I'm sure everyone has a story to tell, as well as, differing criteria regarding the word "dumb." So, let's hear it!

I was reading Jeff Rients' blog and used that inspiration to create Suffoglyd the Impatient, a blade that does not suffer fools gladly.

QuoteThe magic bastard sword in question can be used either one or two-handed. There are ancient runes running down one side of the blade that state, "If can see this sword, you'd better be the one wielding it." Mechanically speaking, it's a +1; +5 vs dolts, nincompoops, braggarts, idiots, jackasses, and swine.

If you're curious, feel free to read more about it here on Draconic Magazine: http://draconicmagazine.com/articles/suffoglyd-impatient

Enjoy,

VS

Dude, don't turn into the Zweihander guy, pimping your products in the guise of starting threads. You're better than that.

Quote from: JeremyR;1026493Dude, don't turn into the Zweihander guy, pimping your products in the guise of starting threads. You're better than that.

Am I?  That guy's obviously successful because I see his stuff on the top selling lists of DriveThruRPG.  Meanwhile, I'm being forced into early retirement due to lack of profit.  

VS

Quote from: JeremyR;1026493Dude, don't turn into the Zweihander guy, pimping your products in the guise of starting threads. You're better than that.

Pretty tough advice to follow since the stuff designers work on is the stuff they are thinking about . . . and the stuff they want to discuss.
How tenously related do things need to be to match your expectations?

I am being a little tongue in check, but it is challenging for folks who are working on games. We want to talk about what we are doing. And self-censuring is shit.

I'm trying to think or specific really dumb magic items, but I'm not thinking of more than just stuff I don't like.

What mainly comes to mind are the magic items in computer RPGs such as Diablo and Dungeon Siege where killing any monster or opening any no-reason-for-existing-or-having-treasure box, barrel, or coffin produces random gear (that's almost never actually used by the monsters you get them from) which is tuned to the PCs' own power level and is clearly randomly generated by taking a random item and randomly applying an excessive number of magic effects to just about anything, to the point that there's a whole mini-game of constantly sorting through a long list of looted (or for sale in shops) items of every type and trying to pick what the current best items or combos of items are to munchkin-maximize the benefits.

Oh look, when this bear died, a magic halberd flew out of it which when equipped gives +7 intelligence, +3 charisma, 20% poison immunity, and increases the chance of finding random items in the future by 2%! :eek:

5e D&D's 500gp brooms of flying & 25000gp potions of flying?

Edit: Venger is certainly better than Zweihander Guy.

I am sure I have mentioned this here before, but we had a Detect Mountain spell (Range 3m) enchanted into a boulder that was so heavy it could only be pulled along by a cart. The GM thought it was a funny, joke item. Until of course, the party had to negotiate the Undissmissable Fog around Poison Mountain, if you touched the mountain you died from the poison, but the fog meant you couldn't see where the mountain was, we had to get into a cave, so flew the cart on a sylph and slowly went around the mountain, casting the spell until we found the cave (didn;t detect as a mountain). It was even funnier that the GM who gave out the boulder was running the scenario.

Not a magical item, but i always liked the Thermonuclear Hand Grenade, a logical result of miniaturisation and quantum technology, basically a 10 Megatonne nuclear device in a hand grenade, you pull the pin, throw it, wait 10 seconds and then kaboom! Where's the flaw in that?

Thondor: Thanks, hoss!

Skarg:  Yeah, that pretty much signals the death of old school, which is the death of immersion, wouldn't you say?

S'mon:  Yes, that's dumb.  And thanks!

Soltakss:  That's weird, but then became dumb because who the fuck forces you to navigate around a poison mountain?!?  The Thermonuclear Hand Grenade is boss, though.  Much more impressive than a thermal detonator!

VS

Okay... *I* did not invent this. But a GM I used to respect created it - The Cosmic G-String.

Yes... it's a G-string. But if you wore it, you were immune to natural environmental concerns like extreme temperatures, and you could digest anything. So it was pretty goddamn useful.

It also helped my character was a barbarian with adamantite teeth.


I've done the whole thing where in 1e a Cavalier player found a treasure horde and he was allowed one pick from it. And I put in +42 Chainmail, right next to a suit of rust-spotted full-plate just to fuck with him. (in 1e Cavaliers would never choose lesser forms of armor over full-plate for those of you that don't know). The good ol'days.

Quote from: VengerSatanis;1026703... Skarg:  Yeah, that pretty much signals the death of old school, which is the death of immersion, wouldn't you say? ...

No, I just see it as the continued perpetuation of one of the many rivers of dumb in the floodplain of mediocre game conventions that get mindlessly, apathetically, and/or lazily repeated.

I do think it's unfortunate because it's an idea that seeps around tainting other games and players' thinking, and I think it is a kind of limit to what's possible for those games and gamers.

But I wouldn't call it "the death" of anything, because there are other games and gamers that don't have those malfunctions. And I think that the more people continue to play games, the more some of them develop more sophisticated tastes, so I don't think it's entirely a case of old versus new either. (I started out with Milton Bradley games etc.)

+1 longsword because it's boring.

Quote from: VengerSatanis;1026703Soltakss:  That's weird, but then became dumb because who the fuck forces you to navigate around a poison mountain?!?  

Curly Andrew, can't remember his surname.  His favourite place to campaign, as a GM, was The Acid Pits, you got there by climbing a mountain where an immortal Illuminated Griffin asked you questions while you climbed up, this had the chance of Illuminating you, which is a bad thing/good thing depending on who you asked. The Treasure was always "just around the corner", when we dragged our bloody bodies back home. We stopped allowing him to run sessions when he showed us the Random Chaos Demons he had generated using his department's mainframe, probably 30 pages of them.

By the way the Thermonuclear Hand Grenade first appeared in Different Worlds, I think, many years ago. But, it doesn't deserve to languish there.

Quote from: Mike the Mage;1026716+1 longsword because it's boring.

Not in those moments when it's your only magic weapon and you're facing some creature that normal weapons only tickle.

GURPS Magic Items had a clown suit that rendered the wearer immune to crushing damage but turned it all into knockback and a tablecloth that became frictionless when a command word was spoken.  Both silly but fun.

[video=youtube;OPgJwxb73Js]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPgJwxb73Js[/youtube]