Sword of charisma: But it attracts bugs for some reason.
Amulet of protection: Stops heals too.
Boots of speed: Brakes not included.
Wand of light: Slightly radioactive.
Potion of restoration: Removes buffs as well, kills undead.
There was an older barbarian subclass that was immune to magic including beneficial magic. It was dumb and wonderful
Lol, is that from AD&D 1e?
I gifted my party a sapient dagger. It was really good too. It was a 1d6 but let you attack again, but rolling a 5 or less on the die makes you insane because the dagger insults the user so badly for missing. If it happened 12 times, the character died. They used it from level 3 or 4 through the end of the campaign at level 18, since there was no cap on how often you could attack again.
Alternatively, rolling a 1 makes you roll the damage against yourself, but it’s a permanent loss of max HP as a psychic effect. It kills you if you hit 0 max HP. Anything that would let you recover the max HP, like straight-up wish (greater restoration isn’t good enough) also makes the dagger not work for you any more because you cheated.
With the cheating stipulation I’d personally let greater restoration work too.
I re-read greater restoration, because 5e was never really my game (3.5), and saw one of its uses was explicitly to end one effect reducing your hit point maximum. So I’d amend my earlier and say yeah, that spell works. Since my reading is that it’d only reverse a single crit fail’s penalty per casting - not to mention the spell has a smallish material component cost (100 gp diamond) - the weapon wouldn’t call it cheating, per se.
As the dagger’s main thing is that it’s a 1d6 instead of 1d4, that’s only +1 point of damage per hit on average. 1 in 20 hits backfires, so essentially the cost for 19 extra damage over 19 hits per penalty taken, reversing just the one with a 5th level spell… there’s better ways to do 19 damage with a 5th level spell, so probably not really cheating :)
Correct if I’m misremembering the general benefits of the sapient dagger.
I thought the special thing was the extra attack mentioned in the dagger at the top of the comment thread. That would seem very powerful. Your reasoning is sound for the 1d6 dagger though.
[The sapient dagger] was a 1d6 but let you attack again, but rolling a 5 or less on the die makes you insane because the dagger insults the user so badly for missing. [… T]here was no cap on how often you could attack again.
You’re right about the extra attack, of course; I was too tired to remember or to go back and read again before commenting. I think we’d need a few things clarified before properly balancing an alternate version:
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Rolling a 5 or lower on the extra attack’s attack roll, or its damage roll? Presumably either way it refers to a raw die value.
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“No cap on how often you could attack again” - no cap on uses per day, or could you just make additional attacks within one round until you decided to stop (or died)?
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Does using the dagger’s additional attack take your bonus action, or is it a free action? This may be answered by #2, since if it’s unlimited per round it must be a free action.
3a) If it’s essentially a free action, does it get included with a class’s Extra Attack? Which is to say, does it count within the activation of that ability for the purpose of anything that might positively (or negatively) impact all the attacks within a given activation of Extra Attack? (Of course, it wouldn’t make sense for it to have to count AS one of the class’s Extra Attacks, since it would be categorically worse as it would just invoke the risk with no compensating benefit.)
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Wand of Premature Eruption: Launches a fireball that detonates immediately
Wand of wishes. It’s great, but it will respond to any speaker in the vicinity
Wand of wishes, but gives you what you actually want right now.
Yeah, you need a bridge, but you’re fatigued, so on some level what you really want is a hot bath and a warm bed; maybe some soup.
Worst thing ever, don’t even want it. Would ruin my life
Periapt of health: this is a small vial with a red liquid inside attached to a small chain. While wearing this, all diseases that you would otherwise contract enter the small vial instead. If the vial is broken, the closest creature will immediately contract all diseases contained within.
Deck of many things (used): the previous owners of this deck got all that they could have wished for. The remaining cards might not be the best.
Ring of mind shielding: the creator of this ring was a bit over-zealous. Along with the usual effects, this ring will censor violence, sex, and other uncouth things.
Cloak of the bat: along with the usual effects, wearing this cloak will also make you speak bat. You will only be able to produce high-pitched squeaks.
Portable hole: this portable hole is bottomless! Anything that falls down the hole is lost forever.
The periapt of health also keeps you from the fun effects of drugs (including alcohol); not useless, but keeps working for 24 hours after you take it off
Deck of many uncomfortable things Normal mix of good and bad, weak and powerful, but as an example: the two dueling demon lords it spawned aren’t fighting for power or honor; this is a domestic dispute between two supernaturally-dickish immortals who have been emotionally abusing each other for a thousand years, and they’re airing all their dirty laundry. Take sides if you dare.
Ring of mind shielding: Also shields you from anything uncomfortable; you do not gain xp. (Yeah yours is better)
Ring of mind shielding (extremely racist): you can’t see elves’ faces now. you’re welcome.
Portable hole: It’s soft, meaty, and contains multiple (always closed) giant sphincters. Sometimes shudders. Otherwise functions normally. So far.
Oof, that periapt of health. Contract everything you can, then chuck it at an enemy. What a grenade.
Wand of Fireball: has a medium chance of shooting a stream of cinnamon whiskey.
Imagine if they rolled the whiskey thing whenever they tried to use it. Then at the local tavern “SHOTS! SHOTS! SHOTS! SHOTS!”
(Dice clatter)
TPK.
Sword with fire enchantment, fire has no regulator and cannot be turned off.
Also it’s blunt as a butter knife because none of its past users wanted to try to sharpen something that is always on fire.
Sword II: HAS a regulator but needs to be monitored because using it for too long may melt it. And needs to cool down before sheathing.
Hate it when my sword thermal throttles in the middle of combat.
Sweaty Sword:
Really good sword, strong steel. The handle is wrapped in living leather harvested from the palms of a cursed pervert. It’s always slightly warmer than your hand and it exudes a sticky substance that enhances grip. Smells like corn.
Survival Stew Balls:
A fried ball of…food. It’s rock hard, slightly too big to hold with one hand easily, completely impermeable, and covered in a flaky, delicate panko breaded crust. To eat, boil one in 5 gallons of water to produce a pot of stew. The flavor is different for every ball. Never cook two in the same pot at the same time. Wash the pot thoroughly within 6 hours after removing from heat. especially if it’s made of iron. Under no circumstances are you to reheat the left overs.
Emergency Shews:
Bubble gum that turns into one time use sandals. Once the flavor runs out, you have 30 seconds before the gum expands into shoes. The sizes seem to have been printed on the gum but they’ve long since faded or rubbed off. Durian flavor.
Dead Cat Bounce:
A black bottle with a cat eye painted on it. If you drink the contents and die due to falling from a great height, you will be revived immediately and launched with equivalent force in a random direction.
Survival Stew Balls:
A fried ball of…food. It’s rock hard, slightly too big to hold with one hand easily, completely impermeable, and covered in a flaky, delicate panko breaded crust. To eat, boil one in 5 gallons of water to produce a pot of stew. The flavor is different for every ball. Never cook two in the same pot at the same time. Wash the pot thoroughly within 6 hours after removing from heat. especially if it’s made of iron. Under no circumstances are you to reheat the left overs.
that’s some stuff you find in the lunch room of an SCP facility
It’s a furby right?
The “Sword of Instant Regret”. It does 100% DMG, but only stabs the wielder.
Leaky alchemy jug.
Whenever you use this jug roll a d100. This is how many percent of your choosen liquid are replaced by mayonnaise.A potion of True Healing… heals 1d8+2 damage, recipient MUST truthfully answer the next question they are asked. Sell the characters 6, but don’t tell them about the truth serum. Let them figure it out on their own.
Boots of Elvenkind… except Elves can hear you.
A bag of holding that contains infinite clowns. Every time it is opened, 1d4 clowns come out. The clowns are useless in combat and attempt to distract, annoy and mock the holder. While this could be used as a distraction, the clowns will follow the holder, drawing attention to them. You could create a table for what kind of clowns you get (mime clowns, pie throwing clowns, balloon animal clowns, magician clowns, etc). The clowns will wander off after 1d6 minutes. Where the clowns go and what they are (Illusions? Demons?) is unknown.
There’s so much role play potential in the ability to create a giant mob of clowns at will by repeatedly opening and closing the bag. You almost don’t need anything else!
Never starve again with their endless supply of pies!
Probably bad that without the parentheses, I was already assuming this was some kind of horrific Sweeny Todd situation.
That’s just practical thinking right here! Someone else argued for shaving cream pies, which naturally leads to the counterpoint of cannibalism.
No, but the pies are a bit off, so they always give you the runs.
As a diabolical GM, I can think of so many ways to make these strategies backfire. :D
That’s half the fun! Sometimes, the true clown you spawned is yourself.
Sell the bag to a lich to keep him from robbing graves, collect big $$$ for the unique magic item, and the bounty from the town
I can’t see any of these working as intended. Clowns don’t subscribe to reality
Spawn them as a distraction!
Some of them cause a big distraction that accidentally points directly towards those you don’t want to be seen.
Use them to hide!
One of them will look giant and big to hide you while the others honk and gesture/point behind, clearly showing where you are.
Build yourself a mountain of clowns to scale any wall!
Crabs in a bucket. None will let you climb. You must stay to hear their jokes…
Never starve again with their endless supply of pies!
Shaving cream pies. Ain’t nobody got time to bake 30 coconut creams
Use their weight to bring down any air-/ship
They all blow up helium balloons to help it float. Unless you want it to float in which case their balloons turn into bowling balls at the last second with a big shrug.
Air drop them on their enemies!
See balloons
Just crush your entire party by spawning hundreds of them in a closed room!
Clown car logic. You’re all “crushed” but it’s just extremely difficult terrain.
Exactly this. Also, one of the clowns will have a trombone to play sad trombone noises at you.
Luckily, most of these arguments assume living clowns. Something that can be easily remedied, it just shifts the entire problem space to doing it fast enough!
On that note, what’s their EXP value?
If my PCs responded to the clowns this way, I would absolutely make the clowns demons and the “bag of holding” a portal to a circus themed layer of the Abyss. And that’s the campaign now.
It turns out the ruler of this layer of the abyss appreciates your lust for violence and mass murder. That’s probably not actually… good? For you?
I don’t know about you, but the prospect of becoming a warlock themed around blood, flesh and clownery sounds pretty sweet to me!
I’d definitely play that campaign.
I would definitely let you play that in my campaign. Also reminds me of that bad guy from One Piece.
Immortal Clowns of Jest. Zero XP and their death only fuels development of further abilities
They just despawn and it’s 1/10^(78) xp per clown.
A fraction of 1 EP for each atom in the universe.
deleted by creator
Jesus…
That’s certainly not great, but this show has way worse.
Bag of holding with a preexisting hoarding problem
Can’t-trip - only works when you don’t want it to
Book of spells, but you have to spell out letter by letter each time you cast
Scroll of summon wisp.
When used nothing appears, but you gain a speech impediment for 1d6 days.
Owo what a tewwible cuwse to put on youwselwf…
i hawe a fudden defiwe fow wabbit
But it is duck season.
How do I delete someone else’s comment?
Become a moderator
*modewatow
As always, the real cursed item is in the replies
ew
You down’t :3
Flawed bag of holding - it’s a bag of holding, but the dimensions inside are normal bag sized.
Movable rod - an immovable rod, but it can only resist up to 10lbs
Bed of comfort - it’s comfortable, just not the way you were hoping.
Vorple blade - it’s exactly what it is, but it’s too dull to cut and sharpening it would damage the enchantment.
So for the sword… Bludgeoning damage unless it’s a crit, and then the enchantment does it’s thing regardless of the sharpness?
I was thinking a secret -2 to crit so it only actually crits on a nat 20
Why secret? It’s a dull sword.
I like letting my players figure it out. If I don’t pack the game with contrived stats they’ll spend all night investigating an unlocked door.
Caltrops of Seeking. Drawn to metal and increase chance to damage/hit metal boots.
They stick together though and must be manually placed one by one over an extended period of time.
