Player ate an Artifact

[demonwalker]

Currently gming a game with the focus of destroying some artifacts. One of the PC's recently ate one of them: The Deck. I have absolutely no clue what I should do for this. Up to know, players have been having to make saves when drawing from the deck due to some things that happened. I'm thinking of adding that in to her. Occasionally random draws? I have no clue. Any help is appreciated.

[Spriteless]

My first thought was, this could be painful on the way out. Then I thought, if she could fit it down her mouth probably not that big. Also, why am I thinking about this realistically?

My second thought was, she has drawn all the cards! But since there are a few game overs in there, that might not be fun.

My third thought is, in stressful situations, like combat, she might have to make saves to avoid becoming nausiated, and then suddenly puke up some cards at the enemies. On a natural 1 she may get rid of the whole deck.

[The Glyphstone]

Is it even possible to swallow a deck of cards without the sort of special practice/training generally attributed to circus sideshow performers?

[demonwalker]

Player is large, so it was fairly easy to do.

[Forrestfire]

My vote: turn them into a living rod of wonder that triggers every time they attack or get attacked.

Make an offensive table and a defensive table, with much stronger results when you near the bounds of each table. Most of the time, have it be incidental bonuses or penalties, but occasionally you can have some randomly awesome (or terrible) magic happen.

Alternatively, rule that the deck got destroyed and imbued them with its power, giving them deck of cards-based superpowers. Start with giving Cards Over Swords as a bonus feat and the ability to summon decks of cards for it, then go from there

[demonwalker]

Rod of Wonder idea works, but they'd still need to be able to destroy the Deck somehow. Not sure when I'd use the two tables though. Offensively for when she attacks? Or just say "I use offensive mode?" Defensively when taking hits or using on self?

As for giving her powers...She just entered the game last session and is already fairly strong. I feel like giving her more stuff already would be unfair to the rest of the party who've been around longer. It also screws with some of my plans a bit if that is how the artifact is destroyed.

For reference, she is a Merfolk Sorcerer with the Linnorm bloodline.

[Milodiah]

I'm of the opinion that...erm...passing each card would count as "drawing" it, personally.

[icefractal]

IIRC, the traditional way to destroy the deck is to lose it in a game with a lawful deity, without said deity knowing what it is. So for a person, the equivalent might be the character swearing service to a lawful deity, and the deity accepting without knowing about the card thing.

Or of course, just kill her. That should either destroy the deck or cause it to return to artifact form. You can always resurrect her afterwards (having said resurrection act like Reincarnate seems like a possible side-effect from the deck's chaos).

[demonwalker]

This player's character going...let me rephrase. This party going near a Lawful Deity is about as likely (and as smart) as a Paladin forsaking his vows for a cookie. The PC swearing allegiance...I'd rather not think about that.

Her death was considered, but no one in the party knows she ate it, and only one other person knows she has it. Sometimes I feel like I'm GMing for Paranoia instead, with all the secrets the party keeps from each other and the amount of indirectly screwing each other over that happens.

[Eldan]

What powers do they have? I'd suggest giving them a bit more randomness on everything. Like, if they are normally a caster, do the chaos mage thing where there's random effects on everything and fluctuating caster level. Nothing that makes them more powerful in general, just random.

Apart from that, they just incorporated some of the most powerful magic in the multiverse into their body. That's a perfect excuse to **** with them in any way you please. Mutations? Sure! Curses? You bet! Inevitables or devil collectors coming to find the thing and cut it out of them? Why, yes!

How about giving them a magical transformation. They wake up one day and look at their foot. There's now a tattoo on there, beautifully exact and in all the right colours, of the tower card. From there on, another card every day shows up somewhere on their body. Then their skin turns dry and white and papery and the tattoos begin falling off as cards that form a new deck over time.

Because seriously. This is Divine Magic with a capital DM. Don't go for the boring option.

[Erik Vale]

Given that that doesn't destroy the deck [it can't], I'd either give the player intestinal troubles as the cards get stuck, or I'd roll luck.
On a good roll, you poop the cards all at once rather painfully.
On a bad roll, you poop cards in several different lots, and are treated as having drawn some cards.


There's some chaos for you, as well as a dopeslap for being a moron.

[Yora]

Why being a moron? The GM trolled the players by giving them the deck, the player counter-trolled him back. Seems just fair.

[Cosmic Traveler]

Currently gming a game with the focus of destroying some artifacts. One of the PC's recently ate one of them: The Deck. I have absolutely no clue what I should do for this. Up to know, players have been having to make saves when drawing from the deck due to some things that happened. I'm thinking of adding that in to her. Occasionally random draws? I have no clue. Any help is appreciated.

Alright, my first alarm bell is that you introduced a DECK OF MANY THINGS INTO YOUR GAME. That in itself is a sign you may not care much about the fate of your game's direction or you have no idea how game breaking the thing is and how much of a problem it can be for everyone involved with the deck

Second alarm bell is you LET him devour the deck. You should have stopp him with something in the like of "A strong feeling in your mind is keeping you from eating the deck"

Why would you EVER have a Deck of Many Things in your game?

[lytokk]

I'd say to pick a trigger. Triggers could be everytime the sorc casts a spell, or every time the sorc is hit, or melee hits someone, something like that. Then, draw a card. Whatever that card is becomes part of whatever happenned. For example, if you chose whenever the sorc is hit, draw a card. It could be the death card, which means a wraith shows up and starts attacking the person who hit the sorc. Or you could have drawn the 3 wishes card, which means whoever hit the sorc now has 3 wishes. Just my thoughts.

[demonwalker]

When the goal is to destroy artifacts, I'm not going to skip one because it's game breaking. I introduced it knowing how stupid of an idea it was. And so far, the party has been fairly smart on their usage of the deck, bar one player.

As for eating the deck, other than having to figure out the repercussions of such an act, it prevents more abuse of it for a time. I don't have to worry about anyone in the party pulling it out and trying to draw a card.

I did ask the player after game why she did that, and she stated she likes to make GMs think. Which I have no problem with. That was partly the goal was for everyone to think of creative ways to destroy artifacts while destroying them.

I am liking Eldan's ideas. They seem like a fairly good idea for this situation.

[BeerMug Paladin]

I am liking Eldan's ideas. They seem like a fairly good idea for this situation.

He actually gave me my own idea. Specifically, the curses. Each day the player is subject to a curse based on the effect of a random card. Make a table for this purpose. If they get an effect derived from the wish card, make it clear they have a feeling that on this day, they could choose to end the curse if they want it to end.

If taken, the deck appears in their hands, unharmed and in perfectly normal condition. Also if they die, the deck appears nearby their dead body.

[Bulhakov]

I'd handle it by having the character experience stomach aches growing in strength until a new random effect manifests. To show the player the deck is actually being digested, have the pains be slightly decreased and extend the times between consecutive effects. E.g. the first day/night the pain is so strong the character can hardly move, then the first effect manifests - a flash of light emanates from the character and a huge undead monster appears in the middle of the camp. The pain is gone, so the character can fight. A few hours later the pain starts growing again...

Depending on your campaign plans have the effect manifest in a predictable pattern, e.g. 1,2,4,8,16... or 1,2,3,5,8,13,21... days apart. Tell the character the pain is much decreased with each cycle, and at one point the pain is completely gone and grows no more.

[Icewraith]

I'd handle it by having the character experience stomach aches growing in strength until a new random effect manifests. To show the player the deck is actually being digested, have the pains be slightly decreased and extend the times between consecutive effects. E.g. the first day/night the pain is so strong the character can hardly move, then the first effect manifests - a flash of light emanates from the character and a huge undead monster appears in the middle of the camp. The pain is gone, so the character can fight. A few hours later the pain starts growing again...

Depending on your campaign plans have the effect manifest in a predictable pattern, e.g. 1,2,4,8,16... or 1,2,3,5,8,13,21... days apart. Tell the character the pain is much decreased with each cycle, and at one point the pain is completely gone and grows no more.

This shouldn't destroy the deck though. Depending on the game rules, anyone with sufficient divination magic should be able to figure out the location of the deck and unleash a never ending tide of mercenaries seeking to disembowel the character. Also, anything that causes the character to vomit should probably cause the deck to turn up.

Alternatively, the character's butt should become the center of a continuous fascinate effect. Anyone who fails the appropriate defense is mentally encouraged to stick their hand up the character's butt and draw a card (they don't know they're trying to draw a card per se, just the, ahem, physical motions they want to make with their hand up the butt). Once the characters figure out what's up they have to figure out how to get the deck out without just being compelled to draw cards.

Depending on the nature of the player in question, this will either result in a very quick resolution to the problem of the artifact being in the player, or the player will actively fight off attempts to rid them of their "hypno-butt" (assuming they figure out what's going on). This option is definitely not suitable for all groups but should be hilarious if done right. Especially given that a certain percentage of the population regardless of race, gender, or orientation, will likely misconstrue the sudden attraction to the character's butt as some kind of lust.

Having the character just pass the deck in 1d4 days is probably the most boring option.

Depending on the ruleset, the character is now in danger of being permanently destroyed as part of the material component for Apocalypse from the Sky.

[Milodiah]

I vote for hypnobutt.

[Scowling Dragon]

I would make the character an NPC and turn them into a mutated aberration.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

Best thread.

[demonwalker]

Interesting ideas. In the case that the player lives, and decides to continue to eat artifacts, as I'm not going to stop her, what other suggestions do you all have?

[Totema]

Alternatively, the character's butt should become the center of a continuous fascinate effect. Anyone who fails the appropriate defense is mentally encouraged to stick their hand up the character's butt and draw a card (they don't know they're trying to draw a card per se, just the, ahem, physical motions they want to make with their hand up the butt). Once the characters figure out what's up they have to figure out how to get the deck out without just being compelled to draw cards.

This is like something out of FATAL.

[BeerMug Paladin]

This is like something out of FATAL.

I thought that too.

[Eldan]

Interesting ideas. In the case that the player lives, and decides to continue to eat artifacts, as I'm not going to stop her, what other suggestions do you all have?

Critical mass of magic in one spot. Randomly shoots off Disjunction effects.
Inevitables come to take him away and throw him into the deepest layer of Pandemonium, where such things go.
Tiamat comes by to collect his valuable body for dissection.

[Bulhakov]

I'd say enforce a one-artifact-per-stomach limit :) i.e. as long as she's digesting the deck, any other artifact she tries to swallow is violently vomited back out.

Hint at the fact that in time she will digest the deck, but she has no idea how long that will take. E.g. if you follow the Fibbonaci sequence for digesting cards (assuming a 22 card deck), she'll take about 78 years to digest the whole deck (though the last cards would come at intervals of many years)... of course that is assuming one of the effects doesn't kill her first.

[infinitetech]

hmm... lose base race, gain great devourer as new race, can "eat" anything, character is a changeling whom once they eat an item it becomes part of them, their physical appearance looks a little more like what they eat each time, they are compelled to eat powerful things, any time the character make a roll the dm rolls a % to see if they trigger an ability, % = inverse health percent, the character can concentrate for (1 turn base item, 2 turns rare item, 3 turns magic item, 4 turns wondrous item, 5 turns artifact) to either stop an effect or cause one, if successfully activate an effect is randomly chosen out of all effects from that item teir, target is always random, though no self destroying effects can take place all effects can hit any target, if purposefully caused the player may choose once per lvl to re-roll the target before effect is chosen, any effect that would harm the caster instead gets rid of a random item of lowest quality, any effect that would kill the player gets rid of the middle quality item round down, any effect that would destroy the player removes a top teir item, for every 5 lvls whenever an effect goes off make another copy, any item consumed gives XP equal to its GP, this character looses all lvls in other classes and must lvl in monster lvls instead(monster lvls are gesalted with base class chosen at each lvl, but take 3x the normal xp, and only gain xp from eating things, while concentrating to control an effect the player may choose once a day, per every 2 lvls, to instead of causing a random ability with multi cast or stopping one that's trying to go off multiplicatively, to choose either the targets or the ability, each choice drops the spell's # of casts by 1, any item can be used for regular mundane use at teir 1 cost, complicated/odd use t2, low magic/highly complex use t3, high magic/future tech t4, unique magic/living lvl complex t5

[Anonymouswizard]

Interesting ideas. In the case that the player lives, and decides to continue to eat artifacts, as I'm not going to stop her, what other suggestions do you all have?

What other artefacts can she eat?

The character becomes a +1 character, giving a +1 enhancement bonus to any that try to use her as a weapon or shield.

The character's innards begin to absorb the limitless magic of the item. After 2dX days/months/years part of them becomes an exact copy of the item, which manipulates chance so that both will be discovered by any autospy or cavity search.


...I hope she doesn't eat a sphere of annihilation.

[Eldan]

The character eats several artefacts. Effect? Magical items in general fear her. (Yes, they all act as if they were at least a bit intelligent here. Go with it). They have their caster level reduced when used by her. Items that have some kind of movement effect will try to get away from her. Items that can fail fail more often when used by her.

Artefacts violently fear and hate her and will backfire when touched by her. After she ate a few, they might be repelled, as if by magnetic forces.

[Kami2awa]

Artefacts in general are hard to destroy; stomach acid and enzymes are not going to do much. I'd say the Deck's staying in there until someone gets it out. However, it's likely many people are going to want it (they can find out where it is through divination) and the PC will die one day anyway. The Deck's not gone in any shape or form.