Magic Item Ideas in a unique environment

[Dr paradox]

hallo, all! I'm stuck on a bit of a conundrum here, regarding the loot in an abandoned magicians guild.

you see, in the old empire, magic worked a little differently; specifically, people tended to rely on mechanics and science more for day to day problems. wagons, horses, airships, pulleys, et cetera, because Magic wasn't yet specialized enough. as a side note, because so much less magic was used, magic started to build up. eventually, it ended up being let out rather explosively in an event called the Mage Wars, but that's beside the point.

back at this time, magic tended to lack subtlety. it dealt in powerful absolutes - there was little to no middle ground between no magic, and a roiling fireball as hot as the surface of the sun. the difference between magic then and magic now is the difference between a drill and a sledgehammer. the hammer is REALLY good at making holes quickly, but you can't really make a small hole with it.

the question is, what sorts of magic items would the party find down there? I'm looking for flavor more than crunch, but if anyone has anything specific, it's D&D 4e.

so far, I have two of them, both of them rings.

the "Ring of Tragic Ends" kills the wearer for one week, and if at the end of that week, they're still wearing the ring and haven't been, say beheaded or drained of all blood, they come back to life.

the "Ring of the Heat Sink" provides the wearer with a resistance to fire, but a vulnerability to ice, and once per day, they can allow the ring to absorb a certain large amount of fire damage, but also take cold damage. sometime soon, they can then release the heat as a spell like ability. basically the ring absorbs all ambient thermal energy.

any other ideas?

[icefractal]

There was a thread on RPG.net, which I can't find at the moment, that had a somewhat similar concept to this. IIRC, magic was inherently "always at maximum", in the form of objects/materials, and the ability to make/use magic items was the ability to reduce that.

So for example, there might be a chunk of iron that radiates incredible heat, enough to set anything nearby on fire. When made into a sword and used by a qualified wielder, the heat can be restricted to the blade only, and turned off when not in use. Or a crystal that tries to fly skyward with great force, and would be lost if taken outdoors; harnessed, it can be used to hover or levitate.

In game terms, I'm thinking this would be represented by items with continuous properties or at-will abilities, and potentially an uncontrolled surge effect under the right circumstances (maybe if the wielder is stunned while the item is active, or on rolling a natural 1).

[Cespenar]

"Gauntlets of Preservation" that give you -4 to Strength, but for 1 round per day, you can activate it to give you +20 to Strength.

"Boots of Great Ease" that turns all your normal movement into teleportation, but you are still limited to your normal movement speed.

And an idea stolen from Dune, "Ring of Force Field" that evokes an explosion on both the caster and the wearer each time the wearer gets hit by a ray spell. Explosion is 20' radius, d4 force damage for every level of the spell.

[navar100]

Use a 3E magic item that works according to 3E rules. Something Happened in the Mage Wars that caused magic to be changed so drastically from what it used to be.

[Dr paradox]

I suppose that might work to some degree, in that magic tended to be more powerful compared to other sorts of combat at higher levels...

but the problem is that it's not really less complicated. the whole "Less complicated" part of that is largely why Magic wasn't widely used. well, come to think of it, the Mage Wars were started because wizards were starting to get RIGOROUS in their magical experiments, and learned how to pull some of the crazy stuff...

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Like splitting the Atom

GROUP, don't you dare look!

I might give that a shot... something from Pathfinder...

[Mastikator]

Fireworks, a two part item, one magic that propells and one that explodes.

[Prime32]

There was a thread on RPG.net, which I can't find at the moment, that had a somewhat similar concept to this. IIRC, magic was inherently "always at maximum", in the form of objects/materials, and the ability to make/use magic items was the ability to reduce that.

So for example, there might be a chunk of iron that radiates incredible heat, enough to set anything nearby on fire. When made into a sword and used by a qualified wielder, the heat can be restricted to the blade only, and turned off when not in use. Or a crystal that tries to fly skyward with great force, and would be lost if taken outdoors; harnessed, it can be used to hover or levitate.

In game terms, I'm thinking this would be represented by items with continuous properties or at-will abilities, and potentially an uncontrolled surge effect under the right circumstances (maybe if the wielder is stunned while the item is active, or on rolling a natural 1).

Reminds me of the Blast Sword from Slayers, which was so sharp that it was almost unusable.