Our GM introduced the thing to us without us knowing anything about it. So after our warlock summoned a level 3 fighter, or rogue wanted to pick a card too. We don't have a rogue anymore.
Same thing but diffrent draws lol, our paladin got an extra life so i drew, i got joker... Soooo long story short we got to pick three cards... I am now a mass of negative energy... Negative energy cannot effect me period.... Our barbarian picked one that turned him and allll his loot into a gem, it is worth 2500gp x his lvl and after that all his loots value.... Long story short we have 280k now 😂
I once had a character by the name of Rodrik Ironheart. Dwarven barbarian. We were higher level at the time, around 15. We had just encountered a mindflayer who had been separated from the mother brain by a planar shift. Using telepathy they mindflayer conveyed to the party that it did wish any harm as it was enjoying a peaceful life outside of its mother brain. As a deal to the party the mindflayer was able to take one magic item each from its collection if we just let the mindflayer be. Rodrik was happy with his war hammer and didn't feel the need for armor or items so as the party was going through items, he picked up a deck to play with. On the first draw Rodrik pulled the card to get a magical item and got a flaming sword. Enthralled with the idea, he immediately drew another card before the rest of the party noticed and took the deck away with a promise of ale. Rodrik had drawn the wish spell card and with a roll on the side got 2 wishes. He wasn't aware what it was and didn't use the wishes for so long it was forgotten about. About 20 sessions later and the party had just routed a hobgoblin encampment. Not satisfied with the battle Rodrik announces, "I wish we had a stronger foe to fight." Cue the DM to summon a dragon for us to fight. After a long and arduous battle, we defeated the dragon. Rodrik then in a fit of elation exclaims, "I wish we could have fights like that forever." Cue the DM to fulfill the second wish. Rodrik's diety Surtur had watched the battle and was overwhelmed by the display, immortalizing the party so we could wage war with him.
@@thestoopidiot870 it's a double win situation for you, the villain has a ruined evening and you pizza for life or a giant pizza party in the village you saved.
What makes you think I need Comet? You know how much XP the Balrog is worth? Closest reference is a balor, with a CR of 19, so 22,000 XP. Enough for a 13th level character to level up immediately. Just hang back, cast DC 18 Hold Monster, then blast it with max slotted Disintegrate, using every slot until it's dead.
Ok, it's 2nd edition, the party is still low level (somewhere from 1-3, I forget.) We came across a caravan of gypsies. We are invited to camp with them for the night and party and such. One of them is an old lady, who, some time into the night, offers to let us each draw from this magical deck of cards she has. Now, out of game, most of the players had been wanting to draw from the DoMT. (Our GM likes putting it in games, but refuses to actually give one to the players, they just have a chance to draw 1-5 cards.) I, however, had heard about it, weighed the good I could expect to get from it against the bad, and had decided that if I came across one, I would decline to draw. Most of the players decide to draw, and I believe they all took the full 5 cards. There were a couple 'gain a level if you beat the next monster you fight single handedly' (I'm not sure if it was worded differently, or we just interpreted it differently, but you didn't have to beat ALL the foes in an encounter, just the first one you fought.) I think there was one 'get a magic item', and maybe one or two other good ones. Now, there were 2 or 3 people drawing, and they all elected to draw 5 cards. So that's 10 or 15 cards, with only about 5 good ones. Not terrible odds, right? EXCEPT, it wasn't just 10 or 15 cards. See, in the old DoMT, not sure about the new ones, but in the old one, there were some cards, that, in addition to whatever effect they had, they also made you draw an extra card, usually on the bad cards. And once you said how many cards, you wanted, you couldn't stop drawing until all of your cards were drawn. So it was actually about 4 good cards to about 15-20 bad ones. Now, at the time, I was playing a very anti-social Wizard. I did't like people, and went to great lengths to ensure nobody approached me or talked to me unless they had a good reason to. This included: mumbling under my breath to myself, keeping raw fish in the pockets of my robes, snarling, and being generally rude. I wasn't really mean to my party members, but I didn't chat much with them either. I did, however, have good enough stats that, even as a first level Wizard, I was the party's tank. So, add to that my magic, and I was worth putting up with. Now earlier, I said 'Most of the players decided to draw'. I was asleep at the time, and had no intention of getting back up. However, when one of the party came and told me they were in some trouble, I grouchily went out to see what was happening. While one person, (the rogue, I believe,) had gotten a bad card or two, it was stuff that could be dealt with. She used the cloak of teleportation (a charged item, not unlimited) that she had just gotten from the deck to show back up after getting spirited away to some tower somewhere. The cleric, however, was another story. He had gotten really bad luck. One card took all of his worldly possessions, and another had separated his soul from his body. I don't recall his other draws, but those were the worst ones, and I don't think any of them were good. Now, I wasn't happy about this, because this cleric was decent enough at healing, and, perhaps more importantly, didn't bother me much. So I didn't want to have to go get a new one that I'd have to learn to deal with. So, with that in mind, and the knowledge that one of the cards gave 1d4 wishes, (plus a feeling that all the bad luck had been taken, so I would be fine,) I decided to draw 3 cards. The first was a magic item, although I didn't get mine right away, but would surely find it soon. The second was the 'level for winning...yada yada yada' And the third was the wishes. Now, the DM had told me that each wish could only undo one card, so I needed two to fix the cleric and get his stuff back. (If I wanted him to be able to cast, he need his holy symbol and possibly material components. Plus, you know, that way he wouldn't be naked anymore.) So, of course, I got exactly two wishes. Without a second thought, I fixed the cleric, and told the party I was going back to bed, "Don't wake me up again." Luckily for me, this particular DM liked to make it where wishes could be much more powerful if uses for selfless things, and so since it looked like to everyone else I had just given up a chance at great personal power, wealth, and/or fame, just to help a friend, he made that magic item I was gonna get a whoooole lot more powerful than it would have been. Before we left the gypsies, one of them came up to me and handed me map and a box. I don't remember the reason he gave for giving them to me, but this was how I was getting the item. In the box was a single Gauntlet of the valorous, with the added effect that they MAXIMIZED ALL MY SPELLS. I fairly quickly became the most powerful person in the party. However, something else that was just as much of a bonus, the cleric felt indebted to me for the rest of the campaign, even though I considered it something I was doing just so I wouldn't have to deal with more people. After a while, we ended up pretty close as comrades go. I still didn't talk to him much, but we trusted in each other unflinchingly, and he dealt with people so I didn't have to, and I let him point me at things he didn't want to exist anymore. It was nice.
We had this in our last campaign, mostly because my DM loved messing with his players. For some reason, my group decided to give me, an emotionally unstable Pixie, the deck. I actually defeated a boss using the deck in the most beautiful way. This Nobel had a gambling problem but had a brooch of luck, however, it didnt work with the deck. I didnt know this until AFTER I challenged the guy to pulling cards. We each pulled one, he going first... and proceeded to say "oh dear," and vanished into an abyssal prison leaving behind all his clothes. I now had the deck and the brooch. It was a pretty great session.
I actually did what you suggested with making my own deck of many things. Did it for the first incarnation of HackMaster. Full 52 cards to pick from. Called it "The Dwarven Deck of Blessings and Curses". The thing was, all red cards were good, all black cards bad, but all card results were from the dwarven perspective. There was one that would have you grow a foot long beard. Great if you're a dwarf as it'd extend your beard that length, bad if you were an elf as it'd make you start growing facial hair (an elven prince PC in the group drew that card). Kept the potential for wishes and curses in it by having the dwarven gawd of magic "Murgain" descend from the heavens to bestow/grant the boon/bane but "he could only stay a minute". So the player had 60 seconds to convince the DM to either grant or remove the option. I drew the ungodly curse and he came down to punish me. Had a +5 magic axe which was part of my treasure and the GM said in Murgain's voice, "My, that's an AWFULLY nice axe you have there..." Gave him the axe, avoided my fate, but still hate the fact I missed out on cashing that bad boy in for the money. Submitted it to "Knights of the Dinner Table" gaming magazine and they printed it as an official magic item for the system (Issue 95 if anyone's interested). Would later get messages from DM's about how it made their players cringe from all over the world. Good times...good times...
so i tried to find it online. but i cant fina a place where i dont have to pay for the magazine. do you know where i could take a look at it without having to pay? if there is such a thing of course.
Imagine Balance hitting the one character who was secretly Evil the whole time, and about ten seconds from enacting his evil plot. Rest of party: "Oh, SHIT! Our warlock is gonna betray us!" Warlock: "Ahhhhaha, funny thing about that--see, I was ALREADY planning to betray you."
Imho, what's even worse than the switch on the good-evil axis is the switch on the chaotic-lawfull axis. Every decent roleplayer can manage to play out the good-evil switch one way or the other and even an evil character can join and follow a mixed group. But the lawfull-chaotic axis often says a lot about a players personal preferences. I can't play a chaotic character even if I try and a friend of mine can't play a lawfull character and we had a lot more fights over this than because of our good/evil differences.
I thought about character that is result of someone else using the deck. A coven of green hags has found the deck. First one pulls out the Balance and becomes good. She puts the card on the top of the deck. She convinces the other to pull out the card. Then they repeat it with the third. Then they raise girl which they planned to turn into yet another hag and they get slain by a witch hunter in that time. The result? Naive and friendly sorcerer of hag "ancestry", or rather imperfect transformation into a hag. She loves sad stories (as evil green hags love causing tragedy) and is very insecure. She carries with her three kinds of weird magic items: three dolls with the souls of her "aunties" (she tries to revive them and gets advices from them, mostly things like "put on the coat"), wart cream (gives the user big warts in places of application) and green tanning gel (the name says everything).
I always loved the concept of the DoMT, but would never dare use such a ridiculous item, so I made my own lighter version. I called it 'The Jesters Deck' and made some tweaks. Firstly, the deck is contained inside a small wooden box that only opens when it chooses to, and only allows a certain number of cards to be drawn before snapping shut. I had card effects for a full classic card deck, but all of them were far more minor in scope. The good cards were minor happy boons or curious quirks (gaining an animal friend, learning to sing, minor enchantment on a non combat item, card turns into a few gold coins, etc), whilst all the bad cards were either inconveniences, or temporary problems. (eg, the card attempts to bite the character with a wisdom/dex based poison, the character randomly changes race and/or gender in their sleep but only for 1d8+1 days, the character turns blind for 1d8+1 days, a misc item owned by the character falls apart.) It worked pretty well, since whenever the card box hummed and opened up, the PCs were excited to draw some. They were always somewhat wary, but there was never any fear of destroying either the campaign or anyone's characters, only derailing it a little. The boons were generally lesser than the "pranks" but given the non permanent nature of the bad cards, it sort of became a thing of risking their dignity in return for fun little bonuses. And whenever things started getting too chaotic, the box would simply remain closed and let things calm down.
@@petersmythe6462 Okay, rolling for race, thinking about all the current official player races, do you even have a high enough die for that? Not even mentioning just the more sane homebrew races, that I know there is not a big enough die for on any sane person's shelf. That is just evil.
Pulls vizier "Why are we here?" "You're not, you're just small figurines on a matt being controlled by Titans and your fate is not your own. You don't exist, your lives are a lie and I'm your god. I tell you what to do next and torture you for my own amusement" ...... ...... *Eye twitch* "What?!" That's right all of us are just small figurines in a fucked up d&d game that just keeps going.
@@laziwastaken”No, I meant here, like, in this canyon. As far as I can tell, the only reason we built a base here is because they have a base over there, and the only reason they have a base over there is because we have a base here.”
My PC drew the avatar of death one, and also drew the large exp boon (50k I think?) so he went from a 40hp lvl 6 bard to I think a 80hp lvl 11 or something close. He basically just dropped a high level fireball on it killing it. Oh, did I mention he got the single handed encounter level up before all this? He then said oh my lucks great, fuck it I'll go again. He got 3 wishes.
4th draw: vizier 5th draw: attains godhood, former GM steps down and becomes a humble hobbit to maintain party size 6th draw: void, character removed from game with cleansing flame...
Mine had a tendency to use the most interesting tactics. The avatar had 25 HP. I decided to take out a pre-prepared Molotov cocktail from my bag and just blow it up. It was a critical success. In other words, it ended like the gun in a sword fight scene from Indiana Jones
Nathan Holstrom and a lot of professional d&d players will say that it depends on what type of game you want to run either 5e and 3.5 depending and such a blanket statement is bullshit
Me: "I drew Balance." DM looks to the others: "Okay, you see your friend draw from the deck. His eyes seem to turn dark and a cruel smile forms upon his face as he..." Me: "No, I don't." DM: "Uh... what?" Me: "I look at the card, shrug, put the card away into the deck, and look to the others saying, 'Alright. Let's continue.'" DM: ".... oh shit."
I find the deck of many things is best when the players don't know it's the deck. And I always put a delayed effect on the cards drawn, and instead if weird shit just happening it's more like the card sets things in motion that get you there. Like one of my players who was a paladin and staunch crusader of Justice and Good had drawn Balance, nothing happened and he laughed it off but on their next quest he had to catch a thief and in the ensuing struggle he had accidentally pushed the thief off the ledge of a building killing him when he inspected the body the thief was revealed to be a kid and he found the card on the kid... Multiple situations like this kept happening like turning a corner in a dark hallway weapon drawn only to accidentally stab some innocent person etc. But the card kept showing up... He eventually started becoming extremely nihilistic and cynical and eventually went full evil and became an Oathbreaker and after that his character became a Death knight NPC bad guy. I find the card is best interpretted as something that changes your destiny and is best utilized when the players don't know what it is doing to them.
that's harder with some than others. like void would be a hard one to implicate. the one that grants wishes would be pretty hard to deal with. how would you even begin to handle it? Dm (me): "you're taking your turn for watch, eyes still heavy from sleep, when you see a shooting star streak across the night sky blazing a brilliant white glow" Pc: "ok?" that's how it would pan out with my party, maybe yours have more functioning brain cells but sadly that would never work with my group.
The Deck of Many Things is a good way to end a campaign: "Hey guys, it's been a good run. We're all high level and have done just about every adventure we could do in this world; how about we fuck around with this magical deck of cards in a Russian roulette style?"
That basically happened to a friend's party, only it was by accident. Someone made a wish that would have unmade the Deck itself, contradicted a previous wish AND itself, and caused a temporal paradox on top of all that. The result was a giant fireball followed by a crater the size of France. A pretty over the top method of "rocks fall, everyone dies".
I love giving, "fake magic items." My favorite being the Deck of Many Cards. It looks identical to a Deck of Many Things at a glance, but all actuality, it's a normal deck of cards. Or the Eye. People think it's the Eye of Vecna. It's just a glass eye.
My fantastic DM gave me a "Dwarven Gravity Pebble", for being always on time for our sessions. Whenever you're not sure if the gravity is natural or affected by magic, throw the Pebble:if it falls normally everything is fine, if it floats gravity is absent! Gotta love him
In a game years ago our party found what we thought was a sort of tarot deck, as it had a bunch of cards with images of creatures, places, and people on them. We had no idea what to make of it, as none of our characters could figure out how to activate them. We knew they were very strongly magical, but none of us knew how to make it work, or what it did. So we hung onto it for a while, and eventually found someone who had heard of something like it. It turns out it was a deck made by some lich ages ago, and the cards worked as a soul trap, imprisoning things inside of the card. They could also be used to key to a specific place, to allow someone to teleport to that location. But only once, as the card would go blank after it was used, and could only be recharged by a spell that the lich had invented, which of course nobody else knew. Which meant our party's wizard was VERY keen on finding it, because he loved the idea of the cards and how they worked. That one little item turned into a huge story arc for the whole campaign, which was really neat. A couple of the people in the deck were adventurers that had tried fighting the lich decades earlier, and one of them ended up joining the party (which I thought was a cool way to introduce a new character to the campaign. We did end up finding the lich, who was still around and kicking, and managed to kill him, though we had no idea where his phylactery was, so he became a recurring villain.
I helped a friend build a Deck of Several Things. It's mostly normal playing cards, but the faces have effects. I don't remember the effects right now, but it was fun.
I was thinking how I as a player would deal with Balance while playing a good character. The character’s personality doesn’t change much, but every now and then they will feel the urge to do something terrible. I don’t think the character would instantly become a murderer, but the character would slowly start acting like a worse person.
I would probably flavour it similar to how Sam acted in Supernatural after he lost his soul. Not so much mustache twirling evil, just indifferent and giving no shits about anyone or anything but himself and not even realising how that's a bad thing
The party I play with uses the deck as a weapon by tricking NPCs into drawing from it. There was a fight with a demon we were loosing badly and it was looking like three characters were going to die, when our fighter throws down his sword, takes out the deck, holds it out to the demon, and (on an intimidation check) yells "WHAT'S THE NUMBER OF YOUR GOD?" Demon fails an intelligence check and yells "MY GOD IS NUMBER ONE!" and draws one card. It's the Void. Fight over, party saved.
Pretty sure they are informed what it can do to them. I am unsure if it even works while under Mind Control Spells. So why would a NPC start drawing from that?
@Barokai Rein: Saying the number one != Deciding how many cards he will draw. Also the cards will only force-reveal atfter 1 hour of the first drawing. No idea what alternate version of the Deck you are talking about. But I talk about the 3.0, 3.5 i have the books for and 5.0 version I found on Roll20.net. Wich lack any such abuse potential.
That doesn’t make sense... sure, he said "one", but he didn’t choose to draw. Besides, I doubt saying a number in front of the thing will cause it to work like that.
Alright, here's my view on the card "Comet"... "Single-handedly" doesn't necessarily mean "doing it all by yourself." I interpret it as "using only one hand during the encounter". During the next encounter, you tie one hand behind your back and proceed as normal. Maybe I'm only reading what I want to read...
No, single handily is a phrase to were someone solos something, like how people say chuck Norris single handily defeated a army with a pair of chopsticks or something like that
Dictionary Search for a word sin·gle-hand·ed·ly /ˌsiNGɡəlˈhandədlē/ adverb without help from anyone else. "Michael single-handedly transformed the team"
Player in my game drew Vizier. He was playing a barbarian. Me: "Okay you can ask me any one question and I will answer it." Barbarian: "What should I ask?" Me: "You should ask where the lich keeps his phylactory." Barbarian: "I do that." Me: "With what question?" Barbarian: *internal screaming while everyone collectively facepalms* That could have pretty much been the end of my campaign if he didn't muck it up.
My 7 intelligence druid gained a hag's favor and the hag told her she could answer any one question. So, playing my dumb but curious druid impeccably, I asked "Are you really able to answer any question?"
NAVADAX well, the week before it was pokemon and I drew a Rattatta. Gotta admit, having a white dragon join the team for a session was cooler than having a pet dire rat.
first card i drew was fool...and the next day i chose skull and won, but then i drew void...realizing that its evil i never drew again. however my friend got wishs and information from the gm so mabey its my luck...i did have a session where i rolled 6 natural 1s which caused a crit failure and since i rolled 4s and 3s on the d4 my character did not survive the encounter
First card i drew from a deck of many thing... death, redid it, void, redid it, yes i was saved by my friends at that time. i got then level up, castle and then pit fiend, at which point the DM himself made the deck vanish. he had enough of me creating new adventures for my companions. my companions were happy, we had a blast doing all these chores.
Alternative to balance card from me: When this card is drawn, an exact replica of you and your non legendary/unique equipment appears within 300ft/ somewhere in the world. This replica has the opposite of your alignment and seeks to stop your goals at the time of drawing. This replica retains all your present memories and believes it is the original affected by the original use of the balance card. This gives an all new opponent on equal footing of the player, the balance is represented by their characters being opposing and balanced, the player faces someone who can be a true threat with the knowledge they have aquired and the player can act as them if they want to try out an evil character for once.
Also make it so at the time of the pulling you and your simulacrum are randomly positioned. So there is an element "who is the real one" And try to make it so the player doesn't even know Maybe after its all over they kill the simulacrum and then find out oh no they killed gus the murderer!
For some reason, GM's don't like to run evil campaigns. I don't see why, being the hero all the time can get very dull after a while of "Slay the demon, secure the keep and save the realm".
About avatar of death: mid level wizard can easily take it on with magic missiles. It will have a very low HP (half of your wizard's) but you'll also only be able to stand up to it for a couple of rounds. Upcasting magic missiles to max available level seems like a very good strategy for automatic hits.
My level 15 Barbarian drew the Ruin card, immediately lose all wealth and property... However the wizard got the Throne card, so she killed all the monsters in his castle under the condition that he let her live there
reminds me of a spell in a D&D video game called "restoration" that restores lost levels (some undead have level drain) BUT the character won't get back lost experience, so even WITH that spell handy, getting level drained JUST before a level up is about the worst thing that could happen... with the exception of getting drained to level ZERO. THAT makes the character BECOME an undead!
One of the guys that I play with made himself a "deck of critical fails" where if someone rolls a one, the person closest to them draw a card, and something crazy happens. Once a large water elemental rolled a one, and ripped open a tear in space, which went to the elemental plain of dice, causing 3 dice elementals (which were d4s) to fall out. Apparently dice elementals are extremely carnivorous. They still helped kill the water elemental, though.
We used to use Critical Hit and Critical Fail charts. If you roll a 1, you roll a d6 and something happens, such as you whiffing so bad the weapon flies out of your hand and you need to spend rounds tracking it down. If you roll a 20, you roll a d6 and you could do extra damage or even cut off an enemy's limb.
I've always found the Deck to be an encounter in and of itself. Let it fall into the players hands, with an 'instruction' page of sorts. The previous owner madly circled the card that will grant a wish, but the scribbles and scratches conveniently block out the more terrible fates. First player to draw, immediately gets the void. After that, it's a mad dash to draw the wish card, reversing time to before they found the Deck, with only the one member having any memory of the event at all.
but then every time you draw it the same thing happens. It needs to change each time, assuming you want to stack the cards and not roll with the randomness
draws comet okay so I go to a bar, insults someone's mother, get into a fight that I win handily because he's drunk and I'm not, and gain a level. easy peasy
My brother/DM actually made a few NPCs specifically for bar fights. When my 12th level Wizard drew this card, he walked up to one of them. It was the level 1 Fighter who had 11 in every stat.
I once gave my players the ‘Ever Useless Item’. A magical artifact that, was, no matter what you might need or want at any given moment, something entirely useless. They eventually managed to destroy (?) or at least rid themselves of it when they tracked down a collector of magical curiosities, and arranged a sale. At that point, it vanished, never to be seen by them again.
I like to imagine it didn't self destruct, rather it realized the only way to stay useless was to become something that prevented you from locating it (like a single air molecule).
I've only ran into the Deck of Many Things once, and it was amazing. So in this world the Deck of Many Things was explicitly owned by a character named Pan. Pan was known to the party as the god of time and fate, but he was really more of a trickster god, though he definitely had time magic. Over the course of the adventure (starting with my own character, Vere) he would hand out cards that had various powerful magical effects. It was only later we learned this was basically the deck of many things. One day he shows up in town and a big stink happens. Eventually, he starts offering the chance to draw from the deck of many things. Now, OOC the GM had hinted pretty heavily to the group that Pan controls the deck. Vere explicitly figured this out in character. She knew Pan could cheat by pausing time and one of his cons saved her from Death. (Long but great story, she kinda pissed off the Death.) She failed to tell others about that though. What Pan did was really more of a fortune teller's act. He would have us draw three cards out, show them to us. Act if we wanted to swap any of the now facedown and shuffled cards with three random cards, then we would point and exchange as we wanted. Then a random card would be given to us. Except remember, he controls the deck. It was always the card he wanted to give us. Most of the time this was seemingly beneficial, but came with severe downsides none of us knew about. For example, I had a pair of backup characters because this game would let us swap characters out. This guy was the only one of mine to draw from the deck. He got the card that lets you draw two more times, a MASSIVE Xp bonus shooting him from lvl 1 to 5, and had his class changed to a martial class as a knight under Pan's service and rule. When Pan later turned out to be the real big bad, all of it was put into a new context and we got screwed hard. After a bit, characters asked to draw from the deck again. They insisted after being told no. My complete idiot character said yes. A lot of card were pulled out of the deck, and we got to point and pick which one we wanted. Expect, of course it was every BAD card he pulled from the deck. So, no matter what it would be a bad fate. As a side note, both of my main characters had the wisdom to not draw from the deck. Though, Vere needed her dragon ex-girlfriend to remind her it was a bad idea when her vision got to big for reality. (In character, Vere didn't know that not even wishes could make her into a dragon in this universe and she didn't know what cards were in the deck so she assumed there was a dragon card or some such. She also eventually figured if Pan really wanted her to have a card he would gift it since they were friendsish.) So, yea, that's one way to run the deck of many things. It wasn't really random, it was explicitly the GM cheating, but that was because the character was cheating. He kept giving off fake good cards to string people along. Kinda cool.
O boy that's interesting. What I think would be interesting is if another god was against him and wanted to help the party (after all I do believe the idea that if there are many gods there should away be a balance if there is a light god there must be a dark god that's what I think)
I don't play dungeons and dragons (unless you count the games like Neverwinter Nights, but that's a totally different thing entirely anyway), but from what I've often heard, the games are more interesting when the rules are only loosely followed. They give a decent basic structure, but it's up to the DM to make it more interesting for his group of adventurers.
If I ever get this deck in a game, I intend to persuade my enemies to draw a card from it. Because that I feel would be even more hilarious than drawing for myself, even if it ends in a TPK.
I drew 4 cards from a deck in my game and they were all good. A buddy of mine stole it from me while I was sleeping and DREW 10 CARDS. All of them were bad and the 10th card was the void
So I ended up using the DoMT in my first ever campaign, which I ran in 5e. While one PC was imprisoned in an extradimemsional bubble (and as such was considered retired) another managed to reach level 23 (That is, level 20 with 3 epic boons). This epic level sorcerer also had the avatar of death after him. He magic jarred death. He really enjoyed that new body... Up until a solar attempted to assassinate him. Then he had two fun bodies.
I actually drew Balance in one of mt last games, and I am having a lot of fun with the change of spectrum of my character. I began the adventure as Chaotic/Neutral, and for a year (IRL) I worked to be better and do good deeds, I’ve saved cities, the damn world more than once and even united divided nations, therefore I became Neutral/Good. One of the players asked me to draw a card from this new deck he found, and baaaaam. Instant Neutral\Evil AKA True Evil, I am actually having so much fun now RPing and making everyone else clueless about why I am such a jerk/evil dude out of nowhere. I am a level 17 Sorcerer that always wanted to learn as much as possible about the Arcane and Magic in general, now I want to be the most powerful spellcaster in the world, and nothing is going to stop me, also started to use a lot of Necromancy, I just cloned myself and I hope the Paladin never finds out. 🤗
One time I was DMing a game of D&D 5th Edition and one of my players who I'll name Alex ended up getting balance and became evil, but he did it in secret. Now, we we're pretty wild that game (it was only gonna go on for a couple of days) and so I let them make there own moves (as long as they weren't OP)! Alex's said that he could summon a creature the same lvl as him. So my now evil man Alex is pretty high lvl (this was at the end of the campaign) and began to act more aggressively, gradually adding on to the aggressiveness. Finally, we got to the main villains Temple and beat them. Alex was a Wizard, and he ended up unleashing all his magic power at this moment, and you know what he summons? He summons a MOTHERF***IN TARRASQUE. We hadn't lost any party members throughout because we had a mad OP mage with healing abilities, but in that battle alone we lost our Mage, then our Rogue, then our Warlock and the only 2 people at the end of the battle left were our Paladin and our Fighter. Then they had to fight our crazy powerful Wizard. Our Paladin was able to kill him with a well placed thrown sword to the chest, but not before he absolutely wrecked our Fighter. The Wizard was dead. The Tarrasque was dead. Our Mage, Rogue & Warlock were dead. Our Fighter was within one inch of his life. Then.... the room started collapsing. Listen, Tarrasque's are BIG, so it's pretty obvious that the room would start crumbling. Our Paladin grabbed our Fighter and bolted for the exit. He couldn't find a door, so he ended up jumping out of window 🤦. Now the Paladin had broken legs. Overall a bitter end for everyone involved.
My boyfriend's party had the deck of many things which he drew from in the final battle... He changed history so that Bohamet, the giant dragon of justice, would kill the final boss.
When I ran my very first 3.0 game (which also was my very first non-Al-Qadim Forgotten Realms game) after 6+ years of DMing AD&D 2nd Ed, I included a magical deck of cards during the campaign that was protected by a box enchanted with a modified Guards and Wards spell which created a sequence of spell effects, one per round, until it was dispelled or all effects ran their course. Since all detection and divining spells only read the box's magic and NOT that of the deck, the party of 11 players (yes, eleven. Never again, though running for that group was incredibly fun) ASSUMED that it was a Deck of Many Things. The party, which was already essentially divided into sub-groups (mostly split by Good and Evil) with only one Neutral character universally liked and respected by everyone else, could not make a group decision on whether to open the box and attempt to use the deck. They kept it put away until they reached the next town (I forget which one). The selfish, evil wizard of the party managed to sneak away with the deck and decided to pay some poor child in town to open the box - after giving him time to get a block or two away. Please note that this occurred on a relatively busy street, though not near the marketplace. One Cloudkill, a Summoned Monster (I forget what got summoned), a spot-on Web spell and two Suggestions (causing party members who were attempting to end the ongoing magic/save the town to see hostile monsters everywhere instead of allies) later, the party had one casualty and many wounded in their number, not to mention the dozens of dead townsfolk including the boy. The deck was, itself, never used as the majority of the party worried about what further damage it might do. The party's Lawful Evil cleric did what she could to heal the injured party and townsfolk (secretly attempting to save their reputation) and was joined by the Paladin of Sune and the aforementioned beloved Neutral character - a Halfling Barbarian/Cleric - in doing this. The casualty lost the party a Fighter but gained it a Rogue. The selfish wizard, realizing he screwed up big time, skipped town and was retired. The wizard's player made the conscious decision to bring in a new, less- selfish wizard (though he caused some less severe trouble later on as well). The party was about 5th or 6th level at this point. For the record: it was a Deck of Illusions, enchanted so that a small percentage of the cards - predetermined by me, though somewhat randomly - would instead summon the actual creature which would then be under the user's control for a short time before being banished back to its home. :) Apologies for the block of text and possible grammar errors/run-Ons. Typing on a touch screen is a royal pain.
+dtracers The boy died to the initial Cloudkill effect since he was essentially at Ground Zero. The monsters were the box "defending" itself (and by extension, the cards), attacking anyone near it. +Gnarlston Gnu I'm glad my story inspired you! Hopefully your group has as much fun as mine did... I mean, even with all the pain, suffering, and death that occurred thanks to that box. :)
The backfiring wish is actually pretty uniquely western. In most mythologies, getting a wish granted is 100% badass. We tend to see the “ironic wish” as ubiquitous because we see foreign myths rewritten to fit western enculturation. As an example: in the pre-Christian version of Aladdin, he gets a ring with a spirit that does cool stuff for him, and uses it to get the lamp. There are no ironic consequences.
Well, the description of the Wish spell does say: "[...]You might be able to achieve something beyond the scope of the above examples. State your wish to the DM as precisely as possible. The DM has great latitude in ruling what occurs in such an instance, the greater the wish, the greater the likelihood that something goes wrong. This spell might simply fail, the effect you desire might only be partly achieved, or you might suffer some unforeseen consequence as a result of how you worded the wish. For example, wishing that a villain were dead might propel you forward in time to a period when that villain is no longer alive, effectively removing you from the game. Similarly, wishing for a legendary magic item or artifact might instantly transport you to the presence of the item's current owner.[...]" So it all comes down to the DM and his interpretation really. So if you want to make it all about teaching your players that you don't need wishes to be happy, the rules certainly allow you to do that. Unless they're just using it to get an 8th level spell. In that case, there's noting to interpret :P
Hell in another version of Aladdin and the Magic Lamp, he doesn't even have to use a ring but simply gets unlimited wishes as the genie's master for recovering the lamp and not giving it to Mustafa (or Mustafar can't remember the spelling atm). In that story he doesn't really get any repercussions for using his wishes, the most I can say is that he realizes that even with wishes he still has to work hard in order to win over the princess, the sultan and give his mother a luxurious life. It's been some time since I read that version so take what I say with some skepticism. xD
Be Careful What You Wish For is a common trope across many cultures, but the lesson isn't really "the supernatural is out to screw you" so much as "think about what you really want". The Greek fable of King Midas is about not thinking things through; while King Midas's touch seems like a wish backfire, it is actually supposed to be a metaphor for the difference between thinking you want something and actually wanting something. Indeed, the one who granted Midas his wish even warned Midas that it was a bad idea, but Midas didn't listen. Wishes end up connected to this trope, but it isn't really about literal wishes, but about seeking for a goal without thinking things through and whether or not you want all of the outcomes, both good and bad, of what you're doing. It is a close relative to the Gone Horribly Right trope, of which it is basically a subtrope.
At the end of my Strahd campaign... Rogue: Cool! A ring of wish with one charge left! GM: So do you want to wish for something? Rogue: Sure! I wish that Sergei von Zarovitch was right next to me! GM: 😂do you want to play this character anymore? Rogue:... GM: The rogue vanishes. GM: Rogue, you see castle ravenloft with decorations piled high... *Descriptive text* GM: You see a man standing next to you. Sergei: Hello. Who are you?
Trivia : Aladdin is originally a Chinese story. The Middle Eastern thing came much, much, much later. In the UK, the pantomime version of Aladdin still retains the Chinese setting.
There is a card that actually gives you XP automatically in 5e. It's called jester which gives you 10,000 XP and lets you draw 2 additional cards. The funny thing is, Fool can't take away levels. It says that specifically in the description no matter what. It's mainly made to slow down character progression.
See balance is my favorite, because my players always just play chaotic neutral assholes. The idea that one day they might have to actually play sensibly for once is like a dream come true for me. lol
I actually added a rule to the deck that drove a campaign forward. I had a campaign that was very home cooked and rather backward being based almost entirely on greek myths with different names. The gods had fought the titans and saved humanity from destruction only to have two of the three fates create a prophecy that would eventually bring the titans back and ended the world as it was known. One of the fates fell in love with a human orical and decided to edit the prophecy to include the adventurers. The story was lots of fun and odd without being Dr Seuss crazy. One of the first things the party did was enter a cleshay ruined tempe in the desert and fight to cleanse the temple of its evil. As a reward the goddess gave the players tw magic items. To the oricle in the group she gave a deck of fate (aka deck of many things). The players were terrified and excited at the same time. The rule was that only one card could be pulled per lunar cycle and the card would force fate upon the chooser, but instead of an instant action being taken magically the deck would lead the party to this eventual fate. They would have to complete a task to get the reward or to avoid a hideous fate. In one case one of the party members was plucked off of the road by a dragon rider and captured. This caused the party to have to go rescue him and lead to one of the most ridiculously fantastic sessions ever. Another time someone pulled the death card. They were forced to contend with death in a game but managed to win the game and the party was able to gain a resurrection from death if needed. This thing played right can actually do all the plot work for you if you let it lol.
Currently running a campaign where the deck was powered by 22ish souls(it might be 21, I got rid of one of the joker cards) and they all scattered across the land distorting nature, bonding to things, and sometime creating their own physical forms based on what the card did and who was sacrificed. Cut time down by having a few card encounters grouped up(lorewise the deck wishes to reunite and release the souls back into the cycle) and it's been received very well. They also only need 13 cards to use the deck, so collecting the good ones became a great hook and with the encounters' flexibility great run could be had. Most recently they fought the comet; his main Ability was that he forced equal number combat if the duel was interrupted. Bit of backstory; the party had already encountered but lost to tpko (comet treated their wounds and left after duel, he was actually a pretty great guy.) Back to present; comet had been attacked by a village to the north, and had completely annihalated it. With his psyche spread so thin, packs of lvl 20 fighters roamed the land attacking and pillaging. Mind you; no finishing blows ever dealt, just moving on to the next moving Target.(this was about happy mile from PC forward base, they could hear it and saw large pools of ink rising to the sky.) After a few rounds, nearby allied troops(not informed of the cards beyond legend) took arms to aid the PCs; Now the party, who originally had only come across one, were facing 39 Comet clones. All seemed lost, but, comet had a huge weakness. Simple, but very deadly. There are many rivers in this land, and comet packs had been following the riverbanks south, to the next closest settlement. The druid used a water spell to bring a large pool of water and attempted to catch the current horde; I rolled Dex saves and smiled as many failed the 17 check with disadvantage. The party watched the druid move the pool back into the river, carrying 13 or 14 or them. The other comets advanced, but the river was calm, stained an inky black. Comet focused his whole life on swordplay. They laughed as I confirmed it appears they can't swim. After disposing of all I with, they didn't even loot the bodies. "We won, f*** that guy" /says the druid, one of the 2 in the first encounter(comet had also been lvl 2 at the time). Druid was only remaining PC alive since beginning. I knew his hatred then. Good stuff though, just one card from that silly deck. Have 5 more stories so far about their card adventures(side quest to my silly main plot that ended up being really, really important once they got a certain card.)
Our DM recently broke our game because he got a little too spontaneous, and decided one of the NPCs had a DOMT. And then begged some of us more cautious types to draw from it. He's been trying to do cleanup for weeks. One of our players has left the group in the process. And we mostly got good cards, amazingly. But they unbalanced everything and made enough of a mess that certain hard resets were necessary. Playing the deck straight out of the DMG is a good way to just mess up everything. My advice: avoid.
I actually recreated the concept of the deck for my own game, but instead of cards, it's 3 gemstone dice (6-sided dice). They're stored in an ivory case, and a single character can only roll for an effect once per day. Each result of the dice has an effect (yes, I have a chart for every single result). Some are incredible, some are monstrously "The GM just hates us", and a few I dread anyone ever rolling. Some rolls result in a permanent black band snapping around the character's forearm like a magic tattoo. If a character gets three of these, they can never roll the dice again. If the dice go 3-days without being rolled, the artifact begins calling out for someone to roll it (compulsion effect: DC = 10 + [Days not rolled]). I've had so much fun with this item that I don't even care about what other GMs say about balance for it...the thing is a center point of discussion for EVERY new character or player to my game since I made it...
The vizier card is actually a way to open new storylines, "whats that guy planning?" "Nothing, someone is planning for him" or "where is that really cool item we were tasked to find?" Someone in town has it, it causes u to rethink some things but thats what the deck IS. Everyone changes, everyone
The Rattle in the Book Hmmm...I could see this being a cool item in and of itself. Maybe it's an item like the heart from Dishonored that tells tells you things, but is always somewhat cryptic about it. That could actually be used as a plot point/GM plot saver if shit gets derailed. Say someone batches a roll, and they accidentally kill the guy they were supposed to interrogate or their informant got ganked. Pull out the heart and ask it a question. It will tell you some stuff, enough to get the plot going again, but not enough to spoil anything. Might be a uses per day item so they can't abuse the fuck out of it.
josh baughman I dont think it says you have to be not cryptic, you just have to say how to apply it as well, so in the "whats the BBEG planning?" Nothing example, they would say, you should go to the top of the tower and find a way to get the truth out of him
An excellent discussion. I could never get ANYONE to use a deck of many things when I was GM-ing. The 3.5e one was pretty half-and-half, good to bad cards. But no one wants to take the risk. Friggin' cowards...
Thanks for the compliment! Yeah, I always hate giving players this super cool magic item and then nothing happening. Another related note: I gave the players a spell which let them TRAVEL THROUGH TIME and they never used it.
Found one of these in my game... drew one card, gained 4 levels. Party member drew three... because he's an idiot... had to roll a new character immediately.
So my GM have my current game a deck of many things with most cards having doubles and some homebrew thrown in. My ended up drawing 7 cards total due to reasons. The first have me a boat load of xp, the second forced me to draw more cards, the third gave me a minus to my stats (my divine intervention fixed that one quite fast), fourth was a card that slowly turned me into an evil lich, fifth made an evil clone of me (most difficult boss fight my party has ever fought) sixth have me an insomia curse and 7th was balance turning me back to the good allignment. Our barbarian drew 5 cards, one destroyed all his material possesions, next one his magic items, next one was flames, then avatar of death, then donjon (we rescued him later), our spell sword drew 2 cards, one gave him 3 wishes, and two gave him the one question (saved our butts in a dungeon designed to kill us), and our assassin drew two cards, one gave him 2 levels, the other dropped his INT to just below literate
I personally LOVED playing with any Deck of Many Things my group found. At one point in a campaign that spanned 3 years my character came across an artifact that was a Deck of Many Wondrous Things. Best part of this deck was it had unlimited uses but it took a month (actual real life time) to restore its magic to be used again. That deck gave us many many good things and moments in our campaign. Some of the better things to pull was +100,000 exp, +50,000 exp, +10,000 exp. +1 Major Magical Item, + Personal Keep in separate dimension. But at the same time it also almost caused a complete wipe because even though 18/22 of the cards were wonderous items / gold / exp / whatever. The 4 cards that weren't were extremely horrid. Like you must fight Death, if you lose you are permanently dead. Or "You are being hunted. You do not know who is hunting you or why but you have 4 days until you meet this person." And this was outside game knowledge that you were being hunted. So your character had no idea what had happened when you pulled the card. Another horrid card was you lose 1 item from your possession. (Usually equipment. Rolled a D-4 to determine where the item was taken from. Person, Equiped, Bag, or Storage). And IMO the absolute worst was "You feel weaker when you gaze upon this card." You instantly lost 1 lvl and 2 points of Con. Good good times. And I so do miss playing DnD. Moved 2 years ago and since moving I've had no one to play DnD with.
*TLDR; Read the last line xD* I played with a GM for a long time that at the beginning saw the Deck as annoying but ok, he asked people if they preferred to play with or without it and only added it when at least 1 person wanted to play with it. The players were scared in a good way of it, scaroused?, because they feared a lot of it's effects but they obviously wanted to benefit from the good ones, so it always became an off character discussion on who should draw or possibly keep it, if anyone. We had a ton of fun with it because of some really ridiculous draws and some very interesting role playing surrounding the Balance draws, to the point the GM stopped fearing the deck all together and even made some house rules for it. For example, my very first time finding one was with this same GM, my party members gave me the deck because they didn't want to mess with it themselves and i was the only one that urged the GM to let me try it at some point in this or another campaign, i drew 4 cards in this order, Star>Talons>Balance>Key. Just try to imagine the reactions in that order, the first time i drew a card from a Deck of Many Things in my LIFE, and it was a STAR, nobody could believe it, i was a bard that decided to have a natural score of 20 STR lol, so many laughs. Then imagine drawing Talons next, literally the second draw of my life and i lost all my items, again, imagine the laughs....... Now try to imagine drawing Balance after that, the gaping mouths in unbelief, the raised eyebrows, the "oh my god" 's.......................... and if that wasn't enough, the fourth card? KEY, mother f**** noob bard with 20 STR draws Balance and Key.... At this point they didn't know if they wanted to kill me and steal my only item just to be sure, or let me keep playing pretending their PCs knew nothing of what the balance card meant, this was their choice. So i had lost all my shit to the Talons card, and i thought it wasn't a big deal since we could buy my equipment back, but then they chose to split the gold of the party, this was after they agreed to share in the spoils if the Deck drew a Gems or a Throne (stupid me for agreeing), but saying we didn't agree to share the losses too, till that point we had a communal fund, with the rules that anyone could leave the party or withdraw from the communal fund by withdrawing their equal share and every spending was approved by vote, so they basically decided to just split the fund to pretend they weren't forsaking my character to loot based survival lol..... (still with the party but wearing rags rofl) So I was suddenly a Neutral Evil Bard conniving against my own party members, leading them into traps, trying to gain political power, tricking monster villages into thinking I'm Ghaunadaur reborn (even if this wasn't the Underdark derp) etc. Trying to get revenge on his party members for not helping him out of bankruptcy (LOL). This was sort of fun and hilarious at times, everyone thought the drawing this time was completely worth it and enhanced the game and put a twist to the regular party-internal interactions, as well as the combat itself. That was part of the reason we kept playing with the Deck of Many Things, every single session trying to decide who would draw from it and why (RP wise and otherwise). Most of the time people feigning ignorance and just drawing one card for fear of drawing Balance. At this point, the Deck of Many Things was a penalty kind of thing, someone had to draw from it just for the lulz, more than a Yolo thing, and sometimes, just sometimes, people going YOLO crazy bold and deciding to draw 6 cards (facepalm), just because it was a short campaign and they weren't too attached to the PC/party. Basically most of us avoided it like the plague just because Balance existed, unless we had plans for it. One such time was when I was playing a Druid, i was true neutral, because i was neutral and everyone was afraid of drawing balance it was decided (or more like i pleaded) that i should draw from it (i was the only crazy one who wanted to use the deck like 50% of the time, the others were like once every 2 or 3 campaigns, and would still wuss out and pull just one card most of the time). Anyway, here i was, Druid, True Neutral, convinced everyone else if they didn't have the balls to draw the earnings from this should be mine.... certainly not going to draw Balance on the first draw right? wrong, Balance first draw, we drew from the top instead of handpicking cards which made me suspicious even if though shuffled, but i let it slide, then i drew Joker, not relevant, third i drew Fates, which to us is one of the most awesome cards you can draw from an role playing perspective, good so far, so i drew Gems, this in and off it self was good, but even better was the fact that nothing bad happened so far, and that i had a free Fates card to choose what to do with, at this point all i wanted was any kind of good card or just mildly bad, guess what the last card was, thats right, Donjon.... I immediately used Fates to negate the effect of the last draw, honestly i could have used Fates on something else if it was a different party and just let them rescue me, but i was the only one with the Wish spell... so nope, not going to wait forever, I'm not a Lich. This was hilarious because we never had such a mild draw, normally you draw more than 4 cards you are very likely to be screwed, i drew 5, should have drawn 4 only lol. *Plus i had to roleplay a rich druid U>_>* Blyat. At least i didn't get Gems AND Throne, how do you role play a druid with a Keep and 50K gold??? *Point is* the same GM from both my Bard and Druid draws went from not desiring but just allowing the Deck of Many Things to exist in his campaigns; To developing house rules and even adding the Deck of Many Things to almost all his campaigns. Because of the low possibility of drawing too many good cards, spoiling a game, he decided on a rule that you can only use the deck once (you can't draw one at a time indefinitely), you have to choose how many cards to draw, and once the deck is used (after auto drawing if necessary), the deck is randomly teleported away from the individual that used it, he wouldn't say what randomly meant, we asked if it was to another plane or within X kilometers or to a random place in the continent/plane/etc. He wouldn't say, all he would answer when asked was, either "It's a mystery, nobody knows." or "Why not pull a Vizier card and ask?". Guy literally introduced house lore into his house rules, if it's a mystery, its nobody's business knowing i guess. *So basically the Deck of Many Things became a D&D version of Shen Long's Dragon Balls to us LOL.*
You might be laughting but my players will be finding individual single cards during adventures and only after they collect all of them, they can pull out the magic of the deck. After few uses, the deck will scatter all over the world again.
We had this deck in an old 3.5 game. I got so lucky with it. It got me leveled up so I could multiclass and gave me some cool loot. It also switched my alignment from chaotic neutral to lawful neutral but we played it as I was cursed to follow the laws of wherever we were, but I still had my chaotic nature so I wasn't a 'must uphold the law's kind of person but rather a 'gosh dang it all, I would really like to just pick up a guy at a bar, and steal all his money while he sleeps, but I literally can't force my hands to take his coin pouch.' Kinda thing.
The thing about the Vizier card is that the description says you have to answer truthfully but not specifically, though I could be wrong on this, and that could technically mean you can just give very basic answers like "the villain wants to hurt you" or "the sword is somewhere you wouldn't think to look" or something like that. I guess it would depend on how specific the question was asked?
Thanks for catching that and a good point! Yeah, GMs do have an 'out' in order to not totally break their game, which I didn't talk about. When I played with this, I went into it trying to not use the 'out' and when I didn't use it, that's when I got into trouble.
Can confirm. My session was playing with the deck of many things and we all decided to pull a card. And each of us, except for one person, pulled either donjon, or void.
@@eric_moore-6126 Five, but we were all new to the game and the dm just thought "Wow, this is cool." But we were also pulling from a deck that Asmodeus had and told us to pull a card because we freed him, and this was his reward. I know for a fact the DM didn't know about this rule, but I'm sure he could retcon that so it just refreshed because Asmodeus said so
I remember my encounter with the Deck of Many we found them soon after we hit lv 5. Our rouge got the keep, a magic weapon and the encounter, our cleric got 3 wishes, then was sent to the void. Our fighter got his alignment swapped, which was funny cause he was lawful neutral. And then my character, my poor, poor bard was forced to pick 4 cards, the first broke and shattered ALL magical gear in my possession, the second, made a high level being my enemy (my dm chose a god cause I pissed him off a lot and survived what should have killed me), the third card, was DEATH INCARNATE, or the avatar of death, it failed all its wis saving throws and psychic damage of a bard does wonders, the fourth card, after we had a laugh about my bad luck, I drew the flames card...... a high lv demon/devil has made it his life goal to kill me and those around me... I just dropped my lute and walked away after that, while everyone else killed themselves laughing.
IN one game I ran, a player drew the next encounter gain a level card. He suddenly decided that our friend who had their soul devoured by the void (the body still lives on according to that card’s description) was the next encounter.
If I were to draw that card, my first trip would be to the local tavern asking if they need some pest control for the wine cellar. There got to be some rats.
PF: "Worst card is the Balance card which makes good characters evil. Which in my opinion is the worst thing" me: *laughs nervously as she is playing an evil campaign who's whole point is for her to start a war to watch the world burn for the sole purpose of saying she caused the world to burn*
Everyone imagines this card as turning someone good evil. Few people consider the reverse. I can imagine a great story where a chaotic evil demon is fooled into drawing a card, gets balance... and is now lawful good. Eventually becomes a paladin. One who conceals his identity from most people, for obvious reasons.
The first time I heard of the deck of many things was actually from Spoony who told this amazing story about how one of his Co players, vegan Steve drew nearly every single good card in a row. It was a funny story.
Vizier is very easily dodged by the GM. When you roll the dice to determine the card, and it comes up Vizier.. don't tell the player.. just look at him, slowly shake your head, and grab some scissors or perhaps slowly start shredding a piece of paper... then when he worriedly asks, "what card did I pull", you answer the question :P
My old group had a tradition. Every DM, every campaign, every party, you /had/ to encounter the Deck before 5th level. And there was always an additional gimmick that /forced/ you to draw at least two cards. Usually it was the White Rabbit, pocketwatch and all, trapping the players in a demiplane until they drew and he permitted them to leave. Once, anytime a number was spoken, the Deck automatically shot that many cards at the speaker. Once the Deck produced a bubble of Time Stop that didn't subside until all participants had drawn. The effect was always devastation. One player would jump to 15th level with a pile of money and his own kingdom, and the DM would force-retire them because they were too powerful for the rest of the party. One player would accrue six Knights and four Flames, giving him weak allies and extremely powerful enemies. One would draw so many Rogues that all of the previous player's Knights hated him. Wishes would be used to undo bad draws, wealth would be gained and lost, and most characters walked away with heavy permanent penalties (Multiple Euryales). But the tradition continued.
That "every time a number was spoken" variant has me in stitches. Just think, if the whole party had died against the big boss the last player to go down could've had a dyinging monologue about "I can't believe you managed to conquor the whole world by age...how old are you?" "Twenty-Five"
Another interesting thing about the avatar of death is whenever someone else tries to hit it, another avatar is summoned for that creature.. I can just imagine adventurers using that to their advantage. What they would do is when they are going up against an army, if they draw that, they make it seem like it is an ally of the party, so the army attacks it too, summoning more, attacking the army.
oh, i read a story where someone drew that card in a city, and some town guards tried to help... that pretty much caused a "deathpocalypse" for the city.
My DM once used this on a level 3 group. Two members outright died and one got untold riches. The rest got prophesies that never went anywhere and one guy got stuck in a shield. HE WAS SOUL TRAPPED IN A SHIELD FOR THREE SESSIONS
I was in a campaign where my GM made his own deck of many things that was tarot themed, and my lawful good dragonborn paladin pulls The Devil, a card that made her an evil demon dragon which buffed her, but as she was the moral compass of the group, the campaign got very derailed. However there was also a card that didn’t get drawn that would have made her good again, but she would have to hold an unmelting ice cube in her hand forever. It was the Justice card... Just Ice
I handed this deck to my party during our first adventure. It has been the crux of the campaign so far and was essentially how they singly defeated an entire dungeon and shadow demon boss without combat. They also resurrected the creator of the dungeon from his ghost and he became a party member that was now almost a millennium out of sync with the “modern” world of the game setting. It has been fantastic. Also, no one has died yet, but the same character inherited 3 keeps (not all cleared yet) and they got the treasure card twice (as a group they split it up). It’s been fun, that’s for sure. One also drew flames, but the big bad was already a devil, so I didn’t actually have to change my adventure at all.
I've made some spin-off decks: The Deck Of Useless Things (spawns items from the trinkets table), The Deck Of Mundane Things (spawns items from the equipment table), The Deck Of Shiny Things (spawns temporary magic items), The Deck Of Many Blings (spawns temporary riches), The Deck Of Animal Stings (throw them like daggers to do random animal attacks), The Duck Of Many Sings (a singing duck),
Dude if you're a wizard with 15hp you just murder death,use magic missiles and it instantly hits,since it has no attack roll. 8 damage? Yeah lol magic missiles does AT MINIMUM 6 damage,as long as any of those 3 1d4+1 rolls is more than 2,you win.
Actually, he got it wrong in the video. The avatar of death would only have 7 hit points in his case. To quote the 5th E. Player's Handbook, "Whenever you divide a number in the game, round down if you end up with a fraction, even if the fraction is one-half or greater." --p. 7, under the section "Round Down."
Balance is not bad. If you play a caricatural evil character and suddenly attack everybody it kind of sucks, but if you slowly comme to terms with your new evil feelings and drift towards evil, it makes for an interesting story.
I would just make the deck of monsters, it summons monsters during battle, and half of the time they fight for you, and the other half they fight against you
Once had a player who wanted to play an Ogre whose int/wis/cha combined added up to 14 and was, umm, surprisingly perceptive that being the case. He wasn't all there, and I made a point of pointing out to him that with his int score only being slightly better than an especially clever dog he only knew about a dozen words (give or take), I wanted a list of them, and one had to be his name (the list included such things as "bash", "follow", "stop", "master" and "Ugh" [which he considered his name, being the exhausted/disgusted noise his master made at him frequently]). This was a plane-hopping campaign (almost like a fantasy Sliders) and Ugh was introduced to them by a fortune teller they had encountered who was an illithid who kept him as a pet because it felt he was more valuable as a guard dog than a light snack. It sold Ugh to the party for a decent price by emphasizing that he was a mightily strong and obedient Ogre and de-emphasizing that he was severely mentally disabled by Ogre standards. Anyways, as a result of goings on, Ugh ends up with a wish. Knowing that the whole concept of a wish is entirely outside of Ugh's comprehension, I ask Ugh's player - "If Ugh could have or do anything Ugh wanted right now, what would it be?" I fully expected an "UGH BASH!" in response, and planned on earthquakes and maybe a new gorge on the map and a confused party as to how exactly Ugh did that. Instead he answered "Magic Deck", neither of which was on his word list. So I gave him a toy I deemed the "Cursed Deck of Summoning." It appears to all appearances to be a Deck of Illusions, until one uses it. The creature conjured is not an illusion, and after 1d4 rounds turns on the user, persisting until either the summoned creature or the user is slain. That went poorly for him.
Nice. I never dropped one of these into my campaign when I ran but I was always tempted to. A friend of mine dropped a few into the game with a crazy dead guy offering their use, draw for draw with him. We ended up attacking him and I took a deck, but I never used it. A couple of the others did and they got wishes. They had mummy rot so one guy wished they were cured of any diseases they had ... forever. After some consulting, the GM decided they both became lawful good and had to take a level of paladin (because they're immune to disease). I used to keep the deck in my pocket for some great emergency, but it didn't come up in the course of that campaign.
@@bobwilson679 most wizards will have the health to live the first hit, and most have a guranteed hit spell that can do half their health in damage, unless they are high leven in which case they have loads of health and dont need to worry anyway.
@@aidenaune7008 Potentially deathly at low level. Trivial at higher levels. Like laughably so. My light domain cleric could just rain fireballs at it and be done. Same goes for a wizard.
I see alignment change not as the end of the character - and more as the start of roleplaying. Of course, at first my gut-reaction would be similiar, but then I get to think about what I could do, and how it maybe would go into play to even lift "the change" magical or roleplaying wise. Evil doesnt after all mean you have to suddenly backstab, kick kittens and drown children and do other unspeakable things. If the character loves and protects children, s/he would, in my example, probably still do it. But instead on maybe being reactive and protecting them, they could be then more reactive and make sure no harm would cause them. Someone that was loyal to the party beforehand, doesn't have to stab them in the back, I am still not sure why evil always has to be backstabby. And as we have no classes in 5e that are unplayable after an Alignment-change, why not? The only one I could kinda see is maybe the Cleric, as they are God-dependant, but that again can be voided with good roleplaying. And if a cleric wants to set an innocent dog on fire, who was half starved and fed by another party member and the GM was already planning in and how his stats would be as a party pet, because normally people adopt pets than they see them, not barbecue them.. anyhow, they will still do it, no matter what alignment they said on the sheet and wonder why the god from them might not be pleased. ...yes that happened.
Good comment. Although, I don't see it as the 'start of roleplaying' as much as just potential for new role playing. I always wonder why everyone thinks evil characters must be crazy, anti-social or obviously violent/criminal. There are many forms of evil.
Thank you^^ Yeah, in hindsight I formulated it poorly. What I meant with it is, that instead of the end of a character, it is merely a new beginning in a different direction, if that makes more sense? So basically I completely agree with you^^ I am not sure really. The same way that some say you can't run evil characters and good characters in the same group. I.. never had a problem with it so far, neither as a player or as a GM. (I had problems with a Murder-Hobo, but these come pretty much in any shape or form >.>) Heck, one of my longest running campaigns had my character being a Neutral Good Paladin being friends and almost family with my fellow players character. His character was by the end going towards Neutral Evil (Gunslinger). My character was sacrificing to a fault (which was also his undoing) , his was selfish and wanting to protect everything that is dear to him. I was the moral that kept Althea, his character, towards becoming a true villain. And she kept Erescher grounded. My take on Alignment is something that I got from a another RUclips-GM and Player. That alignment is a guideline how to play your character. As such, I am not bound to hate an character just because his Alignment is evil. The same, I can hate a fellow character and his alignment could be the same as mine. it all comes down to roleplaying for me.
I disagree with you, Elyanley. Chaotic Evil is exactly "you have to suddenly backstab, kick kittens and drown children and do other unspeakable things." It's what you do. You're not a good person, and you don't care much to hide it. Orcs are a good example of this: They rape, pillage, murder, and most importantly, they don't care if you know it. In fact, they WANT you to know so you'll be afraid of them. It's the alignment of demons for a reason. This is where the term Stupid Evil comes from, as even the smartest creatures of this alignment as usually well known to be evil as hell. Literally. Neutral Evil is more reserved, but no less despicable. They're selfish to a fault. They would take candy from a baby, and they'd try to blame it on someone else when people find out the baby has no candy. They only have morals when it benefits them. They'll lie, cheat, and steal as long as they think they can get away with it. They'd sell their own grandmother if the price was right and they could come up with an excuse as to why grandma isn't around anymore. Lawful Evil is subtle evil. They follow the rules, they obey the law, they can even have a code of honor; but they will screw you over eventually. They are the politicians that pervert the law, they are the tax collectors that send henchmen to collect from the poor, they are the evil genies that grant your wishes in the worst way possible. They will have contracts, and make you sign in blood. If they give an oath they'll keep it, but they're always careful how they word that oath so as to give them the advantage later. Of the three, Lawful Evil is the only one that could work long term in a good party; and even then only if it's done well. The other two need to be cured of their alignment switch quickly, or they'll end up tearing the group apart. Nothing sinks a good party quicker than one of the members caught stealing from a church's poorbox or executing foes that have given up. When you roleplay an evil character, you need to actually DO evil things. Sure, you can be smart and hide your evil, but you should be doing things that need to be covered up. In your loves/protects children example: -Chaotic Evil would most likely kill the children. Maybe to use their souls to fuel some powerful magic item, or as target practice for their new throwing axes, or as carriers of the effects of a disease spell to spread a plague to nearby villages. They'd most likely do it right in front of the party, or at least threaten to do it openly, which would cause a lot of problems for the group if a commoner were to overhear and tell the town guard that one of those guys over there is going to MURDER THE CHILDREN. -Neutral Evil would abuse the children as long as no one was looking. He'd steal what little money the kids might have, he'd push them down if they asked for food, he'd cast domination spells on them and make them dance to amuse himself, etc. If someone were watching he'd treat them like little darlings, but the kids would know the truth and be too afraid to say anything. Think of an abusive babysitter, who takes money to watch the kids but couldn't give two shits about their well-being. -Lawful Evil would open an orphanage that has a very good reputation for caring for children. They're fed, clothed, and they get to play in a well tended lawn. Then, when they become older, they all get adopted. And by adopted, I mean sold; either as slaves to the local barbarians, or as feed to some hungry trolls, or for parts to the friendly neighborhood necromancer. The character would enjoy a sterling reputation for loving children, and all the profits of a human trafficking ring. The most insidious part? Not even the kids would know what terrible things are going to happen to them when they get older, and would actually look forward to being "adopted". Alignment is not a straightjacket, but it should be an indication of how your character would react to certain situations. An evil person would not normally protect children without some ulterior motive. They still CAN, but they can only do that so many times before the DM should be saying something. It's the same way good characters don't kill kittens, even if they don't like kittens, and if they do the DM should get on their case about it if the character knows what they're doing is wrong. Normally changing alignment would be character development, going from one alignment to another slowly, and it can be a good thing. But in the case of having it flipped all at once, that character's attitude, personality, and goals in life can be shifted dramatically and abruptly. Think of demonic possession, but instead of it happening slowly over the course of a movie, it happens during a commercial break. They essentially become a new character if the alignment switch was drastic enough, which is why alignment change is listed as a character death in the video. You can still RP the character after the change, but it's not the same character. At least not until the alignment is shifted back and the character has to reconcile what they've done.
i play in an evil cazmpaign right now, my character isn't even supposed to be a leader, i mean come on, minotaur barbarian with 6 int,wis and charisma... yet it seems im the most evil of them all, the others only want to be murder hobos, my character wants to satisfy his thirst for sins. i'm not going around killing everything for sake of it. that doesn't even serve any sins. would he do that ? he also seks someone stronger then him because he strive to serve a strong person. why ? because thats what he was created for, to serve, becoming free willed didn't change any of that. being evil doesn't change any of that either. i think the missconception here is that evil people only thinks of themselves and thus will simply kill outright whoever is in their way. and most people ends up murder hobos. but thats very bad role play to be honest.
@TheKrossRoads you are totally and uncontrollably wrong, chaotic evil is that you think for yourself first... imagine the joker, did he immediately try to kill harley quinn, did he immediately kick a kitten, did he immediately put the building he was in in flames ? he did none of those, can be more evil and crazy then him, yet he has control over himelf. what you describe is a murder hobos who just kills on sight, thats not the definition of evil at all. thats not even close to a character in itself. sure a chaotic evil character will eventually backstab people, sure he will set a building into flames sure he could kick a kitten, but he still has a purpose, hes not just a guy who does thing out randomly. he does thing he wants to do and people who just wants to kick a kitten so badly i have never seen, if you think being evil is you not having any plans for the future or you having no purpose at all in life. then i honestly wonder what is your definition of evil. i played chaotic evil characters before and they were great teammates, until my teammates realised i as using them for something they didn't like and killed me. who backstabbed who here ? Joker plays a lot as a teammate with the legion of doom, sure he has his own agendas, but why would he backstab all of his partners without a good reason to ? even psychopaths who hear voices in their heads aren't killing out of nowhere, they heard a voice telling them to do it, thats why they did it. otherwise they wouldn't have done it from the get go. remember, there is always a reason to do things, no characters ever do things because out of nowhere their brain shorted.
I just recently started playing pathfinder, and our GM gave our dwarf a deck of many things at level 3... that dwarf is gone now... and so is my monk. but hey, at least theres a castle that he owns that no one knows about now.
I was running a homebrew 3.5 game a few years ago and they found a deck of many things, and the same guy kept drawing Flames so after the second time I made it the same demon each time and made it a minor plot point.
I am going by what some other commentators here wrote. But without reading the item description my intuitive idea would also be that the cards are not put back it (at least not immediately).
When I made the deck for my campaign I turned it into a 54 playing card deck(I included jokers) then I included a card that changed the way the deck worked. I also set a rule where some cards would change effect after being pulled. I changed a lot of the original cards, but i mostly kept the one that rips your soul away the same. I decided to turn that into a quest for the players to free their friend and it turned out to be a lot of fun, actually the fondly remembered it far later in the campaign.
1:25 With the newest expansion, there is a spell that restores a persons alignment to what it originally was, meaning that this is one of the best worst ones to draw :)
The alignment flip isn't near as bad as you're implying. The core thing about being evil is that in DnD Evil=Selfish, not staby madness. Also I don't know if they kept it for v5 but some editions had a spell that just let you directly change your alignment instantly with a little divine aid. A paladin who was lawful good and fought for the people in accordance to their code of ethics, even when its harder to keep to that standard, would just become a fallen paladin (otherwise known as a diet fighter) who was motivated to save only themselves even at the expense of others and was willing to break laws to do so but only where they believed they would be caused more trouble obeying the law then breaking it.
In the case of an Evil character becoming forced into the Good alignment you can justify changing back by being absolute Good and a moral utilitarian. Basically you say that you can save the world better as an Evil character and that the lives and happiness saved from the world not ending exceeds that of staying Good and phoning it in. As such you have a moral obligation and duty as a proper Good character to both become Evil again and to restore all that lost efficiency that the forced alignment switch cost you and the party. Reversing a recent alignment shift is always justifiable.
You are ignoring the fact that it also switches law-chaos. Meaning your "Lawful Good" Paladin is now a "Chaotic Evil" former Paladin who likely has inclinations toward stabbing innocents and other wanton evil actions, not just selfishness.
Chronic back-stab disorder or allies or civies has nothing to do with the Law Chaos scale. Law only means that you hold yourself to a code of conduct even when its not convenient to do so. IE Never ambushing someone or always/never accepting surrender can all be part of a lawful character's philosophy. Chaos is all about doing whatever works with no regard to order. With Chaos you take every instance as its own isolated thing. Chaos or Law has nothing to do with how you interact with external laws, only your internal consistency with your life philosophy. Remember you can be Lawful Good and still be fighting the lawfully elected or appointed rulers of a city state so long as the Law of the land and what you consider 'right' don't match up. For example a Lawful character that hates and opposes slavery might fight against a lawful society that has legal slavery. Becoming Chaotic Evil suddenly doesn't mean you run around killing people, thats your failure as a player to understand how alignment works, it means you do whatever it takes regardless of how much you need to compromise your morals to get what you want done. If you're Chaotic Evil and want to become a Lawful Good character again because you believe its in your best long term interests to do so you put aside your evil inclinations for any given instance in favor of getting what you want for selfish reasons in the long run. As a last reminder that Chaos does not equal wild raging ass hat I recommend you look up the [Paladin of Freedom]
I used to play a game: Kingdom of Drakkar. It had a "deck of many things" system. Multiple, in fact. The most common one, drinking from the fate pools, was reserved for either griefing other players by emptying out healing or stat-increasing potions and filling it with fate water (could get you banned) or just messing around with a level 1 character. The fate pools could increase stats, lower stats, increase skills, lower skills, give experience, take experience, change race or gender, or any number of other things. I think it could even change the character's name. Fate cards were the same thing, but they were bought at a secret shop that required a lot of effort to get to. The only fate mechanic people would ever use were Dion pots, which were the only way to get stats past 21 (maximum 23), and could ONLY increase or decrease stats. So if you were at 21 in strength and Dion didn't like you that time around, you'd just drink a strength pot and try again. The point is: I learned long ago that fating is never worth it.
i gave my players a deck of not too many things, you could draw as many as often as you wanted, but it only had two cards, one summoned a rain of fish in a 60 foot diameter circle around the caster, the second card sent the fish back up into the sky. they figured out if they used both every round they had a hovering cloud of fish around them, giving them partial cover
Eberron(3.5) has an interesting version of the deck of many things which focusses more on transforming your character. Basically you can switch race, gender, get or loose stats. Much more moderate. It is also has a role in the lore and tends to disappear when you don't look at it.
My DM used the Deck of Many Things in a previous campaign. He used it as a Hexblade Warlock Patron and the Character who had it, drew a card at every level, and then the DM would use the card he drew as the task he had to do before he was able to level up. It was a pretty cool character. We did have to have to have an intervention though because one of the tasks required him to trap a soul, and i think eat it as some point.
Wizard is probably best for fighting the avatar of death. Just spam magic missile They auto hit and deal 1d4+1 force damage and a 1st level cast makes 3 darts so...
this Item is beautiful. I use it in every single campagn. It is the perfect teaching tool to get new players used to the idea of risk and gain in D&D. It teaches them that this is not a video game; your actions have consequences and you can do ANYTHING. DM's should NOT be afraid of this. Use it on new characters, and make it a curse for old players. Good players won't use it, new players will learn from it. GUARENTEED
One of my groups found a Deck and one of the players got the perfect combination of cards: The wishes, then the one that lets you know the answer to your next dilemma. So he knew exactly how to word the wishes to fix a couple of bad draws the other players made. It was brilliant.
I had a campaign where the players got to draw from the deck of many things from one to three times during character creation. Now I'm not going to lie, some of them died during said character creation, but it was still really cool. Are Barbarian got + 8 to diplomacy and a castle.
I once made a magic item called "Medallion of Randomness". It was a joke item that gives a random effect every time somebody puts it on. I guess, some of these effects can be put into your variant of deck: 1 - Medallion shines mysteriously for one scene. 2 - One random 1lvl spell cast on wearer. 3 - 1d4 random monsters of appropriate level attack the wearer to steal the medallion. 4 - 1d6 items from wearer's inventory (except the medallion) teleport to party's inventories or to random places 300 ft around. 5 - Wearer can cast 1d4 random 1lvl spells this day. 6 - Wearer gets sick, -1 on all rolls for 1 day. All party roll save or get sich too. 7 - As soon as the wearer is among people other than PCs, GM secretly rolls: 1-2 - nothing happens; 3-5 - you atract a person of opposite gender falling in love with you, 6-9 - pick-pocketer, 10-14 - drunk angry brawler, 15-19 - guards, 20 - very helpful NPC. 8 - Wearer and everything he touches becomes immaterial for 1 scene. Wearer is visible as a ghostly figure and can speak normally. 9 - Wearer's hairstyle and hair color change (determined by DM). Changes remain till the end of the scene and do not affect anything but Charisma score. 10 - Wearer automatically succeeds next check. 11 - Wearer automatically fails next check. 12 - Change wearer's gender. Effect lasts till next sunrise and can be dispelled. 13 - Wearer learns one random language and forgets his native and Common till the end of the scene. 14 - Wearer appears as a random different race for 2 scenes. 15 - All wearer's clothes and content of pockets teleport 1d6 meters forward, 1d6 meters left or right, and 1d6 up. Bags, medallions, and rings are not affected. 16 - Wearer loses 1 point in one random ability score and gets 1 in another. Effect is permanent but can be dispelled. 17 - Summons illusion of a dragon near-by. 18 - Next living creature touched or atacked by a wearer, turns into a little girl for 1 scene (Str 3, Con. 4, Dex. 7, Int. same, Wis. same, Cha 14 (If initial was higher, raised by 3). Can be dispelled. 19 - Wearer auto-fumbles highest stat rolls and auto-succeeds lowest stat for 1 scene (or 5 rounds in battle). 20 - Roll again. During next day none of party members can: 1-2 - lie; 3-4 - speak other than in metaphors; 5-6 - scream; 7-9 - die (still takes damage, it's just nonlethal); 10 - kill anybody (still deals damage, it's just nonlethal); 11-12 - pronounce or write personal pronouns; 13-14 - be affected by the medallion (effect transferred to the nearest character); 15-16 - be dispelled from medallion's effects; 17-19 - take critical success or fumble; 20 - read, write, and count to more than 2.
The Comet (defeat a creature to gain a level) needs to be cheesed to take proper advantage of it: Use divination and transportation magic to find a low-level encounter that the recipient can beat easily. The keep was a lot more convenient back in the 1e era: It appeared close to any strongholds the PCs already controlled, and was _not_ stuffed with monsters to plague the land until destroyed.
Ahh the deck of many things is awesome. I hate seeing it not played, I think the real problem is the players not being made to understand just how risky and insane insane a risk it is, and the GM not being able to handle its potential consequences.
Our GM introduced the thing to us without us knowing anything about it. So after our warlock summoned a level 3 fighter, or rogue wanted to pick a card too. We don't have a rogue anymore.
Literally what happened to me haha! I was the rogue Doug DimaGnome
@@sumimasensir7956 Heh. Cute.
I know that this is from 7 months ago, but IDC I'm the 420th like!
@@sumimasensir7956 This is the best thing I've heard all day
Same thing but diffrent draws lol, our paladin got an extra life so i drew, i got joker... Soooo long story short we got to pick three cards... I am now a mass of negative energy... Negative energy cannot effect me period.... Our barbarian picked one that turned him and allll his loot into a gem, it is worth 2500gp x his lvl and after that all his loots value.... Long story short we have 280k now 😂
I once had a character by the name of Rodrik Ironheart. Dwarven barbarian. We were higher level at the time, around 15. We had just encountered a mindflayer who had been separated from the mother brain by a planar shift. Using telepathy they mindflayer conveyed to the party that it did wish any harm as it was enjoying a peaceful life outside of its mother brain. As a deal to the party the mindflayer was able to take one magic item each from its collection if we just let the mindflayer be. Rodrik was happy with his war hammer and didn't feel the need for armor or items so as the party was going through items, he picked up a deck to play with. On the first draw Rodrik pulled the card to get a magical item and got a flaming sword. Enthralled with the idea, he immediately drew another card before the rest of the party noticed and took the deck away with a promise of ale. Rodrik had drawn the wish spell card and with a roll on the side got 2 wishes. He wasn't aware what it was and didn't use the wishes for so long it was forgotten about. About 20 sessions later and the party had just routed a hobgoblin encampment. Not satisfied with the battle Rodrik announces, "I wish we had a stronger foe to fight." Cue the DM to summon a dragon for us to fight. After a long and arduous battle, we defeated the dragon. Rodrik then in a fit of elation exclaims, "I wish we could have fights like that forever." Cue the DM to fulfill the second wish. Rodrik's diety Surtur had watched the battle and was overwhelmed by the display, immortalizing the party so we could wage war with him.
That’s my kind of GM
That is glorious, I’m getting Valhalla vibes
@@noahhornbeak8831 Makes sense, given it’s a wish 😆
*”If you defeat the next encounter single Handley, it gives you a level-up”* .........
OH NO! THAT BLADE OF GRASS IS EVIL!
The Card specificies that it has to be a monster or group of monsters
Still, the DM can throw a single Goblin their way or smth
Slay this unaligned ant!
Help I read that in Abserd's voice
@Chris
OH NO!
THIS BLADE OF GRASS IS A MONSTER
@@CErra310 Hey, squirrels can be pretty vicious, I'll have you know!
"If you win the next encounter single handedly"
Players do not have to wait around for GMs to sent encounters at them, just attack something helpless.
Jonathon Wisnoski yeah, or if your the more noble and heroic type, just stroll in the city and beat the shit out of some asshole thugs Batman style
“The supposedly helpless halfling child beggar is revealed to be a gold dragon in disguise. Role for initiative.”
Me:Attacks rabbit furiously.
GM: ok but ‘that rabbit’s dynamite’
Rabbit is buffed to level 20
@@dhaisley Than you just use the holy handgrenade of Antioch. I see no problems here.
menno graafmans but my GM didn’t give me one.
"What is the villain planning?"
"To take over the world"
"No, like: what are the next steps the villain will take in his plan?"
"You get one question"
he's planning on having pizza for dinner
Than I shall buy all the pizza in the world so he won't get any
@@honooryu5374 That's what a chaotic good character would do, after drawing the balance card.
@@thestoopidiot870 it's a double win situation for you, the villain has a ruined evening and you pizza for life or a giant pizza party in the village you saved.
He's planning to torture one of his underlings because he wasted too much money at the inn again.
What about gandalf? He was able to get comet out easily! He single handedly fights the Balrog, gets a level up, and new armor and weapons.
This is a genious comment
What makes you think I need Comet? You know how much XP the Balrog is worth? Closest reference is a balor, with a CR of 19, so 22,000 XP. Enough for a 13th level character to level up immediately. Just hang back, cast DC 18 Hold Monster, then blast it with max slotted Disintegrate, using every slot until it's dead.
True, but Gandalf is clearly a higher level than the rest of the party.
Gandalf, level 18 celestial wizard.
Aragorn, level 10 vatient human ranger, 4 paladin
Legolas, level 8 elf ranger, 2 druid
Gimli, level 10 dwarf barbarian
Bromier, level 6 human fighter
The hobbits, level 2 rogues with broken dice that only roll nat 20s.
Gandalf died in that fight, but the GM said his work wasn't done and sent him back.
Ok, it's 2nd edition, the party is still low level (somewhere from 1-3, I forget.)
We came across a caravan of gypsies. We are invited to camp with them for the night and party and such. One of them is an old lady, who, some time into the night, offers to let us each draw from this magical deck of cards she has.
Now, out of game, most of the players had been wanting to draw from the DoMT. (Our GM likes putting it in games, but refuses to actually give one to the players, they just have a chance to draw 1-5 cards.) I, however, had heard about it, weighed the good I could expect to get from it against the bad, and had decided that if I came across one, I would decline to draw.
Most of the players decide to draw, and I believe they all took the full 5 cards. There were a couple 'gain a level if you beat the next monster you fight single handedly' (I'm not sure if it was worded differently, or we just interpreted it differently, but you didn't have to beat ALL the foes in an encounter, just the first one you fought.) I think there was one 'get a magic item', and maybe one or two other good ones.
Now, there were 2 or 3 people drawing, and they all elected to draw 5 cards. So that's 10 or 15 cards, with only about 5 good ones. Not terrible odds, right? EXCEPT, it wasn't just 10 or 15 cards. See, in the old DoMT, not sure about the new ones, but in the old one, there were some cards, that, in addition to whatever effect they had, they also made you draw an extra card, usually on the bad cards. And once you said how many cards, you wanted, you couldn't stop drawing until all of your cards were drawn.
So it was actually about 4 good cards to about 15-20 bad ones.
Now, at the time, I was playing a very anti-social Wizard. I did't like people, and went to great lengths to ensure nobody approached me or talked to me unless they had a good reason to. This included: mumbling under my breath to myself, keeping raw fish in the pockets of my robes, snarling, and being generally rude.
I wasn't really mean to my party members, but I didn't chat much with them either. I did, however, have good enough stats that, even as a first level Wizard, I was the party's tank. So, add to that my magic, and I was worth putting up with.
Now earlier, I said 'Most of the players decided to draw'. I was asleep at the time, and had no intention of getting back up. However, when one of the party came and told me they were in some trouble, I grouchily went out to see what was happening.
While one person, (the rogue, I believe,) had gotten a bad card or two, it was stuff that could be dealt with. She used the cloak of teleportation (a charged item, not unlimited) that she had just gotten from the deck to show back up after getting spirited away to some tower somewhere.
The cleric, however, was another story. He had gotten really bad luck. One card took all of his worldly possessions, and another had separated his soul from his body. I don't recall his other draws, but those were the worst ones, and I don't think any of them were good.
Now, I wasn't happy about this, because this cleric was decent enough at healing, and, perhaps more importantly, didn't bother me much. So I didn't want to have to go get a new one that I'd have to learn to deal with.
So, with that in mind, and the knowledge that one of the cards gave 1d4 wishes, (plus a feeling that all the bad luck had been taken, so I would be fine,) I decided to draw 3 cards.
The first was a magic item, although I didn't get mine right away, but would surely find it soon.
The second was the 'level for winning...yada yada yada'
And the third was the wishes.
Now, the DM had told me that each wish could only undo one card, so I needed two to fix the cleric and get his stuff back. (If I wanted him to be able to cast, he need his holy symbol and possibly material components. Plus, you know, that way he wouldn't be naked anymore.)
So, of course, I got exactly two wishes. Without a second thought, I fixed the cleric, and told the party I was going back to bed, "Don't wake me up again."
Luckily for me, this particular DM liked to make it where wishes could be much more powerful if uses for selfless things, and so since it looked like to everyone else I had just given up a chance at great personal power, wealth, and/or fame, just to help a friend, he made that magic item I was gonna get a whoooole lot more powerful than it would have been.
Before we left the gypsies, one of them came up to me and handed me map and a box. I don't remember the reason he gave for giving them to me, but this was how I was getting the item. In the box was a single Gauntlet of the valorous, with the added effect that they MAXIMIZED ALL MY SPELLS. I fairly quickly became the most powerful person in the party.
However, something else that was just as much of a bonus, the cleric felt indebted to me for the rest of the campaign, even though I considered it something I was doing just so I wouldn't have to deal with more people. After a while, we ended up pretty close as comrades go. I still didn't talk to him much, but we trusted in each other unflinchingly, and he dealt with people so I didn't have to, and I let him point me at things he didn't want to exist anymore. It was nice.
Best of friends. Literally annihilating everything.
That's one of the best character-driven RPG stories I've heard in a while. That's the kind of thing you play for.
Sounds fun
Cool story
The first two paragraphs gave me such a ravenloft vibe. This brought back memories.
We had this in our last campaign, mostly because my DM loved messing with his players. For some reason, my group decided to give me, an emotionally unstable Pixie, the deck. I actually defeated a boss using the deck in the most beautiful way.
This Nobel had a gambling problem but had a brooch of luck, however, it didnt work with the deck. I didnt know this until AFTER I challenged the guy to pulling cards. We each pulled one, he going first... and proceeded to say "oh dear," and vanished into an abyssal prison leaving behind all his clothes.
I now had the deck and the brooch. It was a pretty great session.
lol
Oooh goodness! its even funnier when you imagine the "oh dear" part rather than simply read over it XD
I actually did what you suggested with making my own deck of many things. Did it for the first incarnation of HackMaster. Full 52 cards to pick from. Called it "The Dwarven Deck of Blessings and Curses".
The thing was, all red cards were good, all black cards bad, but all card results were from the dwarven perspective. There was one that would have you grow a foot long beard. Great if you're a dwarf as it'd extend your beard that length, bad if you were an elf as it'd make you start growing facial hair (an elven prince PC in the group drew that card).
Kept the potential for wishes and curses in it by having the dwarven gawd of magic "Murgain" descend from the heavens to bestow/grant the boon/bane but "he could only stay a minute". So the player had 60 seconds to convince the DM to either grant or remove the option.
I drew the ungodly curse and he came down to punish me. Had a +5 magic axe which was part of my treasure and the GM said in Murgain's voice, "My, that's an AWFULLY nice axe you have there..." Gave him the axe, avoided my fate, but still hate the fact I missed out on cashing that bad boy in for the money.
Submitted it to "Knights of the Dinner Table" gaming magazine and they printed it as an official magic item for the system (Issue 95 if anyone's interested). Would later get messages from DM's about how it made their players cringe from all over the world. Good times...good times...
so i tried to find it online. but i cant fina a place where i dont have to pay for the magazine. do you know where i could take a look at it without having to pay? if there is such a thing of course.
That’s i cool idea you done 👍
Heh, I remember reading about that item. Nicely done.
Going to have to look into that now, lol. I've got #95 in my collection
Imagine Balance hitting the one character who was secretly Evil the whole time, and about ten seconds from enacting his evil plot.
Rest of party: "Oh, SHIT! Our warlock is gonna betray us!"
Warlock: "Ahhhhaha, funny thing about that--see, I was ALREADY planning to betray you."
dragonoverlord2010 draws card, breaks down in tears, happy that he didn’t hurt his friends
”What’s wrong?”
”You are all so beatiful!”
”What?!”
Imho, what's even worse than the switch on the good-evil axis is the switch on the chaotic-lawfull axis. Every decent roleplayer can manage to play out the good-evil switch one way or the other and even an evil character can join and follow a mixed group.
But the lawfull-chaotic axis often says a lot about a players personal preferences. I can't play a chaotic character even if I try and a friend of mine can't play a lawfull character and we had a lot more fights over this than because of our good/evil differences.
Now he appears to be evil but is secretly good
I thought about character that is result of someone else using the deck.
A coven of green hags has found the deck. First one pulls out the Balance and becomes good. She puts the card on the top of the deck. She convinces the other to pull out the card. Then they repeat it with the third. Then they raise girl which they planned to turn into yet another hag and they get slain by a witch hunter in that time.
The result? Naive and friendly sorcerer of hag "ancestry", or rather imperfect transformation into a hag. She loves sad stories (as evil green hags love causing tragedy) and is very insecure. She carries with her three kinds of weird magic items: three dolls with the souls of her "aunties" (she tries to revive them and gets advices from them, mostly things like "put on the coat"), wart cream (gives the user big warts in places of application) and green tanning gel (the name says everything).
dragonoverlord2010 if you’re evil then it would make you good though
I always loved the concept of the DoMT, but would never dare use such a ridiculous item, so I made my own lighter version. I called it 'The Jesters Deck' and made some tweaks. Firstly, the deck is contained inside a small wooden box that only opens when it chooses to, and only allows a certain number of cards to be drawn before snapping shut. I had card effects for a full classic card deck, but all of them were far more minor in scope. The good cards were minor happy boons or curious quirks (gaining an animal friend, learning to sing, minor enchantment on a non combat item, card turns into a few gold coins, etc), whilst all the bad cards were either inconveniences, or temporary problems. (eg, the card attempts to bite the character with a wisdom/dex based poison, the character randomly changes race and/or gender in their sleep but only for 1d8+1 days, the character turns blind for 1d8+1 days, a misc item owned by the character falls apart.)
It worked pretty well, since whenever the card box hummed and opened up, the PCs were excited to draw some. They were always somewhat wary, but there was never any fear of destroying either the campaign or anyone's characters, only derailing it a little. The boons were generally lesser than the "pranks" but given the non permanent nature of the bad cards, it sort of became a thing of risking their dignity in return for fun little bonuses. And whenever things started getting too chaotic, the box would simply remain closed and let things calm down.
That sounds like a good and fun compromise. It doesn't break the game while at the same time remaining true to the decks core idea and excitement.
That sounds like an awesome idea! I’d love to test my luck and draw a card.
I'm using this, thank you very much.
You ser, are a genius.
The character randomly changes race in their sleep.
*FOR 1D8+1 YEARS*
@@petersmythe6462 Okay, rolling for race, thinking about all the current official player races, do you even have a high enough die for that? Not even mentioning just the more sane homebrew races, that I know there is not a big enough die for on any sane person's shelf. That is just evil.
Pulls vizier
"Why are we here?"
"You're not, you're just small figurines on a matt being controlled by Titans and your fate is not your own. You don't exist, your lives are a lie and I'm your god. I tell you what to do next and torture you for my own amusement"
......
......
*Eye twitch*
"What?!"
That's right all of us are just small figurines in a fucked up d&d game that just keeps going.
so the GM wants to retire?
Hey
Yeah?
You ever wonder why we're here?
What if god is the dungeon master and we are all npcs :O
@@laziwastaken”No, I meant here, like, in this canyon. As far as I can tell, the only reason we built a base here is because they have a base over there, and the only reason they have a base over there is because we have a base here.”
My PC drew the avatar of death one, and also drew the large exp boon (50k I think?) so he went from a 40hp lvl 6 bard to I think a 80hp lvl 11 or something close. He basically just dropped a high level fireball on it killing it. Oh, did I mention he got the single handed encounter level up before all this? He then said oh my lucks great, fuck it I'll go again.
He got 3 wishes.
4th draw: vizier
5th draw: attains godhood, former GM steps down and becomes a humble hobbit to maintain party size
6th draw: void, character removed from game with cleansing flame...
Mine had a tendency to use the most interesting tactics. The avatar had 25 HP. I decided to take out a pre-prepared Molotov cocktail from my bag and just blow it up. It was a critical success. In other words, it ended like the gun in a sword fight scene from Indiana Jones
No, you have to announce how many cards you'll draw.
Nathan Holstrom yeah no
Nathan Holstrom and a lot of professional d&d players will say that it depends on what type of game you want to run either 5e and 3.5 depending and such a blanket statement is bullshit
"The entire point of the knight’s quest for the holy grail is the young adventurer never finds it."
Sir Galahad enters the chat.
yeah, but he was kind of a mary sue anyways, so we don't count him. he was basically just some loser's OC designed to be Lancelot but better.
Me: "I drew Balance."
DM looks to the others: "Okay, you see your friend draw from the deck. His eyes seem to turn dark and a cruel smile forms upon his face as he..."
Me: "No, I don't."
DM: "Uh... what?"
Me: "I look at the card, shrug, put the card away into the deck, and look to the others saying, 'Alright. Let's continue.'"
DM: ".... oh shit."
~~he was true netural all along
@@connorschultz380 No his goal was to hide it from the other members.
@@thebigdumb5859 i was making a joke
@@connorschultz380 Well it wasn't funny
@@thebigdumb5859 no need for hostilitys
I find the deck of many things is best when the players don't know it's the deck. And I always put a delayed effect on the cards drawn, and instead if weird shit just happening it's more like the card sets things in motion that get you there. Like one of my players who was a paladin and staunch crusader of Justice and Good had drawn Balance, nothing happened and he laughed it off but on their next quest he had to catch a thief and in the ensuing struggle he had accidentally pushed the thief off the ledge of a building killing him when he inspected the body the thief was revealed to be a kid and he found the card on the kid... Multiple situations like this kept happening like turning a corner in a dark hallway weapon drawn only to accidentally stab some innocent person etc. But the card kept showing up... He eventually started becoming extremely nihilistic and cynical and eventually went full evil and became an Oathbreaker and after that his character became a Death knight NPC bad guy. I find the card is best interpretted as something that changes your destiny and is best utilized when the players don't know what it is doing to them.
Holy sh...! Have to remember this one too! Hard to pull off with some of them, but so worth it!
that's harder with some than others. like void would be a hard one to implicate. the one that grants wishes would be pretty hard to deal with. how would you even begin to handle it?
Dm (me): "you're taking your turn for watch, eyes still heavy from sleep, when you see a shooting star streak across the night sky blazing a brilliant white glow"
Pc: "ok?"
that's how it would pan out with my party, maybe yours have more functioning brain cells but sadly that would never work with my group.
what i do is i dont tell them about the wishes in any moment, but if they said "i wish that" or "i hope that" then a wish would be used.
lol yes my dm is stringent about that rule if you have wishes and you say the words i wish it happens
Wow this is a cool idea.
I draw vizier. GM whats your credit card number and security code?
That's actually two questions phrased as if it were one, as far as cheats like this go. So you can have the card number _or_ the security code.
GM is your marriage happy?
@@RoninCatholic All right then.
Hey GM what are all the details on your credit card?
All you need to send is your *credit card number* and *the three numbers on the back*
sure! ill give you my card numbers... after i scramble them together and tell you them in the wrong order ;D
*party draws Vizier*
Party: What's the villain planning?
GM: Which villain? Gonna need to be more specific.
Nice + eyyyy 69 likes
one question ... too late.
or : The villain is planning his daughter's wedding party dinner menu at this moment.
Pretty much
Craig the Thief is planning to steal some carrots.
What about Shneizali the Dark Lord?
1 question only
The Deck of Many Things is a good way to end a campaign: "Hey guys, it's been a good run. We're all high level and have done just about every adventure we could do in this world; how about we fuck around with this magical deck of cards in a Russian roulette style?"
Then you'll like the ending to critical role campaign 1. Someone just had to draw one more card as the game reached a conclusion.
That basically happened to a friend's party, only it was by accident. Someone made a wish that would have unmade the Deck itself, contradicted a previous wish AND itself, and caused a temporal paradox on top of all that.
The result was a giant fireball followed by a crater the size of France. A pretty over the top method of "rocks fall, everyone dies".
OMG what was the wish that could make that.
You just end the campaign when you beat EVERYTHING! Even THIAMAT
I love giving, "fake magic items."
My favorite being the Deck of Many Cards. It looks identical to a Deck of Many Things at a glance, but all actuality, it's a normal deck of cards.
Or the Eye. People think it's the Eye of Vecna. It's just a glass eye.
Bottomless mug, head of Vecna, gauntlets of ogre scent...
My fantastic DM gave me a "Dwarven Gravity Pebble", for being always on time for our sessions.
Whenever you're not sure if the gravity is natural or affected by magic, throw the Pebble:if it falls normally everything is fine, if it floats gravity is absent! Gotta love him
In a game years ago our party found what we thought was a sort of tarot deck, as it had a bunch of cards with images of creatures, places, and people on them. We had no idea what to make of it, as none of our characters could figure out how to activate them. We knew they were very strongly magical, but none of us knew how to make it work, or what it did. So we hung onto it for a while, and eventually found someone who had heard of something like it. It turns out it was a deck made by some lich ages ago, and the cards worked as a soul trap, imprisoning things inside of the card. They could also be used to key to a specific place, to allow someone to teleport to that location. But only once, as the card would go blank after it was used, and could only be recharged by a spell that the lich had invented, which of course nobody else knew.
Which meant our party's wizard was VERY keen on finding it, because he loved the idea of the cards and how they worked. That one little item turned into a huge story arc for the whole campaign, which was really neat. A couple of the people in the deck were adventurers that had tried fighting the lich decades earlier, and one of them ended up joining the party (which I thought was a cool way to introduce a new character to the campaign. We did end up finding the lich, who was still around and kicking, and managed to kill him, though we had no idea where his phylactery was, so he became a recurring villain.
I remember the sword of disintegration, it's a +1 sword that when you hit something with it, the sword disintegrates...that's all.
I helped a friend build a Deck of Several Things. It's mostly normal playing cards, but the faces have effects. I don't remember the effects right now, but it was fun.
I was thinking how I as a player would deal with Balance while playing a good character. The character’s personality doesn’t change much, but every now and then they will feel the urge to do something terrible. I don’t think the character would instantly become a murderer, but the character would slowly start acting like a worse person.
I would probably flavour it similar to how Sam acted in Supernatural after he lost his soul. Not so much mustache twirling evil, just indifferent and giving no shits about anyone or anything but himself and not even realising how that's a bad thing
The party I play with uses the deck as a weapon by tricking NPCs into drawing from it.
There was a fight with a demon we were loosing badly and it was looking like three characters were going to die, when our fighter throws down his sword, takes out the deck, holds it out to the demon, and (on an intimidation check) yells "WHAT'S THE NUMBER OF YOUR GOD?"
Demon fails an intelligence check and yells "MY GOD IS NUMBER ONE!" and draws one card.
It's the Void. Fight over, party saved.
Your party is genius
Pretty sure they are informed what it can do to them. I am unsure if it even works while under Mind Control Spells. So why would a NPC start drawing from that?
Probably because of the failed intelligence check?
Why else would he roll an intelligence check?
@Barokai Rein: Saying the number one != Deciding how many cards he will draw.
Also the cards will only force-reveal atfter 1 hour of the first drawing.
No idea what alternate version of the Deck you are talking about. But I talk about the 3.0, 3.5 i have the books for and 5.0 version I found on Roll20.net. Wich lack any such abuse potential.
That doesn’t make sense... sure, he said "one", but he didn’t choose to draw. Besides, I doubt saying a number in front of the thing will cause it to work like that.
Alright, here's my view on the card "Comet"...
"Single-handedly" doesn't necessarily mean "doing it all by yourself." I interpret it as "using only one hand during the encounter". During the next encounter, you tie one hand behind your back and proceed as normal.
Maybe I'm only reading what I want to read...
Dm decides that
The wonders of grammar and rethorics.
if I were GM and a player tried to pull that, I'd let him. Reward creative thinking.
No, single handily is a phrase to were someone solos something, like how people say chuck Norris single handily defeated a army with a pair of chopsticks or something like that
your character is going to gain so many levels.
Dictionary
Search for a word
sin·gle-hand·ed·ly
/ˌsiNGɡəlˈhandədlē/
adverb
without help from anyone else.
"Michael single-handedly transformed the team"
Player in my game drew Vizier. He was playing a barbarian.
Me: "Okay you can ask me any one question and I will answer it."
Barbarian: "What should I ask?"
Me: "You should ask where the lich keeps his phylactory."
Barbarian: "I do that."
Me: "With what question?"
Barbarian: *internal screaming while everyone collectively facepalms*
That could have pretty much been the end of my campaign if he didn't muck it up.
He said “What should I ask?” That was his question.
My 7 intelligence druid gained a hag's favor and the hag told her she could answer any one question. So, playing my dumb but curious druid impeccably, I asked "Are you really able to answer any question?"
He picked the right class!
how to be a bad GM
He asked you, or was it an open question for the table?
First card i ever drew from the deck of many things?
Void
never touched that shit ever again.
First thing I drew?
Blue eyes white dragon.
I suspect it was actually a yugioh deck.
NAVADAX well, the week before it was pokemon and I drew a Rattatta.
Gotta admit, having a white dragon join the team for a session was cooler than having a pet dire rat.
AncapFTW
Rattatta is the best. Focus Sash with Endeavor and Quick Attack. You win.
first card i drew was fool...and the next day i chose skull and won, but then i drew void...realizing that its evil i never drew again. however my friend got wishs and information from the gm so mabey its my luck...i did have a session where i rolled 6 natural 1s which caused a crit failure and since i rolled 4s and 3s on the d4 my character did not survive the encounter
First card i drew from a deck of many thing... death, redid it, void, redid it, yes i was saved by my friends at that time. i got then level up, castle and then pit fiend, at which point the DM himself made the deck vanish. he had enough of me creating new adventures for my companions. my companions were happy, we had a blast doing all these chores.
Alternative to balance card from me: When this card is drawn, an exact replica of you and your non legendary/unique equipment appears within 300ft/ somewhere in the world. This replica has the opposite of your alignment and seeks to stop your goals at the time of drawing. This replica retains all your present memories and believes it is the original affected by the original use of the balance card.
This gives an all new opponent on equal footing of the player, the balance is represented by their characters being opposing and balanced, the player faces someone who can be a true threat with the knowledge they have aquired and the player can act as them if they want to try out an evil character for once.
So the replica givs a damn even if you're true neutral and it's true neutral?
If he's true neutral, nothing happens.
Also make it so at the time of the pulling you and your simulacrum are randomly positioned.
So there is an element "who is the real one"
And try to make it so the player doesn't even know
Maybe after its all over they kill the simulacrum and then find out oh no they killed gus the murderer!
@@ErikaWeiss633 no it should make a second simulacrum that is also true neutral. Maybe they can be friends... But probably not.
For some reason, GM's don't like to run evil campaigns. I don't see why, being the hero all the time can get very dull after a while of "Slay the demon, secure the keep and save the realm".
About avatar of death: mid level wizard can easily take it on with magic missiles. It will have a very low HP (half of your wizard's) but you'll also only be able to stand up to it for a couple of rounds. Upcasting magic missiles to max available level seems like a very good strategy for automatic hits.
My level 15 Barbarian drew the Ruin card, immediately lose all wealth and property... However the wizard got the Throne card, so she killed all the monsters in his castle under the condition that he let her live there
i like how u have the deck being shown with magic the gathering cards
Draw: Chaos.
Draw: Chaos.
Draw. Chaos. Why does everything hafta die?
lol someone else noticed
There is this sweet level one paladin spell called ceremony. It has a list of effects one of which just restores your alignment!
With a willing creature. A chaotic evil character will be anything but willing.
reminds me of a spell in a D&D video game called "restoration" that restores lost levels (some undead have level drain)
BUT the character won't get back lost experience, so even WITH that spell handy, getting level drained JUST before a level up is about the worst thing that could happen...
with the exception of getting drained to level ZERO. THAT makes the character BECOME an undead!
@@Tarszon that why you dump your WIS to 3, you can do everything willingly so long as you’re completely clueless about it
One of the guys that I play with made himself a "deck of critical fails" where if someone rolls a one, the person closest to them draw a card, and something crazy happens. Once a large water elemental rolled a one, and ripped open a tear in space, which went to the elemental plain of dice, causing 3 dice elementals (which were d4s) to fall out. Apparently dice elementals are extremely carnivorous. They still helped kill the water elemental, though.
This is glorious
Nukestarmaster
I agree. Glorious!
OMG, I'm using this in my campaign
I just knew dice elementals were carnivorous, my bad dice are always stealing the luck off my good ones.
We used to use Critical Hit and Critical Fail charts. If you roll a 1, you roll a d6 and something happens, such as you whiffing so bad the weapon flies out of your hand and you need to spend rounds tracking it down. If you roll a 20, you roll a d6 and you could do extra damage or even cut off an enemy's limb.
I've always found the Deck to be an encounter in and of itself. Let it fall into the players hands, with an 'instruction' page of sorts. The previous owner madly circled the card that will grant a wish, but the scribbles and scratches conveniently block out the more terrible fates. First player to draw, immediately gets the void. After that, it's a mad dash to draw the wish card, reversing time to before they found the Deck, with only the one member having any memory of the event at all.
...if the players actually do that.
but then every time you draw it the same thing happens. It needs to change each time, assuming you want to stack the cards and not roll with the randomness
draws comet
okay so I go to a bar, insults someone's mother, get into a fight that I win handily because he's drunk and I'm not, and gain a level. easy peasy
>implying you might not be fighting a level 20 Orc Barbarian
My brother/DM actually made a few NPCs specifically for bar fights. When my 12th level Wizard drew this card, he walked up to one of them. It was the level 1 Fighter who had 11 in every stat.
I once gave my players the ‘Ever Useless Item’. A magical artifact that, was, no matter what you might need or want at any given moment, something entirely useless. They eventually managed to destroy (?) or at least rid themselves of it when they tracked down a collector of magical curiosities, and arranged a sale. At that point, it vanished, never to be seen by them again.
I like to imagine it didn't self destruct, rather it realized the only way to stay useless was to become something that prevented you from locating it (like a single air molecule).
Weary Sigh, that has the potential to be useful.
that and epic ideal i am definitely using it at some point maybe adding it to my deck of fate but already got a card that similar
That sounds like something from Hitchhikers Guide.
I've only ran into the Deck of Many Things once, and it was amazing.
So in this world the Deck of Many Things was explicitly owned by a character named Pan. Pan was known to the party as the god of time and fate, but he was really more of a trickster god, though he definitely had time magic. Over the course of the adventure (starting with my own character, Vere) he would hand out cards that had various powerful magical effects. It was only later we learned this was basically the deck of many things.
One day he shows up in town and a big stink happens. Eventually, he starts offering the chance to draw from the deck of many things. Now, OOC the GM had hinted pretty heavily to the group that Pan controls the deck. Vere explicitly figured this out in character. She knew Pan could cheat by pausing time and one of his cons saved her from Death. (Long but great story, she kinda pissed off the Death.) She failed to tell others about that though.
What Pan did was really more of a fortune teller's act. He would have us draw three cards out, show them to us. Act if we wanted to swap any of the now facedown and shuffled cards with three random cards, then we would point and exchange as we wanted. Then a random card would be given to us.
Except remember, he controls the deck. It was always the card he wanted to give us. Most of the time this was seemingly beneficial, but came with severe downsides none of us knew about. For example, I had a pair of backup characters because this game would let us swap characters out. This guy was the only one of mine to draw from the deck. He got the card that lets you draw two more times, a MASSIVE Xp bonus shooting him from lvl 1 to 5, and had his class changed to a martial class as a knight under Pan's service and rule. When Pan later turned out to be the real big bad, all of it was put into a new context and we got screwed hard.
After a bit, characters asked to draw from the deck again. They insisted after being told no. My complete idiot character said yes. A lot of card were pulled out of the deck, and we got to point and pick which one we wanted. Expect, of course it was every BAD card he pulled from the deck. So, no matter what it would be a bad fate.
As a side note, both of my main characters had the wisdom to not draw from the deck. Though, Vere needed her dragon ex-girlfriend to remind her it was a bad idea when her vision got to big for reality. (In character, Vere didn't know that not even wishes could make her into a dragon in this universe and she didn't know what cards were in the deck so she assumed there was a dragon card or some such. She also eventually figured if Pan really wanted her to have a card he would gift it since they were friendsish.)
So, yea, that's one way to run the deck of many things. It wasn't really random, it was explicitly the GM cheating, but that was because the character was cheating. He kept giving off fake good cards to string people along. Kinda cool.
Cool, a mini episode
Really have to remember this one. Heck of a way to run it.
O boy that's interesting. What I think would be interesting is if another god was against him and wanted to help the party (after all I do believe the idea that if there are many gods there should away be a balance if there is a light god there must be a dark god that's what I think)
I don't play dungeons and dragons (unless you count the games like Neverwinter Nights, but that's a totally different thing entirely anyway), but from what I've often heard, the games are more interesting when the rules are only loosely followed. They give a decent basic structure, but it's up to the DM to make it more interesting for his group of adventurers.
If I ever get this deck in a game, I intend to persuade my enemies to draw a card from it. Because that I feel would be even more hilarious than drawing for myself, even if it ends in a TPK.
I drew 4 cards from a deck in my game and they were all good. A buddy of mine stole it from me while I was sleeping and DREW 10 CARDS. All of them were bad and the 10th card was the void
Wow, you've got a guardian angel and he loves you.
Yeah. After that I put it away and never touched it again
Joshua Tungate KAAAAARMA!
Joshua Tungate "Have fun in the Pandemonium"
Never touched it again?
After all the trouble your friend went through to get rid of all the bad ones? :^)
So I ended up using the DoMT in my first ever campaign, which I ran in 5e. While one PC was imprisoned in an extradimemsional bubble (and as such was considered retired) another managed to reach level 23 (That is, level 20 with 3 epic boons). This epic level sorcerer also had the avatar of death after him. He magic jarred death.
He really enjoyed that new body...
Up until a solar attempted to assassinate him. Then he had two fun bodies.
I actually drew Balance in one of mt last games, and I am having a lot of fun with the change of spectrum of my character. I began the adventure as Chaotic/Neutral, and for a year (IRL) I worked to be better and do good deeds, I’ve saved cities, the damn world more than once and even united divided nations, therefore I became Neutral/Good. One of the players asked me to draw a card from this new deck he found, and baaaaam. Instant Neutral\Evil AKA True Evil, I am actually having so much fun now RPing and making everyone else clueless about why I am such a jerk/evil dude out of nowhere. I am a level 17 Sorcerer that always wanted to learn as much as possible about the Arcane and Magic in general, now I want to be the most powerful spellcaster in the world, and nothing is going to stop me, also started to use a lot of Necromancy, I just cloned myself and I hope the Paladin never finds out. 🤗
One time I was DMing a game of D&D 5th Edition and one of my players who I'll name Alex ended up getting balance and became evil, but he did it in secret. Now, we we're pretty wild that game (it was only gonna go on for a couple of days) and so I let them make there own moves (as long as they weren't OP)! Alex's said that he could summon a creature the same lvl as him. So my now evil man Alex is pretty high lvl (this was at the end of the campaign) and began to act more aggressively, gradually adding on to the aggressiveness. Finally, we got to the main villains Temple and beat them. Alex was a Wizard, and he ended up unleashing all his magic power at this moment, and you know what he summons? He summons a MOTHERF***IN TARRASQUE. We hadn't lost any party members throughout because we had a mad OP mage with healing abilities, but in that battle alone we lost our Mage, then our Rogue, then our Warlock and the only 2 people at the end of the battle left were our Paladin and our Fighter. Then they had to fight our crazy powerful Wizard. Our Paladin was able to kill him with a well placed thrown sword to the chest, but not before he absolutely wrecked our Fighter. The Wizard was dead. The Tarrasque was dead. Our Mage, Rogue & Warlock were dead. Our Fighter was within one inch of his life. Then.... the room started collapsing. Listen, Tarrasque's are BIG, so it's pretty obvious that the room would start crumbling. Our Paladin grabbed our Fighter and bolted for the exit. He couldn't find a door, so he ended up jumping out of window 🤦. Now the Paladin had broken legs. Overall a bitter end for everyone involved.
Hah. What a nice guy.
Mason Climax top ten anime battles
How in holy hell did you DM a game in which the summoning of a Tarrasque didn't result in a team wipe?
Thats a good story man
So now we have a fighter on the verge of death and a paladin with broken legs...
Overall, not the best ending
My boyfriend's party had the deck of many things which he drew from in the final battle... He changed history so that Bohamet, the giant dragon of justice, would kill the final boss.
Well ain't that fucking clutch.
I wouldn’t even be angry. That’s an awesome Final Fantasy level event right there
I once witnessed a single level 3 gnome defeat an Ogre by herself
I got crazy scared of that character, and I'm THE DM!
When I ran my very first 3.0 game (which also was my very first non-Al-Qadim Forgotten Realms game) after 6+ years of DMing AD&D 2nd Ed, I included a magical deck of cards during the campaign that was protected by a box enchanted with a modified Guards and Wards spell which created a sequence of spell effects, one per round, until it was dispelled or all effects ran their course. Since all detection and divining spells only read the box's magic and NOT that of the deck, the party of 11 players (yes, eleven. Never again, though running for that group was incredibly fun) ASSUMED that it was a Deck of Many Things. The party, which was already essentially divided into sub-groups (mostly split by Good and Evil) with only one Neutral character universally liked and respected by everyone else, could not make a group decision on whether to open the box and attempt to use the deck. They kept it put away until they reached the next town (I forget which one). The selfish, evil wizard of the party managed to sneak away with the deck and decided to pay some poor child in town to open the box - after giving him time to get a block or two away. Please note that this occurred on a relatively busy street, though not near the marketplace.
One Cloudkill, a Summoned Monster (I forget what got summoned), a spot-on Web spell and two Suggestions (causing party members who were attempting to end the ongoing magic/save the town to see hostile monsters everywhere instead of allies) later, the party had one casualty and many wounded in their number, not to mention the dozens of dead townsfolk including the boy. The deck was, itself, never used as the majority of the party worried about what further damage it might do. The party's Lawful Evil cleric did what she could to heal the injured party and townsfolk (secretly attempting to save their reputation) and was joined by the Paladin of Sune and the aforementioned beloved Neutral character - a Halfling Barbarian/Cleric - in doing this. The casualty lost the party a Fighter but gained it a Rogue. The selfish wizard, realizing he screwed up big time, skipped town and was retired. The wizard's player made the conscious decision to bring in a new, less- selfish wizard (though he caused some less severe trouble later on as well). The party was about 5th or 6th level at this point.
For the record: it was a Deck of Illusions, enchanted so that a small percentage of the cards - predetermined by me, though somewhat randomly - would instead summon the actual creature which would then be under the user's control for a short time before being banished back to its home. :)
Apologies for the block of text and possible grammar errors/run-Ons. Typing on a touch screen is a royal pain.
That is the best kind of party to play in!
Nice artifact crafting man. I hope you don't mind if I steal this idea, I love it!
So the monsters were in fact in control by the boy? And not truly evil
+dtracers
The boy died to the initial Cloudkill effect since he was essentially at Ground Zero. The monsters were the box "defending" itself (and by extension, the cards), attacking anyone near it.
+Gnarlston Gnu
I'm glad my story inspired you! Hopefully your group has as much fun as mine did... I mean, even with all the pain, suffering, and death that occurred thanks to that box. :)
The backfiring wish is actually pretty uniquely western. In most mythologies, getting a wish granted is 100% badass. We tend to see the “ironic wish” as ubiquitous because we see foreign myths rewritten to fit western enculturation.
As an example: in the pre-Christian version of Aladdin, he gets a ring with a spirit that does cool stuff for him, and uses it to get the lamp. There are no ironic consequences.
Well, the description of the Wish spell does say: "[...]You might be able to achieve something beyond the scope of the above examples. State your wish to the DM as precisely as possible. The DM has great latitude in ruling what occurs in such an instance, the greater the wish, the greater the likelihood that something goes wrong. This spell might simply fail, the effect you desire might only be partly achieved, or you might suffer some unforeseen consequence as a result of how you worded the wish. For example, wishing that a villain were dead might propel you forward in time to a period when that villain is no longer alive, effectively removing you from the game. Similarly, wishing for a legendary magic item or artifact might instantly transport you to the presence of the item's current owner.[...]"
So it all comes down to the DM and his interpretation really. So if you want to make it all about teaching your players that you don't need wishes to be happy, the rules certainly allow you to do that. Unless they're just using it to get an 8th level spell. In that case, there's noting to interpret :P
Hell in another version of Aladdin and the Magic Lamp, he doesn't even have to use a ring but simply gets unlimited wishes as the genie's master for recovering the lamp and not giving it to Mustafa (or Mustafar can't remember the spelling atm). In that story he doesn't really get any repercussions for using his wishes, the most I can say is that he realizes that even with wishes he still has to work hard in order to win over the princess, the sultan and give his mother a luxurious life. It's been some time since I read that version so take what I say with some skepticism. xD
Be Careful What You Wish For is a common trope across many cultures, but the lesson isn't really "the supernatural is out to screw you" so much as "think about what you really want". The Greek fable of King Midas is about not thinking things through; while King Midas's touch seems like a wish backfire, it is actually supposed to be a metaphor for the difference between thinking you want something and actually wanting something. Indeed, the one who granted Midas his wish even warned Midas that it was a bad idea, but Midas didn't listen.
Wishes end up connected to this trope, but it isn't really about literal wishes, but about seeking for a goal without thinking things through and whether or not you want all of the outcomes, both good and bad, of what you're doing.
It is a close relative to the Gone Horribly Right trope, of which it is basically a subtrope.
At the end of my Strahd campaign...
Rogue: Cool! A ring of wish with one charge left!
GM: So do you want to wish for something?
Rogue: Sure! I wish that Sergei von Zarovitch was right next to me!
GM: 😂do you want to play this character anymore?
Rogue:...
GM: The rogue vanishes.
GM: Rogue, you see castle ravenloft with decorations piled high... *Descriptive text*
GM: You see a man standing next to you.
Sergei: Hello. Who are you?
Trivia : Aladdin is originally a Chinese story. The Middle Eastern thing came much, much, much later. In the UK, the pantomime version of Aladdin still retains the Chinese setting.
There is a card that actually gives you XP automatically in 5e. It's called jester which gives you 10,000 XP and lets you draw 2 additional cards. The funny thing is, Fool can't take away levels. It says that specifically in the description no matter what. It's mainly made to slow down character progression.
See balance is my favorite, because my players always just play chaotic neutral assholes. The idea that one day they might have to actually play sensibly for once is like a dream come true for me. lol
MerlosTheMad those kinds of players will usually just play lawful stupid instead. You can't force good RP just by changing an alignment box.
Oh of course. And yeah theyre bad at rp no matter the alignment but it's fun having a reason for them to be outside of their comfort zone.
@@MerlosTheMad Have you at least made it clear that they're playing badly to them, or are you backstabbing rn
I think they revel in it and are having too much fun to care, so it's not bad per se...@@deffdefying4803
I actually added a rule to the deck that drove a campaign forward. I had a campaign that was very home cooked and rather backward being based almost entirely on greek myths with different names. The gods had fought the titans and saved humanity from destruction only to have two of the three fates create a prophecy that would eventually bring the titans back and ended the world as it was known. One of the fates fell in love with a human orical and decided to edit the prophecy to include the adventurers. The story was lots of fun and odd without being Dr Seuss crazy. One of the first things the party did was enter a cleshay ruined tempe in the desert and fight to cleanse the temple of its evil. As a reward the goddess gave the players tw magic items. To the oricle in the group she gave a deck of fate (aka deck of many things). The players were terrified and excited at the same time. The rule was that only one card could be pulled per lunar cycle and the card would force fate upon the chooser, but instead of an instant action being taken magically the deck would lead the party to this eventual fate. They would have to complete a task to get the reward or to avoid a hideous fate. In one case one of the party members was plucked off of the road by a dragon rider and captured. This caused the party to have to go rescue him and lead to one of the most ridiculously fantastic sessions ever. Another time someone pulled the death card. They were forced to contend with death in a game but managed to win the game and the party was able to gain a resurrection from death if needed. This thing played right can actually do all the plot work for you if you let it lol.
Holy shit man, that's amazing! Mind if I use the deck of fate idea?
Yoink, stolen.
That is hella cool and I think it could be the focus of a campaign.
Currently running a campaign where the deck was powered by 22ish souls(it might be 21, I got rid of one of the joker cards) and they all scattered across the land distorting nature, bonding to things, and sometime creating their own physical forms based on what the card did and who was sacrificed.
Cut time down by having a few card encounters grouped up(lorewise the deck wishes to reunite and release the souls back into the cycle) and it's been received very well. They also only need 13 cards to use the deck, so collecting the good ones became a great hook and with the encounters' flexibility great run could be had.
Most recently they fought the comet; his main Ability was that he forced equal number combat if the duel was interrupted.
Bit of backstory; the party had already encountered but lost to tpko (comet treated their wounds and left after duel, he was actually a pretty great guy.)
Back to present; comet had been attacked by a village to the north, and had completely annihalated it. With his psyche spread so thin, packs of lvl 20 fighters roamed the land attacking and pillaging.
Mind you; no finishing blows ever dealt, just moving on to the next moving Target.(this was about happy mile from PC forward base, they could hear it and saw large pools of ink rising to the sky.)
After a few rounds, nearby allied troops(not informed of the cards beyond legend) took arms to aid the PCs;
Now the party, who originally had only come across one, were facing 39 Comet clones.
All seemed lost, but, comet had a huge weakness. Simple, but very deadly.
There are many rivers in this land, and comet packs had been following the riverbanks south, to the next closest settlement.
The druid used a water spell to bring a large pool of water and attempted to catch the current horde;
I rolled Dex saves and smiled as many failed the 17 check with disadvantage.
The party watched the druid move the pool back into the river, carrying 13 or 14 or them.
The other comets advanced, but the river was calm, stained an inky black.
Comet focused his whole life on swordplay.
They laughed as I confirmed it appears they can't swim.
After disposing of all I with, they didn't even loot the bodies.
"We won, f*** that guy" /says the druid, one of the 2 in the first encounter(comet had also been lvl 2 at the time).
Druid was only remaining PC alive since beginning.
I knew his hatred then.
Good stuff though, just one card from that silly deck.
Have 5 more stories so far about their card adventures(side quest to my silly main plot that ended up being really, really important once they got a certain card.)
Our DM recently broke our game because he got a little too spontaneous, and decided one of the NPCs had a DOMT. And then begged some of us more cautious types to draw from it. He's been trying to do cleanup for weeks. One of our players has left the group in the process. And we mostly got good cards, amazingly. But they unbalanced everything and made enough of a mess that certain hard resets were necessary. Playing the deck straight out of the DMG is a good way to just mess up everything. My advice: avoid.
I actually recreated the concept of the deck for my own game, but instead of cards, it's 3 gemstone dice (6-sided dice). They're stored in an ivory case, and a single character can only roll for an effect once per day. Each result of the dice has an effect (yes, I have a chart for every single result). Some are incredible, some are monstrously "The GM just hates us", and a few I dread anyone ever rolling. Some rolls result in a permanent black band snapping around the character's forearm like a magic tattoo. If a character gets three of these, they can never roll the dice again. If the dice go 3-days without being rolled, the artifact begins calling out for someone to roll it (compulsion effect: DC = 10 + [Days not rolled]). I've had so much fun with this item that I don't even care about what other GMs say about balance for it...the thing is a center point of discussion for EVERY new character or player to my game since I made it...
hey can I get a spread sheet or word document of the effects of these dice? I could really use them in my current campaign.
May I have the list? :p
You should definitely publish the list, that sounds fun
I want to see the documentation too!
Me as well
"If you singlehandedly handle the next encounter."
Warlock accidentally insta-kills the end-boss while he is disguised.
The vizier card is actually a way to open new storylines, "whats that guy planning?" "Nothing, someone is planning for him" or "where is that really cool item we were tasked to find?" Someone in town has it, it causes u to rethink some things but thats what the deck IS. Everyone changes, everyone
The Rattle in the Book I never thought about it like that. This could help many GMs.
Ali Mahdi another good one is, "where is *BBEG*?" In the southeastern dwarf town called silvermount, talking to (character thats known to be dead,)
The Rattle in the Book Hmmm...I could see this being a cool item in and of itself. Maybe it's an item like the heart from Dishonored that tells tells you things, but is always somewhat cryptic about it. That could actually be used as a plot point/GM plot saver if shit gets derailed. Say someone batches a roll, and they accidentally kill the guy they were supposed to interrogate or their informant got ganked. Pull out the heart and ask it a question. It will tell you some stuff, enough to get the plot going again, but not enough to spoil anything. Might be a uses per day item so they can't abuse the fuck out of it.
actually, with the visier card it's stated in the rules that the GM isn't allowed to lie or tell half-truths/ be cryptic.
josh baughman I dont think it says you have to be not cryptic, you just have to say how to apply it as well, so in the "whats the BBEG planning?" Nothing example, they would say, you should go to the top of the tower and find a way to get the truth out of him
An excellent discussion. I could never get ANYONE to use a deck of many things when I was GM-ing. The 3.5e one was pretty half-and-half, good to bad cards. But no one wants to take the risk. Friggin' cowards...
Thanks for the compliment! Yeah, I always hate giving players this super cool magic item and then nothing happening. Another related note: I gave the players a spell which let them TRAVEL THROUGH TIME and they never used it.
I remember how frustrated you sounded in your videos about that.
I usually used the deck or the wheel of fortune from adnd as socio-psychological experiment ... usually greed killed the party .... ;-)
Found one of these in my game... drew one card, gained 4 levels.
Party member drew three... because he's an idiot... had to roll a new character immediately.
TtheWriter bitchen magic swag inside himself
Nope. Any time I get one it becomes a nuclear weapon. "DO IT OR I DRAW~"
So my GM have my current game a deck of many things with most cards having doubles and some homebrew thrown in. My ended up drawing 7 cards total due to reasons. The first have me a boat load of xp, the second forced me to draw more cards, the third gave me a minus to my stats (my divine intervention fixed that one quite fast), fourth was a card that slowly turned me into an evil lich, fifth made an evil clone of me (most difficult boss fight my party has ever fought) sixth have me an insomia curse and 7th was balance turning me back to the good allignment. Our barbarian drew 5 cards, one destroyed all his material possesions, next one his magic items, next one was flames, then avatar of death, then donjon (we rescued him later), our spell sword drew 2 cards, one gave him 3 wishes, and two gave him the one question (saved our butts in a dungeon designed to kill us), and our assassin drew two cards, one gave him 2 levels, the other dropped his INT to just below literate
Max Stith It's like playing with a Djinn. Just don't. Not unless you can manage getting fucked over HARD.
Pastafari after I managed to fix the stuff that happened to my character I confiscated it and hid it
I personally LOVED playing with any Deck of Many Things my group found. At one point in a campaign that spanned 3 years my character came across an artifact that was a Deck of Many Wondrous Things. Best part of this deck was it had unlimited uses but it took a month (actual real life time) to restore its magic to be used again. That deck gave us many many good things and moments in our campaign. Some of the better things to pull was +100,000 exp, +50,000 exp, +10,000 exp. +1 Major Magical Item, + Personal Keep in separate dimension.
But at the same time it also almost caused a complete wipe because even though 18/22 of the cards were wonderous items / gold / exp / whatever. The 4 cards that weren't were extremely horrid. Like you must fight Death, if you lose you are permanently dead. Or "You are being hunted. You do not know who is hunting you or why but you have 4 days until you meet this person." And this was outside game knowledge that you were being hunted. So your character had no idea what had happened when you pulled the card. Another horrid card was you lose 1 item from your possession. (Usually equipment. Rolled a D-4 to determine where the item was taken from. Person, Equiped, Bag, or Storage). And IMO the absolute worst was "You feel weaker when you gaze upon this card." You instantly lost 1 lvl and 2 points of Con.
Good good times. And I so do miss playing DnD. Moved 2 years ago and since moving I've had no one to play DnD with.
*TLDR; Read the last line xD*
I played with a GM for a long time that at the beginning saw the Deck as annoying but ok, he asked people if they preferred to play with or without it and only added it when at least 1 person wanted to play with it. The players were scared in a good way of it, scaroused?, because they feared a lot of it's effects but they obviously wanted to benefit from the good ones, so it always became an off character discussion on who should draw or possibly keep it, if anyone.
We had a ton of fun with it because of some really ridiculous draws and some very interesting role playing surrounding the Balance draws, to the point the GM stopped fearing the deck all together and even made some house rules for it.
For example, my very first time finding one was with this same GM, my party members gave me the deck because they didn't want to mess with it themselves and i was the only one that urged the GM to let me try it at some point in this or another campaign, i drew 4 cards in this order, Star>Talons>Balance>Key. Just try to imagine the reactions in that order, the first time i drew a card from a Deck of Many Things in my LIFE, and it was a STAR, nobody could believe it, i was a bard that decided to have a natural score of 20 STR lol, so many laughs.
Then imagine drawing Talons next, literally the second draw of my life and i lost all my items, again, imagine the laughs....... Now try to imagine drawing Balance after that, the gaping mouths in unbelief, the raised eyebrows, the "oh my god" 's.......................... and if that wasn't enough, the fourth card? KEY, mother f**** noob bard with 20 STR draws Balance and Key.... At this point they didn't know if they wanted to kill me and steal my only item just to be sure, or let me keep playing pretending their PCs knew nothing of what the balance card meant, this was their choice. So i had lost all my shit to the Talons card, and i thought it wasn't a big deal since we could buy my equipment back, but then they chose to split the gold of the party, this was after they agreed to share in the spoils if the Deck drew a Gems or a Throne (stupid me for agreeing), but saying we didn't agree to share the losses too, till that point we had a communal fund, with the rules that anyone could leave the party or withdraw from the communal fund by withdrawing their equal share and every spending was approved by vote, so they basically decided to just split the fund to pretend they weren't forsaking my character to loot based survival lol..... (still with the party but wearing rags rofl)
So I was suddenly a Neutral Evil Bard conniving against my own party members, leading them into traps, trying to gain political power, tricking monster villages into thinking I'm Ghaunadaur reborn (even if this wasn't the Underdark derp) etc. Trying to get revenge on his party members for not helping him out of bankruptcy (LOL). This was sort of fun and hilarious at times, everyone thought the drawing this time was completely worth it and enhanced the game and put a twist to the regular party-internal interactions, as well as the combat itself.
That was part of the reason we kept playing with the Deck of Many Things, every single session trying to decide who would draw from it and why (RP wise and otherwise). Most of the time people feigning ignorance and just drawing one card for fear of drawing Balance. At this point, the Deck of Many Things was a penalty kind of thing, someone had to draw from it just for the lulz, more than a Yolo thing, and sometimes, just sometimes, people going YOLO crazy bold and deciding to draw 6 cards (facepalm), just because it was a short campaign and they weren't too attached to the PC/party. Basically most of us avoided it like the plague just because Balance existed, unless we had plans for it.
One such time was when I was playing a Druid, i was true neutral, because i was neutral and everyone was afraid of drawing balance it was decided (or more like i pleaded) that i should draw from it (i was the only crazy one who wanted to use the deck like 50% of the time, the others were like once every 2 or 3 campaigns, and would still wuss out and pull just one card most of the time).
Anyway, here i was, Druid, True Neutral, convinced everyone else if they didn't have the balls to draw the earnings from this should be mine.... certainly not going to draw Balance on the first draw right? wrong, Balance first draw, we drew from the top instead of handpicking cards which made me suspicious even if though shuffled, but i let it slide, then i drew Joker, not relevant, third i drew Fates, which to us is one of the most awesome cards you can draw from an role playing perspective, good so far, so i drew Gems, this in and off it self was good, but even better was the fact that nothing bad happened so far, and that i had a free Fates card to choose what to do with, at this point all i wanted was any kind of good card or just mildly bad, guess what the last card was, thats right, Donjon.... I immediately used Fates to negate the effect of the last draw, honestly i could have used Fates on something else if it was a different party and just let them rescue me, but i was the only one with the Wish spell... so nope, not going to wait forever, I'm not a Lich. This was hilarious because we never had such a mild draw, normally you draw more than 4 cards you are very likely to be screwed, i drew 5, should have drawn 4 only lol.
*Plus i had to roleplay a rich druid U>_>* Blyat. At least i didn't get Gems AND Throne, how do you role play a druid with a Keep and 50K gold???
*Point is* the same GM from both my Bard and Druid draws went from not desiring but just allowing the Deck of Many Things to exist in his campaigns; To developing house rules and even adding the Deck of Many Things to almost all his campaigns.
Because of the low possibility of drawing too many good cards, spoiling a game, he decided on a rule that you can only use the deck once (you can't draw one at a time indefinitely), you have to choose how many cards to draw, and once the deck is used (after auto drawing if necessary), the deck is randomly teleported away from the individual that used it, he wouldn't say what randomly meant, we asked if it was to another plane or within X kilometers or to a random place in the continent/plane/etc.
He wouldn't say, all he would answer when asked was, either "It's a mystery, nobody knows." or "Why not pull a Vizier card and ask?". Guy literally introduced house lore into his house rules, if it's a mystery, its nobody's business knowing i guess.
*So basically the Deck of Many Things became a D&D version of Shen Long's Dragon Balls to us LOL.*
You might be laughting but my players will be finding individual single cards during adventures and only after they collect all of them, they can pull out the magic of the deck.
After few uses, the deck will scatter all over the world again.
We had this deck in an old 3.5 game. I got so lucky with it. It got me leveled up so I could multiclass and gave me some cool loot. It also switched my alignment from chaotic neutral to lawful neutral but we played it as I was cursed to follow the laws of wherever we were, but I still had my chaotic nature so I wasn't a 'must uphold the law's kind of person but rather a 'gosh dang it all, I would really like to just pick up a guy at a bar, and steal all his money while he sleeps, but I literally can't force my hands to take his coin pouch.' Kinda thing.
The thing about the Vizier card is that the description says you have to answer truthfully but not specifically, though I could be wrong on this, and that could technically mean you can just give very basic answers like "the villain wants to hurt you" or "the sword is somewhere you wouldn't think to look" or something like that. I guess it would depend on how specific the question was asked?
Thanks for catching that and a good point! Yeah, GMs do have an 'out' in order to not totally break their game, which I didn't talk about. When I played with this, I went into it trying to not use the 'out' and when I didn't use it, that's when I got into trouble.
You should put up that Deck of Destiny for other people to see and check out.
Yeah instantly I was thinking "to kill someone" and "where the necromancer last put it" respectively
One GM I played with would only answer yes or no questions. It worked pretty well.
My players hated getting that card because I go as vague as possible just to spite them. "Where is the Litch hiding his phelactary?" "A place"
"What are the odds?"
A million to one. Even though there is only one void. Luck is never on your side. Never.
Unless it comes to Whimsy.
Can confirm. My session was playing with the deck of many things and we all decided to pull a card. And each of us, except for one person, pulled either donjon, or void.
@@GreatGamer28 How many people were there? The card resets at dawn, not whenever someone new goes to draw from it.
@@eric_moore-6126 Five, but we were all new to the game and the dm just thought "Wow, this is cool." But we were also pulling from a deck that Asmodeus had and told us to pull a card because we freed him, and this was his reward. I know for a fact the DM didn't know about this rule, but I'm sure he could retcon that so it just refreshed because Asmodeus said so
I remember my encounter with the Deck of Many we found them soon after we hit lv 5. Our rouge got the keep, a magic weapon and the encounter, our cleric got 3 wishes, then was sent to the void. Our fighter got his alignment swapped, which was funny cause he was lawful neutral. And then my character, my poor, poor bard was forced to pick 4 cards, the first broke and shattered ALL magical gear in my possession, the second, made a high level being my enemy (my dm chose a god cause I pissed him off a lot and survived what should have killed me), the third card, was DEATH INCARNATE, or the avatar of death, it failed all its wis saving throws and psychic damage of a bard does wonders, the fourth card, after we had a laugh about my bad luck, I drew the flames card...... a high lv demon/devil has made it his life goal to kill me and those around me... I just dropped my lute and walked away after that, while everyone else killed themselves laughing.
LOL I'm just picturing the god and the demon/devil getting into a fight over who gets to kill you....
Ah I can imagine all the wonderful songs this kind of ending would yield tho...
Seems like a pretty standard day for a bard.
IN one game I ran, a player drew the next encounter gain a level card. He suddenly decided that our friend who had their soul devoured by the void (the body still lives on according to that card’s description) was the next encounter.
If I were to draw that card, my first trip would be to the local tavern asking if they need some pest control for the wine cellar. There got to be some rats.
That friend of yours is everything I aspire to be
0:57 "And introducing irrelevant plots" Percy lost an arm Grog! Those bugbears came out of nowhere.
PF: "Worst card is the Balance card which makes good characters evil. Which in my opinion is the worst thing"
me: *laughs nervously as she is playing an evil campaign who's whole point is for her to start a war to watch the world burn for the sole purpose of saying she caused the world to burn*
~~get balance
O NOoo we can't do that.
Everyone imagines this card as turning someone good evil. Few people consider the reverse. I can imagine a great story where a chaotic evil demon is fooled into drawing a card, gets balance... and is now lawful good. Eventually becomes a paladin. One who conceals his identity from most people, for obvious reasons.
Its supposed to be used in games where you can change your alignment by other means aswell usually through cash or random rolls
@@luminknight2179 what do you mean cash?
But do you know what the jar of greed does?
We'll have to draw the Vizier card to figure it out.
You draw jar of greed and have to draw 2 more cards instantly
Bastion Unit B73 oH MY GOD I LOVE THIS
Jar of greed combos into flames then the void
RIP that PC
in my game it give a players a random item ether helpful or useless or harmful
The first time I heard of the deck of many things was actually from Spoony who told this amazing story about how one of his Co players, vegan Steve drew nearly every single good card in a row. It was a funny story.
Vizier is very easily dodged by the GM. When you roll the dice to determine the card, and it comes up Vizier.. don't tell the player.. just look at him, slowly shake your head, and grab some scissors or perhaps slowly start shredding a piece of paper... then when he worriedly asks, "what card did I pull", you answer the question :P
ahem I'm waiting to know what my card was.
My old group had a tradition. Every DM, every campaign, every party, you /had/ to encounter the Deck before 5th level. And there was always an additional gimmick that /forced/ you to draw at least two cards. Usually it was the White Rabbit, pocketwatch and all, trapping the players in a demiplane until they drew and he permitted them to leave. Once, anytime a number was spoken, the Deck automatically shot that many cards at the speaker. Once the Deck produced a bubble of Time Stop that didn't subside until all participants had drawn.
The effect was always devastation. One player would jump to 15th level with a pile of money and his own kingdom, and the DM would force-retire them because they were too powerful for the rest of the party. One player would accrue six Knights and four Flames, giving him weak allies and extremely powerful enemies. One would draw so many Rogues that all of the previous player's Knights hated him. Wishes would be used to undo bad draws, wealth would be gained and lost, and most characters walked away with heavy permanent penalties (Multiple Euryales).
But the tradition continued.
That "every time a number was spoken" variant has me in stitches. Just think, if the whole party had died against the big boss the last player to go down could've had a dyinging monologue about "I can't believe you managed to conquor the whole world by age...how old are you?" "Twenty-Five"
Wild Blunt Hickok so... then he’d be a good guy, stuck in a void, with minions and a demon hunting him, with assorted other shenanigans as well?
Another interesting thing about the avatar of death is whenever someone else tries to hit it, another avatar is summoned for that creature.. I can just imagine adventurers using that to their advantage. What they would do is when they are going up against an army, if they draw that, they make it seem like it is an ally of the party, so the army attacks it too, summoning more, attacking the army.
oh, i read a story where someone drew that card in a city, and some town guards tried to help...
that pretty much caused a "deathpocalypse" for the city.
My DM once used this on a level 3 group.
Two members outright died and one got untold riches. The rest got prophesies that never went anywhere and one guy got stuck in a shield.
HE WAS SOUL TRAPPED IN A SHIELD FOR THREE SESSIONS
I was in a campaign where my GM made his own deck of many things that was tarot themed, and my lawful good dragonborn paladin pulls The Devil, a card that made her an evil demon dragon which buffed her, but as she was the moral compass of the group, the campaign got very derailed. However there was also a card that didn’t get drawn that would have made her good again, but she would have to hold an unmelting ice cube in her hand forever. It was the Justice card... Just Ice
Please give me your credit card details so I may repay you for those wasted seconds of reading.
I handed this deck to my party during our first adventure. It has been the crux of the campaign so far and was essentially how they singly defeated an entire dungeon and shadow demon boss without combat. They also resurrected the creator of the dungeon from his ghost and he became a party member that was now almost a millennium out of sync with the “modern” world of the game setting. It has been fantastic. Also, no one has died yet, but the same character inherited 3 keeps (not all cleared yet) and they got the treasure card twice (as a group they split it up). It’s been fun, that’s for sure.
One also drew flames, but the big bad was already a devil, so I didn’t actually have to change my adventure at all.
The trick is to rig the deck. Then the players get that feeling of mystery and risk but everything still goes to plan.
That works too
Joel Harris you sound like aizen from bleach lol
Neji Dolo I'll take that as a compliment
You brilliant, devious evildoer, Joel Harris....I love it!
Right and wrong. The trick as a player is to deliver the deck to an evil lich as an _offering_ and watch him undo himself.
I've made some spin-off decks: The Deck Of Useless Things (spawns items from the trinkets table), The Deck Of Mundane Things (spawns items from the equipment table), The Deck Of Shiny Things (spawns temporary magic items), The Deck Of Many Blings (spawns temporary riches), The Deck Of Animal Stings (throw them like daggers to do random animal attacks), The Duck Of Many Sings (a singing duck),
The last one is great.
Now when you say a singing duck, do you mean to say it quacked musically, or it had a human voice?
Dude if you're a wizard with 15hp you just murder death,use magic missiles and it instantly hits,since it has no attack roll. 8 damage? Yeah lol magic missiles does AT MINIMUM 6 damage,as long as any of those 3 1d4+1 rolls is more than 2,you win.
Actually, he got it wrong in the video. The avatar of death would only have 7 hit points in his case. To quote the 5th E. Player's Handbook, "Whenever you divide a number in the game, round down if you end up with a fraction, even if the fraction is one-half or greater." --p. 7, under the section "Round Down."
I think when he said it come down to one role would be initiative, cause death could still do 15 damage on its turn.
Or a spell that needs a saving throw.
See but what if the death boi rolls higher initiate and 1 taps you?
Balance is not bad. If you play a caricatural evil character and suddenly attack everybody it kind of sucks, but if you slowly comme to terms with your new evil feelings and drift towards evil, it makes for an interesting story.
I would just make the deck of monsters, it summons monsters during battle, and half of the time they fight for you, and the other half they fight against you
Just get a character with an intelligence of 6, preferably a Goliath Barbarian, and your game will continue indefinitely.
Will he also be giving cards to random Drunkard NPCs and turning them into Lords?
S Toy we all know you mean Grog
Or at least an extra 2 weeks in game...
I really hope they play out the trip to Pandemonium someday.
Once had a player who wanted to play an Ogre whose int/wis/cha combined added up to 14 and was, umm, surprisingly perceptive that being the case. He wasn't all there, and I made a point of pointing out to him that with his int score only being slightly better than an especially clever dog he only knew about a dozen words (give or take), I wanted a list of them, and one had to be his name (the list included such things as "bash", "follow", "stop", "master" and "Ugh" [which he considered his name, being the exhausted/disgusted noise his master made at him frequently]). This was a plane-hopping campaign (almost like a fantasy Sliders) and Ugh was introduced to them by a fortune teller they had encountered who was an illithid who kept him as a pet because it felt he was more valuable as a guard dog than a light snack. It sold Ugh to the party for a decent price by emphasizing that he was a mightily strong and obedient Ogre and de-emphasizing that he was severely mentally disabled by Ogre standards.
Anyways, as a result of goings on, Ugh ends up with a wish. Knowing that the whole concept of a wish is entirely outside of Ugh's comprehension, I ask Ugh's player - "If Ugh could have or do anything Ugh wanted right now, what would it be?" I fully expected an "UGH BASH!" in response, and planned on earthquakes and maybe a new gorge on the map and a confused party as to how exactly Ugh did that.
Instead he answered "Magic Deck", neither of which was on his word list. So I gave him a toy I deemed the "Cursed Deck of Summoning." It appears to all appearances to be a Deck of Illusions, until one uses it. The creature conjured is not an illusion, and after 1d4 rounds turns on the user, persisting until either the summoned creature or the user is slain. That went poorly for him.
Nice. I never dropped one of these into my campaign when I ran but I was always tempted to. A friend of mine dropped a few into the game with a crazy dead guy offering their use, draw for draw with him. We ended up attacking him and I took a deck, but I never used it. A couple of the others did and they got wishes. They had mummy rot so one guy wished they were cured of any diseases they had ... forever. After some consulting, the GM decided they both became lawful good and had to take a level of paladin (because they're immune to disease). I used to keep the deck in my pocket for some great emergency, but it didn't come up in the course of that campaign.
Good story! I do find often that if players are given a set of good things and bag things, they'll opt to stay where they are.
So being granted immunity to diseases forces you to become a paladin? What the Hell kinda logic is that?
Sir Broadsword
"I'm immune to diseases time to stop being a thieving rogue and become a paladin"
being forced to take a level is moronic
thehumbleone I mean, being granted a free level, but of a specific class, is in line with classic wishes theory
Use magic missile against the Avatar of Death. Done. Problem solved.
IF you roll a higher initiative then the Avatar. If not, depending on your HP as a Wizard, it could one-shot you.
@@bobwilson679 most wizards will have the health to live the first hit, and most have a guranteed hit spell that can do half their health in damage, unless they are high leven in which case they have loads of health and dont need to worry anyway.
@@aidenaune7008 Potentially deathly at low level. Trivial at higher levels. Like laughably so. My light domain cleric could just rain fireballs at it and be done. Same goes for a wizard.
I see alignment change not as the end of the character - and more as the start of roleplaying. Of course, at first my gut-reaction would be similiar, but then I get to think about what I could do, and how it maybe would go into play to even lift "the change" magical or roleplaying wise.
Evil doesnt after all mean you have to suddenly backstab, kick kittens and drown children and do other unspeakable things.
If the character loves and protects children, s/he would, in my example, probably still do it. But instead on maybe being reactive and protecting them, they could be then more reactive and make sure no harm would cause them.
Someone that was loyal to the party beforehand, doesn't have to stab them in the back, I am still not sure why evil always has to be backstabby.
And as we have no classes in 5e that are unplayable after an Alignment-change, why not? The only one I could kinda see is maybe the Cleric, as they are God-dependant, but that again can be voided with good roleplaying.
And if a cleric wants to set an innocent dog on fire, who was half starved and fed by another party member and the GM was already planning in and how his stats would be as a party pet, because normally people adopt pets than they see them, not barbecue them..
anyhow, they will still do it, no matter what alignment they said on the sheet and wonder why the god from them might not be pleased.
...yes that happened.
Good comment. Although, I don't see it as the 'start of roleplaying' as much as just potential for new role playing. I always wonder why everyone thinks evil characters must be crazy, anti-social or obviously violent/criminal. There are many forms of evil.
Thank you^^
Yeah, in hindsight I formulated it poorly. What I meant with it is, that instead of the end of a character, it is merely a new beginning in a different direction, if that makes more sense?
So basically I completely agree with you^^
I am not sure really. The same way that some say you can't run evil characters and good characters in the same group.
I.. never had a problem with it so far, neither as a player or as a GM.
(I had problems with a Murder-Hobo, but these come pretty much in any shape or form >.>)
Heck, one of my longest running campaigns had my character being a Neutral Good Paladin being friends and almost family with my fellow players character. His character was by the end going towards Neutral Evil (Gunslinger). My character was sacrificing to a fault (which was also his undoing) , his was selfish and wanting to protect everything that is dear to him. I was the moral that kept Althea, his character, towards becoming a true villain. And she kept Erescher grounded.
My take on Alignment is something that I got from a another RUclips-GM and Player. That alignment is a guideline how to play your character.
As such, I am not bound to hate an character just because his Alignment is evil. The same, I can hate a fellow character and his alignment could be the same as mine. it all comes down to roleplaying for me.
I disagree with you, Elyanley.
Chaotic Evil is exactly "you have to suddenly backstab, kick kittens and drown children and do other unspeakable things." It's what you do. You're not a good person, and you don't care much to hide it. Orcs are a good example of this: They rape, pillage, murder, and most importantly, they don't care if you know it. In fact, they WANT you to know so you'll be afraid of them. It's the alignment of demons for a reason. This is where the term Stupid Evil comes from, as even the smartest creatures of this alignment as usually well known to be evil as hell. Literally.
Neutral Evil is more reserved, but no less despicable. They're selfish to a fault. They would take candy from a baby, and they'd try to blame it on someone else when people find out the baby has no candy. They only have morals when it benefits them. They'll lie, cheat, and steal as long as they think they can get away with it. They'd sell their own grandmother if the price was right and they could come up with an excuse as to why grandma isn't around anymore.
Lawful Evil is subtle evil. They follow the rules, they obey the law, they can even have a code of honor; but they will screw you over eventually. They are the politicians that pervert the law, they are the tax collectors that send henchmen to collect from the poor, they are the evil genies that grant your wishes in the worst way possible. They will have contracts, and make you sign in blood. If they give an oath they'll keep it, but they're always careful how they word that oath so as to give them the advantage later.
Of the three, Lawful Evil is the only one that could work long term in a good party; and even then only if it's done well. The other two need to be cured of their alignment switch quickly, or they'll end up tearing the group apart. Nothing sinks a good party quicker than one of the members caught stealing from a church's poorbox or executing foes that have given up. When you roleplay an evil character, you need to actually DO evil things. Sure, you can be smart and hide your evil, but you should be doing things that need to be covered up.
In your loves/protects children example:
-Chaotic Evil would most likely kill the children. Maybe to use their souls to fuel some powerful magic item, or as target practice for their new throwing axes, or as carriers of the effects of a disease spell to spread a plague to nearby villages. They'd most likely do it right in front of the party, or at least threaten to do it openly, which would cause a lot of problems for the group if a commoner were to overhear and tell the town guard that one of those guys over there is going to MURDER THE CHILDREN.
-Neutral Evil would abuse the children as long as no one was looking. He'd steal what little money the kids might have, he'd push them down if they asked for food, he'd cast domination spells on them and make them dance to amuse himself, etc. If someone were watching he'd treat them like little darlings, but the kids would know the truth and be too afraid to say anything. Think of an abusive babysitter, who takes money to watch the kids but couldn't give two shits about their well-being.
-Lawful Evil would open an orphanage that has a very good reputation for caring for children. They're fed, clothed, and they get to play in a well tended lawn. Then, when they become older, they all get adopted. And by adopted, I mean sold; either as slaves to the local barbarians, or as feed to some hungry trolls, or for parts to the friendly neighborhood necromancer. The character would enjoy a sterling reputation for loving children, and all the profits of a human trafficking ring. The most insidious part? Not even the kids would know what terrible things are going to happen to them when they get older, and would actually look forward to being "adopted".
Alignment is not a straightjacket, but it should be an indication of how your character would react to certain situations. An evil person would not normally protect children without some ulterior motive. They still CAN, but they can only do that so many times before the DM should be saying something. It's the same way good characters don't kill kittens, even if they don't like kittens, and if they do the DM should get on their case about it if the character knows what they're doing is wrong.
Normally changing alignment would be character development, going from one alignment to another slowly, and it can be a good thing. But in the case of having it flipped all at once, that character's attitude, personality, and goals in life can be shifted dramatically and abruptly. Think of demonic possession, but instead of it happening slowly over the course of a movie, it happens during a commercial break. They essentially become a new character if the alignment switch was drastic enough, which is why alignment change is listed as a character death in the video. You can still RP the character after the change, but it's not the same character. At least not until the alignment is shifted back and the character has to reconcile what they've done.
i play in an evil cazmpaign right now, my character isn't even supposed to be a leader, i mean come on, minotaur barbarian with 6 int,wis and charisma... yet it seems im the most evil of them all, the others only want to be murder hobos, my character wants to satisfy his thirst for sins. i'm not going around killing everything for sake of it. that doesn't even serve any sins. would he do that ? he also seks someone stronger then him because he strive to serve a strong person. why ? because thats what he was created for, to serve, becoming free willed didn't change any of that. being evil doesn't change any of that either. i think the missconception here is that evil people only thinks of themselves and thus will simply kill outright whoever is in their way. and most people ends up murder hobos. but thats very bad role play to be honest.
@TheKrossRoads you are totally and uncontrollably wrong, chaotic evil is that you think for yourself first... imagine the joker, did he immediately try to kill harley quinn, did he immediately kick a kitten, did he immediately put the building he was in in flames ? he did none of those, can be more evil and crazy then him, yet he has control over himelf. what you describe is a murder hobos who just kills on sight, thats not the definition of evil at all. thats not even close to a character in itself. sure a chaotic evil character will eventually backstab people, sure he will set a building into flames sure he could kick a kitten, but he still has a purpose, hes not just a guy who does thing out randomly. he does thing he wants to do and people who just wants to kick a kitten so badly i have never seen, if you think being evil is you not having any plans for the future or you having no purpose at all in life. then i honestly wonder what is your definition of evil. i played chaotic evil characters before and they were great teammates, until my teammates realised i as using them for something they didn't like and killed me. who backstabbed who here ? Joker plays a lot as a teammate with the legion of doom, sure he has his own agendas, but why would he backstab all of his partners without a good reason to ? even psychopaths who hear voices in their heads aren't killing out of nowhere, they heard a voice telling them to do it, thats why they did it. otherwise they wouldn't have done it from the get go. remember, there is always a reason to do things, no characters ever do things because out of nowhere their brain shorted.
I love the phrase "Bitchin Magic SWAG". Mind if I use it?
I just recently started playing pathfinder, and our GM gave our dwarf a deck of many things at level 3...
that dwarf is gone now... and so is my monk.
but hey, at least theres a castle that he owns that no one knows about now.
I was running a homebrew 3.5 game a few years ago and they found a deck of many things, and the same guy kept drawing Flames so after the second time I made it the same demon each time and made it a minor plot point.
47 encounters in...
*Hey Jim.*
Hey, Caqrax.
*Deck of many things again?*
Yyyyyup.
*Okay. We're still meeting for golf on Tuesday?*
Wouldn't miss it.
...There should only be one Flames card in each deck...
@Ryan Lybbert Apparently the cards go back into the deck. So it's more like rolling a die instead of drawing a card.
Robert The Wise weird, I always thought that the cards were used up, given that they're often missing cards when first found
I am going by what some other commentators here wrote. But without reading the item description my intuitive idea would also be that the cards are not put back it (at least not immediately).
When I made the deck for my campaign I turned it into a 54 playing card deck(I included jokers) then I included a card that changed the way the deck worked. I also set a rule where some cards would change effect after being pulled. I changed a lot of the original cards, but i mostly kept the one that rips your soul away the same. I decided to turn that into a quest for the players to free their friend and it turned out to be a lot of fun, actually the fondly remembered it far later in the campaign.
I'm intrigued. Any chance you have the deck in Google Docs-form?
I would also love to see this!
I'd love to see more episodes like this exploring famous items/monsters etc. :)
1:25 With the newest expansion, there is a spell that restores a persons alignment to what it originally was, meaning that this is one of the best worst ones to draw :)
The alignment flip isn't near as bad as you're implying. The core thing about being evil is that in DnD Evil=Selfish, not staby madness. Also I don't know if they kept it for v5 but some editions had a spell that just let you directly change your alignment instantly with a little divine aid. A paladin who was lawful good and fought for the people in accordance to their code of ethics, even when its harder to keep to that standard, would just become a fallen paladin (otherwise known as a diet fighter) who was motivated to save only themselves even at the expense of others and was willing to break laws to do so but only where they believed they would be caused more trouble obeying the law then breaking it.
In the case of an Evil character becoming forced into the Good alignment you can justify changing back by being absolute Good and a moral utilitarian. Basically you say that you can save the world better as an Evil character and that the lives and happiness saved from the world not ending exceeds that of staying Good and phoning it in. As such you have a moral obligation and duty as a proper Good character to both become Evil again and to restore all that lost efficiency that the forced alignment switch cost you and the party.
Reversing a recent alignment shift is always justifiable.
0
Cobra100 kinda right but that's why there's 3 other things with that
You are ignoring the fact that it also switches law-chaos. Meaning your "Lawful Good" Paladin is now a "Chaotic Evil" former Paladin who likely has inclinations toward stabbing innocents and other wanton evil actions, not just selfishness.
Chronic back-stab disorder or allies or civies has nothing to do with the Law Chaos scale. Law only means that you hold yourself to a code of conduct even when its not convenient to do so. IE Never ambushing someone or always/never accepting surrender can all be part of a lawful character's philosophy. Chaos is all about doing whatever works with no regard to order. With Chaos you take every instance as its own isolated thing. Chaos or Law has nothing to do with how you interact with external laws, only your internal consistency with your life philosophy. Remember you can be Lawful Good and still be fighting the lawfully elected or appointed rulers of a city state so long as the Law of the land and what you consider 'right' don't match up. For example a Lawful character that hates and opposes slavery might fight against a lawful society that has legal slavery. Becoming Chaotic Evil suddenly doesn't mean you run around killing people, thats your failure as a player to understand how alignment works, it means you do whatever it takes regardless of how much you need to compromise your morals to get what you want done. If you're Chaotic Evil and want to become a Lawful Good character again because you believe its in your best long term interests to do so you put aside your evil inclinations for any given instance in favor of getting what you want for selfish reasons in the long run. As a last reminder that Chaos does not equal wild raging ass hat I recommend you look up the [Paladin of Freedom]
I used to play a game: Kingdom of Drakkar. It had a "deck of many things" system. Multiple, in fact. The most common one, drinking from the fate pools, was reserved for either griefing other players by emptying out healing or stat-increasing potions and filling it with fate water (could get you banned) or just messing around with a level 1 character. The fate pools could increase stats, lower stats, increase skills, lower skills, give experience, take experience, change race or gender, or any number of other things. I think it could even change the character's name. Fate cards were the same thing, but they were bought at a secret shop that required a lot of effort to get to. The only fate mechanic people would ever use were Dion pots, which were the only way to get stats past 21 (maximum 23), and could ONLY increase or decrease stats. So if you were at 21 in strength and Dion didn't like you that time around, you'd just drink a strength pot and try again.
The point is: I learned long ago that fating is never worth it.
i gave my players a deck of not too many things, you could draw as many as often as you wanted, but it only had two cards, one summoned a rain of fish in a 60 foot diameter circle around the caster, the second card sent the fish back up into the sky. they figured out if they used both every round they had a hovering cloud of fish around them, giving them partial cover
Eberron(3.5) has an interesting version of the deck of many things which focusses more on transforming your character. Basically you can switch race, gender, get or loose stats. Much more moderate.
It is also has a role in the lore and tends to disappear when you don't look at it.
My DM used the Deck of Many Things in a previous campaign. He used it as a Hexblade Warlock Patron and the Character who had it, drew a card at every level, and then the DM would use the card he drew as the task he had to do before he was able to level up. It was a pretty cool character. We did have to have to have an intervention though because one of the tasks required him to trap a soul, and i think eat it as some point.
Wizard is probably best for fighting the avatar of death. Just spam magic missile
They auto hit and deal 1d4+1 force damage and a 1st level cast makes 3 darts so...
3d4+3, 10.5 average
this Item is beautiful. I use it in every single campagn. It is the perfect teaching tool to get new players used to the idea of risk and gain in D&D. It teaches them that this is not a video game; your actions have consequences and you can do ANYTHING. DM's should NOT be afraid of this. Use it on new characters, and make it a curse for old players. Good players won't use it, new players will learn from it. GUARENTEED
fake mcCnotmyrealname or you get players who genuinely like all the effects because it adds variety so they use it regardless.
And it will also make new players never want to play again
One of my groups found a Deck and one of the players got the perfect combination of cards: The wishes, then the one that lets you know the answer to your next dilemma. So he knew exactly how to word the wishes to fix a couple of bad draws the other players made. It was brilliant.
I had a campaign where the players got to draw from the deck of many things from one to three times during character creation. Now I'm not going to lie, some of them died during said character creation, but it was still really cool. Are Barbarian got + 8 to diplomacy and a castle.
I once made a magic item called "Medallion of Randomness". It was a joke item that gives a random effect every time somebody puts it on. I guess, some of these effects can be put into your variant of deck:
1 - Medallion shines mysteriously for one scene.
2 - One random 1lvl spell cast on wearer.
3 - 1d4 random monsters of appropriate level attack the wearer to steal the medallion.
4 - 1d6 items from wearer's inventory (except the medallion) teleport to party's inventories or to random places 300 ft around.
5 - Wearer can cast 1d4 random 1lvl spells this day.
6 - Wearer gets sick, -1 on all rolls for 1 day. All party roll save or get sich too.
7 - As soon as the wearer is among people other than PCs, GM secretly rolls: 1-2 - nothing happens; 3-5 - you atract a person of opposite gender falling in love with you, 6-9 - pick-pocketer, 10-14 - drunk angry brawler, 15-19 - guards, 20 - very helpful NPC.
8 - Wearer and everything he touches becomes immaterial for 1 scene. Wearer is visible as a ghostly figure and can speak normally.
9 - Wearer's hairstyle and hair color change (determined by DM). Changes remain till the end of the scene and do not affect anything but Charisma score.
10 - Wearer automatically succeeds next check.
11 - Wearer automatically fails next check.
12 - Change wearer's gender. Effect lasts till next sunrise and can be dispelled.
13 - Wearer learns one random language and forgets his native and Common till the end of the scene.
14 - Wearer appears as a random different race for 2 scenes.
15 - All wearer's clothes and content of pockets teleport 1d6 meters forward, 1d6 meters left or right, and 1d6 up. Bags, medallions, and rings are not affected.
16 - Wearer loses 1 point in one random ability score and gets 1 in another. Effect is permanent but can be dispelled.
17 - Summons illusion of a dragon near-by.
18 - Next living creature touched or atacked by a wearer, turns into a little girl for 1 scene (Str 3, Con. 4, Dex. 7, Int. same, Wis. same, Cha 14 (If initial was higher, raised by 3). Can be dispelled.
19 - Wearer auto-fumbles highest stat rolls and auto-succeeds lowest stat for 1 scene (or 5 rounds in battle).
20 - Roll again. During next day none of party members can: 1-2 - lie; 3-4 - speak other than in metaphors; 5-6 - scream; 7-9 - die (still takes damage, it's just nonlethal); 10 - kill anybody (still deals damage, it's just nonlethal); 11-12 - pronounce or write personal pronouns; 13-14 - be affected by the medallion (effect transferred to the nearest character); 15-16 - be dispelled from medallion's effects; 17-19 - take critical success or fumble; 20 - read, write, and count to more than 2.
Just have to ask what counts as a "scene"? How long is that in time?
TrixyTrixter
A few minutes to a few hours. As long as one encounter takes in the game.
... I am totally using this for my one-shot.
This sounds like it would be fun
The 20th has so many interesting options I feel like it should be split into two numbers.
The Comet (defeat a creature to gain a level) needs to be cheesed to take proper advantage of it: Use divination and transportation magic to find a low-level encounter that the recipient can beat easily.
The keep was a lot more convenient back in the 1e era: It appeared close to any strongholds the PCs already controlled, and was _not_ stuffed with monsters to plague the land until destroyed.
One of my player drew the change your fate and used it to have instead drawn a different card...
Uh... logical paradox. End of universe?
Ahh the deck of many things is awesome. I hate seeing it not played, I think the real problem is the players not being made to understand just how risky and insane insane a risk it is, and the GM not being able to handle its potential consequences.