Powerful Items in PC Hands

[Scott]

I can't really remember too many players in my groups ever getting their hands on any too many top shelf items or artifacts. I've put a few out there, but the parties have always brought along an NPC or two, and the NPCs somehow always end up with the big items. My cousin hates NPCs just because they have won too many big item dice rolls. His main PC has a Cube of Force and a Rope of Entanglement, which are great items, but that's really all I can think of for items in play at the moment. I have a few big swords placed, but nobody has found them yet.

[GRWelsh]

I'd call Harlrun a top shelf sword. It's kind of funny, if I hadn't been there, no one in your cousin's group would have been able to use it, since it's attuned to True Neutrals.

[Scott]

Yeah, see the other thread where I mentioned the random treasure hoard that contained a holy avenger and a sword of sharpness that they sold because nobody could use them. The session after that my cousin had his alignment switched by a helm and could have used the sword of sharpness. He was pissed.

[grodog]

I've placed a variety of powerful items into PC hands in the past:

- an intelligent, CE level-draining bastard sword created by Orcus (which eventually corrupts and turns its wielder into a vampire) [minor artifact]
- staff of fungal power
- non-intelligent gold dragon slayer sword (dragons aligns aren't color-bound IMCs)
- ring of shooting stars variant
- short sword +3 named "DeathStrike" (various death-like powers/effects, also created by Orcus IIRC) [minor artifact]
- wand of force
- arrows/bolts of slaying
- intelligent sword of sharpness
- sword +2/lifeblade (from Dragon IIRC)
- +4 vorpal sword (NE)
- ring of blade turning (from Dragon?)
- pearl of power
- Hellsguard (Hellish armor, one suit for each of the 9 planes) [artifact]
- some vicious LE intelligent sword (also tied to the Hells) [minor artifact]
- portable hole
- holy avenger

I'd have to go back to my DM Logs for others, but those are the ones that really stick out in my memory.

[GRWelsh]

Allan, did you DM for a group of evil characters? Or did you just let them find evil-aligned magic items?

***

"Hellswords? Vampiric blades? But I don't want to be like Elric...I'd rather-- "
"Rather what?! "
"I'd rather... [music] ...just... sing!"
"Stop that! You're not going into a song while I'm here."

[GT]

HAR!!!!! ;D

[GT]

The Sword of Ralfenson (mentioned above) had been stripped of much of its power, since it couldn't be destroyed, and lost after its wielder was slain (maybe by Kas--we didn't really set that in stone). When found (in Quasqueton... aka: B1), it was a CG +2 longsword. The thing was, it had to devour certain magic items to regain its power, and could not communicate to its user until this was done. So Yokon (the Elven Fi/MU PC who found it) mysteriously found magic items disappearing from time-to-time; a wand of lightning here, a ring of flying there (to name two I recall...). Alan, the player, was not amused and didn't know what was going on until the sword was able to manifest its true artifact nature. At that point, he was strangely mollified! This was back between 1979 and 1981... ^__^

[GT]

Oh, yeah... Woodstock the Bard had a +3 crystal sword with various powers, but it was more "Relic" level than "Artifact".

[grodog]

grashyewl said:

Allan, did you DM for a group of evil characters? Or did you just let them find evil-aligned magic items?

Yes, I'm DM'd across all PC alignments. In general, when I've played or DM'd, we've rarely had homogenous group alignments....

grashyewl said:

"I'd rather... [music] ...just... sing!"
"Stop that! You're not going into a song while I'm here."

=)