DnD Assistance 3: Fun with Items

[duke o' york]

To steal from Baldur's Gate, one of my favourite magic items is the girdle of gender difference or whatever it's called - the item that makes you a woman/man.
I once gave an unfortunate character a really cool axe, and a ring that turned him into a gnome. Having been a barbarian warrior beforehand, this made the next quest (to reverse the spell) very interesting indeed. Fortunately, he was a good enough roleplayer to handle a confused barbarian in a gnome's body.

[Jon Miller]

you can be a gnome barbarrian warrior??

JM

[Jon Miller]

basically I don't know what would be wrong with that?

JM

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Jon Miller
we sorta did some unexpected things, and discovered some of the nature of The Dark Lord way way early, when we were suppose to just be figuring out what was going on with a tribe of goblins attacking from the mountains (we are only level 6)

Hm. The DM can use some work on his skills

[Jon Miller]

he is good at a lot of things, most importantly of being entertaining and keeping people from being bored

basically he didn't know about a spell speak to dead, so someone told us stuff that wasn't part of the plan, and so we headed towards the Dark Lord (instead of wondering and searching for what was behind the goblin raids)

I like that fact that he is willing to go with us doing the unexpected (usually the deus ex machina is suitibly hidden (when we split up, he set something up which I thought at the time (And still think, even though it is now part of the story) was purely to make us join back together instead of spliting up into two groups))

Jon Miller

[Jon Miller]

we were playing paladium last summer, but the game sorta died with many people quiting before so because of being unhappy

that was because the main GM (right before the final end, we had decided to try a couple of other GMs to give people a break) found the biggest interest to be interparty conflicts as well as had very convoluted story lines (And it seemed to most of the characters, except for the couple in the conflict, that we were just moving arround randomly)

two other's GMed as well (including myself), I think that I was not familiar enough with the system, also I did some big No Nos (like letting the members break into a number of groups, so some players would be sitting arround bored for long periods of time), the other while techinically knew the game well, just was not very strong on creating a story

our group is fairly large (6-8 PCs), so that is another hardship

so this is the best GM we have found (he was a good PC as well, and I would be happy to have another GM, if a good one could be found)

while there is a little bit of the 'random mishmash of people who were thrown together by happenstance', there is also some party identity as well

basically 3 of us were ordered to investicate the goblin attack, after a little adventure we met three others who were also interested, soon after we discovered that this Dark Lord was behind the betrayal that allowed the goblins in, so we decided to follow that up so as to completely investigate the goblin attack

we than ended up running into a lady who was searching for the Tower of Lore to get assistance in figuring out what was going wrong in her country (Goblins were obviously going wrong with ours), when we got to the tower we found overtaken from within (well there is one of the original mages apparently on our side) and we are in the process of freeing it, there we found some wonderous items which are somewhat the object of contention

for example my character signed up to investigate to get money to continue his magic researches (he was fairly poor), he is not likely to want to go and fight the Dark Lord unless he was assured of more wealth or if his elven homeland was threatened (it is not that he doesn't care about the humans, he wishes them well, it is just that it is not his business); but everything makes sense so far (it is not like the story of my loss and tragic paladin (who actually died))

Jon Miller

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Jon Miller
he is good at a lot of things, most importantly of being entertaining and keeping people from being bored

Those are good skills

However, giving out such powerful items will render the game very boring later on.

[duke o' york]

Originally posted by Jon Miller
you can be a gnome barbarrian warrior??

JM

No, basically he just turned into an ordinary gnome fighter. The funny thing was that he would keep trying to use weapons and abilities that he had learned as a barbarian human, and failing. Actually, he once went to knock the head off a bear that had the party cornered, with a mighty swing of his oversized axe. Being a gnome, he couldn't lift it that high, but managed to cut both legs off the bear. He didn't always pass his luck rolls though....
It was fun for an afternoon, but I wouldn't inflict something as serious, and potentially game-altering, as that on a character long-term. I would make them change sex, and have them keep all their abilities though.

[duke o' york]

Originally posted by Jon Miller
you can be a gnome barbarrian warrior??

JM

No, basically he just turned into an ordinary gnome fighter. The funny thing was that he would keep trying to use weapons and abilities that he had learned as a barbarian human, and failing. Actually, he once went to knock the head off a bear that had the party cornered, with a mighty swing of his oversized axe. Being a gnome, he couldn't lift it that high, but managed to cut both legs off the bear. He didn't always pass his luck rolls though....
It was fun for an afternoon, but I wouldn't inflict something as serious, and potentially game-altering, as that on a character long-term. I would make them change sex, and have them keep all their abilities though.

[Jon Miller]

btw, I think the best item found is this

Full Plate +3 to AC, Constant Protection from Chaos and Evil, Arcane Sight once per day, Bull Strength twice per day

deffinitely a minor artifact

Jon Miller

[Jamski]

That's insane.

Against CE enemies (the majority, it seems) that counts as +7 full plate armour!

-Jam

[duke o' york]

Give the character some item that changes his/her alignment to evil.

That would be great fun!

[Jamski]

Sadly, IIRC, an evil character can benefit from PfE

-Jam

[Jon Miller]

Originally posted by Jamski
That's insane.

Against CE enemies (the majority, it seems) that counts as +7 full plate armour!

-Jam

I didn't think that protection stacked?

Jon Miller

[duke o' york]

Don't worry - how often do you fight Anglicans?

(joke for Jamski's sake only)