Artifact Trap: Rubied Death

[Lysander]

Here's an idea I'm thinking of unleashing on some players (with some warning so it isn't unfair):

The Rubied Death is a gorgeous perfectly cut ruby. It bears a mighty curse though. Any time a person deliberately moves the ruby they must pass a DC30 will save, or otherwise be transformed into an identical but non-magical ruby. The transformation is utterly irreversible and fatal, however the ruby still counts as their body and can have Resurrection cast upon it.

This effect is not blocked by using gloves or using a tool to indirectly touch it - even moving the Rubied Death with telekinetic magic can trigger the effect. The only safe way of moving Rubied Death is within an anti-magic field. The gem also transforms undead, constructs, and animals, but the rubies created are flawed and less valuable.

When found by adventurers the Rubied Death is usually buried in a pile of identical gems (its victims), which can be touched and taken from safely until the cursed gem is found.

[DracoDei]

What does it take to tell a mundane ruby from a ruby that is someone's dead body, from the cursed one?

How can you tell which ruby is which person?

The pile sounds like a deadly game of "pick up sticks" since if the cursed ruby moves because of taking a different one from the pile, that counts as moving it. This might actually be a good thing because "Sleight of Hand" skill doesn't get much use.

Can a summoned creature move it and not have the caster of the summoning spell effected?

Will the PCs have a way of casting AMF when they encounter it or not?

[DanielLC]

You don't move any of them until you're prepared to move all of them.

Does the gem itself have to be in an antimagic field, or just the mover? I think the best way to move this would be to make an antimagic field, than toss it into a portable hole. The portable hole can be moved without moving the contents, as they're in a different plane. When you want to get it out, open the portable hole, hop in, cast antimagic field (the hole is just large enough that you can cast the spell while inside without closing the whole thing), then toss it out.

If that doesn't work, that raises the question of how it got there in the first place. Is that where it was made? Did they use miracle?

I think an artifact is a bit much. It's certainly a powerful trap, but it's only slightly more powerful than one that casts finger of death with a high save DC.

[Lysander]

What does it take to tell a mundane ruby from a ruby that is someone's dead body, from the cursed one?

How can you tell which ruby is which person?

The pile sounds like a deadly game of "pick up sticks" since if the cursed ruby moves because of taking a different one from the pile, that counts as moving it. This might actually be a good thing because "Sleight of Hand" skill doesn't get much use.

Can a summoned creature move it and not have the caster of the summoning spell effected?

Will the PCs have a way of casting AMF when they encounter it or not?

There's no way to tell that the created rubies are someone's body, other than casting resurrection on it or perhaps divination spells. It's not an issue though if you see your teammate become a gem and fall to the floor.

And slightly shifting the gem indirectly wouldn't trigger the effect, it'd actually have to be moved. As long as you take from the top it shouldn't be a problem. Or, the gems could be scattered around an area.

Summoned creatures can move it with no risk to the caster, but there's a high chance the creature would get transformed.

[Asheram]

It's an interesting trap.. just... Prepare for abuse.
Soon they'll start to smuggle in pesants to throw at this ruby and flooding the makret with rubies.

[DanielLC]

You could summon fiends and tell them to move the item. Because they're not killed, they don't just go back to the lower planes unharmed. You will slowly, but permanently, drain the denizens of the lower plains, decreasing their power for evil.

Also, you could use the gate spell so you could keep the gems.

How much are the gems worth? How about the lower quality ones from animals and such?

[Juggernaut1981]

Rubied Death = endless cash supply.

For all of you who remember QBasic and Basic languages...

RubiedDeath.bas
10 Hamsters = 2
20 FOR i = 1 to 10,000
30 Hamsters = Hamsters + 1
40 LOOP i
50 Rubies = Hamsters
60 Cash = Rubies x Price
70 Wealth = Wealth + Cash
80 Goto 10


Good idea... BAD execution.
Rubied Death should turn them into something with NO VALUE...
e.g. twigs, stones, piles of coloured dust, feathers, etc, etc, etc

[Belobog]

Rubied Death = endless cash supply.

For all of you who remember QBasic and Basic languages...

RubiedDeath.bas
10 Hamsters = 2
20 FOR i = 1 to 10,000
30 Hamsters = Hamsters + 1
40 LOOP i
50 Rubies = Hamsters
60 Cash = Rubies x Price
70 Wealth = Wealth + Cash
80 Goto 10


Good idea... BAD execution.
Rubied Death should turn them into something with NO VALUE...
e.g. twigs, stones, piles of coloured dust, feathers, etc, etc, etc

Perhaps the rubies themselves are worthless? Chipped, pitted, full of impurities that ruin the color, etc...basically, no self-respecting jeweler would ever take one of the gems made from this object. Cuz let's face it, now matter how pretty they are, people are just ugly inside. :smallamused:

Alternatively, a Rubied Death could try to make another one of itself from someone who touches it. That way, they could technically never be sold.

[Stegyre]

Rubied Death = endless cash supply.

For all of you who remember QBasic and Basic languages...

RubiedDeath.bas

***

Good idea... BAD execution.
Rubied Death should turn them into something with NO VALUE...
e.g. twigs, stones, piles of coloured dust, feathers, etc, etc, etc
Pretty much what I was thinking, although I was going to phrase it as, "Another great use for low-level minions!"

[quick_comment]

To address the infinite cash issue:

Make the size of the gem proportional to the level of the transformee. Larger souls become larger gems.

Also, make the clarity of the gem related to the virtue of the transformee. So if the players start abusing it by getting high priests of pelor to touch it, now you have an excuse for having high level paladins running them down.

[Lysander]

The gems scattered around Rubied Death would usually be valuable, to tempt players into touching them. However additional gems they create would scale in value depending what the creature is. A hamster would probably make a tiny dull red pebble, a true ruby but barely worth more than a rock.

And yes, they could make some serious money by murdering peasants with this should they prove that unethical. But murder is both profitable and unprofitable. The gems they create would be valuable, but would it be equal in value to all the enemies they'd rightfully earn? You can sell kidneys for money on the black market, but that doesn't really provide an incentive to kill random strangers for their kidneys. Especially for a non-evil party that has legit ways of making cash.

[Stormthorn]

How can you tell which ruby is which person?

Im assuming the answer is "you cant" because if you could then the one ruby that isnt a person is the trapped one and you could ignore it. Just start casting Freedom at random and hope the parties rogue pops out.


You can sell kidneys for money on the black market, but that doesn't really provide an incentive to kill random strangers for their kidneys. Especially for a non-evil party that has legit ways of making cash.

Good point. This gem is only a problem if you cant control the munchkins in your group. Or if your group is all epic level chaotic evil people.

[Juggernaut1981]

I have played too many enterprising nutjobs in my time who would look at Rubied Death (after they figured out what it did) and not care... Hamsters make themselves (maybe a few coppers a week to keep them alive and breeding)... even bad rubies (worth 1 or 2gp a pop) are valuable to sell to commoners or jewellers who want cheap stuff...

Also, if the hamster-ruby market fades... I can work on other livestock that may not breed so fast but are still worth converting to rubies... If I REALLY wanted to be a nutter about it, I'd be tempted to find some way of building a "Ruby-Abbattoir"...

Room at the top with door for animals
Trap door/slippery slope
Section in the middle with ruby on pendulum (so animals can move the ruby and become rubies)
Bucket at the bottom to collect other rubies (not Rubied Death)

If I wanted to be horridly evil, I'd make it into a carnival maze or something similar and periodically drop a peasant into it (after I'd collected a small fee of 5cp for allowing them into the carnival maze of smoke & mirrors)... Woo hoo cash machine...

[Haven]

What does it take to tell a mundane ruby from a ruby that is someone's dead body, from the cursed one?

The cursed one is magical, the rubies it creates aren't, so you could do it with Detect Magic.

Although it might be cooler if it created copies of itself. It's like a zombie apocalypse, but shinier.

[Pyrusticia]

Hmm...one possible fix would be that when moved, the ruby not only transforms the mover into a non-magical replica of itself, it also teleports itself to a new, random location in the world (multi-verse?). In effect, it disappears, leaving the new, non-magical ruby behind in its place. Thes would make it very difficult to turn this thing into a perpeptual cash machine.

As an interesting side effect, this should also make it harder for the party to figure out what happened to their comrade...if they neglected to detect magic on the ruby beforehand, all they see is their party member disappear. They have no idea that the original ruby is what actually disappeared, and what they hold in their hand is their former comrade... :smallamused:

[Night-breeze]

If we assume a teleporting ruby, leaving a full functional copy of it behind, then:

An apocalypse descends. The Bearer of the Crimson Gem plays "catch" with random people, a gem teleporting away and another one going to another unsuspecting victim. How many months or years before all the people in the world realize that touching a ruby is probably a bad idea?

[DracoDei]

I agree that teleportation should not be combined with "cloning" of powers. One, or the other, but not both.

[DrakebloodIV]

Howzaboot it reacts to magic in such a way that it forms a new gem. So any attempt to teleport it, summon a magical creature to move it, perhaps even to identify it with divination would result in said magic effect turning into a new Rubied Death and the caster being turned into a ruby. Also, shouldn't the ruby increase in size and quality based on the number of jems it has accumulated, so the deadly one is always the most beautiful?

I can so see a thousand year old one of these with just hundreds and thousands of these just piled up, from tiny ruby dust made by spiders jarring it to massive rubies the size of someone's head from ancient dragons trying to add it to their horde. And in the center of it all a massive gem with a flickering fire to it.

[Lysander]

Here's a way to curb abuse. Rubied Death was built as a trap for the greedy, and is designed to target the avaricious person who wants to move it, not necessarily the person who touches it.

So if you hurl a hamster at it, the hamster isn't transformed. You are. Animals can sense something wrong and won't willingly pick up any of the rubies, but a well trained animal could be coaxed into doing so by its trainer. This would likely turn the trainer into a gem, and the animal would usually drop Rubied Death to investigate.

If you trick a peasant or other sentient being into willingly touching the gem they'll transform, but so will you.

If you force someone at swordpoint into touching the gem they won't transform, but you will. Rubied Death won't actually affect a person who actively doesn't want any of the rubies. This doesn't apply to requests, for example a party leader unknowingly telling an ally or ordering a subordinate "go collect the rubies" would only hurt the ally.

This also means that you can't trigger the effect by brushing the gem accidentally, or moving it unintentionally by dislodging a gem it's resting on.

---

And here's a new trick for Rubied Death. Whenever someone touches it and transforms, it randomly switches places with another victim gem in the immediate vicinity. So this prevents the remaining gems from being safe.

Detect Magic can't pinpoint which gem is Rubied Death, but will detect strong magic. When a victim gem is taken away it will register as non-magical but have a faint aura indicating a magical origin. A DC 30 spellcraft check will reveal it as a victim of Rubied Death.

[Pyrusticia]

If we assume a teleporting ruby, leaving a full functional copy of it behind, then:

An apocalypse descends. The Bearer of the Crimson Gem plays "catch" with random people, a gem teleporting away and another one going to another unsuspecting victim. How many months or years before all the people in the world realize that touching a ruby is probably a bad idea?

Um, the one left behind is non-magical. I made that clear in my post. So there's only one that's teleporting around causing trouble...from the viewpoint of any group the finds it, the first one to touch it disappears, and then it's safe to handle (although, of course, they're really handling their former colleague, and not the artifact ruby).

[Bouregard]

If the transformed victims of the Rubied Death get seperated from their creating Rubied Death (more then 100y) they turn to worthless dust, fully destroying the body.
Cash machine problem solved. And far more deadly.

[Night-breeze]

Um, the one left behind is non-magical. I made that clear in my post.

I know, I know. Mine was not criticism, merely a hypothesis.

[Juggernaut1981]

If the transformed victims of the Rubied Death get seperated from their creating Rubied Death (more then 100y) they turn to worthless dust, fully destroying the body.
Cash machine problem solved. And far more deadly.

Oh no, cash machine system now just became FRAUD MACHINE 12,000!!!
I make a bunch of hamseter-rubies, sell them to merchants inside a nice box. Merchants travel away, rubies are now worth squat and I have cash.
End result = PC gets cash, market for rubies is identical because the rubies I make never really make it into the market... SCORE

Sure I may get a reputation as a fraudulent con-artist... but isn't that what Hat of Disguise is for???

---------------------------------------
Rubied Death
Artifact
Rumour has it that this exceedingly large ruby was a form of poetic justice unleashed upon the multiverse by [insert god most likely to indulge in poetic justice]. It is said that those with greed in their hearts are physically transformed into rubies and their souls used to improve the lustre and appeal of Rubied Death.

Whenever this ruby is picked up and stored by a being in any way, Rubied Death will have the following effects upon them:
- their physical body and all equipment in their possession at the time will be turned into a ruby worth 100gp per ECL
- their soul will be trapped inside Rubied Death, meaning that spells such as Resurrection will not work
- the Rubied Death will teleport itself to a random location in the multiverse

Legend has it that [insert god here] may decide to release souls trapped within Rubied Death, but this would require you travelling to this god and personally petitioning for that individual's soul. The god will make their decision based upon this petition and the life of the soul, which they will be able to learn from the soul trapped inside Rubied Death.

[Haven]

good ideas

I like this. It could even just be an extension of the "touching it with a tool" clause.