6 Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition Magic Items that Break Campaigns and How to Deal with Them
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- Опубликовано: 6 июл 2024
- Looking for the best Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition Magic items? Here is a list of 6 overpowered magic items that drive Dungeon Masters crazy and break D&D campaigns- and some DM tips and tricks to deal with them.
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I am late but I would wish for more wishes not for evil deeds tho if I am not allowed to do that wakey wakey azothoth for lolz or something saner
What if the instant fortress wasn't truly instant, instead taking time to set up a few markers to give it a target area to jump to?
Next time, buy a decent greenscreen.
• Get invisibility cloak
•Wrap around head
•Become headless horseman
•???
•Profit
Beautiful
There is a Centaur in my current game...if I end up with an invisibility cloak, imma give it to him under the circumstances that he always wears it around his head.
In our party (roleplay by a out player) we have a invisibility cloak , that speaks , loudly about anything especially about lewd things.
Collect underpants?
If there's any Growth with this Profit, then it's GROFIT!!!
Cloak of Invisibility
"No Image Available"
Very clever. 👏
I laughed way more than that gag deserved.
The magic item cards that wotc put out says 'cloak of invisibility' then no art drawn
“Don’t do this” actually just means do it in a one shot.
The biggest thing is that everything belonged to someone. These items come with a past and abusing them in public enough spreads word to very old, very powerful NPCs.
A planewalking party could be seen as demonic invasion.
One of my games (LMoP I think) after killing the bbeg I gave them a magic sword that polymorphed people. And then an ancient druid came to retrieve his weapon and turned into an enemy for about 5 sessions until they killed him in his sleep. Good times
@@itstherealbrace6424
Poor druid.
@@lurkingone7079 ahh so thats how the orc got off draenor
12:15 ok using a "no image available" thing for the Cloak of Invisibility is pretty funny
13:15
Yeah, that was pretty brilliant. Simple, but brilliant. XD
I had to show my brother who is only casually familiar with DnD. He got a kick out of it too
The DMG entry on the Cloak of Invisibility says that you remain invisible until you lower the hood or stop wearing the Cloak. That basically makes it a Cloak of Improved Invisibility. Other items that grant invisibility say that you become visible if you attack or cast a spell. Not so with the Cloak.
@Soviet who Cuts If you play Adventurers League, the Cloak is unlocked for Season 8, although it DOES cost 24 T3 Treasure Points.
On the topic of the Instant Fortress - I ended up using that item to send off a character in the best way possible:
Me and my group had been playing a very long campaign that spanned a little under a year and a half of real time. The crux of the campaign was that a crazy powerful wizard/necromancer was creating a plague of undead to wipe out an entire continent, and we, as the adventurers, were trying to stop him. My character was the only one to survive from the start until the very end, with everyone else going through 2-3 characters minimum due to the brutal encounters our DM threw at us from start to finish.
Now, my character had went through a lot of development during the year and a half, he went from an exiled ex-soldier with a very gray sense of right and wrong to being a paladin, carrying on the cause of the Gnome cleric who had died about 2/3rds through, wrapping his holy symbol around his shield arm to carry it through to the end.
A few sessions before we confronted the wizard, he found an instant fortress, and we made good use of it for rests and a little bit of damage when needed. But it's best use was for the finale of the campaign.
During the final fight, having fought through rooms full of the animated corpses of all of our previous party members (including the Gnome cleric, who went toe-to-toe with my character in a duel which made for a very dramatic fight), it became clear my character was going to die. A few bad rolls and I was left with about 30hp, and I was cornered by the wizard - He grabbed my character by the neck and started to drain the life from him using some homebrew spell which did 16d8 or something along those lines. Before rolling the damage though, our DM allowed me to say some last words, as the whole party, DM included, had become seriously attached to this character over the course of the campaign.
So of course I described how my character brought his fist up next to the wizards face, said "I'll see you in hell, you son of a bitch." Before speaking the command word of the Fortress. The sudden expansion of the Fortress instantly killed my character, and sent the wizard flying across the room into the far wall for 10d10, weakening him enough for the party to finish him off.
I was happy with that send off.
James Wood damnnnnn
Write a book about it.
epic
Sounded like the perfect way for a paladin to go too.
Savage
1. Tie a wand of magic missile to a broom of flying
2. Launch it at enemies
3. airstrike goblin camp
4. Profit
1. Tie a wand of spheres of annihilation to broom of flying
2. Launch from a safe point where it reaches it's maximum range as it lands on your target.
3. Rig with the Contingency spell to fire the wand when within range of target.
4. Instant multi-warhead ICBM
5. Target Thay
6. Fire
7. Invade and conquer
8. Become Toril's single superpower nation
9. Take over the Red Wizard market
10. Profit.
The DnD equivalent of an A10 Warthog, love it!
Or even better(but harder) a few meteor storm spell gems.
Nice
In my old lich story line if you messed up snd went to war. I'd let you do that and it would indeed net you profits.
If you mess up and shit goes bad. You fight a literal war, to enter a dungeon, kill the lich at the end, to then have to travel to his other lair before he respawns and clear that and destroy his vessel. Or you're fighting him again.
And by the time you kill him it's 4 lich fights 2 of which he runs from but leaves you fighting small armies and a few mini bosses.
It's evil af.
I once played in an Eberron game where the DM allowed us to find a Deck of Many Things. One of our party members didn't trust it, so he paid two homeless NPCs to draw from the deck first. The first man drew and was rewarded with enough XP to take him to level 10 and an ebony fly. The second man ended up with a personal Dread Wraith to fight. He fled in terror, and the city guard jumped in to save him... each of which spawned their own personal dread wraiths to fight. The situation ballooned out of control at that point, as the wraiths multiplied exponentially as more people either died to them (coming back as a wraith themselves) or jumped in and spawned their own. Wraithageddon is still a legend whispered about in Sharn to this day.
That is a genius story arc. The death wraiths is such a good idea. Like the players head to a city that they knew was populated... even a week prior. But now dead bodies EVERYWHERE... and the deck of many things at sitting on the ground in the temple, or the keep or in a nobleman's house.... ahaha like the video tape in the Ring.
um, the death wraiths to mention that they if someone is to attack them, they will have their own death avatars to fight. also, once the player or npc dies, the death avatar vanishes.
I once played a game where a character got a deck of many things, many years ago. The person playing that character and the DM had been in an escalating feud over some nonsense for several sessions at this point. Well this game it turned into a shouting match, so the holder of the deck of many things pulls out the deck and says "hey guys, let's play a game. FIFTY TWO PICK UP!". Thus our campaign came to a close.
@@ASolzhenitsyn Best use of a bad group.
Amazing sequence but I have to ask...
What kind of character uses homeless aa canon fodder
I had a player give a Circlet of Intellect to a deer. It became the most intelligent member of the party.
Not quite the same thing but I just recently had someone win a belt of giant strength, then instead using it themself as someone who might make use of it. They instead gave it to the gnome who previous had 4 strength.
Don't you have to attune to it?
My paladin gave her mount a circlet of blasting turning her auroch into a laser unicorn.
-Nerdarchist Dave
Nerdarchy Dr Evil must be jealous that you had a unicorn with a frikkin laserbeam attached to it's head.
There is a module like this where a girallon discovers the circlet. He acts like Winston from Overwatch.
I ran into issues with players wanting access to legendary items way too early in the campaign. This type of metagaming has plagued my last two campaigns. I’ve learned that when a player wants a specific item, I make them roll a history or simple intelligence check to see if their character even knows about the item. If they don’t roll high enough then I let them know that their character doesn’t recall the item.
One player stole a ring of three wishes from a vault, thinking that he would be able to wish himself extra feats for his character. I explained to him that the wish spell doesn’t really work that way, but I was willing to compromise. That same player attempted to get another one in a different campaign that took place in that same world, with the intention of trying to get feats...
again. I had the character research for a few weeks during downtime and discovered that there WAS a ring of three wishes in a private collection. However that ring had gone missing (stolen by his other character).
I wanted a vorpal sword for a campaign I was playing, but the item was too powerful so the DM and I had a compromise: I collect shards of a sword scattered across the Sword Coast and my sword would slowly get better and better until I'd get the actual sword. It made for some pretty fun encounters where I'd be screwing around and actually get the crit instakill even though I had next to no chance of doing any damage at all.
I love the last bit where his other character stole the same item he is looking for? ; )
As a side note, I didn't realize this was that much of a thing? In the worlds I play in, there isn't much way for players to find out about non-famous magic items. Do other DMs really run into this a lot?
In my campaign I started out my players at level 5 and just loaded them down with tons of powerful magic items. They have dozens of the coolest things from the dmg. I'm going to hurl them onto another plane, naked and afraid style, before they can even use or play with the exciting new items they got. The driving goal is going to be either getting home, or recovering their new playthings.
"What's that? You wish for more FEET?! Okay! You just summoned a rip in space/time that constantly spews forth severed feet of varying ethnicity!"
You should've gave him extra "feet"
I should start playing dnd...
You should!
It's fun!
How did you get here, WoW, Board gaming?
No
Indeed!
One of my favorite game games was when I handed out a wish ring and all the players got super excited and the drawf looked at it and wished for a pint of ale the entire grop started laughing because it made absolute sense for his character
or worse with the amulet of planes: if they hop enough in the wrong locations, you may be drawing the attention of entities that don't appreciate 'mortals' entering their kingdom so... 'freely'
Exactly the response I had. If a 9th level party decides they want to go planeswalking, they should be very concerned that powerful extraplanar beings are going to want their convenient little artifact. As a DM, I'd be more worried that I would have no logical choice but to kill the party more than I'd be concerned they're going to skip past my current plot.
Our old cleir had somthing simmler they sent them selves to hell
Inevitables are still a thing in 5e? there is one that deals with dimensional ripples for example :3
amulet of the planes is much like the deck of many things. Players should be afraid of it. The Best odds in most cases of the thing even with knowledge of places to travel to is 50/50 at 20 intelligence. Being a pure intelligence check proficiency in saves or knowledges or anything like that won't help the person. having less than 20 intelligence lowers the odds of success dramatically with each modifier point below that. it, like the deck of many things, is more likely to go wrong than right and is more likely to break the game by killing or permanently incapacitating the party than it is to do anything useful or help them escape. I personally fear the amulet of the planes more than I do the deck and won't use it unless there is no other choice.
The deck on the other hand depending on my character I'm perfectly willing to draw cards and see what happens and I'm a veteran player.
What is dangerous about one turn being somewhere else? Since that thing is way to ambiguous worded (like nearly everything in 5e that would require some kind of thought), everything "bad" that will happen is not really bad. You need to fail two times a %-roll to even be planeshifted to a (probable) harmful plane of existence. Even the plane of fire is just a boring hot desert.
amulet of the planes sounds like a perfect "you beat the campain, but if you want more adventures this can take you to them" story tool.
I actually was playing a planescape game and we were about 1/2 done . One of our characters was an artificer and figured out a way to build 3 amulets of the planes into the ship which allowed it to planeshift Once a week.It required a second helm and the caster that activated it had their ability to cast all spells I think above 3rd lvl taken away for the day. That was a groovy campaign. They really need a 5e Planescape book.
"They can't break your campaign if there is no campaign, right?" My new favorite quote.
I always have my amulet of the planes be sentient, and they were essentially gameshow hosts. So if the players wanted to go to the plane of fire they had to get 5 questions correct to travel, like if you want to go to the elemental plane of water the questions would be
1: What is the capital city named?
2: Name 3 creatures that live here
3: What creature has the strongest presence
4: Is this realm suitable for halflings, Humans, elves, yuan ti, etc;
5: is this an inner or outer plane?
At the end of one of my friend campaign, the gods gave each of us a wish as a reward for saving the world... Our cleric wished for a mighty temple so that he could seal the evil relic that have been at the center of the campaign plot. Our fighter wished that he could only be kill in battle, so he become ageless (and since he was one of the most powerful fighter in this world, practically immortal...),. Our paladin wished for the resurrection of one of the NPCs wife who had been kill by an evil necromancer (a very selfless act, worthy of a paladin). My elf character wished to give half of her life essence to her beloved (a human), so that they could age together... and that same human, a nonchalant wizard, decided that he would hold is wish in reserve, because he had nothing to wish for at that time.... and for that, he became the most powerful npc of the following campaign we would play on this world.... Epic!
Danny Dupré Having an NPC with a wish ready to be used whenever he chooses? Yeah. That’s powerful, alright.
i like how they all actually meant something
This sounds like a truly great group of people to play with. Amazing
Danny Dupré ageless=immortal, what youre talking about IS immortality, but not because of the basically undefeatable in battle thing. thats invincibility. the fighter is basically invincible AND immortal
There's no quicker way to anger a God than to append stipulations to a boon they are trying to bestow on you.
If you have ever watched Disney's Gargoyles, the amulet could work similar to the boat from Avalon. "It doesn't take you where you want to go, but sends you where you need to be!"
Also known as the TARDIS rule
Odds are good it's not even going to send them where they want to go. Being a straight intelligence check. NOthing but their int modifier improves the dice roll. Save proficiency doesn't help. So it's not an if it goes wrong item. It's a when it goes wrong item. A smart DM that hands it out already has a place or places to send the party when that inevitability happens because it will happen or they will never use the item. Smart players will use the item only when they have absolutely no other choice because of this. They know that even attuned to a 20 int character they are looking at 50/50 odds at best. It's betting their characters lives and well being on a coin toss.
But... the best encounters always happen when the players are where they need NOT to be!
Who's to say they're not needed in those places?
Why not have them fight through a deranged murdercult their magic item teleported them smack dab into they didn't even know about?
Like The TARDIS ("The Doctor's Wife")
Just started playing, and our DM had a Christmas special that definitely twisted the campaign with the deck of many things. It turned out hilarious though.
He ended up wishing us all to level 20. The DM was against it but then thought about it and said “eh, sure”.
So my character Kyoto, a Dragonborn warlock, ended up with 180 hp (this is relevant) and one of the spells I went with was Power Word: Kill.
We were discussing some of the broken cards in the deck of many things, and began talking about the skull card, and whether or not the avatar was killable. When I found out it had half the hit points of the drawer, I realized quickly that I could power word: kill and instakill it. I took my chances and drew; low and behold, the skull card.
I may not have gotten anything for it, but killing an avatar of death was really satisfying
If your patron was a lord of the Undead, I bet he was wicked proud of you! It doesn't *get* much more thematic than that...
Great fun magic item. especially when the players get a negative result.
Have you ever tried sitting on a broom? Try laying a broom over two chairs and sit astride it for 15 minutes. See if you can sit on it for an hour. Now try doing it with a heavy backpack. Now tell you players that they have to sit on this torture pole for the entirety of each scene that they use their magic broom. Sitting on horseback with a saddle gets uncomfortable after a few hours. Brooms don't have saddles, they get uncomfortable very quick.
Im certain that most players will ditch that stick next time they find someone willing to buy it, or accept it as a gift, or making a nice warm camp fire with it.
Well, if Harry Potter managed it...
Reminds me of those crazy tiny bike seats the professional riders use, wtf even are those?
That's why you make it a seat
Flying carpets were invented for a reason.
@@patricklyons794
I am not joking, it's actually stated explicitly in "quidditch through the ages" that the cushioning charm was invented so that wizards and witches could ride brooms comfortably :)
I actually am about tho give my players a broom of flying that is afraid of heights.
It will have an enchantment that causes it to scream loudly in fear if it goes over 5 feet in the air and if it is higher than five feet for over 2 minutes there is a possibility it will pass out and cease to function.
That is hilarious, I gonna have to tell my dm that one!
Thanks, I hate it.
Sam Dude my god that sounds hilarious and amazing. Is it going to be written on the sheet or are you going to let them figure it out?
That's something I would do. My warlock is scared of the place since he is an aasimar, and I gave him the planar ring....
Can't break the campaign if you don't let them in your game *taps head*
Can't break the campaign if don't have a campaign to begin with. *cries quietly*
+GrimmofSparta theres online dnd?
@@jamestrotman3238 yeah, people used discord, Skype, roll 20 hell even Kik to communicate online, and everyone uses roll 20 to play games, it's a online and sim simply
@@jamestrotman3238 Fantasy Grounds is a great way to play online.
@@grimmofsparta5022 Can you give me links to one? A begginer looking to play, here.
You missed the subtlest campaign destroying item that is highly available and arguably more disruptive than any wish or three.
Dust of dryness.
They can carry a marble of "negligible weight" that, when broken, will instantly unleash 21,0691 pounds of water. That's approximately 105 tons or approximately 25 thousand gallons. There are not, and need not be, damage numbers associated with what happens to something that has that detonation occur in close proximity or, deities of choice forbid, within an enclosed space or body cavity. Folks holed up in a tiny fort? Throw a marble or 2 in, flush them out. Need to open a door? Wedge a marble in the crack. Happen to be an insanely talented target shooter with a hand crossbow? Strap a marble on the end of a crossbow bolt and aim for the mouth. These things are night-mares to cope with if you have a bunch of creative players that also happen to be physics teachers... like I do...
You could of course just GM-stick declare that they're far rarer than default book listing but that feels like a cop out.
Any suggestions on creative mitigation of these tiny terrors?
Pray more.
Use their fragility as a liability for those carrying them. Big ogre hits the user with a mace, ruptures marble and near drowns the party. Also, remember that magical effects don't always follows the rules of physics, I.e. maybe they don't generate force.
Make the water instantly evaporate outside of a specific radius? Great for pushing around mobs or CCing creatures with an unexpected slip into prone (think marble + stairs = insta waterfall NPCs struggle to follow fleeing characters) but not "fill up a building" level of flooding.
@@darkaccoustic8974
That's a really good idea. I'll recommend it that to my GM as currently in our campaign, were trying to open a vault full of magic items and loot.
Make the water come out slowly. RAW say the water comes out, it doesn't say how fast.
Saw the deck of many things on critical role. Gave it to my players. Campaign lasted 3 more weeks
I would sell the deck to a king, archmage, or demon lord. No damn way im drawing from it.
I made my own variant of the deck of many things that could only be used in a gambling match with a devil npc. It cant give wishes or anything so good that it breaks the game, and if you lose the gamble you risk losing money, items, ability score, becoming addicted to gambling, or losing your soul(which can be reclaimed)
@@johnsnow9210 I would absolutely draw from it.
...I would also have a backup character written up.
My character got a wish from an NPC, and asked for a pony who'd be immortal until he died himself (because nobody wants to curse a pony with immortality, right?).
That's what the character legitimately wanted most in the world...maybe I'd go for an immortal pony, too.
A nasty DM would give the player a pony that was immortal but not invulnerable. The pony could be chopped into pieces or burnt to ashes and the pieces/ashes would still be alive & in agony. BAAAAAAD player character!
But if it's alive, it's still healable! Yaaaay!
A REALLY nasty DM would turn the player's character into the pony. The "pony" would die when the "character" dies. No immortality needed.
Hmm...if I was a mean DM (I'm not, really), I'd say okay...here ya go. Nice, cute pony. It's gorgeous, and the envy of all.
Including that assassin who just HAS TO HAVE IT.
So he kills you for it, and your pony dies as well.
@@daviestj while finny I think that twists the wording of the wish too much. It is specified that they own the pony this it is a separate being.
The Bag of Beans literally exploded my campaign. A player plants one, uses the Create Water spell, activated the bean, and then uses Gust to throw the whole patch of dirt the bean grew in down a dragon’s throat, bean turns into 12 eggs that explode when swallowed, the dragon takes 40d6 force damage, and that was the end of my campaign.
That's not ruining a campaign, that is creative use. Those players are clever.
HEHE - and you let it happen
That's one of the coolest ways to kill a dragon though
That's awesome.
Your players are fuckin badass.
If every play group always tries the same stunts, I just assume that they're common knowledge.
Player: I use the broom of flying to fly strait to the master bedroom on the 3rd floor.
Me: The windows are barred with iron bars without joints or locks.
Player: What? No locks to pick? Nothing?
Me: The mansion guard captain, hired to provide security for this high profile party, laughs from below "HA HA HA! You think this is the first time someone tried to fly a locksmith to the third floor on one of those flying brooms? GUARDS, OPEN FIRE!"
Roll initiative!
Enough people and creatures can fly, so indeed, that would be logical. Medievel 'mansions' would have bars against people climbing in or the windows were simply to small to fit through. So that's just common architectoral sence.
In my home setting magic is common enough that wealthy individuals and businesses have permanent alarm spells inscribed on windows and doors as a matter of course.
ThreadbareInc and that's why detect magic is a must
Also possibly multiple glyphs of warding keyed to fireball if anyone in a broom approaches
@@yellowbeard1 there are much worse things than fireball out there
make a sentient broom of flying that's afraid of heights.
Best D.M. advice with magic items: be knowledgeable of them and plan for probabilities accordingly.
Exactly. A DM needs to understand what he could be getting into before he hands out a magic item.
And know which items to not give the players ahead of time.
efreeti have a tendency to twist wishes... An example in a Darksun(yes im showing my age here) campaign I had a PC wish for "a 1000 steel swords to arm the party,a merc company,and the village they were defending.The efreet made the swords rain from the sky.killing the mercs and the village defenders leaving the party to defend the village on their own. After defending the village the surviving villagers wanted the party gone and would not pay them for services rendered due to the number of people they killed.
To be fair, if the wish was to 'arm' the people, killing them is not really twisting the wish right? If the killed people had swords sticking out of their arms maybe it would be a twist. :P
With that wish I would have thought of replacing the whole villages arms with swords ... they probably wouldnt be so inclined about that ^^
Dark sun was a 4e campaign setting.
@Joseph Dickson All in the way the wish is worded. If the wish was 'Give me 1000 steel swords' with the intent of arming the mercs and villagers then they got exactly what they asked for but not what they intended. There is a reason for the old saying 'Be careful what you wish for. You just might get it.'
Not only that but it can be argued that the nature of wishes, whether it's the creator of the spell or the powers that help grant such reality bending magics to work are of the same ilk and mind of efreeti and genies are. neither of which are the nicest about how they grant them and can often resent having to grant them and being only able to grant the wishes of others.
Gave my level 1 plays a deck of many things as a joke for their first treasure drop. First card drawn was the void.
Image not available killed me XD
~also scariest wish I had a PC make. I had a wizard wish himself a single 9th level spell slot at 6th level. He exclusively cast fireball with it.
Explooooooosion!!!
"There is only fireball"
0:35 Broom of Flying
5:50 Amulet of the Planes
8:50 Instant Fortress
13:08 Cloak of Invisibility
15:00 Wishes (Ring of Wishes & Efreeti Bottle)
17:35 The Deck of Many Things
Too many DMs assume that every Wish comes from the Monkey's Paw and must be corrupted. The description is clear as to the financial limits, spell levels it can mimic, etc.
Let you player do routine things like acquire choice magical items, improve their stats, and the like without the harassment.
The Monkey's Paw wishes are for when wishes are forced, stolen, greedy, or impossible. Normal wishes are just powerful (and expensive) magic.
Its an educated understanding not an asumption, especialy with an efreete, jinn are not somthing you cant trust , their forces of nature , their is no simple wish and get what you want if you word somthing wrong a jinn will not asume but out the most literal interpretation , if you read into ancient evocation in real world cultures your find constant warnings of demons twisting the wishes of the summoner.
@@demonic_myst4503 Okay, and that has nothing to do with a wizard casting a spell literally from his own mind, reworking the very fabric of reality to fit the vision he has conjured.
There are no demons involved, no spirits. Sure, if you get a Wish from a vengeful entity, they will betray your intentions.
But not every Wish is like that. Whycwould they be? Is the cleric at the chapel passing out faustian heals, which take years off your life to repair your scratched arm? No. Is the fireball your sorceror cast suddenly sputtering out because it became sentient and lost the will to live? No. Wish is just a spell. If you pay a wizard to cast it, it's a business deal. He has his reputation to consider. If you are the wizard casting it, you're probably not dooming your party to some twisted, ironic death by choice.
Wish is a spell like any other. And none of the other spells betray their caster on a whim or behave on their own when they are cast.
@@Alyxandeyr But you are dooming said wizard to a 33% chance to not be able to cast Wish ever again in 5e, and making him/her take a whole day off from spellcasting unless he wants to eat a d10 of necrotic damage whenever he casts a spell, on top of taking 2d4 days to not go adventuring. A Wish doing anything other than replicating an 8th level spell has drawbacks inherent in the spell, never mind the monkey's paw effect, so it really isn't something to be casually used. And personally I don't think any wizard would ever willingly sell a 33% chance to never cast Wish again.
@@ZeroNumerous ...What exactly are you arguing here, because I'm not following the conversation you're having.
Even normal wishes can break a campaign. I was playing a solo game with my good friend, and started the game in an interplanar city with my personal goal to get home. Tickets to portals were beyond the pocket change I was left with. He is a min-maxer; I'm a role-player. He gave me a ring with one wish on it expecting that I'd use the wish to improve my stats. I saw it as a tool to fix my problem -- I wished for enough money to buy myself a planar ticket home. I did this NOT KNOWING that he had intended to run a planar-hopping campaign (I honestly thought that this was just an initial puzzle or something). Turns out that I accidentally completed his whole campaign with that one wish. Oops.
The players in my long-running campaign are fairly high level and so I am used to dealing with most of these type of things (except for the Deck which I have kept far, far, away from our game).
Our mage is high enough in level to cast the Wish spell and he learned quickly to only use it for emergencies due to all of the inherent drawbacks (aging, days to recover after casting, receiving the bare minimum of what was desired due to not being thorough enough in his wording, Etc.)
At this point the other party members may suggest "Hey! Why don't you use a Wish to get X done?" to have him reply.. "Uh... No. Just no."
:)
I would suggest home brewing a deck of your own, I did and made it give out reasonable highs and lows. Max would be some magic items and lowest would be a loss of most equipment or -1 or -2 on str,dex etc
"Attack the cleric" ah you mean that completely see through piece of air right there... hmmm its almost like the cleric might be wearing some sort of magical cloak that renders them invisible giving the party an unseen healer
My broom of flying was cursed. It had "Giddy Up" engraved on it. When you got on it and said giddy up, it took off straight up into the air. I let them decide when to let go...in 10' increments.....
Hahahaha that's terrible!
And funny as hell
Broom of flying: can only fly north.
Now that's awesome. 😃👊
Feather fall sucks eh
best one I had was its minimum speed was 400 and it moved at max or a dead stop. the players used it once and never saw the wizard again >
This part of the Wish spell description is all you need to to keep it from ending a campaign.
"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."
Just come up with fun ways for the wish to not be granted exactly as the player expected, or even just have it fail as it states in the description that it failing is an option.
The party wishes that the villain was dead and suddenly the villain is a Lich or Vampire or somesuch...
The party wishes for a ton of gold, and a precise ton of gold appears. How will they transport it?
Having the spell just fail is super lame tho. Just come up with a loophole in their wording to turn the wish into a disaster, and if their wording is precise enough so you can't turn it against him, suck it up and grant the wish, he's earned it
Isaac Gleeth The gold appears above their head and falls. Dex 15+ or take x damage.
The only player I plan to give wish to is my extremely precise, studious, and careful wizard player.
He will make sure to take the time to research and perfectly word any wish he wants to make. And he will make the wishes fulfillable by perfectly avoiding asking too much.
I am 100% prepared to let absurdly gainful wishes be used. However, gamebreaking or cheesing the campaign wishes will likely have disastrous consequences
Our party had a mobile fortress... A player forgot we had a friendly in the area of effect... DM smiles and our party member rolled a 1 and pink misted our friend... one of the funniest things I've ever experienced in DnD.
Wait people have trouble with PCs having a flying broom?
*Has two flying PCs in the group*
I'm currently playing a Kraul (an insect race from Magic the Gathering that I homebrewed into a playable race) and I rarely use flight in/or to avoid combat. I mostly use it in RP situations for scouting and the like.
The hate DMs have for flying is so weird.
@@TheKillaShow Well it makes sense. My bladesinger has a cloak of flying that can cast fly on her 3 times a day, and some encounters I can just fly up and blast safely from the skies if I want to. Although, I often don't, and usually use it as a scouting tool, a gap closer, or a retreat device. Camping gets frustrating for everyone at the table, and eventually the DM gets sick of it and starts throwing things at you that wreck you in the air.
As a DM I have explained it to my players like this:
When you're on the ground you have a lot of different options. You can hide, run, jump, climb, and in combat you can use terrain to your advantage. This means I as a DM can introduce enemies that counter your weaknesses in these ways, or you can use your strengths in these aspects to develop interesting strategies.
When flying you ignore all of that. So whatever enemy that I send at you is either too easy, too slow to catch you, or impossible to beat.
That said, I don't ban flying. I merely homerule that all ranged attacks have advantage Vs flying units, and everyone has advantage Vs perceving flying units.
So you can use it for transportation as much as you like, but if you use it in combat you better have a good strategy for it.
Zarion106 then it’s up to your dm to “punish” you for this.
Let's say the Level 12 PCs have a way to get wishes. They want to wish for a large amount of gold. The DM reminds them that the wish cannot create, but only takes from the current plane. They do it anyway.
A few sessions later, a group of hooded figures approach them. A female steps forward, appearing to be the leader. She wears an amulet with black dragon on it. "You have stolen a portion of our master's hoard. She wants it back. Now, return what's rightfully hers, and she will not trouble you further."
At least the black dragon (through her minions) asked nicely first... other DMs would not even give the players a reason for the sudden breath attack coming from nowhere without a high roll of Insight.
The leader, as much as she wants to kill them, decides it's better to give them a chance to return the gold without a fight. More bees with honey, and all that.
Without the others knowing, the black dragon is among them, ready to make short work of the robbers who magically stole from her.
They may fight her, but are outmatched due to several more well-armed minions over the next hilltop ready to act if a fight breaks out.
Who are we kidding. That black Dragon will hire a hit squad a year and a day later. :P
I like to imagine that the dragon doesn't really hold a grudge against the players, because the spell took the gold randomly, and so there was no way they could have purposefully taken ITS gold.
That said, the dragon would probably *start* holding a grudge if they didn't hand it over.
Whether the gold was taken randomly or not, a black dragon would certainly hold a grudge against anyone that stole from their hoard
Ya, the amulet of planes is REALLY dangerous... you do NOT want to be put into the Demiplane of Imrisonment
Isaak O'Rourke-Dela Cruz I hate I’m risen ment’s deal
My friend loves cards, and when his character came across a deck of many things for the first time, naturally he went for it.
The other players rolled to restrain him from it.
scrying orb, we remembered every single npc and checked upon them. we busted a few moles and found the BBEG with the first 5 minutes of getting the item
I was given a Rod of Wonder from a rather lucky roll on the loot table via the DM.
As it turns out, going into a town and "testing" it is not a good way to maintain the presence of a reliable adventuring party.
We turned a rather large hay-bearing cart in the middle of the road ethereal, turned a sheep to stone, and.... we might have been walking around with a raincloud over our heads while trying to accept a quest. While we were all laughing, our GM realized the mistake and had a rather frustrated (and uneducated) member of the guard walk up, snatch it from my hands, and break it...
You know how that goes...
Back in the day, I was the next-level kind of mischievous that quite handily EARNED getting the rod broken over my PC's head... nearly killed the poor bastard. ;o)
The wizard in our group found one last session. And his character is super care free. I can't wait to see what happens.
Edit: And no, the DM didn't have a full grasp on what it could do when he made it available until our wizard started reading to him all of the possibilities.
God wishes, they can really break a campaign. I actually came up with a neat little way to deal with it. Have the wishes act as guides. What I mean is that instead of the wish immediately granting whatever the player asked for, have it give them the items and knowledge to fulfill their wish. A great example is a previous campaign we had recently.
Due to mistakes made by both me and my players. The key they needed to continue the story was lost. Instead of coming up with a convoluted arc to get back the key, I had the party meet up with a spirit they had saved before and gave them a single wish. They obviously wished for a new key, but I instead gave them 3 items, a map that gave the general location of the people and items they needed to forge a new key, a compass that pointed towards the nearest item, getting more and more accurate as they got closer, and an indestructible lantern (the lantern is mainly an inside joke, in a previous campaign we had a barbarian half-orc get their hands on an indestructible lantern and they would use it as a weapon ALOT. It was hilarious.).
This method obviously had problems of it's own, but we had alot of fun with it and it really helped to flesh out the world of our campaign.
There's another way to limit invisibility: in several of L.E. Modesitt Jr's series, invisible creatures are hindered by blindness.
My DM employs “The Look”. I got a stone that can grant one wish a day fairly early in my current campaign with the unspoken understanding that I wouldn’t necessarily metagame, but keep in mind that it was gonna be for fun shenanigans and CREATIVE problem solving. If I ever did go a little overboard, he’d give me “the look” and I’d bail. The player should also be accountable for not being a dick. (Edit: spelling)
The cleric huh?
Nerdarchist Dave
Yeah he was pretty bent on the cleric there for a few seconds.
Inside joke from Save or Dice I believe. We were razzing him about the Healing Word video. I might of said something about healing word not mattering if you just kill the cleric 1st.
-Nerdarchist Dave
:D
R.I.P Grindlebrew
So in my most recent campaign our dm placed a "mystery box" In the very first town we entered (we literally spawned in there pretty much), It was in an out of the way location and he outright admitted he had put it there on the off chance we came back later and found it. However through a strange series of events, our bard scared a dog that ran to the docks and knocked a boy into the lake who of course couldnt swim so our paladin dove in to rescue him, however this pally had a crazy high passive perception (it was his thing, that his instincts for noticing things were ungodly) and noticed an ornate chest sunken in the lake. Once the boy was saved he passively asked if anyone had heard of a buried treasure or lost chest in the lake and no one did. so he, our fighter, and barbarian (all the muscle) dove in and dragged it up onto land. Our dm told us what it was and decided to let us use it since we found it early. so the box was a paradoxical structure in which a magic item spawned each time it was opened by a new person. The items ranged from uncommon to incredibly rare with varying chances of each. when it was my turn to roll the 3 D 100's were rolled and somehow i actually got a straight 3 100's. My dm just stared at the dice for a minute, looked at us and said i just got a ring of wishes.... I decided that my wizard was too wary to just use such precious things without deep intense thought on what he could wish for since wishing for something in a rushed mindset could have catastrophic consequences.
Bruh, thats a 1 in a million roll. Unreal
Took the fortress, and made it have been wished into essentially a tram long ago. Riding on dwarven tracks, it was actually pretty manageable by having it contained and with a set course.
my character would wish for a never ending beer Stein.
I would wish for enough time to play dnd every day
alchemy jug. jughead
There is a reason Sovereign Glue is no longer a "common" magic item :p
I’m a Druid and wild shaped into a Giant Eagle, then carried all of my party members over encounters one by one.
Edit: I also dropped the final boss off a cliff.
Tolkien would like to know your location
No joke. Your sponsors are actually always quality ones. Small thing but appreciated
Hey Cody! Just wanted to say that I love your videos. I'm an absolute noob at DnD, I started my first campaigns as a player two weeks ago and your guides have really helped me understand how the game works. Thank you!!
So glad you dig the content Tea Cup!
As an alternative, a GM could NOT give campaign-breaking magical items. Otherwise, you give a deck of many things or an amulet of the planes on purpose, knowing it will be a focus in your campaign.
Also, I gave a type of instant fortress to my party but to make it grow, it requires a 1h ritual.
Man deck of many and the amulet dont need to be GIVEN. just let them use it once and have them leave it where they found it.
This right here. Unless you make the item the encounter and plan like Batman prep time plan. Or yeah just don't use it
Yes, bingo. If an item has the potential to break a campaign, DON'T USE IT. Or, be prepared for the campaign to break. Or heavily change the item to deal with all its issues.
the problem with the amulet is that people forget that the amulet requires you to have a familiarity with other planes to begin with. On top of that it does require a DC roll. in the hands of an unintelligent person that is guaranteed to go wrong. in the hands of an intelligent one it's still potentially dangerous because it's a pure intelligence check. So even with a 20 intelligence there is a 50/50 chance of it going wrong. It is not a save roll so proficiency in it does not improve the odds at all. 50/50 is the best luck they are going to get with it under any normal circumstances.
I loved the added little detail of no image available for the cloak of invisibility. 🤘🤘🤟🤟Very well done
A surprisingly tricky one is a Necklace of Prayer Beads with one or more Wind Walk beads. It allows a player to turn themselves and 9 friends into wisps as a *bonus action*. Those wisps are resistant to magic damage and can move 600 feet a round. If they figure it out and you don't account for it, the party can pretty much escape any trap or perilous situation you put them in from then on.
No image available. Sensible chuckle.
So, my DM in a Crit Role inspired campaign gave me this neat staff. I was a Warlock/Bard, and the staff raised my Charisma to 26 (A +8). By this point, I was very powerful (level 15-16 ish). My E-Blasts were godlike. But you know what else it gave me? Resistance to ALL MAGICAL DAMAGE. Playing a Teifling as I was, and having armour/class features/feats that gave me resistance to certain damages, my little Warlock effectively became the god of tanking.
Then he got immunity to Force damage.
We fought a Lich/God-thing as our finale. He wailed on me, but I took no damage, or near enough as can be. Twas glorious, to see the looks and my group's reaction as the 'Man of many Dice' blueballed a god with Counterspell, Cutting Words, and effective immunity to nearly all damage worth a damn.
It was glorious.
Tech me horned senpai, my ebony scales wish to bask in thyne damage resistant radiance.
First you gotta take the Teifling Race. Then take Warlock (Raven Queen) Because that gives you res to Necrotic at level 10. You can pick up Infernal Constitution (For Teiflings only), granting you Cold and Poison res (Which makes 4 resistances by level 10). The armour Osiris wore was Deathwalker's Ward, so I set resistance on that to lightning, and the staff gave the magic res. Took 3/8ths damage from Meteor Swarm.
+Ironclad Guildhand holy shit, ok, i'll see if i can find some human hoe and a nalfeshnee and do so electric boogaloo.
@@samuelwall5559 atta boy
That item sounds broken as all fuck.
I want it.
One home brew rule you could do for the Amulet of the Planes is that it requires a soul sacrifice to use. As in you have to have a soul ready and willing to be sacrificed to use it. This puts a major restriction on the amulet so it can't be used often, and you can, in some cases, dictate how many souls are usable and when they get them. That would also give strong intensive to not just start hopping planes. Another idea is that it can only be used at specific locations such as in front of specific gates. Or combine the rules to make it require that you be in front of a portal of sorts and requires a soul sacrifice. This would again place a ton of limits on the item making it less game breaking.
As for dealing with wishes, I think the best thing would be that you have the wishes be very literal and very vague in their results. For example, if a player says "make me a sandwich" the player is then turned into a sandwich. Or if the player says "I wish to be transported into the castle" have them transported directly into the camber of the guards. Or if your player says "I wish for (insert villain here) to die", it just speeds them through time to where the villain is dying of old age and they witness his last breath, but meanwhile the entire world has went to hell in a hand basket and they can't undo the devastation that has been done and they can only fix it by going back in time (and if they have already used up all the wishes, well too bad they are stuck there until they find another way back). Or if they say "seal away (insert villain here)" you could have the villain sealed within a room that is locked from the outside and someone lets them out. Or if it's a very specific wish that clearly defeats the boss without any question or room for out playing them, simply have the consequence of the wish being fulfilled and the wanted out come be horrific as they completely screwed up something the boss was going to do that would have ultimately helped them in the end and then they have to find a way around the situation they have created.
Also, something I have found really enjoyable for everyone involved, making things up on the fly. Yes you want to have a clear goal of where you should be headed, what you want to happen, and have stuff prepared. But sometimes it's just nice to let the players change your plans a bit and you adapt pushing things in a sightly different direction. You can actually have a lot of fun allowing the players to help craft the plot via choices and things you didn't expect. Of course you want to have some things on standby, but that shouldn't be an issue.
4:20 Now this is just the magic carpet from Aladdin
Here's the thing about flying: you, as the DM, are allowed to create scenarios that challenge PCs even when they can fly. Every DM has to learn this skill by the time the PCs get to fifth level, as many arcane casters will pick up the Fly spell. But it's applicable regardless of whether it's a magic spell, a magic item, a class feature, or even a racial power (like with Aaracocra or Feral Tieflings). If you, the DM, have allowed these character options, you are tacitly agreeing to accept all the challenges it could provide.
So how do you deal with flight? Well first, flying enemies. Throw a bunch of those at the party on the reg. This can be especially appropriate if the antagonists the PCs are dealing with _know_ that one or more of the PCs can fly, and will therefore adapt accordingly. Have random encounter tables set aside for flying foes, or ones who can cling to ceilings when it enclosed environments. Make their nemesis send patrols mounted on flying creatures, like hippogriffs, griffons, pegasi, or others. Dragon-riding Nazghul are THE reason the fellowship of the ring didn't attempt the "giant eagles" plan; Mordor had friggin' aerial troops, and would spot flying infiltrators from miles away, squandering the element of stealth. Mount the tops of fortresses with animate gargoyles.
Trust me, if you've managed to make the one person with flight be scared of taking to the skies alone, you are on the right track.
For that matter, emphasize that word "alone". Most of the time, only one PC will have the ability to fly in a party. Maybe two, if you count the Druid's wildshape. So make that mean something. Encounters immediately surrounding an objective should be potent enough for an entire party, not just the one guy on the flying broom. If anything, an antagonist who knows the PCs have some flight ability will beef up security to prevent lone adventurers from flying around to dodge defenses.
Indeed, a canny antagonist is going to move as many operations as possible into enclosed spaces. Dungeons, fortresses, tunnel systems, etc. Low ceilings and guarded entrances. Windows that have bars on them, and look-outs stationed on roofs when complete enclosure isn't possible.
Next, have ground-based foes adapt to flying characters. The ogre isn't going to take the flying wizard, peppering him with fire from above, lying down. He's going to start throwing javalins or rocks. He's going to take cover under trees or around buildings. He might even focus down the PC's grounded allies, so the wizard can't throw area-of-effect magic down on him without hitting his friends. Archers will focus fire on the airborne PC with arrows and crossbow bolts. Armoured troops might turn their shields into mobile cover, if they are large enough (like Greek or Roman infantry). Minions of an antagonist might start carrying scrolls of Fly with them, or potions of flight, or some kind of potion or scroll that can ground a flying opponent.
Finally, if the party is using their flight abilities to circumvent encounters entirely...let them. You can always let the encounters they skipped come back to bite them later. That contingent of soldiers the party bypassed won't stop being a threat just because they were avoided. If anything, flying over or around them means they'll have a chance to grow more powerful. Evil has its own schedule.
I wish I could see Cody's true alignment when the the healing word spell changed its name to Cody's Boon
This video’s honestly just really good for tips on how to improvise and incorporate things players do into the main narrative, I’ll definitely be coming back to this video
I've never had the Deck of Many things break my campaigns (I've used it in about ten campaigns). The party either uses it wisely or falls victim to a tpk. You can treat it like wishes and predetermine which cards will be drawn and limit the number of cards, and as you said, foreshadow its discovery.
The thing I have found that breaks my campaigns is a simple first level spell, "detect magic". Who should we target first? detect magic Treasure hoard got valuables? Detect magic. Meeting someone for trade negotiations and you want to know if you could start a fight? detect magic. Looking for an ambush on the road? detect magic. It's like a freakin' radar.
a tpk doesn't count as breaking the campaign?
@@apostateCourier no. Adventuring is dangerous, it is a calculated risk. Now if the party managed to use the deck to tpk an opposing party, yes. But I've never seen that happen.
@@SenseiJae I mean in the sense that the party dying ends the campaign.
@@apostateCourier does it though? My players are comfortable rolling new characters so it isn't an issue. If they really were worried about it, they wouldn't use the deck, they know better.
I wish you would have talked about the deck of many things a bit more. I know its Armageddon level crazy to be injected into any campaign but, I would love to hear your thoughts on dealing with the pros and cons the deck can bestow on the players. The possibilities of plot hooks, quests, and inevitable clean-ups that the deck could spawn would be fascinating to hear about as well.
As a player, I hate that thing. I literally would run away from such a "powerful" magic item. I'll take my chances against the guards or even a dragon rather than that blasted thing. (VOID say anything? *hint* *hint*)
As a GM. I love that thing to death :D
Well there is always the classic last session of the first Critical Role campaign, where Grog for some reason uses it and gets his soul trapped on whatever plane lol. Since it was the last session and they were wrapping up Matt was just like "okay for the sake of brevity and since you're all like 19/20 anyway, you spend 2 weeks retrieving his soul. Okay now we can get back to the epilogue"
Just dont use it. The best thing you can do as a DM is just ban it. Or make your own light version.
Hey, I might be able to help! I, in my ignorance and excitement, made a Deck of Many Things as a MacGuffin/plot driving object in my game, and after the initial fear, figured out a few things. This is what I did, which may or may not apply to you:
1. I stated that the deck they were searching for had been used previously (I had plot reasons), and thus before the game, I had taken out any cards that would have been altogether too game breaking for my party's level.
2. When one of my players drew the Fates (erase one moment from history that happened to you), his low Intelligence character had a chance to break the game with a decision I had not thought of, but thankfully it was near the end of the session for the day. Before the next session, I asked what kinds of decisions this character may make, so I could think out possibilities of branches. Try to inquire/listen to their card possibilities in between sessions, like what he said to do re: wishes.
3. I took a chance and really twisted my campaign plot so that it felt like the deck had real impact by having the character's wish-type-choice have a real Monkey's Paw effect: instead of almost-tragic thing happening to Beloved NPC A (he chose this moment to be erased), actually-tragic thing happened to beloved NPC B with greater consequences, because NPC B naturally handles things differently. So don't break the plot, but really re-purpose and bend things if the game can handle it with the Deck.
I'm actually really looking forward to seeing how things go next: there's alternate timeline stuff happening now and they intend to draw another card from the deck to see if it was affected by the timeline switch, so wish me luck!
I feel like it could be a great plot hook for a Law vs. Chaos themed game.
I would wish for more Taking20 videos
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Too kind!!!!
I've been in a campaign where we got a deck of many things, and, surprisingly, it didn't destroy the campaign. It was actually a really fun campaign and at the end we fought a Terrasque after being trapped in the past. It was pretty awesome.
I wanna show what my CHARACTERS would wish.
Fran Bow: (human wizard, little girl, talks to her cat)
1. To never be apart from her cat
2. To destroy the mental asylum that treated her cruelly
3. To have had a normal life (minis Mr. Midnight
Slim Spit: (rouge, the right hand man of "d'mafia", likes to collect poison and sell it, greaser)
1. D'mafia's protection
2. A device to kill purple worms in an instant
3. 10 million platinum coins
Maximillian Belldark: (teifling bard, snob, teacher of ancient civilizations, plays Floral Fury on a trumpet as his bard song )
1. The extinction of the orcs
2. Knowledge
3. High heels (despite being a straight man) that can crush and pierce a man's skull easily
Mr. Shanty: (human bard, pirate with ship and crew, loves to charm people with music and has a short temper)
1. The greatest singing voice
2. The ability to play every instrument
3. More magic.
I'll update this in the future. Just because.
Well there's only one thing my character wants and this might seem a little OP:I want a wish that allows me to use the stand The world (from JoJo's bizarre adventure) what he does is able to stop time for 12 seconds and have the ability to take maximum 50 punches (at lv 20) but will not be able to be used until I take the next long rest and also my stand can be hurt and if he dies I die no questions asked and finally superhuman strength and above average speed. I know this sounds crazy but I'm a sucker for overpowered abilities 😅😅😅
There is a gold limit of 50,000 gp
Ok, I need advice as a player, not a dm. My group got two cards from the deck of many things early on in the campaign. The monk pulled the card that gave him a fighter follower. I, as my luck always does, got a negative affect where my soul was torn for my body and thrown in an item who knows where. To make things worse, now we traveled back in time and 150 years which means that the item does not exist yet. So basically I'm running around without a soul with no possible way of getting my soul back. Help
Well for one if you have a god that presides over time or fate in your world you could seek them out in hopes that they can send you back to your time or deliver the item to you. You could also search for a Wish to "Return to the time period from when you were taken", or if the soul is in an artifact the item could actually exist but not actually have your soul in it at this time. In general one of your best paths of recourse would be to talk to your DM about it unless they're a "DM vs Player" sort they should be willing to listen and possibly help you accomplish the goal.
He's not the DM vs player type, but he Is one that emphasizes consequences. We changed 3 things and now we basically have existential crises constantly. one of my teammates will die if we made one more change to the timeline basically.
All the more reason to find a god of time, if your DM isn't making any effort towards giving you any ways back to your own time and is being a dick about "changing things" and not letting you interact with people without severe consequences even when you're careful it might be best to drop the game. It honestly sounds like a punishment heavy campaign depending on how careful or careless you've been.
Got gud
Technically speaking, that card is meant to make your character incapacitated until the soul is returned
In one of my previous campaigns, the DM introduced a really OP enemy (for our level). He planned for us to get pummeled a bit, escape and come back to defeat the enemy when we were at a much higher level. For the most part, it went completely according to plan. Except that I managed to disarm the enemy with a natural 20 during the fight. This resulted in me getting the enemy's extremely OP sword which the DM had never intended to wind up in the hands of a player. From that point on, he desperately tried and failed to find a way to get the sword out of my possession every week until I finally sat down with him, discussed it and agreed on some acceptable nerfs.
Best way to nerf weapons is by just making the weapon design matter more and have the material only affect maintenance (so a mythril sword holds a better edge for longer than a steel sword, and if you cross blades you're more likely to damage the enemy's blade instead of your own, so you don't need to spend as much time and money to keep the weapon deal high damage, but enemy's weapons you loot have worse value were you to sell them), if you have magic in your campaign you could have gems serve as a sort of fuel tank for the enchantement so you can have a high quality gem embedded in the sword that runs out of power and you can't recharge without a high level skill or paying a hefty sum to a wizard so he does it for you, or (even though this is a big deus ex machina) you could make the weapon cursed/sentient and it can't be picked up by a low level/worthy/authorized character (the Mjölnir path).
If the weapon was high level soley because it had a better dice roll then I agree with the nerf, but with some workaround it could've added so much more to the story.
a single sword shouldnt be tht bad and he shouldnt have put it in if he wasnt willing to give it to u
@@cdgonepotatoes4219 ick, you're idea is to add maintenance. They didn't add weapon maintenance to the game because its boring and doesn't add anything. If you add weapon maintenance then everyone has weapon maintenance. Theres a reason a lot of campaigns don't care about weight or smaller trivial things. If weapon maintenance wasn't part of the game already suddenly adding it is janky and an obvious ploy to nerf the weapon.
Better to just design encounters around it. Plenty of ways to deal with it in combat. When you are facing smart enemies or dudes who can cast spells, literally the first thing they do is try to disable the guy who does the most damage. Unless the creatures are really dumb like zombies generally tactics are kind of the same.
@@bananajoe113 The tricky part of making the enemy disarm the guy with the better weapon is that, unless there's a very big difference in quality and the better sword is fancy as all hell with a mirror polish and glow, the enemy shouldn't be able to know what is the better weapon held by the player party and causing unlikely scenarios where you inevitably end up metagaming the bad way.
Maintenance doesn't have to be anything fancy or something that impedes greatly the campaign, simply tell the players when an action damages their weapon so they have to take a negative modifier to damage until they get across a whetstone (for use in a town free of charge or a very negligible fee) or even just a smooth rock near a river to fix the edge and if you're so inclined just make higher level weapons unbreakable in a normal combat scenario.
The magical properties of a weapon could be activated at will for a fixed number of times you state so you can give the ability to your players to manage the resource and they won't have to be conservative about using that better weapon they have just because it has a fancy gem that fires off when it wants and you may need it against a bigger bad guy later on. This could also help you as DM make lower risk quests still enjoyable even with high level gear because your players can decide to take a couple more turns in that fight against bandits because they're not exactly worth the cost of recharging that spell and more turns give way to more mid-combat events and creative thinking.
Glove...of....rust. Like a rust monster. In the palm of your hand.
In my eyes the best most interesting magic items I want are the ones whose use I would have to consider the most heavily IE it needs to have great drawbacks if it has great powers, otherwise it just feels OP instead of building a nice lore and story behind the item that feel real.
I'm gonna say this again: I want to start off a Planescape campaign by giving a level 1 party a Cubic Gate and an Amulet of the Planes after playing off the first session like it's just your vanilla medieval fantasy.
I'm hiding elemental magic in gems and asked if they want the gems affixed to their weapons (they just know the gems came from a magical area). There will be an attunement period before they even know what the weapons do, they will have to roll to see if the weapons work (over time, they will be less and less unpredictable), and there will be restrictions on # of uses.
I think it will work ok. We'll see!
I like this idea. Please come back and tell us if it worked
Will do!
Funny you should say that. This is a family game. I've designed so much of the narrative around the things they like, the jokes we have, and they've added their own twists into the role playing, such as my brother's Druid taking a bit of a romantic interest in my sister-in-law's Bard. The reality is that it is their game and I want to make it special for them.
I wanted to give them something fun and the elemental gems sounded like an interesting dynamic, especially with their planned erratic nature. The end game, if it plays out this way, is that the gems hold powerful Elementals, and that releasing them, along with the entity in the Bard's gem, would combine into something akin to a Faerun knock-off of Captain Planet from the cartoon of the '90s. Put that in there solely for my brother, who I know will enjoy it.
They're getting these pretty early, so I'm thinking the gems will only work if they roll higher than a 20 minus their level. . . so, Level 5 characters would have to beat a 15. For attunement, I'm going to have them roll a die (I'll have to check my notes which one), and that's how many hours they need to spend working with the items to activate it. Magic users that put the gem on something they've been using will have to spend less time attuning (so, maybe a d4).
I think it is going to work well!
I agree, and I like the ideas. It will definitely be interesting when they hit lvl 10. Gotta roll a 20 to succeed. Thats gonna be fun
oh hey I'm using something similar I call them the silver dragon rings, they appear to be a four fingered dragon claw clutching a small coloured gem or crystal. whenever the party uses a dmg. type from the element it represents that dmg. increases by 1d6. you can only wear one at a time. currently the party has the necrotic dragon ring (no one uses that dmg. type) the fire dragon ring (used by our ice/wind sorcerer) lightning dragon ring (used by a member who doesn't show up anymore but his character's still cannon, whilst another would really like that ring) it combos with other things in this campaign that was meant to be broken as frick but oh boy it's fun
Great video, Cody!
It might be pertinent to suggest to GM's a simple general rule. One that I learned way back when I was one of three kids learning to play and run the game with naught but a ratty DMG, one set of dice, and some old paper... We often read the book together, and discussed what we were reading, in preparation for organizing the game and getting started (all DIY... and unsupervised)...
Very simply put, "Do NOT just randomly leave shiny sh*t laying around with no purpose... EVER!"
It's fine to utilize or not utilize whatever magics and items, artifacts, relics, etc... you like for an adventure. They are in the canon listings for that purpose as much as any entertaining reading, BUT one should ALWAYS plan out the campaign at least enough to expect abuses of any and every magic items relinquished to "the field of play"... Because I promise you, if a PC can find it, a PC absolutely MUST abuse the sh*t out of it... Common sense would then dictate that you (GM's) just don't go randomly raining magic items willy nilly without a reasonable understanding of what you're putting in the game.
That said, it's only been occasional that I've let loose a magic item that was even "problematic" to the campaign. Inexperience and the unusual dramatic attraction to certain items can still get the better of us all. I had intended a Plane-Jumping campaign, so when we started to gather various implements of planes jumping, it was only sooner or later that PC's (Players?) got the brilliant ideas to abuse the jumping abilities to avoid certain confrontations, and eventually to attempt to utilize the power to MAKE advantages when they even bothered with said confrontations...
Of course, there were work-arounds... Inventing new powers for baddies to be able to predict or sense the PC's no matter where they shifted to, and divinations for tracking from one plane to another... to whit, of course, the PC's started investing in laboratories, and inventing spells and powers and a natural "mystical arms race" took hold as our campaign arc practically threatened every facet of reality...
BUT it reinforced the aforementioned "basic rule" regarding magic items... mystical materials, and all the wonders of weirdness in general. If you employ something in the game, best to plan around and with it. Randomness is fun and all, but it's better utilized for wild-mages, inspirational encounter ideas, and to lend a balance of fairness to "uncalled" shots and hit locations for results when combat is better RP'ed... NOT in doling out mystical weirdness in the treasure room.
I'd wish for Dragons... as dangerous as they might be, and the hell it would be to drive out of a car wash... yep... I'd still wish for dragons. ;o)
I've have to bring up the eye of vecna . . . which requires replacing one of your own eyes with this half-rotted artifact just to start attuning to it, but grants the following effects plus a few minor ones:
-Passive true sight, which for those who don't know, you can see everything plainly visible in its natural form regardless if it's invisible, magically transformed, or in the ethereal plane.
-A toggled ability to view through solid walls akin to the cartoonish x-ray concept, which lasts as long as the user desires.
-Twice per day disintegration or once per day domination spell, among other possible free daily spells, but these two are quite game changing in the right circumstances.
-If it's removed after replacing your own eye, it kills you immediately without saves.
-And using any of it's activate-able effects runs a chance of not only instantly killing it's user, but if that happens then destroying their soul and possesses their corpse.
One of the few all evil party campaigns I was in stumbled across rumors of this long missing lich, and that his pieces held immense power but even more should someone incorporate multiple parts. Oddly dull story short, we found this piece in use by some drow clan, and after dispatching them salvaged said orb of evil. We proceeded to debate for the next session who should use it, each for various vaguely reasonable logic, but concluded it should be given to our cleric, since he was both tanky and the team medic, he'd still have decent bonuses to it's extra spells and would be the best sentry against do-good-ers. Our dm was kind of a jerk and never specified or even alluded to what the chances of the possession would be, he merely mentioned it would be unfortunate if the percentile rolled poorly; couple sessions later during a castle invasion to raid some living wizard's armory, we had a party wipe from the eye killing and possessing our cleric during an ambush of the wizard's defenses.
For the broom, one person sits, another holds on to a rope with a foot loop on the end that's tied to the rope.
On the subject of Rules Lawyers, Puffin Forest did a video a while back addressing the issue, I suggest checking it out, and some of the rest of his videos too
Can't say i'm a fan of Puffin. After watching a few videos he starts to paint himself as a problem player/DM.
I will admit, he does seem to paint himself like that a bit too often. But I still find his stories amusing
One i won a wish.... my character was hungry and wasn't greedy.... likes the simple life.
I asked for a sandwich... the party got rly mad
"This comes from the calvin and hobbs comic where Calvin asks Hobbs what he would wish for and gets mad that he wants a tuna sandwich and goes off on him about all the fantastic things he could wish for instead. Later Hobbs actually gets a tuna sandwich from Calvin's mom leaving Hobbs smiling to say that he got his wish while Calvin is furious and obviously rejecting the simple lesson to be learned.
@@gregogrady8027 I mean it's a similar situation, but it doesn't "come" from it.
Also the whole point of that comic stripe is that Calvin's wish is probably very distant and maybe impossible while a tuna sandwich is a real possibility and also satisfying as well
WHYYYYY?!?!?!?!!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!!!???!!!!!
I think the point is, that was the MOST EXPENSIVE SANDWICH in the history of the world.
Would you spend every penny you have, out of a 90 billion dollar fortune, to have a single 5 dollar item when you could have 18 billion sandwiches instead of 1? You could feed the entire realm for a year... every starving villager, your fault.
Alignment check, is the character 'good' ? not anymore. He just sacrificed the freedom of a million slaves for a little momentary personal satisfaction. New alignment EVIL. probably CE
😭😭😭
I have an entire campaign set around a magical item like the Amulet of Planes. Watching you explain how to more or less balance it gave me some interesting ideas on how to use said item in my campaign! Thanks!
A flying Uber van sounds absolutely amazing
Several rings of spell storing.
Things change when martials can hold their own concentration buff spells
"Don't do this."
Entirely disagree! If the villains of the game employ a tactic repeatedly, wouldn't the player characters research ways of working around that? The inverse applies as well! No reason a villain shouldn't research the methods and tools the PCs are employing.
He was talking about your characters randomly finding one and then your current campaigns big bad immediately having a counter or means of following.
@@X23Natalie No that's Not where he said "Don't actually do this guys". He meant someone who found an interest in it and made research by following the party for weeks, and THEN counter their Fortress by being faster with the command chant. That should be a thing, with the reasoning of the OC, but I agree with it being too offending towards the players (even If they deserved it) since that might just end the campaign on the spot
Indeed he wasn't saying don't do it because of some in-game logic, but as a result of table atmosphere. It would feel to the players like a direct result of DM-vs-Players if he had the villain LITERALLY use their item.
but that's an "oh shoot" moment, like this bad guy just used OUR item. he's smart and resourceful now we need to be more so.
personally, I've done that kind of thing before with the endless water item (which the player keeps on his belt and uses in combat sometimes) blasting off his belt equipment with a serious rush of force. the party became more focused on taking this guy out
keep in mind, not once did I hear a complaint about them not being aloud to do this. Maybe you'll have different results.
This sounds like it mostly depends on players' emotional maturity.
I would wish to split my character into two halves of himself, one half sorcerer with my 20 in charisma, the other half an artificer with my 15 in int, that way I could avoid the multiclass debuff of never hitting level 20 or even getting high tier spells and abilities if you split them evenly
What you need is homebrew, my friend, although good luck getting your DM to okay something like this. I've thought about this same problem, and I really don't like having to think about my build at level 20 when I'm only level 2. If you're interested in seeing what I've written up, I'll drop a link to a forum thread discussing this topic, as well as a link to my (WIP) homebrew. In a nutshell, though, your _character_ level is always the same as your highest _class_ level, so you never lose out on 20th level features. You're only able to have levels in a number of classes equal to your proficiency bonus, though, and you don't gain HP or hit dice normally from these "extra" class levels. Read through the links for the full details.
Forum thread (doesn't have the latest version of this homebrew):
www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?588877-Hybridizing-Gestalt-and-Multiclass-rules
Homebrew (includes some other bits):
docs.google.com/document/d/1XkpH63RskT5akra8IpHP2STak2LeeDi7lpc91fc0mXg/edit?usp=sharing
The multiclassing section of that homebrew is still being written up, but if you read through the thread I linked as well, you should be able to piece together any missing bits. Maybe I'll add them in before you even see this.
And I, as a DM, would make your character have 2 personalities with their own LvL in 1 body :).
Just imagine the insanity of it:
Party fighting a BBEG, and powers of your let's imagine 7th LvL sorcerer will be needed, but he just don't want to come out!
Or in the process of tinkering for artificer a sorcerer would appear, knowing nothing about it.
Both halves of you will have their own memories, some features etc.
I would have you split evenly in two. You would literally be two halves of one person. Each with half a body, one arm, one leg, and half a head. Congratulations on your wish, good luck.
So, why even multiclass in the first place, if you want to play two different characters?
I would be curious to know how many 17th+ level wizards would use one of their Wish spells to repair an Instant Fortress. After all, if you use a Wish spell with one of your spell slots, there is a 1/3 chance that you will never be able to cast Wish ever again.
You definitely want to have a spare Wish spell from a ring or Luck Blade for that.
In the fortress description it states that wish to repair counts as duplicating a spell so there is no chamce of losing wish
Our first D&D game ever, almost everything run on common sense and on the spot homebrew shit.
The party attached a spear on the broom and use catapult to launch it.
We expect the players to handle flying when we throw it at them, we owe them the same
I had the brilliant idea of using the instant fortress as a grenade of 10d10 damage. It worked for one encounter until my dm decided that that was waaay too op for our 6th level party.
Thanks. Helped me in a campaign
Wishes are impossible to use easily. It should take months of research just to find the perfect sentence to utter. A misworded wish should be an absolute nightmare or the effect is a complete misinterpretation of the request. I have often ruled that wishes need to be made in the language of the original creator. A wish is a volatile and dangerous spell that should strike fear into anyone who encounters one.
I have a player who wanted a set of magic weapons. He got his weapons, but they were not only sentient, but he was then equipment locked until he settled the curse. And just to mess with him even more, every session he makes wisdom saves. On a failed save, he flips a coin. Heads is a true good knight. Tails is a chaotic evil rogue. Its been abput 10 sessions and hes yet to find out a greater restoration spell would fix the curse
I personally feel that if a player gets a wish they shouldn’t be worried about how it can be used against them by the DM. Yes, wish is a powerful spell, but why would the world be trying to find the best way to hurt the players? There is no genie laughing at the result of the spell, just the wizard conjuring the wish into existence. Therefore, the wizard’s intent should be what happens, not some random event that is disadvantageous to the party. And if something like that can happen, then there should be an equal chance of the wish being misinterpreted and doing something else good for them. Perhaps the dragon dies, but at the hand of a high level adventurer who befriends them and offers them his/her aid. Perhaps the gold appears, but it’s ancient coin worth far more than regular gold. These are outcomes that are as equally as likely to happen as the players getting sent forward in time until the dragon is dead or the players are teleported to a beholder’s hoard when they wish for gold.
Classically you will find that "wishes" always tend to go wrong in literature and film. The whole notion of "be careful what you wish for" underlies this premise. What I am saying is that casting the wish should be difficult and time consuming. Whether it goes wrong or not is up to the diligence of the Wizard casting the spell, not the world.
TheDMGinfo But D&D isn’t classical literature. D&D is an entirely different world/concept, and often those pieces of literature(like the one with the monkey idol that I forget the name of) include some force or object which is granting the wish and therefore an object or sentience that can twist the wish to be bad. So, if the wizard doesn’t state it exactly right, why would the wish go wrong? There is no other force(unless a sentient magic item or a cursed magic item is granting these wishes) that controls the outcome, so why would the wish almost always randomly do bad things?
Mispronunciation. If the spell is ancient, the word for shiny sword, may end up being shiny word, gourd, shard, etc, etc as the wizard does not pronounce the ancient word correctly. It is not the "force" or "will" or anything of the creator of the wish that causes the error, but the wizard, rushing to cast a very powerful spell. Errors don't have to be malevolent, they are just errors.
D&D draws heavily from classic mythology, literature and other sources to create the "world" of D&D. Not everyone plays in the "sanctioned" D&D universe.
For wish items you could build an adventure for it. There could be a three part artificial that the party has to delve through three separate dungeons to assemble.
For the Deck of Many Things, you may want to make your own version of this with a lesser effects.
So, Deck of Many Things -- I recently used this in a meaningful and effective way, not by giving it to the players, but to the antagonist. An adventurer picked up the Deck and became a villain because of the results of his card draws (wishes, servitor, wealth, items, etc.). He took over a temple and the party was contracted to go and stop him from making things worse for the locals.
When they recovered the Deck and defeated him, one of the party members said that the Deck was the rightful property of Tymora and Bashaba, and should be returned to the temple (kept it out of the players' hands permanently) but that while they had it, the party could draw from it if they wanted to. So chaos was possible, but limited, and if the party wanted to go back to it at some point, they would have to work for it.
I can't tell you how much I love that you've used Psych for background comment popups!
Low Key great magic item in 4e was the dynamic weapon. Allowed my "weapons master build" bugbear to be hilariously OP by always having the perfect weapon on hand
If you have problems with these magic items and effects.... you're not GMing well.
First: never give players random items. As GM, it's your prerogative what exists in the world and what doesn't. Planar amulets and decks of many things are there as a seed for GMs to write campaigns set on other planes or about complete chaos, which is why they 'wreck everything' when you put them in a campaign.
Second: flying/levitation and invisibility are both bog-standard effects, available to pretty much all spellcasters as low as level 5 to some degree or another, AND available to specific other subclasses and races as well.
If your players want to skip certain kinds of activities.... let them. This flexibility is why they're playing a game with you, and not with their computer instead. Story-wise, perhaps there'll be consequences, but there might also not be.
Third: Don't punish your players for being clever. Unless some of the players seem unhappy with the repeated use of a trick, or they're pulling something out so frequently it's gotten stale without ascending to comedy value, finding out ways to use an item that shouldn't be a weapon as a weapon (or vice versa) amps up all the players at the table, not just the user. The same goes for weird combinations of spells. The best campaigns I've been in are the ones where GMs specifically engineered a situation that they knew could be solved only by combining the items and/or spells the players had.
Finally: learning to read the room. If your players seem to be constantly trying to make combat take less time, this is a hint that the encounters you're facing them off against are *too long*. If you keep having the sneaky character(s) split off from the party and accomplishing what needs to be done without help, design your layouts so they need help - a jammed door does wonders for party cohesion. If they're endlessly trying to befriend every animal enemy... let them succeed sometimes.
Especially with the success of 'casts like The Adventure Zone and Critical Role, more and more of the newcomers to D&D are primarily here for story, not for endless rounds of grindy combat. All of the magical items you listed are ones that force a DM to stretch their storytelling skills, but your workarounds try to negate that.
On your second point: The point to encounters, whether they are combat or social encounters, have to have some challenge to them. If they players are skipping it's because your play is boring. You gotta ramp up the encounters to be more interesting. Random encounters on the road suck and don't add anything to the game. Random encounters are more interesting for the DM then for the players. You want to custom build "Random encounters" that leave to a sub arc or build into the current campaign otherwise it's just a waste of time that slows things down.
I think with the "real" campaign breakers I thought "Just don't give them one."
Another idea for Amulet of the Planes is to treat it like the Stargate. The players have to find/match rune combinations, turn it into a mini-game instead of an Intelligence check.
The fact that Matt Mercer was prepared to fuck his own campaign up after the Conclave arc by introducing the DoMT, is just mind blowing