So I have been told in the past that my games are highly intertaining and that people love my games.
I'm not too sure about that sometimes but I have had some really great DM's to learn from and some not so great DM's who I have loathed.
In an effort to help teach others some of the tricks and skills I have picked up over the years of tossing around little plastic dice here is an article in how to be a Killer DM.
This time I'm taking a look at cursed items.
With the conversion of 2nd to 3 and then 3.5 DM's lost a very valuable tool. Namely cursed items, not that they went away but that their effectiveness went down drasticly.
The use of the Identify spells tells you all the properties that a magic item is suppost to have. Including if its cursed or not. here is how I handle it.
Identify spells need to be cast twice to see if an item is cursed or not. Once you start doing this and ABOVE all tell the players that this little rule is in effect you can start playing with their minds a little bit.
Second, you will notice that the cursed items selection in the DMG is slim. And by slim I mean the selection of cool magic items that used to exist in the previous games has been pretty much torn from the pages and thrown away.
So your wondering well if I don't have anything to use on the party what am I'm i to do?
Well its a good thing I'm here and I'm willing to tell you a dirty little secret.
Make things up.
Now I don't mean on the fly you have to think these things through a little bit. Here is a forinstance from personal experiance.
Once apon a time i was running a game where the party was dead set on raiding a yan-ti temple. Despite the fact that 1. I didn't have a temple adventure made up. 2. Hadn't even planned on a temple adventure. 3. Knew that yan-ti threat in this area was just in the basic levels and that if the party decided to wipe it out now then the over all story line could be hurt. ( the party was suppost to be adventuring to the west for a vampire but decided to take the job and then run with the up front loot instead)
so lets take a look at what I did.
1. Load them down with freed slaves.
2. Let them get a little real loot.
3. Let them have fun with our old friend the rust monster.
4. Started throwing mooks at them that had cursed items.
Now you maybe wonder whats up with step 3. Here is why, if the even dreams that they might loose their weapons and armor they will do almost anything to prevent that. Even going to the extreame of taking stuff from dead bodies that they had killed and using the unidentified loot they would rather use that then run in to anouther rust monster and lose their good equipment.
Next lets look at new cursed items.
The key to having good cursed items is not to use most of the ones from the DMG. But wait I can here the collective cry out in the darkness. "But I can't not use the DMG I'm the DM I have to use the rules"
Ok I want you to raise your right hand. Now smack your self across the face. Your the DM you can pick and choose the rules that you like, but you have to be consistant.
Lets look at how you can have a lil fun and make a new item.
Lets start with the clasic long sword. 19-20/X2 crit.
Now lets make it keen. 17-20/X2 crit now lets have a lil fun
Taking a gander over at the basilisk stats, we'll take the gaze ability and make its a +2 enchantment. But thats not quite good enough. Lets bump that save up to fort save DC 17. and only let it go off when the weapon crits.
And to add a lil sugar to the pot well say that when it goes off on a monster the monster has to make the fort save or be turned to stone. The down side? The player has to make the save as well.
so now we have a +3 weapon that the player has to make saves as well as the monster and as well all know the odds are in the DM's favor. We don't have to be consistant in the saving throws, a player only has to fail once.
Remember folks keep its fun and keep it fair. Just know how to make it fair and fun for everyone, even the DM. Hey were playing the game as well