Quote from: mcbobbo;754223Okay,  that's a good point.  It really ought to take the PC out of active status to be worthwhile.   Kill or maim or completely disable.  E.g. a Sword of Pacifism.

But is that more or less dickish?  

Make it a sword that damages the wielder equally for any damage they inflict. And then give it a few +'s, like +infinity or something. So you can carve up anyone you want, you can carve 'em real good, as long as you're willing to pay the price.

Quote from: Raven;754062Tell you what... why don't you drop the bratty attitude? It's not impressing anyone.

Y'know, most people, upon complaining that a poster didn't express a sentiment that he did two sentences after you stopped reading, might respond with an "Oops, sorry I missed that."  Or else not responded at all; okay, sure, whatever.

Of course, getting defensive when you're caught redhanded is perfectly standard human behavior, 'tis true.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;753975If you think cursed items = automatic dick GM then you are a fucking moron.

And boy, you're another one hellbent on responding to what you want people to have said, rather than what they actually did.  Pretty frigging ironic considering your .sig.

Quote from: mcbobbo;754005Also real life tombs exist with spring loaded crossbows, poisonous powders, lakes of mercury, pits and other hazards that are still dangerous today.

No, they really don't.

A lake of mercury would require the refinement of every gram of it in the earth's crust.  Spring loaded crossbows couldn't keep the tension.  And so on.  The fact of the matter is that the notion of tombs laden with traps is the invention of pulp fiction and Gothic horror, and kept alive by Hollywood.  One pithy quote from the University of Chicago's curator of Egyptian antiquities was that if the Egyptian tombs were really trapped, wouldn't the vainglorious pharoahs have boasted that they were?  No actual trap's been found in any ancient tomb.

Quote from: Ravenswing;754285Y'know, most people

Most people can manage to point something like that out in a mature and reasonable manner. That's how you go about getting an apology, not by being a condescending little twat.

'tis true.

Couple of thoughts:

I agree with others that have pointed out that the -1 cursed sword is just a dick gotcha move by the GM. But I also think the ubiquitous +1 sword is pretty lame too.

I could be wrong but I think some players started to think of their characters as walking Swiss army knives. +1 sword, +2 hat of wisdom rolls, +4 socks of hot coal walking, whatever. I think an attitude arose of "how dare one of my gizmos not work how I want?"

But I think as a GM you should be able to place legitimate story related items in a game that reminds the players that every rise to power has consequences.  That is what most cursed items in pop culture has shown:

Pirates of the Caribbean: that cursed treasure turns you into an undead life hating monster when you reach for it.

Raiders of the Lost Arc: turns out that ultimate weapon would curse you to death if you a Nazi ass hat.

LoTR: the ring....

Also, although the ancient Egyptian and Mayan did not have the elaborate traps of pop culture,  they did inscribe the walls of their tombs with spells that they believed in their superstition would protect all those treasures they were buried with.

Maybe with the prevalence of cursed items in pop culture and history, the writers of material for Next will start to include some of the cursed items from D&D's past. I know some of the OUR materials still use these ideas.

As I said upthread I am fine with cursed items under 3 nonexclusive conditions.

1. It must have a logical reason in setting
2. Player buy in (because they know if they play along it's going to be worth it in the end)
3. Something like Stormbringer that drives the story or actions of the players like number 2.

This of course is only for Dnd not an Urban Fantasy/Horror game like White Wolf were it's expected baseline.

In otherwords fuck Gygax and his bullshit gender/species change items and even worse 12 year old guy joke items. It wasn't funny then and less so now.

Quote from: MonsterSlayer;754320Couple of thoughts:

I agree with others that have pointed out that the -1 cursed sword is just a dick gotcha move by the GM. But I also think the ubiquitous +1 sword is pretty lame too.

I could be wrong but I think some players started to think of their characters as walking Swiss army knives. +1 sword, +2 hat of wisdom rolls, +4 socks of hot coal walking, whatever. I think an attitude arose of "how dare one of my gizmos not work how I want?"

But I think as a GM you should be able to place legitimate story related items in a game that reminds the players that every rise to power has consequences.  That is what most cursed items in pop culture has shown:

Pirates of the Caribbean: that cursed treasure turns you into an undead life hating monster when you reach for it.

Raiders of the Lost Arc: turns out that ultimate weapon would curse you to death if you a Nazi ass hat.

LoTR: the ring....

Also, although the ancient Egyptian and Mayan did not have the elaborate traps of pop culture,  they did inscribe the walls of their tombs with spells that they believed in their superstition would protect all those treasures they were buried with.

Maybe with the prevalence of cursed items in pop culture and history, the writers of material for Next will start to include some of the cursed items from D&D's past. I know some of the OUR materials still use these ideas.

Yup totally.

The most effective cursed item I ever gave to a PC was a +5 intelligent sword. The sword had a huge ego and was sworn to slay all magic users. Now that sword got the PC into so much trouble I mean so much when it was taken from him He was so happy but when it found its way back into his hands ... he was its perfect tool easy to manipulate and hungry for power.
awesome

Quote from: mcbobbo;754223Okay,  that's a good point.  It really ought to take the PC out of active status to be worthwhile.   Kill or maim or completely disable.  E.g. a Sword of Pacifism.

But is that more or less dickish?  

but a sword of pacifism just means the character lives a long and healthy life not exactly a sweet revenge...

if I were a lich I would be much more likely to prepare a magic sword that was a periapt where my soul could flee when it seemed all was lost or through a hung contingency.
Being an egotistical being seeking eternal life of course the vessel of my immortality would have to be a powerful blade so more likely a +3/+6 versus good creatures with some sort of corruption mechanic for every life lost in this was such that when the swords bearer reached that corruption threshold my immortal soul would leave the blade and take possession of the bearers body.
That is the sort of 'cursed' item you find in my games.

Quote from: jibbajibba;754022That  attitude of the treasure needs to suit the PCs are just the other side of the coin to the DM puts in creatures or items to deliberately thwart the PCs. Its the same thing.

Like I said and you noted in your example. Put yourself in the role of the monster. Where and how do you place traps, what monsters are here, what is their ecology. If you do all of that and the setting is consistent then your are good to go. I actually hate the "give players clues that the xxx will kill them" because if I was a genius level lich or whatever setting up a trap I sure as shit wouldn't leave any clues about it lying round.

I agree with this, completely. You expanded on what Sacrosanct found annoying and tied it into why others found annoying on the flip side. I believe context matters, and to assume cursed items are by nature contextless is weird to me.

A tool merely facilitates the intent of the user, nothing more. There just happen to be more situation appropriate uses for certain tools. Focus on the logic of the situation and the options for right tools becomes apparent.

As for the -1 sword, about pettiness at great expense, I am reminded of the Black Queen from "Barbarella." She fed her prisoners in the labyrinth only orchids, which they would fight over. As to why she replied that orchids are beautiful and rare, but hold little nutrition. "I spare no expense to torture my enemies!"

To the Greater Evil! :cool:

Quote from: Ravenswing;754285And boy, you're another one hellbent on responding to what you want people to have said, rather than what they actually did.  Pretty frigging ironic considering your .sig.

Do you actually not remember what you post?

Quote from: Ravenswing;753965Hrm.  You know, we might as well raise the point of Dick Posters as well ... the ones who conflate (say) "Cursed items are generally illogical and denote a dick GM" with "O Nos, take away anything that can discomfort a PC."  

Asshole.

Cutting through the authentic frontier gibberish, your statement here seems to clearly indicate that you feel cursed items are illogical and denote a dick GM.

Before proceeding any further would you say that you meant that?

Quote from: jhkim;754059That said, I also stand by my statement that in my experience, cursed items generally come across as metagame "gotchas" for the players, rather than reasonable parts of the game world. Of course, there are a lot of common elements of dungeons that seem meta-game motivated - as if they are designed for adventurers to go through, rather than being natural parts of the world that adventurers happen upon. For example, often a magic weapon is lying in the treasure hoard of a group of orcs as a reward for PCs, when logically if they had that weapons, the orcs would use it to defend themselves.
.

I don't think they have to be there for strictly one reason (whether it be to make the game more interesting and challenging or because it flows naturally from the setting itself). When I play, I am usually balancing a number of different things. On the one hand I absolutely want a consistent and believable world that the characters inhabit. On the other I want the game to be interesting and fun. My decision to introduce a cursed item doesn't have to be rooted in one of them. It can be a product of both, or other considerations. Or I could introduce because I think it presents an interesting challenge, but I also make a point of giving it a logical in game reason for being there.

I do agree it is good idea to consider things like, well if this powerful sword is in the horde, why are the orcs not wielding it (in the case of a beneficial magic weapon). Same holds true for cursed weapons because you usually can't just put them down and stop using them. Sometimes I decide the orcs are using the item, other times I decide they didn't even know it had special properties. It depends.

I don't know I would say they are meant to be "gotchas". Cursed items are certainly there to liven the game up and make it less predictable. But a gotcha item suggests the GM is putting it there soley to be mean, whereas I feel you put them there the same reason you might put traps, special monsters, and secret doors into an area: it is about creating a textured and exciting place to explore.

As I've never been a fan of weapons and armor that magically fit the race who finds them, I could see a good way of doing a cursed item would be that the race who made it originally crafted it so that it affects certain races negatively. Instead of having Drow weapons become inert in the sunlight you could say they act as cursed weapons to the wielder, or maybe Dwarves are super paranoid about their crafting secrets getting out and make their weapons useless in the hands of non dwarves.

I guess as long as the DM isn't actively trying to just screw the players then cursed items can make perfect sense in a world.

Quote from: Ravenswing;754288No, they really don't.

A lake of mercury would require the refinement of every gram of it in the earth's crust.  Spring loaded crossbows couldn't keep the tension.  And so on.  The fact of the matter is that the notion of tombs laden with traps is the invention of pulp fiction and Gothic horror, and kept alive by Hollywood.  One pithy quote from the University of Chicago's curator of Egyptian antiquities was that if the Egyptian tombs were really trapped, wouldn't the vainglorious pharoahs have boasted that they were?  No actual trap's been found in any ancient tomb.

So, like, Google and stuff...

http://www.buzzfeed.com/tombraider/8-tomb-raider-style-traps-that-totally-exist-in-real-life

QuoteThe Chinese have still not fully explored Emperor Qin Shi Huang's tomb, and a big part of that is they think the numerous pressure-plate crossbow traps — carefully coated with a preservative called chromate — probably still work, 2,000 years later.

QuoteAncient Egyptian engineers would cover the tomb floors with hematite powder, a sharp metallic dust designed to cause a slow and painful death to those who inhaled enough of it.
And that stuff has quite the shelf life: When Dr. Zahi Hawass, the Egyptian real-life Indiana Jones, entered the Bahariya Oasis tomb in 2001, his team found the sarcophagus booby trapped with 8 inches of the stuff, forcing them to abandon their expedition until they could come back with hazmat suits and respirators.

QuoteChinese Emperor Qin Shi Huang, famous above all else for the Terra cotta army he was buried with, also commissioned a series of massive rivers and lakes from mercury. These were not only accurate recreations of the Yangtze and Yellow rivers, they were also... totebags poison.

But maybe this is wrong and you personally are a better source than some article on the internet.

But then again, here's another source - http://www.china.org.cn/english/culture/229549.htm

QuoteAncient Chinese tended to bury treasures with them. Not surprisingly, tomb robbery was once rampant throughout the country. To prevent outside invasions, Emperor Qin Shihuang ordered a full range of precautions. It is said that besides poisonous mercury, booby traps with automatically ejected arrows were installed in the tomb chamber to deter would-be robbers. Anyone who dared to break in would certainly die a violent death.

However, all those alleged lethal weapons have been buried under earth for thousands of years. Would they still function adequately now? Most people believe that the crossbows would still shoot arrows if they are triggered. Guo also agreed so after he carefully studied ancient smelting technology recorded in historical books.

Neat what non-magic using people can do, isn't it?  Imagine what they'd be capable of with as many spells as gold can buy...

Quote from: Marleycat;754322As I said upthread I am fine with cursed items under 3 nonexclusive conditions.

1. It must have a logical reason in setting

1A. Some of those who can craft magic items know that adventurers exist and hate what they do, what they stand for, and hate their perfect flowing hair.

Or something like that...

Putting the D&D world in context for a minute, it seems that 'adventurer harassment' would be a thing for villains to do.  I mean really, either they or someone they work with has surely witnessed a raid by a party of do-gooders, found an empty treasure vault, and been left with a burning rage.

Or hell, what about screwing with each other?  (I have always wondered why the orcs didn't raid the goblin lair before the PCs got there.)  But maybe dickish cursed items are created to dissuade competitors from coveting their stuff?