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View Full Version : What are some good magic items you have made or played with



valcorwabajak
2013-02-09, 04:18 AM
What kind of funny or interesting situations have magic items got you into and whats the best magic item you've ever had

to start you off I once had a vial of green liquid that marked any item it touched and from then on anyone who wishes for that item eg. a sword will have this item appear next to them or if possible it will appear in their hands it can also be set to appear to people who wished for something completely different so for instance somebody wishes for a sword they get a boulder covered in harmful sigils and explosive runes!:smallamused:

ArcturusV
2013-02-09, 04:48 AM
Well, one I had a lot of fun with was a Staff of Sand Control. The DM at one point had given me this supernatural ability to "Unconsciously control sand" due to binding with a spirit. Due to RP events it didn't last long as the spirit who gave me that ability Pokemon Evolved (More or less as a quest reward) and no longer granted me that power.

Now... as written, the power was SUPPOSED to be minor. It was basically to make it so I wouldn't treat things like sand dunes (We were in the desert after all) as difficult terrain, etc.

... I broke the HELL out of that power. It became everything from a Moped/surfboard to travel with, to free Combat Damage, to DOOM ability. So suffice to say I was sad to see it go.

But the spirit was still bound to me. And it still existed. And it still had memories. My character was a "Dark Paladin" so he had "The Gift" and could cast spells, I had an earth elemental focus so it fit. And he allowed me to Enchant my staff (I used a staff as a weapon exclusively not because it was the best but for flavor reasons), to no only be a magic weapon but to have this power in it as well.

We left the desert shortly after I did that to my staff. I never really got to use the Staff of Sand Control. Lo and behold however, I think my DM forgot about the Staff and that it had that ability (And several others I enchanted in over time). We end up about 6 months later in Real Time back in the desert.

... I become a nigh unstoppable DOOM god. My natural magical power, and the magic I've put into the staff is so powerful that my Sand Control effect is basically "Manipulate all the terrain within 100 yards however you want". Nobody can hit me. I can hide from all attacks, I can attack people in ways they can't avoid. I just up and SLAUGHTERED every challenge due to it. With a minor power that the DM didn't think twice about giving me at the time.

The whole Sand Control thing wasn't supposed to be a big deal. But I had an Outside the Box mindset to magic in that game that none of the other players had. They saw spells like "Oh... I can move dirt. Whooo. I can dig a hole if I need a place to sleep". I saw it as "Hmm... I can move dirt... and we have to clear these orcs out of a fortress in a mountain pass... I'mma trigger an avalanche to wipe out most of the fort. With a first level throwaway spell no one thinks is worth a damn."

It's a memorable item (And now a major artifact in that campaign world).

Averis Vol
2013-02-09, 05:25 AM
We once had a cursed morningstar being used by our cleric that, in effect, made her revere it as a god.....which Pelor wasn't particularly pleased about, being her patron deity and everything :P So for half a level she lost her divine spellcasting, which SUCKED as she was beatstick supreme. but, after a while, she started drawing spells again and none of us knew why.

It wasn't until one of us woke for our shift early and saw her praying fanatically to the mace that we noticed "****, the mace is a god."

so from then on she was Nimm, high priest of the mace. :smallbiggrin:

Rolled A Three
2013-02-09, 09:53 AM
Once, while escaping a Mormon/Paladin stronghold, I managed to charm an enchanted talking sword named Silver Tongue into my possesion with my sailor mouth. He provided helpful, yet cryptic advice...when not cussing and bad mouthing my teammates.

Tetraplex
2013-02-10, 11:59 PM
Not one of mine, but a friend's DM once left a staff lying around in a Necromancer's tower that contained the personality and abilities of its previous owner, posing as a living weapon. The party, having just fought through some tough enemies, assumed it loot and the wizard kept it. Not long after, he began to act oddly and eventually became entirely possessed, claiming to be the necromancer from before. Not sure what happened next, but it seems like a cool way to keep your evil spellcaster in the game. Just transplant your soul into your phylactery and possess someone while taking their power as a bonus!

Also, a suit of armor that resizes you to fit it, adjusting your stats to match.

Sith_Happens
2013-02-11, 12:26 AM
My DM has obviously never watched or read Naruto, and thought it would be a good idea to turn me into Gaara.

Yeah, he probably should have done his homework on that one. And for that matter, so should you have, since I see nothing about carrying around a Portable Hole full of sand for you to control when not in the desert.

Kane0
2013-02-11, 01:03 AM
Gauntlets of the warlock - Held a single eldritch blast in it to be used by the wearer whenever they like, exactly as if the contributing warlock had.
Eg. I wear the gauntlets, a friendly warlock casts a Vitriolic Cone 'into' it. When combat starts, we both open up with a vitriolic cone each, and he puts another one back in after combat ends.
Or alternatively, an enemy warlock targets me with a brimstone spear, my gauntlets catch it and for my turn i use it on one of his mooks.

Earring of Minor Magical Marvels - It was an earring that allowed the use of prestidigitation at will by touching it. Two party members bought one each and spent the next half dozen sessions in an ever escalating prank war.

Curseblade - It was a standard +1 ghost touch longsword, but could bestow lesser curses (as the spell) on a hit twice per day (but only non-combat curses, such as the inability to have female children or forever cursed to lose large gambles). It also had the unique ability to make existing curses real entities that can be fought and defeated, thus lifting the curse.

The Chaos Shield (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=269794)

Wondrous Adventuring Pot - Converts matter thrown into it into gold, offering the lowest reasonable price it can, spitting the coins out like a popcorn machine. Also can make good meals if the ingredients are added. The party became its own clean-up crew just from throwing all the useless loot and corpses they came across/made as they travelled.

Self Twisting Knife - when it strikes an enemy it burrows in and automatically hits once per round, dealing normal damage (minus strength mod and such). The party rogue used to throw it before entering melee for sneak attacks.

Coin Pouch - Mechanically speaking they were miniature Bags of Holding with infinite capacity, but only accommodated one form of currency and nothing else. Most adventurers ended up with one, solving the "how do you carry around that much gold?" Question.

ArcturusV
2013-02-11, 01:19 AM
Hadn't seen Naruto at that point or I would have thought of it. Well, I had read the manga, but only up until the Bridge Builder thing so I was still several volumes from ever seeing Gaara or what he could do. As a guy with Earth Elemental magics though I tended to make the terrain suit my needs as I wished. I probably could have made sand as I wanted... In fact I think I did during an "honor duel" to impress a local Warlord.

But it was also one of those characters where you had so many things you wanted to do, you could never do it. Option Paralysis set in and I tried to pull out every trick I could due to the vaguely defined spells my Dark Paladin of the Earth Element had. I would look at the list and it had stuff like "Earth Spike - Launch 2+ spikes of stone which deal 60 base damage" or something. Then I'd get a spell like "Control Minerals - Shape any natural stone, metal, dirt, or sand within X feet, up to a limit of Y lbs."

... I broke the hell out of that spell.

For another fun item I ran...

DnD I had a cleric who developed "Vermin Bait" as an item that I mass produced (Since spells like Call Vermin were low level it was cheap). So my Cleric created this item that was a liquid he could throw at... well... anything. Which would compel any Vermin within (At my caster level I started doing it) 5 miles to the target. No control or anything. Duration was measured in weeks. Was hard to dispel outside Anti-Magic Shells. I used it entirely to just piss off NPCs that crossed my Cleric or besmirched his (Chaotic Neutral) god, watching them get plagued by every rat, bug, swarm, etc, within miles of the NPC. Usually doing something subtle with it like using the liquid to poison someone so they ingested it, or putting it on some small item they usually carried around.

TuggyNE
2013-02-11, 01:46 AM
Wondrous Adventuring Pot - Converts matter thrown into it into gold, offering the lowest reasonable price it can, spitting the coins out like a popcorn machine. Also can make good meals if the ingredients are added. The party became its own clean-up crew just from throwing all the useless loot and corpses they came across/made as they travelled.

If it acts as a half-decent coin machine as well (90000 copper pieces into gold, yes please), it would be the best thing since sliced bread. Even without that, that's pretty awesome.

Dr Bwaa
2013-02-11, 05:38 PM
A couple favorites from my groups:

Wand of Create Wand
Decanter of Endless Flour
Ancient Dwarven Brain in a Jar (telepathic, but has forgotten all words that aren't obscenities)
Hangard Orcslayer (intelligent bat'leth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat'leth) possessed by the spirit of its former wielder. Grants a bevy of combat abilities and drops the user's CHA to 5 while wielded (and for 24 hours thereafter).)
Fey Gem (when bonded to an arcane caster, every spellcasting requires a roll of 1d20. On a roll of a 20 or 1, the caster must replace the spell being cast with a Druid spell of at most equal level (20) or one level lower (1).)
Mr. Gem (Ancient Wizard the party found in some ruins. Long ago he chained together Magic Jar and Trap the Soul on himself to escape the death of his body. Now he exists within his Magic Jar, occasionally possessing party members and other NPCs for a few minutes at a time)

Acanous
2013-02-11, 06:30 PM
For me, it's Marvellous Pigments. I can't think up any direct examples, but I also can't think of a single situation in which they wouldn't be useful.

Thajocoth
2013-02-11, 06:48 PM
Mulvera Stone

Some history:
- Mulvera was an Eladrin Wizard specializing in portal magic who created a protective magical portal dome to end a region's war.
- Mulvera went to the Far Realm during his research once. His son kept the resulting foulspawn of his father locked in the tower in secret trying to reverse the effect.
- Mulvera's MIND went into a stone. The Mulvera Stone. His son had no idea about this, but it was findable in Mulvera's tower.

First version of the stone:
- Intelligent item. Grants some bonuses to ritual casting and adds a few minor rituals as castable.
- Decreases casting time when you rub it. Standard action to rub the stone. One minute of casting time goes by. An adjacent ally can help by rubbing the stone with their standard as well, allowing a group to speed up ritual casting by a lot (but they all had to participate in the resulting check, as a group check). This stone was my answer to 4e's ritual casting.
- I had planned for Mulvera to eventually move on from the stone, but leave the casting time helper in place. That campaign never got that far.

Second version:
- Mulvera already left the stone, but it can still be used to decrease casting time. No longer an intelligent item. It's just a magic item.

So the stone allowed n people to cast a ritual in (time listed in the books for the ritual)/(n*10), but it would spend their actions.

More history on Mulvera's Portal Powered Dome:
- Mulvera's portal dome used arcane, divine & primal magic. It creates a circular portal. If one runs straight into it, they will pop out the opposite end of the dome upside down, and whether you're inside or outside the Dome stays the same. Very few have attempted this to know this fact. Light & air pass through the portal just fine with a slight effect to the light, so it's clear where the Dome wall is.
- It was tapped into the Elemental Chaos through some portals in the tower, which was known about, but the rest was unknown.
- Excess arcane chaos spilled out of the dome's northernmost spot (The Chaos Chimney), creating a polluted elemental wasteland of random weather. The local Genasi live here, and Mulvera's son wants to be sure they were kept silent about the pollution.
- The divine power was absorbed from whatever the gods sent to the Dome. As a result, divine magic did not work above level 10 inside the Dome, and the gods couldn't see into it. Also, the general populace was unaware of this. Many thought the gods were forsaking the region, not realizing the truth here. This resulted in less prayer & therefore less divine energy coming in, which was just about to start threatening the stability of the Dome when the adventurers started their quest.
- Primal power was absorbed from the land under the tower with arcane machinery. Being in the middle of a city, no one really noticed a change. They slowly had to go further & further to visit the forest...
- The peace was the result of having only one 10 foot wide opening on the south end of the Dome, right on the edge of the human city. This meant everyone needed to make nice with the humans to be able to trade, and no one was fully self sufficient in the region, so they did so. This peace remained a powder keg in most areas. The Elves & Drow, however, were seeing a quite odd level of peace, facilitated by the changelings going back & forth between the two societies unnoticed.
- The Dome was an attempt to shield just the Eladrin city. Mulvera miscalculated and the result was much bigger than expected.
- Adding further complication, the Dome was powerful enough to manifest in the Feywild & Shadowfell as well, though no one in the regular world was aware of this.
- No campaign inside the Dome went well. Creating a new mini-setting for my first campaign was probably not the smartest idea.

Really, I think the Mulvera Stone was the best piece to come out of that setting. I used it in other campaigns that don't include the Dome. Where the Dome was before, I instead have a crater with a damaging effect, similar to a freshly nuked spot. There's no evidence anyone ever lived there & people just avoid it. It reminds me of mistakes I've made DMing in the past, and to avoid falling into various pitfalls.