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Tuesday, December 9, 2014

30 Magic Treasures Revised

I planned to do a quick follow up to my last post with a list of 30 consumable magic treasures, but I only came up with about 15 that I considered high enough quality.  So instead I'll give a few revisions for that last list.

Curses
First of all, I realized that the burdensome blade is, in fact, only detrimental- a cursed item.  So I revised it to be:

Burdensome Blade – Each day the blade draws no blood it becomes heavier to bear but more likely to land a blow.

That means a player getting that will have to make a choice of having the sword around, managing its blood needs or just tossing it.  It did make me think about why I didn't want anything cursed.  I suppose at the most basic, I'm trying to think of things that would be fun to find and that players would want to seek out and feel happy to find.

I don't really see the place for bags of devouring and such that just make the players hesitate to experiment with items.  If I were to use cursed items I think I would try to make sure they were a bit amusing.  As an example, my Torc of Trammel (which almost made the list) was fun for a player to roleplay the time it came up in my campaign.

Treasures for All
Some other observations.  I really like the idea of the Parchment Sash but didn't include it because I'm trying to make these treasures usable by almost any character.  Although the shields and swords are pretty fighter-centric now that I think of it.  I guess that is the difficulty of class restrictions and magical rewards.  I suppose I could have things like the Burdensome Blade be so magical that they morph into the favored weapon type of the holder.  Staff, dagger, or sword, if it is gaining weight everyday, you'll still need to make a choice.

3 Substitutions
I removed Godith's Gauge because it seems to vague, and the two I mentioned as being great to put in a dungeon - Branwalather's bridge and Clement's Docent - for that very reason, because they feel more like dungeon tricks or features than a personal item a character would want to carry around.

I added these instead:

Marvelous Folding Coracle – Saying the magical word will cause this small packet of willow bark to unfold into a circular vessel large enough for one person.

Ranulph’s Veil – A cage locked over the character's head with a muzzle built in. Wearing it makes them invisible and undetectable but mute and they must have someone unlock them to get the veil off.

Wolf Pelt – When a player drapes this over their shoulders they become a wolf.

I think the first and last are pretty evidently going to be useful at times and give players tools to use.  The middle one, like Anan's Veil, also on the list is just a ring of invisibility with big restrictions.

I'm going to try and make the chart with these revisions a pdf in the future.

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