Help creating weird/wacky D&D magic items?

[Wakerofgods]

Hi, I'm starting on a list of 'weird and wacky' D&D magic items too ... make the players day strange.

Input is appreciated and ideas for new items is also very welcome!



Ring of Jane (cursed)
Item description: A simple copper band (ring).

Item effect: While wearing this ring the wearer has 4 ranks in Craft: Weave and Craft: Knitting as well as the skill focus feats in both of these (these ranks and skill focus feats do not stack if the character already has them at this value or higher). In addition the character has a +2 competency bonus to concentration checks.

Cursed section (players, or at least their characters, do not get to know this part - yet):

You can also converse to Jane…except that the ‘can’ is somewhat of a lie as it implies that there is a choice in the matter; you always talk to Jane and she is in your dreams too. Jane does not distract you in any way or prevent you from sleeping – your character is able to flawlessly multi-task while talking to Jane and is doing it all of the time (this is what gives you the +2 competency bonus to concentration checks). Jane only ever talks about the small fishing town she grew up in and while you can talk to her she never seems to hear what you are saying and replies with offhand comments that lead back to talking about her gossip. All of the stories about this fishing town are outrageous and no one in their right mind would believe even a small part of it. You, however, believe every single one and you love it. In addition, your character may be tempted to tell his friends about the gossip - but he is not forced to do so).

Once you have put the ring on you cannot take it off until you kill an innocent woman called Jane in a fishing village or town (but not a city), at which point the ring will no longer function. Any person called Jane in such a place will do provided they are a woman and live there. Viewing such a womans death will also end the affect of the ring (by, say, your party mates who have had enough of you babbling about Janes gossip).

Item (market) value: No one wants your ring.

Cloak of confidence (cursed)
Item description: A thick cloth cloak that looks like it will fit perfectly and is your favorite colour.

Item effect: Everyone likes the look of this cloak and you will sometimes receive complements about it from NPCs you interact with. If you wear this cloak for a day it will start to whisper encouragements to you, sing you to sleep at night and tell you it loves you whenever you need to hear it most.
While wearing this cloak you receive +2cha, +2 will save and you love yourself slightly more.
Once you put it on you also get to know: It is slightly harder for people to convince you that things are your fault or that you are wrong and you tend a little more towards selfish. NPCs may also express interest in buying, trading or stealing the cloak from the wearer.

Cursed section (players, or at least their characters, do not get to know this part - yet):

Once you have worn this cloak for a day your character grows fond of it. It requires a DC10 will save to take it off and a DC15 will save to leave it behind. In addition, if you are ever not wearing the cloak glowing words appear on the inside of the cloak – these words are explosive runes and will destroy the cloak if read (once it loves a master, it would rather die than be taken by another!). These explosive runes also go off if the wearer of this cloak dies.

Item (market) value: This item can only be sold if it is not activated (worn for a day). The cloak does not like to be sold and emits a faint yet soul-crushing aura that prevents a merchant from ever buying this item for more than 250g – despite the enchantments it contains being of far higher value and its wondrous appearance.

[ctsteel]

I am not familiar with the new rules/abilities past 2nd ed, but for general new item ideas....

[object type] of Narcissus - A item (cursed) of excellent beauty and craftsmanship which the character wears upon their head/torso (a brooch, cloak clasp, necklace, earring etc), that has a narcissistic streak - it subtly compels the wearer to look at themselves in reflections in such a way that the item can see/admire itself (perhaps it is semi-sentient/bound entity and loves the way it looks).

While the item is worn, the character will find themselves drawn to their own reflection and posing in such a way that the item is visible and can see itself, and the wearer will be reluctant to pull away. The longer they stay looking (and the better quality the reflection), the harder it is to resist and look elsewhere (I imagine an intelligence test or similar to resist). If the wearer is positioned such that the item is still able to see itself when the character wishes to turn/look elsewhere, the save required is less (after all the item really only cares about seeing for itself how beautiful it appears on someone). The wearer is also subtly compelled not to cover up the item or otherwise stop it from seeing itself (so may find themselves coming up with all sorts of 'logical' reasons not to wear cloaks, helmets etc)

[AvatarForm]

Sib'd and stolen.

Sham-WOW! (misc):

Allows +4 to unarmed combat scores.

[[lexus]]

You had one awesome spell in the Book of Vile Darkness (I think) for v 3.5. Chaos Touch or something. Roll a D100 and look on the chart what happens. Effects varied from getting turned into jelly and be instantly dead to growing extra limbs and stuff.

I suppose you could create a similar item which uses such rules. Always fun to either instantly kill an opponent or grow him horns so he gets an extra attack :P

[x-esiv-4c]

Get a copy of F.A.T.A.L. Not the most politically correct book in publication.

[Sai-Lauren]

I always found Wands of Wonder to be bizarre enough. :)

But if you come up with a reason for someone to have made it (and, while trickster gods like Loki can make items like that, chances are there's not going to be that many of them around at any one time, and probably only for specific purposes), then you can include it.

For example, if someone's husband is chasing anything in a skirt other than his wife, and their brother or other relation happens to be a mage, then they might wind up with an enchanted shirt that does something about it (ranging from total devotion to a specific person to impacting on their looks/behaviour).

Or, how about a red stone found on a wandering monster whilst the party's on the road to somewhere, that when picked up gives a feeling of a place that it needs to be and that there's potentially great treasure there, then, when the party fights through great odds, gets there and puts the stone on an altar, there's an orange stone that does exactly the same, and so on through the colours of the rainbow, eventually leading to a violet stone that leads the party all the way back to the place they left the red stone, and off we go again...

And then of course there's beneficial items with extremely specific activation conditions - say a hero wanted a ring of climbing to climb a particular tower during an eclipse to rescue a princess, so either via literalism or through the manufacturer being paranoid and making sure it couldn't be used against them, that's what was made - if the wearer's not trying to climb that tower, if it's not an eclipse and if there's no princess in the tower, then the ring doesn't work ;).

[AvatarForm]

What is F.A.T.A.L and how would it be implemented in DnD 4.0?

[T3h D4ve]

ewwww....d&d died at 3.5 for me.
Just one piece of advice, a magical dragon summoning ring sounds fun to give to the party after a bit of adventuring, allowing them to seek sage advice or assistance in battle, etc....but I can guarantee that they will be given a mission that requires a bit of travelling.
They'll use the dragons like a taxi service from then on, especially if you already have a lot of travelling interactions awaiting them. That killed an old game of d&d for me, however it did take a complete slapstick twist from then on.

A handy item for d&d players is a bag of holding, however I'm not talking about just any bag of holding that'll hold any items, it's a small pouch, and the largest thing they could fit into it would be a medium sized book, however they can fit any and all items up to that size in it and negate all weight.
Or a massive amount of rope.

Mithryl armor is always a good one, although it should be pricey & rare, especially if you have any spellcasters in the group, as the mithryl will lower the casters penalty.

[AvatarForm]

Hmm... what about summoning to sage advice of the essence of a dragon or other deceased wisdom?

This would negate the taxi service, yet provide the advice.

[ctsteel]

Summoning a dragon to your location doesn't have to imply that you have any form of control/power over said beastie. The party could find themselves standing next to a very large, very old, very angry wyrm that found itself drawn to this location, away from its now-unguarded treasure horde, and these man-things had better explain themselves right now.

Or you could call on a faerie dragon or such.

[T3h D4ve]

I slipped up and said it summoned a dragon for their assistance, be it knowledge or help.
The only thing I made sure to state was that the locals will react appropriately upon seeing a dragon and grab weapons/call for the guards, can only be summoned once per three days, and that it wasn't an exceptionally strong dragon, one of the basic younger ones, but strong enough that it stopped them getting scared of rolling the dice for random encounters.
The mini-dragon would work, or properly naming/stating what it does....unless you want to give them a taxi service for those long hauls, just make sure to remember that you can fight mid-air, and that sleeping on the back of a flying dragon is a bad idea.....bad idea. For some reason when I DM, no-one in the party ever has rope. When I play, I never have a use for my rope.

The other deceased wisdom could be good too...

[sigur]

Nobody mentioned genderswapping cursed items yet? :eyebrows:

[Wintermute]

I've moved this thread to the Role Playing forum.

Wintermute

[AvatarForm]

I've moved this thread to the Role Playing forum.

Wintermute

Took you long enough :p

[Niibl]

A handy item for d&d players is a bag of holding, however I'm not talking about just any bag of holding that'll hold any items, it's a small pouch, and the largest thing they could fit into it would be a medium sized book, however they can fit any and all items up to that size in it and negate all weight.
Or a massive amount of rope.
And just see the dismay on the player's faces once they find out that the "pouch of holding"is a "pouch of sharing" instead, with at least 10 brothers, all accessing the same extradimensional space...:evilgrin:
Of course, they should only find out the full truth after a series of minor changes to their possessions, random swaps, painful losses and finally a "shake hands" with some hairy paw and a "EURCH!" from both sides of the pouch.

[Kahadras]

One of the weird ones we found was the Black Dagger. Basicaly it was a magic dagger that the Rogue 'found' in a shop. Things got interesting when we got into our next fight. He went to draw his sword and ended up with Dagger instead. So he went to put away the dagger and draw his sword but lo and behold the dagger appeared in his hand again.

When he confessed to stealing it the party wizard found out that it was a cursed Dagger that just really liked its owner and wanted to be used all the time. It was an interesting little item as the Rogue had to learn two weapon fighting to keep the dagger happy but it was also really useful it some situations. There was one time where the party had to give up their weapons to get into this meeting. Things went sour but the Rogue just said 'I go to draw a weapon'.....ping!

Kahadras

[T3h D4ve]

I'm definately going to remember that 'Bag of Sharing' for my next game of D&D =P

And the black dagger sounds cool to have too!

There was an eye one time I left as loot on a corpse of some bandit leader. A simple stress ball style eye...squishy like a real eye, and once it was squeezed, it blinked, despite its lack of eyelids, and kept trying to roll off in a continuous direction.
One time they got lost after a battle in a dense forest, they decided to let the eye loose and follow it to wherever. They ended up losing the eye when it rolled itself off a cliff...they were supposed to follow it down but ah well...rope problems again...

[pwrgmrguard]

Portable holes filled with scraps of paper on which explosive runes have been inscribed at the other end of a portal....great way to kill PCs.

My favorite made up item was the Ring of (In)Visibilty, it checks out as a ring of invisibility, but the one wearing it is the only person that can't see themself. I.E, thinks he's only invisible to himself.

[CanadianRomeo]

The Bag of Cake or Death (cursed)

Once per person, per day, may reach in to the Bag and withdraw a randomly generated piece of cake. Upon eating the cake roll a d10. On a roll of 1-9 Nothing happens and you enjoy your cake and regain full HP. On a roll for 10 Instant Death.

[kardar233]

You forgot to mention that you can only draw three pieces of cake from the bag before it is emptied.

[Infimoid]

Would anyone be willing to help me with a magic item I wanted to make for a specific character? I wanted to make it a ring that had the power of mad magic, similar to wild magic but fueled by the mind of some planar being that is quite insane. I want the item to scale with the character so I was thinking for level one that it would let the character, being a wizard "cast" wild surges in addition to his spells in an equal amount so 1 surge per spell level but after that I am drawing up blanks any ideas?

[A.T.]

Which edition?

3.5 had prestos hat, a non-slot item that could be taken as a ring (though don't adjust the cost - it was cheap to begin with).

The item could be used to create a temporary spell component (up to 1000gp in value), to empower a spell, or to cast a spell from their spellbook replacing one they have memorised. However each time one of these abilities was used the player had to roll a D100 :
1 - 35 : the spell is wasted but a rod of wonder effect occurs
36 - 65 : the spell takes effect but a rod of wonder effect occurs as well
66 - 100 : the spell takes effect as desired

25,000gp. Very very powerful right up until you try to dimension door away from an angry dragon and instead blind yourself with a cloud of butterflies.

[Badbones777]

I don't play D&D (BRP GM here!) so don't know how mechanically it would work but I have used the following I cooked up with some success.

Parasite Blade (or other weapon) Not specifically a curse (though it could be if you preferred). Likely to be found either in the temple of some cult or demon, or possibly amidst the remaining debris and detritus of some long forgotten battlefield.

It's a fairly typical weapon of it's type, (though would notably be of quite old design/style for anyone with weapon smithing skills etc). In good repair despite that and if tested by whatever means (if any) exist in your setting would be detected as magical or otherwise special in some faint, barely noticeable and indefinable way. Anyone using the weapon will at first feel (and indeed will be) more potent in combat (precise details up to GM-I went with more skilled). Continued use will gradually give way to a feeling of near euphoria in combat and increased potency. This in turn gives way to an addiction to killing only sated (for a few days) following taking a life with the weapon (this last may be the only clue as to what is going on).


The weapon is actually infested with a sort of psychic parasite that bonds with the host upon first being picked up. The parasite is basically dormant at this stage having been lying undiscovered for so long. Upon taking a life it is revivified and craves more, becomming increasingly more powerful until the will of the wielder is completely subsumed by the parasite and their identity erased. At this point the weapon controls the body which is little more than a shell and pursues it's own, unknowable agenda. Should the hijacked body be slain (or simply decompose to the point of collapse with no one else about) the weapon enters a dormant state to conserve it's essence and will only stir when a sentitent creature capable of wielding it comes nar. At this point the weapon sends out subtle telepathic prompts to the potential victim who will feel drawn to examine the weapon.


Exactly what the parasite is, where it came from and how it got in the weapon (assuming it was not always so) are entirely down to you as GM - if it serves your purposes one could easily weave a story around it. On the other hand it could simply be one of those things that is never known.

Assume the Parasite can process and navigate whatever social mores and conventions it's host would, though without necessarily understanding them. Anyone who knew the victim at total control stage would know something was wrong, that the person was seemingly withdrawn and distracted and lives and acts in a very functional manner.

Price/Value: Pretty much whatever the typical going rate is for an antique weapoon of it's type (in good nick). Though this is unlikely to ever come up as anyone wielding it would be unlikely to want to sell it (unless of course the parasite had reached the stage of full control over it's host and wanted to be sold on for some reason, which could be fun, though you would need to work out what happens to a host who is "vacated" in this manner)

[Danforth]

D&D be damned, the Black Dagger and the Bag O' Sharing, with a suitable tech-level sheen, are a shoe-in for the next time I run Paranoia :D

In fact it might be worth OP's while looking through some old Paranoia supplements for inspiration...