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View Full Version : DM Help Suggestions for Incomparable Magic Items?



Lord Lemming
2020-04-04, 05:10 PM
I'm designing/playtesting an RPG system where pretty much any magic item encountered provides an 'incomparable' effect, rather than +1 stat bonuses. The problem with this, is that you have to get extra creative in order to come up magic items, particularly since about half the magic items encountered will telepathically list off their names and histories to their finders when first touched. So far, my short list of magic items is:

Steadfast Aegis: A shield that prevents enemies from moving past you unless they pass a Will save. The player who found it uses dual flails as his weapons, so he strapped it to his back so that he could get the magical benefit, though he loses out on the defense benefit of the actual shield.

Reaver: An executioner's blade (two-handed sword with increased damage and decreased accuracy) that restores health to the user on a kill. The player who first picked it up heard its tale of blood and vengeance, and without a word stuffed it into a sack filled with dead monsters. He later tied it to the lamppost he uses as a club.

A small, flying sailing ship, relic of a bygone era...

The Gauntlets of Kreishe, which provide a huge boost to strength, but apply damage to the person who puts them on when donned, and cannot be kept on while sleeping, so you can't just avoid the damage penalty by keeping them on all the time.

Sunlight arrows, more relics which contain liquid sunlight, which can burst over a battlefield to illuminate it briefly (monsters in this world hate sunlight).

Prison book, a book which opens to reveal a hole in its pages leading to an extradimensional prison cell. Could theoretically be used for item storage, but very impractical for that purpose.

Seeker's Gaze: A mask which allows the wearer to spot Anathema (the most common kind of monster in the setting), whatever cover or disguise they use.

Hatred's Mark: A branding iron which forces those branded to do the bidding of those who do the branding, unless they pass a Will save. Sounds overpowered, but the PC who stole it has been trying to get it to work for the better part of two sessions, and the dice are not in his favor.

Cold Night: A cloak that allows short-range teleportation between shadows.

So, that's the general shape of the kind of items I'm trying to come up with. Anyone have any ideas?

Wraith
2020-04-04, 06:09 PM
The Ossuary Key - A key made of bone with a rounded, skull shaped tip. It's a magical skeleton key that will open any lock, however every time it is used a tiny hatchmark appears on the skull. When the hatchmarks reach a given - possibly unknown? - number, then the lock opened instead opens a portal to a nightmarish realm of death and madness, and the denizens immediately begin flocking out.

The Allblade - What appears to be a one-and-a-half-hands long sword hilt resting in a short sword-sized sheathe. When the weapon is drawn, the user can mentally decide what sort of weapon they want to draw; anything from a sewing needle (with over-sized hilt) right up to 6ft of Zweihander will appear out of the extra dimensional space, exquisitely crafted, and can be sheathed again without mishap. Trying to summon a none sword-like weapon (club, axe, bullwhip, etc) makes the weapon impossible to draw.

Darkstone - Less an item and more a sort of magical mineral, darkstone appears to be a fist-sized piece of jet or obsidian. When broken, darkstone emits a 20ft sphere of magical Darkness which blots out any natural light and severely dampens any kind of torch or lamp used by those within. The effect is centred on the stone - carrying it with you makes the sphere of darkness follow with each half at the centre. Creatures with Darkvision can see through the darkness normally, and the effect lasts for 12 hours. Breaking one of the half-pieces causes a 10ft sphere that lasts for 6 hours, and so on to a minimum of 5ft/1.5 hours.

Skyward Sandals - A pair of sandals that allows the wearer to jump on air as if it were solid. The first time they attempt to "double jump" they succeed automatically, but a third jump requires a DC5 athletics check, a fourth jump requires DC10, a fifth requires DC15 and so on until the check is failed, at which point the sandals cease to function for 60 seconds. They do not allow the wearer to stand in the air - if they stop jumping, the sandals are not deactivated as above but gravity immediately takes effect.

Immolatum - A magic wand with a seared, blackened tip. As long as the user holds the wand by its handle with at least two of their hands, anything that touches the tip will immediately burst into flames and burn ferociously, even if it is made of a traditionally non-flammable material. The object (up to a 10ft x 10ft x 10ft cube in size) will burn up to its melting point within 60 seconds, will continue to burn for as long as the wand is touching it, and the instant that the wand is removed then the flame will act like a normal, non-magical fire. The wand itself is immune to flame, heat, or any burning effect, and thus far has not found a material that it cannot heat to destruction.

InvisibleBison
2020-04-04, 06:40 PM
The Hat of Salvation - This goofy-looking cloth hat provides a +2 bonus to all saving throws when worn. Additionally, the wearer may choose to automatically succeed on a saving throw; doing so renders the Hat non-functional for 24 hours.

The Oven of Anguish - This large metal oven is engraved with images of torture. Anyone who eats food cooked in the oven must make a DC 15 Will save or be subjected to a curse of anguish for 24 hours, which increases all damage they take by 5 points.

Tylear's Bone Axe - The haft of this one-handed axe was made from the thigh bone of a notorious criminal. Once per day, the wielder of the axe can summon the ghost of Tylear to assist them in any sort of illegal activity for up to 1 minute.

NichG
2020-04-04, 09:00 PM
Guiding Star: Amulet which causes light that only the wearer can see to shine straight in the direction of the user's intent, regardless of environmental conditions or mental status conditions. Intended target has to be something the user has specific awareness of - not 'nearest enemy' or 'nearest liar' but 'direction to Goblin #3 I was just fighting' or 'direction to my childhood friend Jaddock'. A peculiar property of this guiding light is that following it allows the wearer to side-step confounding effects - the user can navigate straight to an invisible enemy or one concealed by fog (though it doesn't negate any sort of miss chances/etc provided by those things), or walk directly to an intended point even if under the effects of illusions or confusions.

Bloodwell: This item first appears to be an empty potion flask. However, every time the holder takes a sentient life, it re-fills with a dose of blood-red liquid. A dose of liquid applied to a grievous wound, amputation, etc, causes regeneration of the affected area - lost limbs, eyes, etc are restored fully (mechanically, this could be something like healing up to 50% of a character's maximum HP in one shot). The bloodwell holds up to 3 doses at a time.

Far-reaching gloves: When worn, these gloves create a floating extension of the wearer's hands whose movements are exaggerated copies of the wearer's movements. The hands are able to touch and interact with things (and are in fact fully corporeal), and the wearer feels them as if the hands were their own and can exert force through them (and have force exerted back on them in the same fashion). Effectively, this lets the user multiply their natural reach by a factor of 3, though the exaggerated movement of the ghost hands makes it difficult to use them to wield weapons or other heavy objects at range (effectively, it is as if those objects have triple the inertia compared to if wielded directly) - someone who still wants to try can do so, just at a significant to-hit penalty, but unarmed combat usage would not have the same penalty. The extended reach can be used in a variety of ways - gripping the edge of a cliff and pulling ones-self up from further away than normal, distant thievery, etc.

Daredevil's Ring: A dangerous item that encourages its wearer to risk their life. 1/day if the wearer goes from full HP to dead in a single event (either from damage or from some kind of death effect/save or die), the ring restores them to life with full HP to the location they were at at the start of the round.

Friend's Pouch: Items placed in the pouch may randomly vanish and be replaced by other things. Generally the thing that replaces the item is biased towards things that fill an immediate need at the moment that the user checks the pouch, but the sacrificial item must have been there for some time previously (roughly the swap takes place after an item has been in the pouch for a few hours, so it can't be overloaded on demand). The pouch tends not to swap items that have specific importance due to their relationship with organizations in the world, cosmic forces, etc. Basically what's really going on is that there's an alternate-reality version of the user who is also using the pouch, but is just a bit out of sync. So things that wouldn't answer that hypothetical version of the bearer's immediate needs aren't swapped, and it's beyond the power of the pouch to displace artifacts or cosmic items into that alternate reality. The scale is more like 'enough money to buy that item I want' or 'a healing potion when I'm hurt', though the more random or extreme the user's personality, the more extreme results will emerge from the pouch.

Warden's Quill: Though it's called a quill, this is actually a twisted obsidian dagger. As a weapon, it is sub-par even for a usual non-magical dagger due to having bad balance/etc, but the tip in particular is exceptionally sharp and can score metal or other hard surfaces (but can't penetrate more than 1mm or so). If the user draws a creature's blood with the quill and uses it to inscribe a line on a surface, that line attempts to anchor a vertical barrier which cannot be passed by that creature for the next 24 hours no matter what (attempts, because the barrier must form a seal with a contiguous ceiling - if there are gaps in the upper part, the barrier fails totally). If the line is a closed circle, then the barrier prevents even means of extradimensional travel, gates and portals, etc.

D&D_Fan
2020-04-04, 09:19 PM
Wizard's Circlet
A magic circlet, that lets you cast powerful spells but in order to do so, you and the mind of the wizard who powers the helm must agree to cast it. Otherwise it is useless. Each circlet has a different wizard, and it can have different alignments. By powerful, I mean 6-8th level spells.

Eye of Narraration
Goggles, a fake, eye or eyepatch, glasses, or contacts that when seen through narrarate and add comentary to whtever scene you look at. Has multiple possible voices and personalities found in variants:
Loud Sports Commentator
Harsh Movie Critic
Bland News Anchor
Bad Comedian
Can be used to warn the player with spells that detect traps, alignment, and poison.



Far-reaching gloves: When worn, these gloves create a floating extension of the wearer's hands whose movements are exaggerated copies of the wearer's movements. The hands are able to touch and interact with things (and are in fact fully corporeal), and the wearer feels them as if the hands were their own and can exert force through them (and have force exerted back on them in the same fashion). Effectively, this lets the user multiply their natural reach by a factor of 3, though the exaggerated movement of the ghost hands makes it difficult to use them to wield weapons or other heavy objects at range (effectively, it is as if those objects have triple the inertia compared to if wielded directly) - someone who still wants to try can do so, just at a significant to-hit penalty, but unarmed combat usage would not have the same penalty. The extended reach can be used in a variety of ways - gripping the edge of a cliff and pulling ones-self up from further away than normal, distant thievery, etc.

Homestuck Reference?? :smallwink::smallwink::smallwink:

Lord Lemming
2020-04-04, 10:23 PM
The Ossuary Key - A key made of bone with a rounded, skull shaped tip. It's a magical skeleton key that will open any lock, however every time it is used a tiny hatchmark appears on the skull. When the hatchmarks reach a given - possibly unknown? - number, then the lock opened instead opens a portal to a nightmarish realm of death and madness, and the denizens immediately begin flocking out.


I like this one, and it feels like the sort of thing that would fit in my setting.



Bloodwell: This item first appears to be an empty potion flask. However, every time the holder takes a sentient life, it re-fills with a dose of blood-red liquid. A dose of liquid applied to a grievous wound, amputation, etc, causes regeneration of the affected area - lost limbs, eyes, etc are restored fully (mechanically, this could be something like healing up to 50% of a character's maximum HP in one shot). The bloodwell holds up to 3 doses at a time.

Daredevil's Ring: A dangerous item that encourages its wearer to risk their life. 1/day if the wearer goes from full HP to dead in a single event (either from damage or from some kind of death effect/save or die), the ring restores them to life with full HP to the location they were at at the start of the round.


I like both of these. The Bloodwell has a similarly-themed effect as Reaver, but it's more generally usable. Since 5/6ths of my party seem to have some aversion to using swords, that's a good thing. As for the Daredevil's Ring, I can see this party doing some VERY dumb things with it. :smallbiggrin:

MoiMagnus
2020-04-05, 12:40 PM
Some from a campaign I played.

Name of the Rose: A dagger that allow its yielder to read some of the memories of the person it harms.

Black Tea Cup: As an action, this cup of tea fill up with a dark liquid. Drinking it temporary allow to "share senses" with nearby shadows, allowing you to move your conscience around to feel what objects and creature are in them. However a warning: it is addictive, and should you use it too often, or go too far from you body, your consciousness might dissolve itself into the shadows.

Moonlight Sonata: A leather armour, with the appearance of an dress. It gives advantages for hiding in darkness. It protects against death: when at 0HP, you are automatically stabilised (so cannot die just because of death saving throw).

Karnis' Feat: A dragon scale armour, made by a dragon hunter who manage to capture part of the spirit of the dragon inside the armour. Anybody who don it can summon the power of this spirit. And the end of its turn, the character can roll a d6, or re-roll the d6 if it was not yet used. It the result of this d6 is X, it can be used to make an incoming attack that would hit by X or less, alternatively, you can use it to make one of your attack that missed by X or less succeed]. However, if the result is 6, you are possessed by the spirit of the dragon for one round. The dragon's goal is to kill your allies (or anybody that look like an adventurer or a dragon hunter), and he will use this 6 as a bonus on its attack if possible.

NichG
2020-04-05, 01:21 PM
Because I'm bored and it's fun.

Fork and Plate of Substitution: Useful for nobles who want to save face, the Fork swaps whatever it picks up with whatever meal is stored on the Plate at the moment the food enters the user's mouth. Effectively, you can appear to be eating what is served to you, but instead actually be eating a separate meal entirely. Also good for preventing poisonings, and for elaborate heist plans. The magic of the fork and plate prevents mixing, cross-contamination, etc.

Mask of Precision Acting: Someone wearing this mask and participating in a play or fictional re-enactment will behave precisely as the character they are supposed to be representing would act in that situation. In order for this to work, the mask must be primed with some personal belonging, hair or blood, etc from the intended person. The mask allows an actor to express and act upon knowledge that the actor themselves does not possess, but external forms of control magic interfere with the mask's function - you could in principle have someone wear this mask and give a password that only they knew when presented with a circumstance that would cause them to say the password naturally, but if you tried to Dominate them with a spell and order them to tell you the password, it would fail. When worn too long, or if the scenario is sufficiently unrealistic, the character the mask is emulating may 'break the fourth wall' and realize what is going on - this can potentially be dangerous to the user.

That Which Demands Loyalty: This magical item takes the form of a small wheeled cabinet designed with curtains and fold-out wings to shield the view of the interior to a single person at a time when opened. Someone who is made to peer into the cabinet sees the most convincing true reason that they should be loyal to the current owner of the item - generally in the form of a vision of the future. Those who witness this have a deep compulsion not to speak of what they see - it's perceived as if speaking the vision would guarantee its failure to come true or worse would even curse the person with the opposite. This compulsion is the only overtly magical residual effect of the cabinet - the vision itself is convincing or not on a purely mundane basis; and while the vision is drawn from plausible events, it is by no means fated to come into being whether or not its contents are spoken. People with no real reason to be loyal to the owner of the item often see visions of themselves tricking, deceiving, or betraying the owner at some future point where that betrayal is most effective, so pushing the power of this item too hard will tend to backfire. However, for people who are on the fence, this is the equivalent of a very effective Diplomacy check (or system equivalent). The duration of the vision and the real time passage can be significantly different (to the extreme of days or months of subjective time), and so the change in behavior and attitude of those exposed to the cabinet can be shocking to external observers.

Terraformer's Pendulum: By raising the pendulum and setting it to swing, the user brings about a temporary change in the local terrain. Despite being hand-held and fairly light, the pendulum swings at a magically slow rate - one oscillation every 30 minutes. While the pendulum is at center, the local terrain is the natural terrain of the area. While the pendulum is at one extreme, the local terrain becomes more dry, mountainous, craggy, and obstructed, and at the other extreme it becomes humid, flat, and potentially swampy or flooded. Permanent structures and the like are not harmed by these changes - any damage done to said structures during an extreme of the pendulum's swing disappears when the effect ends. Stopping the pendulum causes the terrain to slowly revert to normal within the next minute. A skilled user can torque the pendulum to control some details of the transformation - encouraging caves, variations in temperature, etc.

The Ergosphere: A spherical black sapphire pendant limned with faint glowing light, this pendant can be activated 3/day when the user moves to create a 10 meter radius around the user's path which forbids all movement opposite the direction of the user's travel for one round, including that of projectiles.

Fragment of Inevitability: A sliver of golden crystal which can be used as a reagent for a spell, affixed to a weapon, etc. When used against a target who would normally possess an immunity against the associated spell or weapon, the fragment is consumed in order to outright negate that immunity for this one effect. This occurs after to-hit rolls, saves, etc have been rolled - the fragment is never consumed on an effect which would not actually go through, but it has no power to guarantee auto-hits or force targets to auto-fail saves.

Jitterboots: These shoes enable the wearer to move a short distance (1 meter/5ft/etc based on system granularity) whenever they dodge an attack - be it a melee strike, ranged attack, or area of effect that they save against (assuming D&D-like Reflex save sorts of things).

Ring of Respite: For one round per day, ignore all negative status conditions - up to and including death - impacting the wearer. Yes, this means that if you die with this on, you can be a crummy form of undead that gets to act only once per day until someone removes the ring.

Grim Portent
2020-04-06, 05:02 PM
The Abyssal Shard: A single fragment of a broken mirror. When broken any being caught in the reflection as the break occurs is banished into the Abyss (or other suitable plane/place/dimension) until the next time it is midnight at the place they were banished from, at which time the victim/s or their remains reappear where they previously stood.

The Hammer of the Underworld: This hammer bestows immense strength to whoever wields it, their blows crater the ground, demolish walls and scatter enemies like leaves. The hammer is however possessed by a greedy and cruel spirit that seeks to own any objects of great beauty it encounters and will attempt to persuade it's wielder to take them by any means necessary. If the wielder refuses the hammer can attempt to dominate their willpower with an opposed check or saving throw. The domination ends once the desired item is in the wielder's possession, but they cannot willingly part with the item even once direct control has ended without the hammer attempting to take control again.

The Slime Pits: Rare and perverse objects, slime pits are large semi-organic structures infused with unwholesome magic. They can be used to rapidly produce inferior versions of living creatures by draining the vitality of the surrounding land, or if the land is already barren they can be fueled by any easily digestible organic matter such as meat, soft vegetation or rotted slurry, though they recquire vast quantities of it. Small slime pits can be used to produce a single creature at a time, but they can grow larger as they feed on the land and produce more and more creatures at a time.

Creatures birthed from a slime pit emerge in a physical state slightly less than full adulthood relative for their species, are sterile and visibly deformed, in addition to suffering some stat penalties and/or an aversion to sunlight. They are not inherently loyal to the master of their slime pit, but are usually easily recruited to their creator's cause.

EricAlvin
2020-04-06, 08:46 PM
Otherworldly Contract: This appears to be a blank piece of paper until someone gets close enough to read it. Once close enough to read it, a contract appears, with a line at the bottom for signing. This contract is written by a powerful entity that is (in most cases) not from the world or plane of existence the contract is currently on (such as a demon, a deity, a genie, or other powerful entity). It is written in a language the reader can understand, and the text is only visible to the reader. Anyone else reading the paper sees a contract written for them, instead. Creatures who cannot normally read instead receive the information that would be on the contract telepathically, and can understand it, so long as they are touching it. It offers something to the reader that they need or want, and can be almost anything (such as offering a health potion to a reader that's wounded or offering to teleport the reader to the destination they had been searching for for years). In exchange, however, it states something they must do for the entity, with the difficulty of the task generally being based on the estimated difficulty of the reader to accomplish or acquire whatever they were offered. If the thing offered to the reader is something they need at the time of signing, and what they must do for the entity is not something that can be done instantly at the time of signing, a deadline is also listed on the contract, as well as a punishment for failing to meet the deadline. If the reader willingly signs the contract (or, if they are unable to sign it, fully and willingly agree to it mentally) on the line, the contract appears blank to them for a full day, and they have a picture-perfect mental image of the contract (as it appeared to them at the time of signing) they can bring up at any time. Once the agreement is fulfilled, they recieve whatever was offered to them (or, if they received that at the beginning of the contract, then they avoid the punishment listed on the contract). A user can have multiple ongoing agreements at once, but may stop receiving offers if they repeatedly fail to uphold their end of the deal. The offer listed on the contract can change as well, if the needs and wants of the person it's directed towards change. The entity that writes the contract can also change, and the writer is often dependent on their influence on the location and the reader, as well as how well they can fulfill the readers needs.