Deck of Many Things is AWESOME!

From the referee's point of view, that is.  Heh heh heh...

Because there is ALWAYS that one guy...

The Thermonuclear Hand Grenade is weak sauce compared to an actual weapon, the Davy Crockett.

A fission warhead on a recoilless rifle, with a 1.25 mile range.  For an atomic bomb.

Even better, they were commanded by second lieutenants.

Quote from: Skarg;1026611I'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:

The "Knights of the Old Republic" computer game had a ... thing ... in it where sometimes, the video corpse didn't HAVE a backpack full of stuff, it would, on screen, TURN INTO a backpack full of stuff when your character touched it.

Which ultimately resulted, in our tabletop Star Wars game, with players saying "I'm going to jump up and down on the body!  Turn into stuff, damn you!  Turn into stuff!"

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1026865The Thermonuclear Hand Grenade is weak sauce compared to an actual weapon, the Davy Crockett.

A fission warhead on a recoilless rifle, with a 1.25 mile range.  For an atomic bomb.

Even better, they were commanded by second lieutenants.

Thanks, I had never heard of that. According to Wikipedia it has a fatal radiation does of a quarter mile (400m) and a range of 1.25 miles (2 km) or 2.5 miles (4km) so the crews should be just fine. It is, apparently, also fairly inaccurate, which adds to its appeal.

Quote from: soltakss;1026962Thanks, I had never heard of that. According to Wikipedia it has a fatal radiation does of a quarter mile (400m) and a range of 1.25 miles (2 km) or 2.5 miles (4km) so the crews should be just fine. It is, apparently, also fairly inaccurate, which adds to its appeal.

For some definition of "just fine" - how many rads is the dose at 2km?

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1026867The "Knights of the Old Republic" computer game had a ... thing ... in it where sometimes, the video corpse didn't HAVE a backpack full of stuff, it would, on screen, TURN INTO a backpack full of stuff when your character touched it.

Which ultimately resulted, in our tabletop Star Wars game, with players saying "I'm going to jump up and down on the body!  Turn into stuff, damn you!  Turn into stuff!"

"These aren't the corpses you're looking for..."

Underwear of Devouring, a.k.a. Fruit of the Doom.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1026867The "Knights of the Old Republic" computer game had a ... thing ... in it where sometimes, the video corpse didn't HAVE a backpack full of stuff, it would, on screen, TURN INTO a backpack full of stuff when your character touched it.

Which ultimately resulted, in our tabletop Star Wars game, with players saying "I'm going to jump up and down on the body!  Turn into stuff, damn you!  Turn into stuff!"

Hmm.. I don't remember that and I played ridiculous amounts of that game. Heck, KOTOR is where I learned to make mods.

In a strangely unrelated note, sort of, the recent D&D video game Sword Coast Legends was not a very good D&D game, but if you wanted to play something like Diablo with D&D like elements then it wasn't too bad. One of the things I liked about the game is that whenever magic items dropped, it was almost impossible to get the same magic item twice. It would drop something, and add a bonus and effect or three. The result was you could get some pretty unique items. That is something I would love to see for an OSRish game, a magic item generator with just enough complexity to make most items unique which makes sense because you don't exactly have factories of gnomes churning out the same item over and over. Though I suppose you could.

My issue with the OP's original question is that no matter how dumb an item might seem at first glance, there was almost always a way of making it useful somehow.

Quote from: Kingdaddy;1026974Underwear of Devouring, a.k.a. Fruit of the Doom.

I like that.

Hat of Nose Elongation.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1027322Hat of Nose Elongation.

A thief or an assassin could totally use that. Not to mention every Cyrano de Bergerac impersonator in the realm.

Nose of Hat Elongation.

So, in Illwinter's Dominions computer games, some of the magic items are meant to be used as eyeballs. They go in an eye socket, and require removing the eye if you don't have an empty eye socket already due to injury. I actually really appreciate the significant sacrifice of this and think it's interesting and cool (is it a D&D thing? I know a GM who had something like this in her world, too.)

The part I find extra-hilarious about it, though, is when people install two eyeball items and end up completely blinding themselves... it can be pretty funny to read people posting about doing it without realizing that would happen.

I'm also pretty funny myself when I equip people with flaming swords that cause fiery explosions but not enough fire protection, and my own heroes end up catching fire and dying.

It's from a Moorcock book, where a hero sacrificed a hand and an eye.

Then in D&D it led to "the Eye of Vecna" and "The Hand of Vecna."

And somebody did "The Head of Vecna" and made it work.  Hilarious.

And, of course, there is also "The Peener of Vecna."  No, that's OK, you go ahead.

As a DM (those who make magic items), my favorite dumb magic item was the Glue Pot.

One of my players is always grabbing for the most valuable-looking item. The other player, his brother, got sick of it. I let them dicker it out, but the grabber always got the best loot going forward. So, I decided as a DM to have some fun with this situation.

Part of the party got transported to a secret section in Baltron's Beacon, where there was a lot of loot. I added some more: a cauldron with some watery liquid in it. At the bottom was a nice, shiny ruby.

Complication: The moment that something disrupted the liquid, it solidified. Yes, you had the ruby in hand; yes, you had 25 lbs. of weight on your hand. Saving throw required, of course, to let the filcher have another chance.

The PC in question was the party's magic-user, who needed his hand to cast spells, so of course he couldn't perform. A few encounters later, said impotent M-U died in an encounter, and the other PCs dragged/bounced his body through the Hool Marshes to be raised.

Loads of fun. Quite dumb, as it caught a player being dumb.

Edit: I still snicker at this and remind my players about it.