comsidered a PC. As such, it is a second character that can level to lvl 20 alongside your own character.

If you draw a few cards, the undo any event card or 1d4 wishes are awesome obviously, as you can undo bad cards drawn from the deck. I usually draw 3 cards and pray for the best.

[Keravath]

My personal experience is that the Deck of Many Things ends campaigns. DMs who put it in tend to be either inexperienced or bored. Rarely, if the DM knows the players/characters well and knows they will role play the usage of the deck so it doesn't get out of hand, it might work out. Usually it doesn't.

You might ask why it works this way? The deck has both good and bad cards. A couple of cards virtually guarantee the death or end of your character. A few are great boons while a few are a great hindrance to the character.

However, selection is random. If you take a typical adventuring party of six or so that are reasonably balanced and working together well ... introduce the deck. Two characters are likely to be advanced in power, two are likely to have some lesser boon or bane while two are likely to wind up either dead or with a major negative effect.

Two things happen at this point. Two players are happy, two unhappy and two are just grateful they didn't get burned. The unhappy ones may not have a character left to play and either have to re-roll or role play a character that isn't fun to play anymore. When a campaign isn't fun, it is natural to not want to play anymore. No matter how much people claim they will accept the results of drawing from the deck, 90% of folks aren't happy facing up to the major detrimental effects and ultimately decide they don't want to continue play (this is anecdotal from my experience ... other experiences may vary :) ).

All three campaigns I was in where the Deck of Many Things showed up ended very soon thereafter directly due to consequences from the use of the Deck.

The other aspect of using the Deck is role play. Many people will have characters draw from the deck because they want the good stuff and hope not to get the bad stuff. They are lucky! Everything will be fine. However, when considered from a character perspective, most would likely not touch the Deck unless they were desperate. It is like playing russian roulette ... odds are reasonable that you will kill or cripple yourself. If you are a successful adventurer, rising towards greater power in their class, the future looks bright, why would they ever take the risk? This is why having the deck in a group of experienced role players might work, they decide NOT to use it except perhaps in a situation that is so desperate that the deck might be the only way out. This is a situation where the character is so desperate that the risk of dying is a small price to pay. If they fail then the cause is lost anyway so drawing from the deck doesn't make things worse and might make it better.

Anyway, my experience with the Deck has been entirely negative from a group point of view (even though, in one of the cases I experienced, my character pulled three good cards ... I never actually had a chance to really play them after that because it didn't go so well for everyone else).

[stoutstien]

The DoMT is a randomized plot hook generator masquerading as a magical item. Good for open ended games. Bad as random loot in more structured games.

[Sigreid]

I have a character whose soul got snatched away. Somewhat to my surprise the rest of the party immediately decided they were getting it back.

[Foxydono]

Anyway, my experience with the Deck has been entirely negative from a group point of view (even though, in one of the cases I experienced, my character pulled three good cards ... I never actually had a chance to really play them after that because it didn't go so well for everyone else).
In 5e I've used the deck of many things three times as a player and one time as DM. This however was a modified version for low lvl characters. In all instances I've had good experiences on both a personal and group level. What probably helped, is that everyone is experienced and played d&d for 10+ years. We all know the deal, if you draw from the deck, you accept a decent chance of having to make a new character. If you like gambling, you are going all in with mediocre hand. Most of us love making new characters, so it's no problem at all.

To conclude, the acceptance of the deck will vary depending on the players. As such, make sure everyone knows what the deck does and explain the consequences.

[XmonkTad]

We were playing a game on roll20 and we told to put down a number for how many times we drew from the deck and then told to roll for what cards we drew. One PC drew 3 Throne cards, granting him 3 keeps. Campaign ended before anything could be done with them.

[Yunru]

A smart player uses Augury before drawing from a deck of many things.
A smart DM rewrites the deck.

An annoyed person (me) looks over the outcomes and realises that, just like with Wild Magic, it's been heavily weighted towards hurting the user.

[stoutstien]

A smart player uses Augury before drawing from a deck of many things.
A smart DM rewrites the deck.

An annoyed person (me) looks over the outcomes and realises that, just like with Wild Magic, it's been heavily weighted towards hurting the user.

A smart player uses geas chumps or other surrogates to draw from the deck.

[Yunru]

A smart player uses geas chumps or other surrogates to draw from the deck.

Then they don't get the benefits, the chumps do.
Whereas an Augury player can just go "I shuffle the deck. I cast Augury. Oh, negative outcome? Okay, wait until tomorrow."

[stoutstien]

Then they don't get the benefits, the chumps do.
Whereas an Augury player can just go "I shuffle the deck. I cast Augury. Oh, negative outcome? Okay, wait until tomorrow."
"draw from this deck and if anything beneficial happens I want you to give it to me." Is a pretty reasonable command for geas. Augury is a good idea also. I would probably do both but I've never had a DM give me the deck and as a DM I've only handed out limited ones.

[Yunru]

"draw from this deck and if anything beneficial happens I want you to give it to me." Is a pretty reasonable command for geas. Augury is a good idea also. I would probably do both but I've never had a DM give me the deck and as a DM I've only handed out limited ones.
It would still make you lose out on cards like Jester and Moon, but looking through, there's surprisingly little of those (that are any good).

[Evaar]

I played in a couple campaigns that included a Deck Of Many Things. In the first case it didn't ruin the campaign, but we drew well and it did feel a little bit Monty Haul.

The DM was very generous with his interpretations of the rules, so YMMV, but in the second case I was allowed to have my character do a lot of research and prepare himself as much as possible for the possible outcomes. I would argue that this one was the catalyst for the game falling apart, though it may have always been destined to do so. This was an online play by post game with way too many players with wildly varying degrees of commitment and investment.

So regarding preparations. First, some cards there's just nothing you can do about. Rogue, Flames, Void, Balance, Donjon, Fool, Idiot, you just sort of have to deal with the consequences as written.

Ruin and Talons you can possibly get around. Talons affects magic items you wear or carry, so that's simple enough - just put your stuff down first. Ruin affects wealth you carry or "own." It destroys evidence of ownership like deeds as well. So you can't just have someone else hold your stuff, they have to actually own it. Given that, I applied contract law - I could transfer my ownership of something to someone else in a way that would satisfy the card so long as there was consideration. They had to give me something in return. So I sold my spellbook to an innkeeper we trusted for a few gold. Do that with your most precious items, but I would expect a DM to stop you if you really get out of control with it. I suppose you can write up a contract to grant your entire estate to an ally at the cost of a gold, but just know that you'll lose that gold, the contract, and possibly the ally's memory of that exchange having happened. Depends on how cruel your DM is and if they let you draw from the Deck then chances are they're fairly cruel. But it's better than nothing.

Skull can be tricky, but there are a few things to note. Allies can help you, but they get their own Skull Specter to deal with as well. That can be worth it. Some classes have good tools to trivialize those things. They have very high AC, I believe 20, and pretty good saves all around. They hover and they auto hit every turn they're in melee range, so things like Shield or other ways of having high AC are useless. You want hit points and damage resistance. Barbarians are good at killing them. Magic Missile is extremely effective against them. Find a way to get Advantage to overcome their AC. They won't generally have many hit points. The way my DM ran it ended up killing my character, as we had planned for the team Barbarian to help me if I drew it and then we'd fight the two Skull Specters. Our goofass Bard decided to throw out an Inspiration mid-fight and so summoned one of his own as well. Then, thinking we were all in the Skull Specter battle, I cast Bless on all of us. My DM's reading, however, was that I had not previously aided the other two characters and so that summoned two more Skull Specters focused on me. That was it for me. And I can't argue; it's a fair reading of the rules. So if your DM will clarify how that works first, do so. But look at your party, figure out how to overcome an enemy with high AC who doesn't need to make attack rolls, hovers, can phase through solid objects, but doesn't have many hit points. (The bard also died. The barbarian was fine.)

Moon deserves a special mention, as Wish has a lot of utility with the Deck if your DM doesn't mind getting really crazy. And, again, they let you draw from the Deck so probably. One of the standard effects of Wish is that you can "undo a single recent event by forcing a reroll of any roll made within the last round." So if you have a couple Wishes banked, you might be able to undo one draw. Generally you only do this for the game ending cards, the DM will probably appreciate you solving the problem for them. If you drew a Skull and don't think you can beat it, don't undo the draw; just throw an 8th level Magic Missile spell at it. Wish explicitly undoes the effects of the Rogue card.

The Fates explicitly does what I suggest with Moon's Wishes, and it doesn't specify that it needs an action or any other condition to enact. That potentially means it could even reverse the Void or Donjon cards if your DM is generous (although the fact that Euryale names the Fates as an antidote and Void/Donjon don't is an argument against that).

[hotflungwok]

I've only ever seen an encounter with a DOMT go well once, and that was because the person who drew the card that game them wishes used them to reverse all the bad cards. I've seen it ruin several long term campaigns and cause the instant loss of high level characters.

It seems like a fun item, but it's only fun until one of the really bad cards get drawn and then someone gets screwed, which is never fun. I agree with Keravath, it's like playing Russian Roulette. The rewards just do not outweigh the risks involved.

[MrCharlie]

A smart player uses Augury before drawing from a deck of many things.
A smart DM rewrites the deck.

An annoyed person (me) looks over the outcomes and realises that, just like with Wild Magic, it's been heavily weighted towards hurting the user.
There are only 7 or so truly bad wild magic effects, a few really good wild magic effects, and you can eventually roll twice and thus minimize the penalties. Further, the bad things are usually either "Sit in the corner" effects or "everyone is equally screwed" effects, which may be better or worse for the party of the enemies depending on circumstance.

In comparison, the deck of many things is much more deadly. True 50-50 chance, equal chance of really good (magic weapons, attribute increases, Wish spells, even more power re-write reality effects) and instant nearly unrecoverable death or sticky de-buffs.

Also, if DMs are annoyed about augury "cheating", it never says that A. The entity who you ask knows what will happen after you draw a card, B. That it likes you, and corollary to that, C. That is has to tell you the truth. All it says is that the caster beseeches an entity and that this entity gives one of four results.

So either a lie or a "good or bad, who knows" is a valid RAW answer that is entirely within your power to give. Commune works in a similar way. It specifically says the result is random-taking that to the maximum interpretation, shuffling the deck does nothing, and gods don't know what's gonna happen next.

Making a deity/angelic being, the typical assumed target for augury, lie to it's followers is a **** move, but the other is reasonable. On the other hand if you really need to screw with people for your own amusement, and your group is the type to appreciate your sick humor, shuffling a deck "normally" involves separating the cards-in other words, drawing them. All of them.

Giving it to another person under compulsion is usually a good idea though, and in particular lets you game the Wishes, but I'd recommend you explore the consequences of basically making people play Russian roulette with an uber powerful magical artifact. Entities are going to care, both about the means and ends.

[Evaar]

Lately I've been toying with the idea of the Deck as a character origin story. Some entity forced or tricked the character into drawing from the Deck, the end result being a level 1 character. Of course you could go Wild Magic Sorcerer, but there are a few classes that would work with this I think.

[Great Dragon]

I'll be honest. I only allow the DoMT to appear for groups that I've run with for at least 3 months, and have proved themselves to be friendly to each other.
Both my current groups are in this catagory.

One of the Players in my second group actually bought the Deck.
The others were interested, and so I ran it.

But, with my normal Changes to certain Cards:
Donjon instead of Imprisonment - produces a Treasure Map to a Loot Filled Dungeon.
Void instead in sucking your Soul out - it puts a Quest effect on the PC drawing it.

P1 = got a Nemesis and a Fiendish Foe!

P2 = Got a Keep and a Helpful NPC (Knight card)

p3 = Got that Donjon card !
Also got the +50k exp card, and was willing to share with the Group, so as to not jump about 3 levels.

p4 = 1 Question and 1 Wish.

i'm very curious when p4 will use their question.
I have explained that there are "Rules to Wishes".