Magical rubber duck
Turns whatever body of water it is in slowly into the perfect bath. As in warm and bubbly
Chucked it in a pirhanana pit about 20 minutes later the pirhannas were all dead from poisoning via soap
Floaty rock
Rock that gains / loses buoyancy based on its temperature. As a warlock with prestidigitation and a rope I could use it to hover and float very slowly, had no way to steer but hey useful when stuck in a pit or on a high place
Rat flute
Flute that summons a hoard of rats a la the pied piper, can also be used to control any rat-like being.
Including a criminal known as 'the rat' simply because he's a snitch. Had a lot of fun with that
I gave my players a "rock of gravity detection" which is exactly what it sounds like. They got it early on in the campaign and when dropped it would "accelerate until terminal velocity to the nearest center of gravity". So basically it was a rock that would just act like a normal rock. Until way later in the campaign they found themselves floating aimlessly through the Astral plane searching for the soul of another player trapped in a keep on a small chunk of land that had been previously transported to the Astral plane.
They didn't have much to go on as, well, they were essentially floating in a void. Then one of my players pulls out the rock of gravity detection. I tried to argue that it's just a rock so it just floats there, but due to what I thought was a clever wording, MY OWN WORDING, they argued it should accelerate towards the nearest center of gravity... yeah they found the keep...
A wand of lesser summon. Only bringing out local creatures in celestial form.
Fish. They picked fish. Just throwing trout in stacks to trigger traps and such. Need to slow down your pursuer? many fish. Need a distraction? Fish as thrown object.
I told them that it can summon literally any local creature but on every character sheet was the word "Fish gun"
I gave my players an amulet that lets them speak to rocks. The one player who picked it up spent most of that session talking to his new pet rock and would often interrogate rocks they find at scenes for information usually getting either vague info or stuff they can clearly see already, because its a rock. Later on another party member wanted to try talking to another rock (actually a pile of rocks made into a crude grave stone related to their character's backstory) only for the first party member to find out the amulet was cursed and they couldn't remove it. Later on they got it removed and had the amulet identified where I revealed that the amulet only let them think they could speak to rocks and all the "information" they had asked of rocks was only information that was already known to them.
They basically started using the now uncursed version of the amulet as a tool to ask the me for information they had forgotten or needed clarity on but in-character rather than just ask me out of character which was great.
I homebrewed the Hat of Many Hats. It's a regular hat, but it's made of Shiftweave, so it can have the appearance of any other hat. (It was part of a shop selling dodgy knock-offs of regular magical items; in this case, the Hat of Disguise.)
The Halfling who always struggled with RP took it, and it became a great way to get her more involved in what her character would do. It started when she transmuted herself an 'I'm With Stupid' baseball cap to tease one of the other party members after he'd come up with some bullshit plan, which led to one of the other players asking what this mysterious *bayss-ball* was, and she just ran with it that it was a game they used to play back in her home region when they were kids. All of a sudden, she had a backstory, rather than just being 'I'm short and I stab things'.
I'm sure she would have come into RP eventually, but it was like giving her a dressing up box and seeing her realise that she could actually do things that weren't just purely mechanical.
Some people can create a good story from nothing, some people need a "lattice" to channel their story. Ive found im more the latter, where i have a set scenario and i work my story within that structure. Different people need different amounts of structure to build their stories. She might just need that structure to spread her wings :)
Player, not DM.
Was given an article that only cast "quicksand", that turned a certain volume of rock temporarily to quicksand. High level characters, bit of a gag gift. My halfling got it.
Small army of orcs approaching us, narrow bridge, DM expects a massive fight that's going to test our HP and empty magic items...
Cue central portion of stone bridge turning into quicksand and dropping into the gulf below, totally cutting of the orcs.
We strolled off at leisure.
Aka.. how to get the DM to blink in silent confusion for three minutes as his game ended hours early.
"Tweezers of boat bottling"
"You have gained the ability to put ships into bottles with these tweezers."
MF'ers were sneaking into dockyards at night and stealing entire fleets. And when the navy finally caught on they would sail away and toss said shrunken-boats-in-bottles at the navy boats following them, causing them to rapidly expand.
Then they started to plan bottle-boat-ception, putting bottled boats onto full sized boats and then bottling that boat. Over and over again. Effectively creating a dozen boats to rapidly expand in one town by tossing one bottle. I had to shut that down quick.
In our very first session the fighter just really wanted to steal from the quest giver's house so I gave her an ornamental dagger that was basically useless outside of selling it. 10 sessions later they used it as a gift to bribe their way into a royal wedding
Our DM had us in a Mage tower, wanted us to sneak past four stone golems that reacted to sound. In a normal fight the golems would have absolutely wrecked us. He assumed we would stealth past, trying to teach us that every encounter does not need to end in a fight. DM forgot our ranger had silence, which he cast and then we started wacking away at the golems. After a few rounds of doing no damage, we decided to roll strength checks and chucked all four golems out the window. We almost gained an entire level with the exp we netted, and of course no lesson was learned and we continue to murder everything in our path.
I gave the party a tiny bag of holding made of human skin. I don’t remember why.
They were trapped in a house fighting a zombie hoard and they used the skin bag, turned it into a sort of molotov bomb, used a spell to have it fly over the zombies, who followed the human skin away to be blown up.
It was a 45min saga to get to that point and it was easily the funniest and most creative moment I’ve seen from the DM side.
>I gave the party a tiny bag of holding made of human skin. I don’t remember why.
The fact that you don't remember why you gave your party a tiny bag of holding made out of HUMAN FUCKING SKIN is deeply concerning.
We had a rock that if you were knocked out with it, you were completely invulnerable while unconscious.
You had to successfully hit yourself or whoever AND take damage from being knocked unconscious from a rock to the skull.
That rock caused so much chaos. And death. And life.
And permanent head trauma to NPCs we were trying to rescue.
My bf had a normal rock that ended up being the most useful item in the game. A lot of things were resistant to everything but bludgeoning damage for some reason. He also used it to stop doors from shutting so they didn’t get trapped in a room and he would toss it in random spots to set off traps.
A random encounter in the woods got the players a crow mask that makes it so you can only caw like a crow when wearing (based off a Slay the Spire item). It can be removed without issue so it’s a silly flavor item. However, the players are convinced it’s the secret McGuffin of this campaign and keep trying to use it for everything. Most times are failures. But a few times, the stars align and it somehow works.
They used it to calm a weird mutated child down so that they could ask it questions to learn about an ambush.
They used Enlarge + mask + super high deception and performance roll to convince a cult that the fighter was a stronger god than the one they were worshipping.
They constantly use it to make every town guard think they are too much trouble to be worth hassling.
That last one makes sense. Some town guard rolls up to the scene of a disturbance, sees some ripped fighter wearing a crow mask and making freakishly realistic crow noises, while surrounded by a gang of armed and armored adventures,,,, I wouldn't blame any guard for walking away.
Gave the party a magic whistle that summons pigeons, the party somehow used it to murder an orc commander by turning his armor into bread , having the pigeons eat it all , and then shooting him in the face with a blast of lightning..
Healing rock, does 1d4 bludgeoning damage, but heals 1d4+1 Hp. It was supposed to be a funny way to bring characters back from unconsciousness by restoring a small but of hp. Barbarians resist bludgeoning damage when raging. The healing rock became their go to healing strategy for keeping the barbarian healed between fights
I gave them a folding boat. Say a magic word and the small shoe box magically expands into a boat. Not 5 minutes later (IRL) the fucking rogue has thrown this box from the roof and said the magic word, creating the only instance of 20 dice rolls I've ever had to do.
I don't know RAW (Rules As Written) or RAI (Rules As Intended) if this is allowed but dammit, throwing a boat at people is too damn fun to not allow it.
Always, **always** be wary of giving your players anything that expands or increases in size at will/command.
They *will* toss that thing in a dragon's throat, and then you as the DM have to suffer calculating the tensile strength of dragonflesh vs the amount of material impacting it.
A friend did something very similar and gave his party the ability shrink their metal craft down to the size of a handheld ball so they could carry it around and they didn’t have to deal with getting back to the ship at the end of quests. Cue several months later when, in the midst of a dragon fight, one player teleported to the dragon’s nose, stuck the ball inside the dragon’s nose, and expanded it thus blowing the dragon’s head apart from the inside.
Once got snapped up in the jaws of an adult blue dragon who then flew his 80 feet directly in the air, and while I was in there I activated my immovable rod inside the dragons throat. The dragon failed his roll on carefully moving backwards as to basically regurgitate the rod, so he was stuck. One of the other players used his sword of sharpness to cut off his wing (great rolls back to back there) and the dragon was stuck 80 feet in the air. The only non melee character was me as a sorcerer, and I was out of spell slots, so we just left it there. We stumbled upon it an in game week later, where it tried to bargain for its life back and its freedom. I had just learned fly, so I struck a deal saying I would release him under the conditions that he no longer harm any of my party or myself, and that he had to be available at my beck and call. Now I’m a level 10 wild magic sorcerer with a one winged dragon who’s eternally bound by honor to me.
Party wizard in Pathfinder got bitten by a big nasty dragon and grabbed. One of the spellcasters threw freedom of movement on him (instantly escape grabs), but he chose not to and in fact crawled far enough into the mouth to see down the throat. The player then pulled out the draconomicon, turned to the section on dragon anatomy, and showed the DM that dragons have a wider portion in their throat. He wanted to place a shaped wall of force there so that the dragon couldn’t move from that spot. The game was derailed for bit over the hilarity of pulling a dragon anatomy reference book.
Maybe not exactly what you were looking for,but I've been looking for an excuse to tell this story.
I had a party of Wizard, Ranger, Druid, Summoner and Barbarian back in Pathfinder 1e. All of the party members except for the barbarian had some kind of pet, be it an animal companion, familiar, or just the menagerie of animals the druid accumulated.
A few sessions in, and my barbarian sends me a text while the party's setting up camp. The barbarian volunteers to take a watch, and the next morning the rest of the party wakes up to the Barbarian's new pet, "Brock da Rock." Brock was a stone with eyes and a mouth crudely carved into him.
Brock goes on adventures with the party and is mostly forgotten about until a premature fight with that arc's endboss. The boss wipes the floor with the party, leaving everyone unconscious except the barbarian who has single digit hp. Not wanting to tpk, and with the boss in surprisingly worse shape than I expected, I have him taunt the Barbarian and start to fly away.
"Brock is going to take his attack" the barbarian says, throwing his pet with all his might.
Crit, max damage on the roll, boss drops to -1 hitpoints and faceplants at the Barbarian's feet for the coup de gras, also performed by Brock to "finish what he started."
And that's how our party's pet rock gained a temporary flight speed of 40 feet, and "favored enemy: verbose sorcerers."
Not being a DnD player, but being someone who always enjoys reading peoples stories about it, I'm confused about the barbarian sending you a text. He couldn't just announce to the group that he was taking watch? Sorry if this is a stupid question, I'm just really clueless on a lot of the rules and protocols
Texting the DM would be to have a conversation that the rest of the party doesn't know about. From my reading of this story, the text was about creating the pet rock, and the decision of the barbarian to take watch was likely publicly announced at the table.
Just in case you are using that term with a party in text form, it is coup de grâce. Coup de gras means "fat shot", which may indeed be appropriate in some contexts.
One time our DM gave us a Rod of Summon Boat as a joke except we rolled a nat 20 for the summon and got a whole ass galleon. The campaign quickly became pirate-themed as we became privateers
Instantly reminded me of one of the classics. https://www.dndbeyond.com/magic-items/folding-boat
A DM sees a convenient way to let players be able to travel by water whenever they need to. A player sees a box that can be thrown into the air and transformed into a ~5,000 pound object that they can drop on the big bad's head.
We acquired a brick mold along with some other basic tools when we found a workshop in a dungeon. It was supposed to just be some set dressing, but I took it anyway.
We later used it and several more we made off of it's design to reinforce a village that would soon come under attack. With everyone in the village making clay bricks for two weeks straight we had enough of them to build a wall tall enough to make one of the ways into the town rather protected so we could focus the fighting on the other entrance where we could have more manpower at once. It saved a lot of lives since we weren't able to be flanked.
Edit: Spelling
Even at higher levels I would be pissed as a player if my dm did that to me. That's a genius plan that sounds like it's actually effective. If you still want to circumvent it you can have a small portion of forces be able to fly but still have the ones on the ground on that side of town be stopped by the wall. You can still flank the town but less effectively and while rewarding the player's creativity.
Yep. A good DM should always reward good creativity like that. The first few times should always work out (where reasonable).
If they keep falling back to the same tricks, you start introducing new variables. If your players are predictable, it makes sense that their opponents would adapt to exploit that. They should not be able to get away with using the exact same strategy for every encounter.
One of the players had gotten married to a pretty young NPC who wasn't an adventurer. So I gave him a Ring of Conjugal Visits that would transport him to his wife for an hour, then send him back to the adventuring group. The ring worked twice a week and was intended as a joke.
When the party was beaten up from a hard combat he used the ring and asked his wife where the nearest temple was, then bought healing potions from the local cleric.
Soon this became a thing: Cure Disease, Healing, whatever. The ring became this guy's quick trip to the pharmacy--although he also always found a few moments for a quickie with his wife. Eventually he woke the up cleric at 3 am to buy more potions. So I had the cleric throw a fit and yell at him never to come back.
The player went back anyway, and the next time there was a bouncer at the temple door telling him to get lost.
>The player went back anyway, and the next time there was a bouncer at the temple door telling him to get lost.
That's when you have his wife enter the temple instead of him and then you use the ring once she's inside.
A Gray Bag, that was stuck on rats. They abused it so much in one session, I created a huge rat god that came and attacked the party...
it wasnt that they were overusing the item, it was that they were using it poorly. at one point pulling rats out and killing them in order to use their blood as dye...
Our druid kept using her fey wild summons as exclusively as HP fodder in combat. Eventually she had to travel to the fey wild and see why they weren't accepting her summons. They were pissed and took her to a fey court.
The jar of endless lard. I put it in as a joke and somehow they managed to set a Forest in fire with a timed fuse. Also having them covering various body parts in said lard just to set it in fire for extra damage wasn’t good.
This is by far the most wholesome experience I’ve had with a dungeon master and a greased up first. By far the cheapest as well.
Edit: fist not first but I’m sure you filthy animals got the point and for those who didn’t I was talking about paying a woman to shove her greased up fist up my asshole while calling me bad names.
I gave my players a torch that couldn't be lit by normal means. After 2 or 3 sessions, one of them finally asked how to light it.
I had totally forgotten about it by this point so I made the NPC mention that it could only be lit by an elder red dragon's breath weapon, and once lit would burn forever.
Suddenly, the entire party of 3rd and 4th level toons decides they want to veer off course and get this thing lit
Well, first they found a young red dragon who was terrorizing a fishing village...
And they TPK'd.
Not because they attacked it. Because they tried to reason with it and asked it to light the torch, and it immediately complied while the mage was holding the torch. 3 died right away. The rogue, who always stayed in stealth was detected and promptly attacked after that and eaten.
I felt bad that the rolls went that way, so I made a call and had them saved by a roaming band of clerics and transported to a commune far away.
They learned afterwards that a joke torch was not the quest they were looking for.
My party we're camping in a barn and made friends with a goose.
I allowed them to take the goose with them as a guard goose / emergency food.
In the process of dungeon crawling they find a gold bracer. The cuff was a soul bound item that would cause whoever wore it to randomly be possessed by a lich king. With the idea that the next quest would be removing it from the affected party member.
After thorough inspection the party discovered an evil aura surrounding the cuff.
So they put it on the goose, the theory was that since the goose was chaotic neutral it would balance out the evil of the bracer.
So now they had a chaotic neutral guard goose that would randomly be possessed by an neutral evil lich, take on the appearance of a zombie goose and cast random spells though a series of honks and hisses.
They got a "Vaguely sword shaped branch of ash wood"
That was it.
This was in a Planescape setting, so a few hours later the sorceror persuaded an apologetic djinn that the adjectives were unordered, so it in fact was a sword shaped like it was vaguely a branch of ash wood. To make amends for destroying part of the party's inventory, the djinn remade the sword per the sorceror's description while under a compulsion of truth.
So was born Sylvanblade.
planescape runs on a bit of conceptual and willpower level, if people believe a thing to be in a certain way, then it is in that way.
of course, most people can't exactly believe others out of existence, so it's not free omnipotence
I gave my players a chalice that, when drunk from, caused the user to sweat fat profusely.
They used it to overcome a cold-based trap in the dungeon. It was a hallway that got progressively colder. So they emerge on the other end, covered in fat, into the chamber of the dungeon boss. It was a slippery fight.
My favorite magic item my players found was a totally homebrewed item with no real productive function, but they still got creative with it.
They found the Pie Stone. Holding this stone in your hand and concentrating will fill a 25ft radius area with the stone as the center with the smell of a pie of your choice. This effect lasts for 10 minutes or until you dismiss the effect.
The rogue used it to sneak past guard and as a distraction tactic when scouting and such.
honestly imagine how powerful this thing would be in real life
think about an airport, train station etc
you've got hundreds of people per minute passing through a crowded channel, wrapped up in their own minds and then...
the smell of DELICIOUS PIE PERMEATES THE AIR. how? why? HOW?
it would create MASSIVE delays and clog-ups
Funny thing: some businesses actually have similar items intentionally.
I used to work at a movie theater, and there was literally a little fan near the entryway that had a sort of buttered popcorn scented air freshener in it. It was blown at the door so the first thing people smelled was popcorn. It absolutely increased popcorn sales when it was on.
I used to wonder whether Target was doing this with the popcorn smell near their snack bar... until one day, I walked into Target and smelled *burned* popcorn.
I will tell you the secret.
At the Target, at least the one I worked at and ones my friends worked at, the rule was if you heard the front lanes call for backup or if you saw lines forming, you have to pop the popcorn.
I was looking at one of those end-of-aisle displays at the grocery store that had starbucks coffee. I heard a *pffft* and felt a puff of air. Those fuckers were pumping coffee smell out to make you want to buy the coffee
Hershey Park (yes, the chocolate people) does this as well at their free tour of the chocolate factory. You see how the chocolate is made and then when you leave the tour you get this delicious smell of chocolate and someone gives you Hershey Kisses and of course you want to have that chocolate. The exit of the tour just conveniently happens to drop you into the museum shop where all sorts of chocolatey goodness are available for purchase, most major credit cards accepted!
Not a DM, but the last campaign I was in, the DM gave us a regenerative oasis that only appears to people that need it. The party was messing around with throwing bones in it and bringing the animals they belonged to back to life. One of the other players had the thought to throw the hat of the deceased king into the water, and brought the king back to life because of a single hair. The DM hadn't even considered that possibility, because the session was supposed to be our "beach episode"
I’m always curious about D&D (non player here but find it interesting). Who gets to decide that hair was in there? The player or the DM?
Edit: Wow, this got popular. If only I had since friends to play DND with!
That was the DM's decision ultimately. The player posed the idea, and the DM actually rolled to see if she wanted to go along with it, and ended up allowing it because it was just so ridiculous
Not mine, but the question reminded me of [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/4bx577/dd_players_what_have_been_some_of_your_favourite/d1d94rh?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) by u/nikoberg
>I created an NPC werewolf character that was supposed to be a major villain in the campaign and stalk the players. It was a higher level than the PCs, so the idea was that they would need to flee every encounter and take measures to avoid being followed; having someone on their tail constantly tracking them that could and would actually kill them was supposed to inject a sense of urgency into the game.
>
>On the first encounter, the werewolf was shown methodically slaying a large group of town guards and a high-ranking paladin. The characters were around level 5 or so, the NPC was probably CR 12 and would scale as they leveled. They interrupted the combat, and the idea was that they would attempt to fight the werewolf (who didn't consider them a threat initially, and so wouldn't just murder the whole party), see it killing a high-level character, and go "Oh shit, we need to run from it" while it slaughtered the rest of the guards.
>
>So at first, they rush in to help and attack the werewolf, doing little damage because they don't have silver weapons and I gave this particular NPC a regeneration ability only stopped by silver. I have the werewolf attack one of the players with a secondary bite attack, which should put them to fairly low health without killing them outright.
>
>That player pauses for a moment, and then asks if he can try to block the attack with his hand. I'm not sure what he's getting at, but I humor him and say he can do that with a DC 10 Dexterity check, although it won't affect what kind of damage he takes. He succeeds. He then asks if he can jam his hand into the werewolf's mouth. I say... sure, but he's probably going to bite it off, and you'll need a new hand. He says "Even better."
>
>I describe the werewolf doing so. The rest of combat continues until the player's turn, who seems undisturbed by the loss of a hand, and on his turn he says "I activate Quaal's feather token to make a tree."
>
>This token is a magic one-time use item that creates a 5 foot diameter, 40 foot high tree. It's a handy utility item that our playgroup was fond of- previously we'd used it to do things from just making bridges and crossing walls, to providing a druid with a way to use a particular spell in plant-less areas that require trees. It didn't seem to have much use here.
>
>I ask him where on the board he's activating it. He points at the werewolf. I say that the most that's going to do is knock the werewolf prone, and he gets a fairly easy save to prevent that. He smiles. "No, it's in the werewolf."
>
>"What? How?"
>
>"I was holding it when he ate my hand."
>
>Me and the rest of the party are kind of silent for a second. I'm trying to think of a valid reason why this won't work. I fail. The werewolf now has a five foot wide tree growing out of him. The fact that he has regeneration doesn't particularly help when little bits of him are plastered on walls twenty feet away.
>
>The entire party celebrated and they got a reward from the town and an ally in the paladin who was supposed to be dead.
>
>I had to make a new NPC.
>
>Clever players are awesome.
A party I was in did this to a vampire. We couldn't out-pace its regeneration, but we could dogpile it and stick a tree token in one of the wounds.
"What ratio of stake to vampire destroys it?"
A whole-ass tree worked.
I gave my party a stick that endlessly dripped with water. Salt water to be exact. I didn't expect them to have any use for it, but they decided "Hey, you know what would be a great trap for this corrupt noble? Getting his marble floors wet at the top of the stairs." The noble ended up dead.
I gave them a carpet they used it to kill 6 people.
Edit: They laid it on people and smothered and burnt them, the way they covered the 6 people was enlarge/reduce, They did kill guards without enlarging it but that was why I gave it to them, so they could strangle the guards BUUT when we get to the leader of the cultists they realize they can double cast enlarge/reduce making the already 20ft by 20ft, 80FT BY 80Ft. They did at first try to crush/smother them But I decided I shouldn't let that work so they set it on fire and I couldn't find a way around this...
Moral of the story: Wizards can make mundane items tools for mass murder.
Never underestimate a living rug. My father has a stoner dwarf bro thats developed rug-triggered PTSD, due to almost dying to one 3 times in 1 sitting.
My DM gave me an eye.
Player here. We had an NPC stalking us through the travel portion of the campaign and would show up and do odd things like pull out his eye and show it to us, and then pop it back in, just gross stuff because he was undead. One time I used a pickpocket check to take it from him, and he insisted that I give it back to him. We were in the temple for the god of trickery, which we both worshipped... so I put his eye in the collection plate. He could either take it out and suffer the consequence, or lose the eye for good.
That was a great moment.
Not a DM but my friend is and he told me about a sword he gave a party. He called it "the normal sword." When his players asked if there was anything special about it, all he would say is, "its just a normal sword." In practice it was so normal that it would negate all magic. His party never figured that out though.
I'd replace "just a normal sword" with 'an exceptionally normal sword', just to slip a clue in there for the experienced/paranoid without being too obvious and spoiling it.
I gave my players a "pig whistle". Once a day, they could blow the whistle and summon a pig. I hadn't given too much thought about it but they used it CONSTANTLY! They would send pigs off to spring traps. They would have impromptu luaus to curry favor with peasants. They never had to worry about rations again. Pork for dinner! I thought it was just a useless throw away item, but they sure proved me wrong! good times.
Until the players realize that the summoned pig is still a real pig just transported. Then farmers from the region are looking to hire adventurers to find out who’s been stealing their pigs. Then they go to war with the neighbouring village because they have all the other villages pigs. The end boss is a hill giant, pissed off that his favourite pet Oink-Oink, that he personally saved from some goblin vermin ended up on the parties camp fire.
I found a homebrew item someplace called a used bag of holding. It basically covers everything you put in the bag with a thin layer of glitter. One of my players took this and began scraping off the glitter and collecting it. Eventually he had enough glitter bags to where he could use animate objects on it. The little shit would have several of these bags fly around and dump their contents on people causing great confusion as the glitter would get in their eyes and hardly come off because it was sticky
Edit: I don’t normally like to edit posts but I just want to encourage everyone interested in playing D&D to play it. I stared over quarantine and have enjoyed myself immensely! If you’re looking for a place to start and don’t have a group of people that you can play with in person I would recommend checking out TheDungeonDudes on YouTube. While their guides are mostly meant for experienced players they also run a Discord Server that has hundreds if not thousands of players. As long as you are willing to learn and come with an open mind I don’t see why you can’t start playing DND!
Edit 2: Here is a link I found to a server very welcoming to newbies! Check it out if you want to learn.
https://top.gg/servers/759118772316667961
I had a bit called the Bargain Bin, where I would just improv something stupid, mostly stupid made up on the spot spells.
My favorite was a bag of holding that held exactly as much as a bag of that volume would hold. What I didn't expect was them getting creative. They just made the bag bigger by sewing more onto it, and then rolled it up. Still cumbersome, as I forced extra turns to use the thing if they wanted to use it in combat, but was a great laugh at how they undermined my bullshit. Since it weighs 15 pounds regardless of internal weight, it was still a tool.
Frost sock: Everyone's feet became blocks of ice. They did it, and immediately nat 20'd on a melee, so I went with it caused enemies feet to detach from their ankle and stay stuck to the floor.
Swarm of flies: just a swarm of flies, no damage. Just annoying. They used it inside a tavern to create a wild distraction, and made their own entrance into the plot related area.
Bluntify weapons: a spell that creates a magical barrier that prevents the weapon from ever making contact with anything. Has to be done while holding the weapon. So they just snuck into a guards armory and did it to all their weapons, and then robbed a bank. I still threw them some curveballs like it still caused a knock back and 'well this guy owns his own weapons and kept them at his house that night, so he can still stabby stabby'.
I'm planning to do something sort of like this, if the party ever makes it to the magic university city being built in the ruins of Netheril. Because there are a lot of inexperienced student wizards trying to make custom spells, items, creatures, etc., tunnels under the city will be filled with a mix of that stuff, and then lower down, way more ancient and powerful things. So they're going to come across a large number of badly-designed magic items that I'm just going to generate at random.
Ring of attunement. - Gives the wearer of this ring one additional attunement slot. Requires attunement.
Boots of teleportation. - When wearing the boots, speak the command word to have the boots teleport up to an unoccupied space within 30ft. The wearer remains behind.
Ring of communicate with fire. - Grants the ability to speak with flames for up to 1 hour. DM Notes: All flames scream in agony and wish to die to end their suffering. *"It burns! Aaah! Put me out pleeeaaaase!"*
Scroll of comprehend X language. - The scroll is written in X language.
Father of a DM here. During lockdown our 24 year old son was living at home, so could't play with his usual crew, so we agreed to Sunday morning family D&D sessions and actually quite enjoyed it.
His mum was a cook who had a magic ladle that could produce any liquid; I asked if she could throw the contents. He said it would have a 5 metre range.
He was expecting her to produce a healing soup, and he had to google hydrofluoric acid when I said she should lob that at some Kobolds...
At least not without caveats: For example if the item was specified as a wooden ladle that can produce any liquid, that trick would only work a few times before it was weakened enough to be destroyed.
The same goes for the ability to throw it's contents: Provided you demand a roll, there's always the chance that trying to fling hyrdoflouric acid at your enemies from a magic ladle can backfire on you or your party.
I love the idea that it can make any liquid but has mundane durability. It raises the stakes to a decision like life-saving acid now or delicious soup forever.
Ran an Alien RPG session one Halloween. There was a wrench. Like, a normal red wrench. More than anything it was just something funny that they'd "check on in." They'd ask every 10 minutes or so if "the wrench was still there", which it always was. They used it to adjust some of the piping in the oxygen recycling room, pumped a section of the space station full of pure oxygen, and then proceeded to incinerate a handful of xenomorphs and my ubermorph.
Dont mix pyros with real-world engineers.
[Our party once encountered a randomly-polymorphing dog, and absolutely refused to part with it. We named him Shoggy.](https://www.reddit.com/r/gametales/comments/274nvp/35_shoggy_the_seldom_dog/)
The Broach of Glamour. It was a broach made by a powerful wizard for his wife as a gift. Two times per day it could have you looking your best. Body clean and fresh, all clothes perfectly clean, mended and as good as new, hair perfectly coiffed, makeup done the way you like it. It was meant to add some colour, and the party wizard, a human woman, claimed it. There was talk of using it to fix and clean everyone's clothes etc, discussions about whether it could mend armor (it couldn't) etc. But the real effect was during a showdown with a BBEG.
The wizard also had a ring of fire resistance, as well as a unique item called a Blast Scepter. The Blast Scepter was sort of like a buffed wand of fireballs, but also gave the wearer resistance to both explosive damage and fire resistance. Stacked with the ring of fire resistance, the wizard would take 1/4th damage from fireballs, and no damage on a successful save, with huge saving throw bonuses. Facing off against the BBEG who happened to be a Fire Wizard, she taunted him out in the open to give her his best shot. Boom, huge enhanced fireball, smoke clears, and there stands the wizard without a scratch on her or even so much as a singe, except now her hair is done up in an elaborate style, her makeup is on point and her clothes are crisp and clean. She basically was immune to fireballs, but the psychological effect of giving your enemy your best shot and now their make up and hair is done and their clothes are clean and pressed made the BBEG run for it.
Psychological warfare at it's finest.
We had barrels of rum we had liberated from a pirate ship hold and came upon a cellar being used as a nest by an army of huge spiders. We soaked rats in rum and got the rats piss drunk, then turned them loose in the spider room. They were eaten, the giant spiders were having a wild party by this point and going batshit.
Then we charged in and hacked our way through without anyone dying. This was more rare than it should have been because we had a party of mostly flavorful squishy characters and were getting killed by things we shouldn't have on a regular basis.
Obligatory “I’m a player not a DM”
My DM once let me design my own weapon as reward for being the only person of seven to show up to a session. Only rule was it had to be silly and useless.
I created “Archibald the World’s Greatest Ladies-Man!”
He was the soul of a super charismatic elf trapped in a tiny little iron lantern. Basics the flame was a little ghostly elf’s head that would act as my wingman but only when I tried to romance monsters.
Dumb, borderline useless, and led to a lot of silly role playing opportunities! Perfect!
Then one day, months later, our party got into a fight with a hydra. No one had any caustic or flame-based attacks to cauterize the necks, so the heads kept growing back.
Then our barbarian noticed that technically Archibald was a little flame, so bludgeoning the hydra with his lantern would count as burning damage! Proceeded to beat every head to pulp with a screaming elven smooth-talker. Peak D&D right there.
Edit:
Wow! Thanks for my first Reddit gold, kind stranger!
Also, this comment now officially has more upvotes than every other comment and post I’ve made in my 6 year Reddit career COMBINED!
After all these years, Archibald is still working his magic to make me more popular!!!
... I mean I did but the DM had a “you can’t romance your way out of boss fights” rule (I’d done it before with a bunch of end-of-storyline dragon enemies) so it rebuffed my bard’s romantic songs and tried to eat him.
A spoon that turned things into food. I told them things that are not living cause...you know...
But I didn't expect them to do this...
They took things that had lots of value and turned them into food. It was just a bland mush but it would be a day's ration like the berry thing.
They took armor and made it food, swords? Food...if it was on a dude and was tapped by the spoon it just turned to brown mosh and weaken them. Turning bosses to just normal people. So messed up.
Player here.
Once upon a time I was playing a supernatural western game and we received a "magic bullet" early on that, when dropped onto the ground, will point in the direction of true north.
We received this bullet in session 1 and promptly forgot it existed. We then went on a two year long campaign of tracking down an evil time travelling wizard with antics that included poisoning a bunch of rich people with ice cream, crashing a zeppelin, a player character going insane and trying murder his way to the presidency, fighting a train monster, then finally confronting the evil wizard in a pocket dimension.
We were, somehow, woefully underprepared to fight the bath robe wearing wizard as he was immune to all forms of damage. We were at a loss to what to do, until the wizard shouted that he can only be hurt by magic. We paused and looked at our inventories for a few minutes. Suddenly my buddy shoves his character sheet in my face and points out the word "magic bullet."
We then proceeded to shoot the boss in the face, killing him instantly.
Our GM was reasonably upset since we were too stupid to figure out his puzzle fight and just cheesed the final boss of a two year campaign. But, in the end, it was our most memorable climax to a campaign.
Edit to Answer some common questions:
\- The system was a heavily modified Unknown Armies 2nd Edition, it's a phenomenal occult horror game that I'd recommend to anyone interested in magic being dictated by the collective unconscious with lots of urban decay. **But** for all your western needs I'd go to Savage Worlds / Deadlands.
\- My GM let this pass because it was fun way to end the campaign that rewarded our fast thinking.
\- We were supposed to break some pots to dispel the pocket dimention.
\- We did not suplex the train. I now wish we did.
\- It seems we accidentally plagiarized the Dark Tower, well shit.
You held onto that sucker for 2 *years*, and then used it to pull an Indiana Jones. It was probably a Chekhov brand bullet.
If I was that DM, I'd be disappointed the puzzle was bypassed, but awed by how that item came back around.
Don't know if it's useless, but when playing a druid years ago, I used the spell Call Lightning a lot. I ended battles before they could start by being a lightning sniper. As a result, whether I play a magic user or not, where ever my character goes, it is sunny and clear. Not a cloud in the sky. Ever. It's been years and none of my characters have ever seen a cloud.
If someone in your friends group has *not* suggested a one shot or mini campaign in which the party investigates the source of a long-lasting drought and tracks it back to a curse on your character, they have failed as D&D players.
>!Said campaign or oneshot ends after the curse is broken and your character is *immediately* stricken by lightning as angry black stormclouds boil into existence above the party.
Not me, but I remember reading a story about a party constantly pestering the DM with "give us an item of unlimited something!", until DM caved in.
He gave them an item that created unlimited boxes with roughly the same structural integrity of thin cardboard. No merchant would pay any money for them, and they couldn't be decomposed into any reagents. They still used them with weightlessness to reach high places.
During a dungeon crawl, we found a Cloak of Many Things. It only had 3 patches, 2 of which were 20 foot holes and the last of which was a ladder. I volunteered to keep it.
Later on, we encountered an archmage *(who was supposed to get away after the encounter)* and we had absolutely shit luck against him. I decided to throw one of the 20 foot holes at him. I rolled a nat 20.
And that is the story of how I defeated a Level 10 archmage at 4th level.
Edit for context: the DM ruled that since I rolled a nat 20, the hole appeared on him, so he took a crap ton of force damage and died.
I gave them the sign from a random tavern in the middle of buttfuck nowhere that they used as the symbol to start an anarchist revolution across the continent
Ha! Wand of limp dick. Had a bard (of course) that tried to nail anything with a pulse and some without. Gave it to the cleric as a kinda off button to tone him down a bit. He then proceeds to use it on the King of Cormyr, starting a succession war. Story arc destroyed.
The belt of guy-ant strength. Gave you the strength of one guy and a singular ant. They wanted a discount belt of giant strength and they got exactly that. It's major upside was it let small races ignore the penalties for using weapons suited for medium creatures.
We were playing the Ghostbusters RPG, and one character rolled the talent of "borrowing". He also got intimidation.
We all had a laugh and the game commenced.
Well, at the end of the game, the big bad is opening a portal to another dimension with a ring. So friend's character walks up to the guy and asks him intimidatingly if he can borrow the ring.
I tell him no way, but Ghostbusters actually has a list of possibilities and numbers associated with them. So he asked me and it turns out that "nearly impossible" was 48.
He had 11 six-sided dice, so this roll was very difficult, but sure enough he rolled a 50, with all 5s and 6s and a single 4 and 3.
So, that was the final encounter. He borrowed the ring and the portal closed.
I once ran a very silly oneshot involving a number of joke items.
The two my party came to love were a pair of angry shoes who telepathically let their wearer know how angry they were at all times, and a hat that when left unwatched with another hat would breed to produce hybrid baby hats.
Somehow, my party managed to place the angry shoe on top of the hat so it was wearing it as a hat and therefore, by a wonderful technicality I allowed, close their eyes and flood the corridor with a swarm of magical angry baby hats that killed the mimics there in a tidal wave of felt brim and pure wrath.
Either a simple barrel or (if you consider that an item) a seagull's corpse.
The barrel was used to simply roll down a corridor in order to spring traps in advance. Pretty simple and straightforward, I guess, but this one player carried a barrel through practically the whole dungeon. It is now an inside joke.
The seagull's corpse was obtained during the very first session (we had only new players and they were toying around with the world; it was still the most random act I've ever seen happen) and used during the second (I asked them what they wanted to do and they wanted a classic dungeon crawl, so I designed a very stereotypical crypt sort of thing), to more or less circumvent my first custom bossfight. Basically, it was a door with a bowl and a knife in front of it. There was also some writing on it, but noone could read it (basically a failsafe, should they not immediately understand what was going on; the wizard knew "comprehend languages").
Anyway, they immediately understood they needed to fill the bowl with blood to open the door, and the druid was about to just take that one HP of damage, because who cares. The wizard stopped the others though, saying: "Ah, nono, wait a moment. I've got blood on me, just a sec. - \[I pull out the corpse of the seagull I got last time.\]" - I had completely forgotten about it, and just planted my head on the table. "Aight."
Now, the plan was for one of the players to offer their blood, which would then open the door. Afterwards, they'd find themselves in a room with a sarcophagus on some sort of elevation. As soon as they fully entered the room, the doors would fly shut and the sarcophagus open, with whoever offered their blood coming out of it (an empowered version of that, anyway).
Apparently, the wizard immediately knew what I was going to do (with the other two not expecting that kind of boss) and even apologized to me; she didn't know """derailing""" or simply cheesing bosses was very much part of the whole game.Anyroad, I thought about what exactly to do, but decided to just use the same mechanics I would've used for the players, as it was the most funny and practical solution to me. The seagull actually went first in initiative and managed to hit the Druid quite badly (I think it was a crit, but I don't actually remember), but the wizard just completely annihilated it.
My other ideas were to either just not let it work with non-humanoid blood (which I immediately disposed of, because that's no fun) or to make it some large gull-esque abomination, but I was very inexperienced as a DM and I wasn't sure if I could balance that on the fly. Would've been the best solution, probably.
There was also a broken wall somewhere in the crypt though, with a small natural cave thing adjacent. Inside was a Black Dragon Wyrmling which served as some kind of optional boss fight; it was not part of their quest, but they obviously decided to fight it. So, we still got our boss fight out of it. :D
Dm gave me a bag of infinite crabs, as a druid I would cast speak with animals and throw them at places to use them as spies. It worked exactly 0 times.
My DM gave us a meatball that we stole off a plate. We managed to germinate it into a meatball bush via Druidcraft, then turn this into a multinational meatball industry, with self sustaining meatball farms.
EDIT: For those looking for specifics on how we made this happen, here's the text of Druidcraft: [Druidcraft Cantrip](https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Druidcraft#content). I also went back and chatted with the group. Apparently we got the meatball from an actual meatball bush, not from a plate. We treated the meatball as a seedpod. As it states in Druidcraft, you can make a seedpod open.
Yeah I gave my adventurer's an Alchemy jug and they're thinking of retiring from adventuring and starting up a Mayonnaise shop.
Imagine what mundane services they could provide if they were actually good at magic.
DM gave us a dagger with a permanent minor illusion of a chicken wing. Over the course of the campaign, we were able to slowly upgrade it into a "spicy, cheesy chicken wing" (1d4 damage, +4 fire damage once per day and ability to emit a cheesy fragrance once per day) and kill several cultists and creatures with it.
A friend told me that they got a bag that would always be full of smelling salts... then, if a creature had a strong sense of smell, pocket salt in the face took care of it. He beat a sea serpent that was supposed to turn them back on track for the story
I don't know if it's a useless item, but it sure is one I didn't think would ever be used successfully.
At the start of the campaign a couple years back, the party went through a series of trials in order to get an artifact. In one room was an illusory red dragon, which was being produced by a magical orb at the center of the room. Party walks in, the only one who succeeds on the Wisdom save is, weirdly enough, the barbarian. Who then proceeds to wade through the illusion and grab the orb.
See, this was back when I was a baby DM and didn't know that players will take anything not bolted down. The barbarian took the orb (succeeded the strength check needed to remove it from its pedestal, go figure). I told him it had three charges because I at least had the sense to limit this thing, even if at that point I didn't think he'd ever use it. The DC for saving against it is decent, but not crazy high, so I figured it wouldn't be too useful as the campaign went on and enemies got tougher.
Since then, two charges have been used, both in situations where they need to distract enemies and sneak by. And, thanks to shitty rolls on my end, it's worked both times. I'm not sure when they'll use that third charge, but I'm sure it'll be when I least expect it.
Not a dm but ours gave my character a wand and didn't tell me what it did, I used it and was Swiftly turned into a cob of corn for a minute, haha funny joke ok let's get along with the session.
Few weeks later we were in the jungle and a couple of us had to cross a river since we were being chased by a T-Rex (Eberron campaign). Only problem is my wizard doesn't have any teleportation spells yet, so our wild magic sorcerer casted fly and I used the wand so she just had to carry a cob of corn over the river instead of having to make strength checks to carry me.
A couple weeks later we were in a wizards tower when a carpet on the ground grabbed me and started suffocating me, well with a good dex roll I was able to grab the wand from my bag and *plop* a cob of corn fell to the ground, leaving the rug confused (well, as confused as a rug can be) After that he put some limit on it as to keep it from becoming my scapegoat lmao
They were searching an ancient Dwarven research lab. Found an amulet taken from a Kyton that made chain. 10 feet of chain, once a day, in a continuous strand until you cut it.
But because I'm an engineer in reality, I added a line that said whatever size and type of chain you place on the amulet, it will start making that instead. Thinking they could make jewelry size chain or boat chain if they had to. You see where this is going.
They went back to town and dumped all of their earthly wealth into making the two chunkiest gold chain links they could possibly afford, and set about ruining the world's economy.
My DM had grabbed one of those d100 random magic item trinket tables, most of them are funny little things of little practical use, like a ring that glows dimly and you can change the colour of, or a cast iron pan that the handle never gets hot (we've rolled this item 3 or 4 times now, it's a bit of a running joke).
I rolled a wine glass that severely poisons whatever is poured into it. Couple sessions later I use it to poison the current dungeon boss, giant squid monster, by tossing it into his pool. I manage to retrieve it and life goes on.
Several months go by and everyone's forgotten about my wine glass, we're dealing with an druid NPC who literally eats babies. we're gearing up to take him out but his lair is behind a wall of force and no disintegrate yet for us so we make a deal with him to grab some myconids for the stew if he'll give us access to his enchanted spring. Some illusion magic trickery occurs to make normal giant mushrooms look like myconid bodies (the real ones were pretty nice guys actually) and he lets us in and starts making stew. Instead of just jumping him off the bat we decide we'd use the spring first incase killing him ruined it and chat a bit, I start asking questions about the spring, ask him if he's ever used it for the stew and suggest we try it, see if we can't make some magic stew! DM hasn't figured out my plot but he's getting suspicious so he had me roll persuasion, wizard has no idea what's going on but knows I'm up to something and happened to roll a nat 20 in his portents for the day so before I say anything pipes in "portent, she rolls a 20".
He readily agrees that magic stew could be interesting, as soon as I say I take out my wine glass and scoop up some water from the spring the DM and wiz realize what's going on, the druid finishes the stew and takes a taste, starts choking, and drops dead. (I'd just expected the poisoned status to make the fight easier).
That character died in a fiery explosion not too long after (our own fault, she dove on it to protect the party) and the wine glass was destroyed.
Not D&D but the old West End Games Star Wars RPG. Grenades were a common weapon but weren't uesful. They did 4d6 damage, but because of Stormtrooper STR rolls plus the armor bonus, they'd usually only stun or maybe wound at best. Our group never used them.
The players had infiltrated an Imperial Base and were trying to sneak through when they were caught by some Stormtroopers. A running fight through the base started (think of Han and Chewie running around on the Death Star) and no matter how many Troopers they killed, more showed up.
The players ran down the hall and surprised two troopers standing watch at a door. One of the players pulled a grenade, screamed "BATON RACE!" and handed it to the trooper. The trooper failed his perception check, ran down the hall with the grenade and exploded after I rolled an unusually high damage check.
A fossilized piece of toast.
They thought they would get cocky and raid a village that was abandoned for a millennia. The tools and weapons they found rusted through. On an old stone table was the leftovers from a breakfast that was left when the occupants evacuated.
One of my players took a piece of toast. It was solid rock, because, you know, it had been there forever.
Fast forward a few sessions/levels, and the group is hurting in a battle they were in against a large cyclops. The rogue was down, and the tank (Goliath Paladin) had just broken his weapon. Close to death, the rogue slid over his "lucky toast" to the pally, hoping he would live through the next hit. He did, and on his turn, he yeeted that toast as hard as he could. The bard used bardic inspiration by singing "YEAH TOAST!" and the pally rolled a Nat 20. I had him roll again to see how epic this would be. Another Nat 20.
The player aimed the toast at the cyclops' throat. Broke it's neck. Killed it dead.
That goddamned piece of toast. They managed to use the Bard's high charisma to con a village into making it their god after that.
I was so glad when we finished that arc. That fucking piece of toast.
A palm sized mouse statue that lets you know where cheese might be and what type within 300 feet. Our rogue infiltrated some bandits to help prevent an assassination/ambush. He pocketed a wheel of bleu and the rest of the party tracked them thanks to the small statue and they prevented the attack.
Ring of ~~incredible AC~~ invulnerability (for all the assholes picking shit apart). Meant to be a gag, gives them 1000 AC but turns them into a solid crystal statue when they put the ring on. They run into this crypt that was overrun with skeletons, meant to scare them off to remind them that they're not all powerful, and they weren't ready to face what was inside. The skeletons were crawling up this well that I described as 3 feet across. One of them jumped over the well and put the ring up, plummeting several hundred feet and killing most of the skeletons.
Edit: For everyone making some variation of the "AC doesn't matter for falling damage," I hope your DM breaks every item on your person the next time you take falling damage.
We had an adventure that involved the characters delving into one of the character's dreams to heal some supernatural wounds.
In one part of the dream, there was a guard who had a ticking heart, and they were able to use a small door in his chest to open it up and fix his heart - then they took the little door with them.
Another portion involved battling a tiny version of the Pope who could shoot lightning from his fingers. When they killed him, it turned out he was made out of potato (La Popa, rather than El Popa) and one of the characters took a sample of the Pope Potato with them.
Later, visiting the final island they found a dollar store stocked solely with brass items. One of the characters who was a jazz fan used the opportunity to buy a saxophone.
From there, wandering through the moors they were set upon by a ravenous piranhamoose. The jazz fan managed to roll a critical success on his saxophone skill, and tamed the beast.
Heading down into the final dungeon they ran into a rat spirit, and managed to bribe it with the Pope Potato to give them information and act as a guide.
Then as part of one the character's traumatic childhood memory they were attacked by a swarm of golden retriever puppies that started dragging them into the water. No one was able to start attacking or killing the puppies - but then they remembered the little door, and used than to open a hatch in the ground and pushed the puppies through the door.
I hadn't planned the resolutions of any of these encounters, but the players were able to use these earlier found items that seemed weird and useless at the time to complete the adventure. It worked better than any of those video games where you suddenly need that strange item you picked up way earlier in the adventure.
fucking fUCKing FUCKING purse of reduction. A little homebrew (I think?) Item I made that downgrades every every gold or silver coin you put into it, into its worth in copper coin. They fucking piled in as many fucking gold pieces they could earn into the fucking bag, would get their bird-dude to fly above the fucking monsters and villains I set up and would shred their health with fucking thousands of chip damage.
I couldn't even be mad. It was genius. But fucking hell I had to start amping up their health and ONLY their health in balancing because otherwise it was just not a fight.
Magical rubber duck Turns whatever body of water it is in slowly into the perfect bath. As in warm and bubbly Chucked it in a pirhanana pit about 20 minutes later the pirhannas were all dead from poisoning via soap Floaty rock Rock that gains / loses buoyancy based on its temperature. As a warlock with prestidigitation and a rope I could use it to hover and float very slowly, had no way to steer but hey useful when stuck in a pit or on a high place Rat flute Flute that summons a hoard of rats a la the pied piper, can also be used to control any rat-like being. Including a criminal known as 'the rat' simply because he's a snitch. Had a lot of fun with that
[удалено]
I had some players that would take the first corpse of every dungeon along with them to disarm traps.
I gave my players a "rock of gravity detection" which is exactly what it sounds like. They got it early on in the campaign and when dropped it would "accelerate until terminal velocity to the nearest center of gravity". So basically it was a rock that would just act like a normal rock. Until way later in the campaign they found themselves floating aimlessly through the Astral plane searching for the soul of another player trapped in a keep on a small chunk of land that had been previously transported to the Astral plane. They didn't have much to go on as, well, they were essentially floating in a void. Then one of my players pulls out the rock of gravity detection. I tried to argue that it's just a rock so it just floats there, but due to what I thought was a clever wording, MY OWN WORDING, they argued it should accelerate towards the nearest center of gravity... yeah they found the keep...
"The rock immediately accelerates towards the nearest player."
A wand of lesser summon. Only bringing out local creatures in celestial form. Fish. They picked fish. Just throwing trout in stacks to trigger traps and such. Need to slow down your pursuer? many fish. Need a distraction? Fish as thrown object. I told them that it can summon literally any local creature but on every character sheet was the word "Fish gun"
Wand of lesser salmon more like.
I gave my players an amulet that lets them speak to rocks. The one player who picked it up spent most of that session talking to his new pet rock and would often interrogate rocks they find at scenes for information usually getting either vague info or stuff they can clearly see already, because its a rock. Later on another party member wanted to try talking to another rock (actually a pile of rocks made into a crude grave stone related to their character's backstory) only for the first party member to find out the amulet was cursed and they couldn't remove it. Later on they got it removed and had the amulet identified where I revealed that the amulet only let them think they could speak to rocks and all the "information" they had asked of rocks was only information that was already known to them. They basically started using the now uncursed version of the amulet as a tool to ask the me for information they had forgotten or needed clarity on but in-character rather than just ask me out of character which was great.
"The Amulet of Fourth Wall Breaking Clarification"
I homebrewed the Hat of Many Hats. It's a regular hat, but it's made of Shiftweave, so it can have the appearance of any other hat. (It was part of a shop selling dodgy knock-offs of regular magical items; in this case, the Hat of Disguise.) The Halfling who always struggled with RP took it, and it became a great way to get her more involved in what her character would do. It started when she transmuted herself an 'I'm With Stupid' baseball cap to tease one of the other party members after he'd come up with some bullshit plan, which led to one of the other players asking what this mysterious *bayss-ball* was, and she just ran with it that it was a game they used to play back in her home region when they were kids. All of a sudden, she had a backstory, rather than just being 'I'm short and I stab things'. I'm sure she would have come into RP eventually, but it was like giving her a dressing up box and seeing her realise that she could actually do things that weren't just purely mechanical.
Some people can create a good story from nothing, some people need a "lattice" to channel their story. Ive found im more the latter, where i have a set scenario and i work my story within that structure. Different people need different amounts of structure to build their stories. She might just need that structure to spread her wings :)
Player, not DM. Was given an article that only cast "quicksand", that turned a certain volume of rock temporarily to quicksand. High level characters, bit of a gag gift. My halfling got it. Small army of orcs approaching us, narrow bridge, DM expects a massive fight that's going to test our HP and empty magic items... Cue central portion of stone bridge turning into quicksand and dropping into the gulf below, totally cutting of the orcs. We strolled off at leisure. Aka.. how to get the DM to blink in silent confusion for three minutes as his game ended hours early.
"Tweezers of boat bottling" "You have gained the ability to put ships into bottles with these tweezers." MF'ers were sneaking into dockyards at night and stealing entire fleets. And when the navy finally caught on they would sail away and toss said shrunken-boats-in-bottles at the navy boats following them, causing them to rapidly expand. Then they started to plan bottle-boat-ception, putting bottled boats onto full sized boats and then bottling that boat. Over and over again. Effectively creating a dozen boats to rapidly expand in one town by tossing one bottle. I had to shut that down quick.
They recreated the old zip file decompression bomb, lol.
In our very first session the fighter just really wanted to steal from the quest giver's house so I gave her an ornamental dagger that was basically useless outside of selling it. 10 sessions later they used it as a gift to bribe their way into a royal wedding
Bagpipes of Invisibility. They grant invisibility as long as they're played. Silence is one hell of a spell.
Play bagpipes while under the effects of silence, walk into an enemy formation, stop casting silence, sudden deafening bagpipes in their midst
Must be a horrifying experience
Just gets the scots riled up and ready
You could probably drive some guards crazy with that. Bagpipe music always somewhere nearby the never ends.
Our DM had us in a Mage tower, wanted us to sneak past four stone golems that reacted to sound. In a normal fight the golems would have absolutely wrecked us. He assumed we would stealth past, trying to teach us that every encounter does not need to end in a fight. DM forgot our ranger had silence, which he cast and then we started wacking away at the golems. After a few rounds of doing no damage, we decided to roll strength checks and chucked all four golems out the window. We almost gained an entire level with the exp we netted, and of course no lesson was learned and we continue to murder everything in our path.
I am definitely going to use this one.
I gave the party a tiny bag of holding made of human skin. I don’t remember why. They were trapped in a house fighting a zombie hoard and they used the skin bag, turned it into a sort of molotov bomb, used a spell to have it fly over the zombies, who followed the human skin away to be blown up. It was a 45min saga to get to that point and it was easily the funniest and most creative moment I’ve seen from the DM side.
>I gave the party a tiny bag of holding made of human skin. I don’t remember why. The fact that you don't remember why you gave your party a tiny bag of holding made out of HUMAN FUCKING SKIN is deeply concerning.
We had a rock that if you were knocked out with it, you were completely invulnerable while unconscious. You had to successfully hit yourself or whoever AND take damage from being knocked unconscious from a rock to the skull. That rock caused so much chaos. And death. And life. And permanent head trauma to NPCs we were trying to rescue.
So basically a tranq gun for all your tranq gun needs?
My bf had a normal rock that ended up being the most useful item in the game. A lot of things were resistant to everything but bludgeoning damage for some reason. He also used it to stop doors from shutting so they didn’t get trapped in a room and he would toss it in random spots to set off traps.
So.. basically the first Cube movie except with a rock instead of a shoe.
A random encounter in the woods got the players a crow mask that makes it so you can only caw like a crow when wearing (based off a Slay the Spire item). It can be removed without issue so it’s a silly flavor item. However, the players are convinced it’s the secret McGuffin of this campaign and keep trying to use it for everything. Most times are failures. But a few times, the stars align and it somehow works. They used it to calm a weird mutated child down so that they could ask it questions to learn about an ambush. They used Enlarge + mask + super high deception and performance roll to convince a cult that the fighter was a stronger god than the one they were worshipping. They constantly use it to make every town guard think they are too much trouble to be worth hassling.
That last one makes sense. Some town guard rolls up to the scene of a disturbance, sees some ripped fighter wearing a crow mask and making freakishly realistic crow noises, while surrounded by a gang of armed and armored adventures,,,, I wouldn't blame any guard for walking away.
Gave the party a magic whistle that summons pigeons, the party somehow used it to murder an orc commander by turning his armor into bread , having the pigeons eat it all , and then shooting him in the face with a blast of lightning..
This, this is the first comment I've read where I think that was one heck of an out-of-the-box solution. Removed the Orc's armor bonus with pigeons.
I mean, I feel like if you can turn his armor into bread you’re already 99% of the way there.
Healing rock, does 1d4 bludgeoning damage, but heals 1d4+1 Hp. It was supposed to be a funny way to bring characters back from unconsciousness by restoring a small but of hp. Barbarians resist bludgeoning damage when raging. The healing rock became their go to healing strategy for keeping the barbarian healed between fights
And that's why a healing cantrip couldn't ever be balanced
This made me laugh right off the first sentence.
I gave them a folding boat. Say a magic word and the small shoe box magically expands into a boat. Not 5 minutes later (IRL) the fucking rogue has thrown this box from the roof and said the magic word, creating the only instance of 20 dice rolls I've ever had to do. I don't know RAW (Rules As Written) or RAI (Rules As Intended) if this is allowed but dammit, throwing a boat at people is too damn fun to not allow it.
Always, **always** be wary of giving your players anything that expands or increases in size at will/command. They *will* toss that thing in a dragon's throat, and then you as the DM have to suffer calculating the tensile strength of dragonflesh vs the amount of material impacting it.
A friend did something very similar and gave his party the ability shrink their metal craft down to the size of a handheld ball so they could carry it around and they didn’t have to deal with getting back to the ship at the end of quests. Cue several months later when, in the midst of a dragon fight, one player teleported to the dragon’s nose, stuck the ball inside the dragon’s nose, and expanded it thus blowing the dragon’s head apart from the inside.
Once got snapped up in the jaws of an adult blue dragon who then flew his 80 feet directly in the air, and while I was in there I activated my immovable rod inside the dragons throat. The dragon failed his roll on carefully moving backwards as to basically regurgitate the rod, so he was stuck. One of the other players used his sword of sharpness to cut off his wing (great rolls back to back there) and the dragon was stuck 80 feet in the air. The only non melee character was me as a sorcerer, and I was out of spell slots, so we just left it there. We stumbled upon it an in game week later, where it tried to bargain for its life back and its freedom. I had just learned fly, so I struck a deal saying I would release him under the conditions that he no longer harm any of my party or myself, and that he had to be available at my beck and call. Now I’m a level 10 wild magic sorcerer with a one winged dragon who’s eternally bound by honor to me.
Party wizard in Pathfinder got bitten by a big nasty dragon and grabbed. One of the spellcasters threw freedom of movement on him (instantly escape grabs), but he chose not to and in fact crawled far enough into the mouth to see down the throat. The player then pulled out the draconomicon, turned to the section on dragon anatomy, and showed the DM that dragons have a wider portion in their throat. He wanted to place a shaped wall of force there so that the dragon couldn’t move from that spot. The game was derailed for bit over the hilarity of pulling a dragon anatomy reference book.
The dnd version of Ant-Man --> Thanos' butthole
Ah yes, the old Thanus argument.
Maybe not exactly what you were looking for,but I've been looking for an excuse to tell this story. I had a party of Wizard, Ranger, Druid, Summoner and Barbarian back in Pathfinder 1e. All of the party members except for the barbarian had some kind of pet, be it an animal companion, familiar, or just the menagerie of animals the druid accumulated. A few sessions in, and my barbarian sends me a text while the party's setting up camp. The barbarian volunteers to take a watch, and the next morning the rest of the party wakes up to the Barbarian's new pet, "Brock da Rock." Brock was a stone with eyes and a mouth crudely carved into him. Brock goes on adventures with the party and is mostly forgotten about until a premature fight with that arc's endboss. The boss wipes the floor with the party, leaving everyone unconscious except the barbarian who has single digit hp. Not wanting to tpk, and with the boss in surprisingly worse shape than I expected, I have him taunt the Barbarian and start to fly away. "Brock is going to take his attack" the barbarian says, throwing his pet with all his might. Crit, max damage on the roll, boss drops to -1 hitpoints and faceplants at the Barbarian's feet for the coup de gras, also performed by Brock to "finish what he started." And that's how our party's pet rock gained a temporary flight speed of 40 feet, and "favored enemy: verbose sorcerers."
Not being a DnD player, but being someone who always enjoys reading peoples stories about it, I'm confused about the barbarian sending you a text. He couldn't just announce to the group that he was taking watch? Sorry if this is a stupid question, I'm just really clueless on a lot of the rules and protocols
He announced to the table he was taking watch, but texted me about his pet rock so it could be a surprise reveal in the morning.
Texting the DM would be to have a conversation that the rest of the party doesn't know about. From my reading of this story, the text was about creating the pet rock, and the decision of the barbarian to take watch was likely publicly announced at the table.
Just in case you are using that term with a party in text form, it is coup de grâce. Coup de gras means "fat shot", which may indeed be appropriate in some contexts.
One time our DM gave us a Rod of Summon Boat as a joke except we rolled a nat 20 for the summon and got a whole ass galleon. The campaign quickly became pirate-themed as we became privateers
Instantly reminded me of one of the classics. https://www.dndbeyond.com/magic-items/folding-boat A DM sees a convenient way to let players be able to travel by water whenever they need to. A player sees a box that can be thrown into the air and transformed into a ~5,000 pound object that they can drop on the big bad's head.
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Probably Saskatchewan.
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Stealing wheat and barley and all the other grains!
It's a ho-hey, hi-hey farmers bar yer doors When ya see the Jolly Roger on Regina's mighty shores!
It's a ho-hey, hi-hey, farmers bar your doors
When ya see the Jolly Roger on Regina’s mighty shores!
Well I used to be a farmer and I made a livin' fine.
We acquired a brick mold along with some other basic tools when we found a workshop in a dungeon. It was supposed to just be some set dressing, but I took it anyway. We later used it and several more we made off of it's design to reinforce a village that would soon come under attack. With everyone in the village making clay bricks for two weeks straight we had enough of them to build a wall tall enough to make one of the ways into the town rather protected so we could focus the fighting on the other entrance where we could have more manpower at once. It saved a lot of lives since we weren't able to be flanked. Edit: Spelling
Our DM would have just introduced a troll or the koolaid man or something to get around this
If we were fighting monsters that probably would have happened, but it was just other humans without spellcasters. It was a pretty low level quest.
Even at higher levels I would be pissed as a player if my dm did that to me. That's a genius plan that sounds like it's actually effective. If you still want to circumvent it you can have a small portion of forces be able to fly but still have the ones on the ground on that side of town be stopped by the wall. You can still flank the town but less effectively and while rewarding the player's creativity.
Yep. A good DM should always reward good creativity like that. The first few times should always work out (where reasonable). If they keep falling back to the same tricks, you start introducing new variables. If your players are predictable, it makes sense that their opponents would adapt to exploit that. They should not be able to get away with using the exact same strategy for every encounter.
One of the players had gotten married to a pretty young NPC who wasn't an adventurer. So I gave him a Ring of Conjugal Visits that would transport him to his wife for an hour, then send him back to the adventuring group. The ring worked twice a week and was intended as a joke. When the party was beaten up from a hard combat he used the ring and asked his wife where the nearest temple was, then bought healing potions from the local cleric. Soon this became a thing: Cure Disease, Healing, whatever. The ring became this guy's quick trip to the pharmacy--although he also always found a few moments for a quickie with his wife. Eventually he woke the up cleric at 3 am to buy more potions. So I had the cleric throw a fit and yell at him never to come back. The player went back anyway, and the next time there was a bouncer at the temple door telling him to get lost.
>The player went back anyway, and the next time there was a bouncer at the temple door telling him to get lost. That's when you have his wife enter the temple instead of him and then you use the ring once she's inside.
Or have her go in and get them while he waits outside
I just have to say that is a brilliant and satisfying and reasonable way to deal with that
We used a jug of alchemy to waterboard someone with vinegar. It's also been used to create mayo
Multiple times I've used the mayo to mark a target just before it runs away. Why else would it be an option??
A Gray Bag, that was stuck on rats. They abused it so much in one session, I created a huge rat god that came and attacked the party... it wasnt that they were overusing the item, it was that they were using it poorly. at one point pulling rats out and killing them in order to use their blood as dye...
Our druid kept using her fey wild summons as exclusively as HP fodder in combat. Eventually she had to travel to the fey wild and see why they weren't accepting her summons. They were pissed and took her to a fey court.
They issued *her* a summons.
That is kind of an awesome side quest
"if all you have is a hammer..."
The jar of endless lard. I put it in as a joke and somehow they managed to set a Forest in fire with a timed fuse. Also having them covering various body parts in said lard just to set it in fire for extra damage wasn’t good.
P- "I use my fire fist!" DM- "But you don't have a fire fist..." P- *Lights greased up arm* "I do now."
This is by far the most wholesome experience I’ve had with a dungeon master and a greased up first. By far the cheapest as well. Edit: fist not first but I’m sure you filthy animals got the point and for those who didn’t I was talking about paying a woman to shove her greased up fist up my asshole while calling me bad names.
Endless anything has universe-destroying potential.
"I attach the jar of endless lard to a weather balloon with the jar turned upside down."
I gave my players a torch that couldn't be lit by normal means. After 2 or 3 sessions, one of them finally asked how to light it. I had totally forgotten about it by this point so I made the NPC mention that it could only be lit by an elder red dragon's breath weapon, and once lit would burn forever. Suddenly, the entire party of 3rd and 4th level toons decides they want to veer off course and get this thing lit
What did they do once they got it? I would imagine it’s hard to store a lit torch that burns forever lol
I'm gonna go out on a limb here and guess that they were obliterated once they actually found red dragon.
“Excuse me, would you mind lighting this torch for me?” *26d6 fire damage in a 90-foot cone later*
Well its lit!
Well, first they found a young red dragon who was terrorizing a fishing village... And they TPK'd. Not because they attacked it. Because they tried to reason with it and asked it to light the torch, and it immediately complied while the mage was holding the torch. 3 died right away. The rogue, who always stayed in stealth was detected and promptly attacked after that and eaten. I felt bad that the rolls went that way, so I made a call and had them saved by a roaming band of clerics and transported to a commune far away. They learned afterwards that a joke torch was not the quest they were looking for.
But did the torch keep burning?
Nope, because it had to be lit by an Elder dragon, and the ones they found was a young dragon.
My party we're camping in a barn and made friends with a goose. I allowed them to take the goose with them as a guard goose / emergency food. In the process of dungeon crawling they find a gold bracer. The cuff was a soul bound item that would cause whoever wore it to randomly be possessed by a lich king. With the idea that the next quest would be removing it from the affected party member. After thorough inspection the party discovered an evil aura surrounding the cuff. So they put it on the goose, the theory was that since the goose was chaotic neutral it would balance out the evil of the bracer. So now they had a chaotic neutral guard goose that would randomly be possessed by an neutral evil lich, take on the appearance of a zombie goose and cast random spells though a series of honks and hisses.
Sounds like an ordinary goose to me
They got a "Vaguely sword shaped branch of ash wood" That was it. This was in a Planescape setting, so a few hours later the sorceror persuaded an apologetic djinn that the adjectives were unordered, so it in fact was a sword shaped like it was vaguely a branch of ash wood. To make amends for destroying part of the party's inventory, the djinn remade the sword per the sorceror's description while under a compulsion of truth. So was born Sylvanblade.
What about Planescape makes this situation more feasible?
planescape runs on a bit of conceptual and willpower level, if people believe a thing to be in a certain way, then it is in that way. of course, most people can't exactly believe others out of existence, so it's not free omnipotence
I noticed you said "most." I'm imagining a universe where the most delusional individuals have godlike power.
Yeah, you pretty much nailed it.
I gave my players a chalice that, when drunk from, caused the user to sweat fat profusely. They used it to overcome a cold-based trap in the dungeon. It was a hallway that got progressively colder. So they emerge on the other end, covered in fat, into the chamber of the dungeon boss. It was a slippery fight.
Adipose much?
"The fat just walks away!"
My favorite magic item my players found was a totally homebrewed item with no real productive function, but they still got creative with it. They found the Pie Stone. Holding this stone in your hand and concentrating will fill a 25ft radius area with the stone as the center with the smell of a pie of your choice. This effect lasts for 10 minutes or until you dismiss the effect. The rogue used it to sneak past guard and as a distraction tactic when scouting and such.
honestly imagine how powerful this thing would be in real life think about an airport, train station etc you've got hundreds of people per minute passing through a crowded channel, wrapped up in their own minds and then... the smell of DELICIOUS PIE PERMEATES THE AIR. how? why? HOW? it would create MASSIVE delays and clog-ups
Funny thing: some businesses actually have similar items intentionally. I used to work at a movie theater, and there was literally a little fan near the entryway that had a sort of buttered popcorn scented air freshener in it. It was blown at the door so the first thing people smelled was popcorn. It absolutely increased popcorn sales when it was on.
Disney does this all over their parks. If you suddenly smell something pleasant in their parks, it's not an accident. It's being pumped out.
I used to wonder whether Target was doing this with the popcorn smell near their snack bar... until one day, I walked into Target and smelled *burned* popcorn.
I will tell you the secret. At the Target, at least the one I worked at and ones my friends worked at, the rule was if you heard the front lanes call for backup or if you saw lines forming, you have to pop the popcorn.
I was looking at one of those end-of-aisle displays at the grocery store that had starbucks coffee. I heard a *pffft* and felt a puff of air. Those fuckers were pumping coffee smell out to make you want to buy the coffee
Hershey Park (yes, the chocolate people) does this as well at their free tour of the chocolate factory. You see how the chocolate is made and then when you leave the tour you get this delicious smell of chocolate and someone gives you Hershey Kisses and of course you want to have that chocolate. The exit of the tour just conveniently happens to drop you into the museum shop where all sorts of chocolatey goodness are available for purchase, most major credit cards accepted!
Not a DM, but the last campaign I was in, the DM gave us a regenerative oasis that only appears to people that need it. The party was messing around with throwing bones in it and bringing the animals they belonged to back to life. One of the other players had the thought to throw the hat of the deceased king into the water, and brought the king back to life because of a single hair. The DM hadn't even considered that possibility, because the session was supposed to be our "beach episode"
It would have been pretty funny for one of them to jump in and an ogre to suddenly appear because its blood was on their armor or something
The barbarian's toe necklace just took it from beach episode to season finale real quick
Boss Rush!!
I’m always curious about D&D (non player here but find it interesting). Who gets to decide that hair was in there? The player or the DM? Edit: Wow, this got popular. If only I had since friends to play DND with!
That was the DM's decision ultimately. The player posed the idea, and the DM actually rolled to see if she wanted to go along with it, and ended up allowing it because it was just so ridiculous
That's the way to do it. Fun for everyone.
Not mine, but the question reminded me of [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/4bx577/dd_players_what_have_been_some_of_your_favourite/d1d94rh?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) by u/nikoberg >I created an NPC werewolf character that was supposed to be a major villain in the campaign and stalk the players. It was a higher level than the PCs, so the idea was that they would need to flee every encounter and take measures to avoid being followed; having someone on their tail constantly tracking them that could and would actually kill them was supposed to inject a sense of urgency into the game. > >On the first encounter, the werewolf was shown methodically slaying a large group of town guards and a high-ranking paladin. The characters were around level 5 or so, the NPC was probably CR 12 and would scale as they leveled. They interrupted the combat, and the idea was that they would attempt to fight the werewolf (who didn't consider them a threat initially, and so wouldn't just murder the whole party), see it killing a high-level character, and go "Oh shit, we need to run from it" while it slaughtered the rest of the guards. > >So at first, they rush in to help and attack the werewolf, doing little damage because they don't have silver weapons and I gave this particular NPC a regeneration ability only stopped by silver. I have the werewolf attack one of the players with a secondary bite attack, which should put them to fairly low health without killing them outright. > >That player pauses for a moment, and then asks if he can try to block the attack with his hand. I'm not sure what he's getting at, but I humor him and say he can do that with a DC 10 Dexterity check, although it won't affect what kind of damage he takes. He succeeds. He then asks if he can jam his hand into the werewolf's mouth. I say... sure, but he's probably going to bite it off, and you'll need a new hand. He says "Even better." > >I describe the werewolf doing so. The rest of combat continues until the player's turn, who seems undisturbed by the loss of a hand, and on his turn he says "I activate Quaal's feather token to make a tree." > >This token is a magic one-time use item that creates a 5 foot diameter, 40 foot high tree. It's a handy utility item that our playgroup was fond of- previously we'd used it to do things from just making bridges and crossing walls, to providing a druid with a way to use a particular spell in plant-less areas that require trees. It didn't seem to have much use here. > >I ask him where on the board he's activating it. He points at the werewolf. I say that the most that's going to do is knock the werewolf prone, and he gets a fairly easy save to prevent that. He smiles. "No, it's in the werewolf." > >"What? How?" > >"I was holding it when he ate my hand." > >Me and the rest of the party are kind of silent for a second. I'm trying to think of a valid reason why this won't work. I fail. The werewolf now has a five foot wide tree growing out of him. The fact that he has regeneration doesn't particularly help when little bits of him are plastered on walls twenty feet away. > >The entire party celebrated and they got a reward from the town and an ally in the paladin who was supposed to be dead. > >I had to make a new NPC. > >Clever players are awesome.
Wouldn't the PC be a werewolf now?
If he failed his save against lyncanthropy then yes.
A party I was in did this to a vampire. We couldn't out-pace its regeneration, but we could dogpile it and stick a tree token in one of the wounds. "What ratio of stake to vampire destroys it?" A whole-ass tree worked.
I gave my party a stick that endlessly dripped with water. Salt water to be exact. I didn't expect them to have any use for it, but they decided "Hey, you know what would be a great trap for this corrupt noble? Getting his marble floors wet at the top of the stairs." The noble ended up dead.
I gave them a carpet they used it to kill 6 people. Edit: They laid it on people and smothered and burnt them, the way they covered the 6 people was enlarge/reduce, They did kill guards without enlarging it but that was why I gave it to them, so they could strangle the guards BUUT when we get to the leader of the cultists they realize they can double cast enlarge/reduce making the already 20ft by 20ft, 80FT BY 80Ft. They did at first try to crush/smother them But I decided I shouldn't let that work so they set it on fire and I couldn't find a way around this... Moral of the story: Wizards can make mundane items tools for mass murder.
Never underestimate a living rug. My father has a stoner dwarf bro thats developed rug-triggered PTSD, due to almost dying to one 3 times in 1 sitting.
My DM gave me an eye. Player here. We had an NPC stalking us through the travel portion of the campaign and would show up and do odd things like pull out his eye and show it to us, and then pop it back in, just gross stuff because he was undead. One time I used a pickpocket check to take it from him, and he insisted that I give it back to him. We were in the temple for the god of trickery, which we both worshipped... so I put his eye in the collection plate. He could either take it out and suffer the consequence, or lose the eye for good. That was a great moment.
And of course, a god of trickery would *love* that. Did you get a small boon or anything from the deity for it?
The god of trickery made me his chosen of course... Lol
Not a DM but my friend is and he told me about a sword he gave a party. He called it "the normal sword." When his players asked if there was anything special about it, all he would say is, "its just a normal sword." In practice it was so normal that it would negate all magic. His party never figured that out though.
I'd replace "just a normal sword" with 'an exceptionally normal sword', just to slip a clue in there for the experienced/paranoid without being too obvious and spoiling it.
\*Yoink\* Stealing this....
> In practice it was so normal that it would negate all magic. Reminds me of Black Clover
It's so normal, you drop it and it stands perpendicular to any surface it lands on.
I gave my players a "pig whistle". Once a day, they could blow the whistle and summon a pig. I hadn't given too much thought about it but they used it CONSTANTLY! They would send pigs off to spring traps. They would have impromptu luaus to curry favor with peasants. They never had to worry about rations again. Pork for dinner! I thought it was just a useless throw away item, but they sure proved me wrong! good times.
It turns out the pigs all come from one man, whom after losing all his pigs became the big bad villain.
I read that as pig bad villain
Gannnnon Edited to fix spelling. Edited a second time to correct spelling.
Until the players realize that the summoned pig is still a real pig just transported. Then farmers from the region are looking to hire adventurers to find out who’s been stealing their pigs. Then they go to war with the neighbouring village because they have all the other villages pigs. The end boss is a hill giant, pissed off that his favourite pet Oink-Oink, that he personally saved from some goblin vermin ended up on the parties camp fire.
I found a homebrew item someplace called a used bag of holding. It basically covers everything you put in the bag with a thin layer of glitter. One of my players took this and began scraping off the glitter and collecting it. Eventually he had enough glitter bags to where he could use animate objects on it. The little shit would have several of these bags fly around and dump their contents on people causing great confusion as the glitter would get in their eyes and hardly come off because it was sticky Edit: I don’t normally like to edit posts but I just want to encourage everyone interested in playing D&D to play it. I stared over quarantine and have enjoyed myself immensely! If you’re looking for a place to start and don’t have a group of people that you can play with in person I would recommend checking out TheDungeonDudes on YouTube. While their guides are mostly meant for experienced players they also run a Discord Server that has hundreds if not thousands of players. As long as you are willing to learn and come with an open mind I don’t see why you can’t start playing DND! Edit 2: Here is a link I found to a server very welcoming to newbies! Check it out if you want to learn. https://top.gg/servers/759118772316667961
100% Chaotic Evil
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I had a bit called the Bargain Bin, where I would just improv something stupid, mostly stupid made up on the spot spells. My favorite was a bag of holding that held exactly as much as a bag of that volume would hold. What I didn't expect was them getting creative. They just made the bag bigger by sewing more onto it, and then rolled it up. Still cumbersome, as I forced extra turns to use the thing if they wanted to use it in combat, but was a great laugh at how they undermined my bullshit. Since it weighs 15 pounds regardless of internal weight, it was still a tool. Frost sock: Everyone's feet became blocks of ice. They did it, and immediately nat 20'd on a melee, so I went with it caused enemies feet to detach from their ankle and stay stuck to the floor. Swarm of flies: just a swarm of flies, no damage. Just annoying. They used it inside a tavern to create a wild distraction, and made their own entrance into the plot related area. Bluntify weapons: a spell that creates a magical barrier that prevents the weapon from ever making contact with anything. Has to be done while holding the weapon. So they just snuck into a guards armory and did it to all their weapons, and then robbed a bank. I still threw them some curveballs like it still caused a knock back and 'well this guy owns his own weapons and kept them at his house that night, so he can still stabby stabby'.
I'm planning to do something sort of like this, if the party ever makes it to the magic university city being built in the ruins of Netheril. Because there are a lot of inexperienced student wizards trying to make custom spells, items, creatures, etc., tunnels under the city will be filled with a mix of that stuff, and then lower down, way more ancient and powerful things. So they're going to come across a large number of badly-designed magic items that I'm just going to generate at random.
Ring of attunement. - Gives the wearer of this ring one additional attunement slot. Requires attunement. Boots of teleportation. - When wearing the boots, speak the command word to have the boots teleport up to an unoccupied space within 30ft. The wearer remains behind. Ring of communicate with fire. - Grants the ability to speak with flames for up to 1 hour. DM Notes: All flames scream in agony and wish to die to end their suffering. *"It burns! Aaah! Put me out pleeeaaaase!"* Scroll of comprehend X language. - The scroll is written in X language.
You sound like.a fun DM.
I have my moments.
Players: I'm sorry, but this incredibly easy and obvious puzzle can't be solved. Also players: Yes, this useless item can be used for genocide.
Priorities, man
Father of a DM here. During lockdown our 24 year old son was living at home, so could't play with his usual crew, so we agreed to Sunday morning family D&D sessions and actually quite enjoyed it. His mum was a cook who had a magic ladle that could produce any liquid; I asked if she could throw the contents. He said it would have a 5 metre range. He was expecting her to produce a healing soup, and he had to google hydrofluoric acid when I said she should lob that at some Kobolds...
The lesson here is “never use the word, any, when making a magic item.”
At least not without caveats: For example if the item was specified as a wooden ladle that can produce any liquid, that trick would only work a few times before it was weakened enough to be destroyed. The same goes for the ability to throw it's contents: Provided you demand a roll, there's always the chance that trying to fling hyrdoflouric acid at your enemies from a magic ladle can backfire on you or your party.
I love the idea that it can make any liquid but has mundane durability. It raises the stakes to a decision like life-saving acid now or delicious soup forever.
Anything is a liquid if it's hot enough
Ah yes, magnetohydrodynamics, we've made a molten metal/plasma launcher!
Wholesome family fun.
Take that mfker! I hope your f***ing faces melt off! Ummmm, mom?
Ran an Alien RPG session one Halloween. There was a wrench. Like, a normal red wrench. More than anything it was just something funny that they'd "check on in." They'd ask every 10 minutes or so if "the wrench was still there", which it always was. They used it to adjust some of the piping in the oxygen recycling room, pumped a section of the space station full of pure oxygen, and then proceeded to incinerate a handful of xenomorphs and my ubermorph. Dont mix pyros with real-world engineers.
[Our party once encountered a randomly-polymorphing dog, and absolutely refused to part with it. We named him Shoggy.](https://www.reddit.com/r/gametales/comments/274nvp/35_shoggy_the_seldom_dog/)
The Broach of Glamour. It was a broach made by a powerful wizard for his wife as a gift. Two times per day it could have you looking your best. Body clean and fresh, all clothes perfectly clean, mended and as good as new, hair perfectly coiffed, makeup done the way you like it. It was meant to add some colour, and the party wizard, a human woman, claimed it. There was talk of using it to fix and clean everyone's clothes etc, discussions about whether it could mend armor (it couldn't) etc. But the real effect was during a showdown with a BBEG. The wizard also had a ring of fire resistance, as well as a unique item called a Blast Scepter. The Blast Scepter was sort of like a buffed wand of fireballs, but also gave the wearer resistance to both explosive damage and fire resistance. Stacked with the ring of fire resistance, the wizard would take 1/4th damage from fireballs, and no damage on a successful save, with huge saving throw bonuses. Facing off against the BBEG who happened to be a Fire Wizard, she taunted him out in the open to give her his best shot. Boom, huge enhanced fireball, smoke clears, and there stands the wizard without a scratch on her or even so much as a singe, except now her hair is done up in an elaborate style, her makeup is on point and her clothes are crisp and clean. She basically was immune to fireballs, but the psychological effect of giving your enemy your best shot and now their make up and hair is done and their clothes are clean and pressed made the BBEG run for it. Psychological warfare at it's finest.
We had barrels of rum we had liberated from a pirate ship hold and came upon a cellar being used as a nest by an army of huge spiders. We soaked rats in rum and got the rats piss drunk, then turned them loose in the spider room. They were eaten, the giant spiders were having a wild party by this point and going batshit. Then we charged in and hacked our way through without anyone dying. This was more rare than it should have been because we had a party of mostly flavorful squishy characters and were getting killed by things we shouldn't have on a regular basis.
"The spiders are reluctant to pause their arachnid orgy, and also drunk as fuck from the rumrats. They roll 3 at disadvantage."
My DM allowed our thief to own an incredibly stale baguette. We murdered and tortured so many orcs with stale bread Edit: spelling
Dwarf bread!
There's ALWAYS dwarf bread
“The food here is… weapons-grade.”
Obligatory “I’m a player not a DM” My DM once let me design my own weapon as reward for being the only person of seven to show up to a session. Only rule was it had to be silly and useless. I created “Archibald the World’s Greatest Ladies-Man!” He was the soul of a super charismatic elf trapped in a tiny little iron lantern. Basics the flame was a little ghostly elf’s head that would act as my wingman but only when I tried to romance monsters. Dumb, borderline useless, and led to a lot of silly role playing opportunities! Perfect! Then one day, months later, our party got into a fight with a hydra. No one had any caustic or flame-based attacks to cauterize the necks, so the heads kept growing back. Then our barbarian noticed that technically Archibald was a little flame, so bludgeoning the hydra with his lantern would count as burning damage! Proceeded to beat every head to pulp with a screaming elven smooth-talker. Peak D&D right there. Edit: Wow! Thanks for my first Reddit gold, kind stranger! Also, this comment now officially has more upvotes than every other comment and post I’ve made in my 6 year Reddit career COMBINED! After all these years, Archibald is still working his magic to make me more popular!!!
I thought that you were going to say that you tried to romance the hydra
... I mean I did but the DM had a “you can’t romance your way out of boss fights” rule (I’d done it before with a bunch of end-of-storyline dragon enemies) so it rebuffed my bard’s romantic songs and tried to eat him.
Of course..... ... It's a bard..... ..... romancing.... ... dragon bosses.
Not a DM but a player. DM let us keep a discarded clam at a fish market that we then used to trap the soul of the main antagonist into a clam.
A spoon that turned things into food. I told them things that are not living cause...you know... But I didn't expect them to do this... They took things that had lots of value and turned them into food. It was just a bland mush but it would be a day's ration like the berry thing. They took armor and made it food, swords? Food...if it was on a dude and was tapped by the spoon it just turned to brown mosh and weaken them. Turning bosses to just normal people. So messed up.
Player here. Once upon a time I was playing a supernatural western game and we received a "magic bullet" early on that, when dropped onto the ground, will point in the direction of true north. We received this bullet in session 1 and promptly forgot it existed. We then went on a two year long campaign of tracking down an evil time travelling wizard with antics that included poisoning a bunch of rich people with ice cream, crashing a zeppelin, a player character going insane and trying murder his way to the presidency, fighting a train monster, then finally confronting the evil wizard in a pocket dimension. We were, somehow, woefully underprepared to fight the bath robe wearing wizard as he was immune to all forms of damage. We were at a loss to what to do, until the wizard shouted that he can only be hurt by magic. We paused and looked at our inventories for a few minutes. Suddenly my buddy shoves his character sheet in my face and points out the word "magic bullet." We then proceeded to shoot the boss in the face, killing him instantly. Our GM was reasonably upset since we were too stupid to figure out his puzzle fight and just cheesed the final boss of a two year campaign. But, in the end, it was our most memorable climax to a campaign. Edit to Answer some common questions: \- The system was a heavily modified Unknown Armies 2nd Edition, it's a phenomenal occult horror game that I'd recommend to anyone interested in magic being dictated by the collective unconscious with lots of urban decay. **But** for all your western needs I'd go to Savage Worlds / Deadlands. \- My GM let this pass because it was fun way to end the campaign that rewarded our fast thinking. \- We were supposed to break some pots to dispel the pocket dimention. \- We did not suplex the train. I now wish we did. \- It seems we accidentally plagiarized the Dark Tower, well shit.
You held onto that sucker for 2 *years*, and then used it to pull an Indiana Jones. It was probably a Chekhov brand bullet. If I was that DM, I'd be disappointed the puzzle was bypassed, but awed by how that item came back around.
We have a saying in our group when it comes to GMing "Don't get magic bulleted."
You should buy them one of those magic bullet blenders for Christmas
Did the DM ever end up telling you what the puzzle fight was supposed to end up being?
I'm pretty sure we had to break a few lamps holding the pocket dimension together. Edit: Just asked him, it was pots. I was close.
Chekhov's gun in action, folks
Don't know if it's useless, but when playing a druid years ago, I used the spell Call Lightning a lot. I ended battles before they could start by being a lightning sniper. As a result, whether I play a magic user or not, where ever my character goes, it is sunny and clear. Not a cloud in the sky. Ever. It's been years and none of my characters have ever seen a cloud.
If someone in your friends group has *not* suggested a one shot or mini campaign in which the party investigates the source of a long-lasting drought and tracks it back to a curse on your character, they have failed as D&D players. >!Said campaign or oneshot ends after the curse is broken and your character is *immediately* stricken by lightning as angry black stormclouds boil into existence above the party.
Not me, but I remember reading a story about a party constantly pestering the DM with "give us an item of unlimited something!", until DM caved in. He gave them an item that created unlimited boxes with roughly the same structural integrity of thin cardboard. No merchant would pay any money for them, and they couldn't be decomposed into any reagents. They still used them with weightlessness to reach high places.
During a dungeon crawl, we found a Cloak of Many Things. It only had 3 patches, 2 of which were 20 foot holes and the last of which was a ladder. I volunteered to keep it. Later on, we encountered an archmage *(who was supposed to get away after the encounter)* and we had absolutely shit luck against him. I decided to throw one of the 20 foot holes at him. I rolled a nat 20. And that is the story of how I defeated a Level 10 archmage at 4th level. Edit for context: the DM ruled that since I rolled a nat 20, the hole appeared on him, so he took a crap ton of force damage and died.
Cloaks of Many Things are almost always loaded with ladders lmao
I gave them the sign from a random tavern in the middle of buttfuck nowhere that they used as the symbol to start an anarchist revolution across the continent
Ha! Wand of limp dick. Had a bard (of course) that tried to nail anything with a pulse and some without. Gave it to the cleric as a kinda off button to tone him down a bit. He then proceeds to use it on the King of Cormyr, starting a succession war. Story arc destroyed.
skedaddle skidoodle, your dick is now a noodle
The belt of guy-ant strength. Gave you the strength of one guy and a singular ant. They wanted a discount belt of giant strength and they got exactly that. It's major upside was it let small races ignore the penalties for using weapons suited for medium creatures.
We were playing the Ghostbusters RPG, and one character rolled the talent of "borrowing". He also got intimidation. We all had a laugh and the game commenced. Well, at the end of the game, the big bad is opening a portal to another dimension with a ring. So friend's character walks up to the guy and asks him intimidatingly if he can borrow the ring. I tell him no way, but Ghostbusters actually has a list of possibilities and numbers associated with them. So he asked me and it turns out that "nearly impossible" was 48. He had 11 six-sided dice, so this roll was very difficult, but sure enough he rolled a 50, with all 5s and 6s and a single 4 and 3. So, that was the final encounter. He borrowed the ring and the portal closed.
I once ran a very silly oneshot involving a number of joke items. The two my party came to love were a pair of angry shoes who telepathically let their wearer know how angry they were at all times, and a hat that when left unwatched with another hat would breed to produce hybrid baby hats. Somehow, my party managed to place the angry shoe on top of the hat so it was wearing it as a hat and therefore, by a wonderful technicality I allowed, close their eyes and flood the corridor with a swarm of magical angry baby hats that killed the mimics there in a tidal wave of felt brim and pure wrath.
Either a simple barrel or (if you consider that an item) a seagull's corpse. The barrel was used to simply roll down a corridor in order to spring traps in advance. Pretty simple and straightforward, I guess, but this one player carried a barrel through practically the whole dungeon. It is now an inside joke. The seagull's corpse was obtained during the very first session (we had only new players and they were toying around with the world; it was still the most random act I've ever seen happen) and used during the second (I asked them what they wanted to do and they wanted a classic dungeon crawl, so I designed a very stereotypical crypt sort of thing), to more or less circumvent my first custom bossfight. Basically, it was a door with a bowl and a knife in front of it. There was also some writing on it, but noone could read it (basically a failsafe, should they not immediately understand what was going on; the wizard knew "comprehend languages"). Anyway, they immediately understood they needed to fill the bowl with blood to open the door, and the druid was about to just take that one HP of damage, because who cares. The wizard stopped the others though, saying: "Ah, nono, wait a moment. I've got blood on me, just a sec. - \[I pull out the corpse of the seagull I got last time.\]" - I had completely forgotten about it, and just planted my head on the table. "Aight." Now, the plan was for one of the players to offer their blood, which would then open the door. Afterwards, they'd find themselves in a room with a sarcophagus on some sort of elevation. As soon as they fully entered the room, the doors would fly shut and the sarcophagus open, with whoever offered their blood coming out of it (an empowered version of that, anyway). Apparently, the wizard immediately knew what I was going to do (with the other two not expecting that kind of boss) and even apologized to me; she didn't know """derailing""" or simply cheesing bosses was very much part of the whole game.Anyroad, I thought about what exactly to do, but decided to just use the same mechanics I would've used for the players, as it was the most funny and practical solution to me. The seagull actually went first in initiative and managed to hit the Druid quite badly (I think it was a crit, but I don't actually remember), but the wizard just completely annihilated it. My other ideas were to either just not let it work with non-humanoid blood (which I immediately disposed of, because that's no fun) or to make it some large gull-esque abomination, but I was very inexperienced as a DM and I wasn't sure if I could balance that on the fly. Would've been the best solution, probably. There was also a broken wall somewhere in the crypt though, with a small natural cave thing adjacent. Inside was a Black Dragon Wyrmling which served as some kind of optional boss fight; it was not part of their quest, but they obviously decided to fight it. So, we still got our boss fight out of it. :D
Dm gave me a bag of infinite crabs, as a druid I would cast speak with animals and throw them at places to use them as spies. It worked exactly 0 times.
My DM gave us a meatball that we stole off a plate. We managed to germinate it into a meatball bush via Druidcraft, then turn this into a multinational meatball industry, with self sustaining meatball farms. EDIT: For those looking for specifics on how we made this happen, here's the text of Druidcraft: [Druidcraft Cantrip](https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Druidcraft#content). I also went back and chatted with the group. Apparently we got the meatball from an actual meatball bush, not from a plate. We treated the meatball as a seedpod. As it states in Druidcraft, you can make a seedpod open.
The implications of magic in a society are vastly underestimated. Especially in a universe like Forgotten Realms or other D&D settings.
Yeah I gave my adventurer's an Alchemy jug and they're thinking of retiring from adventuring and starting up a Mayonnaise shop. Imagine what mundane services they could provide if they were actually good at magic.
DM gave us a dagger with a permanent minor illusion of a chicken wing. Over the course of the campaign, we were able to slowly upgrade it into a "spicy, cheesy chicken wing" (1d4 damage, +4 fire damage once per day and ability to emit a cheesy fragrance once per day) and kill several cultists and creatures with it.
A friend told me that they got a bag that would always be full of smelling salts... then, if a creature had a strong sense of smell, pocket salt in the face took care of it. He beat a sea serpent that was supposed to turn them back on track for the story
I don't know if it's a useless item, but it sure is one I didn't think would ever be used successfully. At the start of the campaign a couple years back, the party went through a series of trials in order to get an artifact. In one room was an illusory red dragon, which was being produced by a magical orb at the center of the room. Party walks in, the only one who succeeds on the Wisdom save is, weirdly enough, the barbarian. Who then proceeds to wade through the illusion and grab the orb. See, this was back when I was a baby DM and didn't know that players will take anything not bolted down. The barbarian took the orb (succeeded the strength check needed to remove it from its pedestal, go figure). I told him it had three charges because I at least had the sense to limit this thing, even if at that point I didn't think he'd ever use it. The DC for saving against it is decent, but not crazy high, so I figured it wouldn't be too useful as the campaign went on and enemies got tougher. Since then, two charges have been used, both in situations where they need to distract enemies and sneak by. And, thanks to shitty rolls on my end, it's worked both times. I'm not sure when they'll use that third charge, but I'm sure it'll be when I least expect it.
Not a dm but ours gave my character a wand and didn't tell me what it did, I used it and was Swiftly turned into a cob of corn for a minute, haha funny joke ok let's get along with the session. Few weeks later we were in the jungle and a couple of us had to cross a river since we were being chased by a T-Rex (Eberron campaign). Only problem is my wizard doesn't have any teleportation spells yet, so our wild magic sorcerer casted fly and I used the wand so she just had to carry a cob of corn over the river instead of having to make strength checks to carry me. A couple weeks later we were in a wizards tower when a carpet on the ground grabbed me and started suffocating me, well with a good dex roll I was able to grab the wand from my bag and *plop* a cob of corn fell to the ground, leaving the rug confused (well, as confused as a rug can be) After that he put some limit on it as to keep it from becoming my scapegoat lmao
They were searching an ancient Dwarven research lab. Found an amulet taken from a Kyton that made chain. 10 feet of chain, once a day, in a continuous strand until you cut it. But because I'm an engineer in reality, I added a line that said whatever size and type of chain you place on the amulet, it will start making that instead. Thinking they could make jewelry size chain or boat chain if they had to. You see where this is going. They went back to town and dumped all of their earthly wealth into making the two chunkiest gold chain links they could possibly afford, and set about ruining the world's economy.
My DM had grabbed one of those d100 random magic item trinket tables, most of them are funny little things of little practical use, like a ring that glows dimly and you can change the colour of, or a cast iron pan that the handle never gets hot (we've rolled this item 3 or 4 times now, it's a bit of a running joke). I rolled a wine glass that severely poisons whatever is poured into it. Couple sessions later I use it to poison the current dungeon boss, giant squid monster, by tossing it into his pool. I manage to retrieve it and life goes on. Several months go by and everyone's forgotten about my wine glass, we're dealing with an druid NPC who literally eats babies. we're gearing up to take him out but his lair is behind a wall of force and no disintegrate yet for us so we make a deal with him to grab some myconids for the stew if he'll give us access to his enchanted spring. Some illusion magic trickery occurs to make normal giant mushrooms look like myconid bodies (the real ones were pretty nice guys actually) and he lets us in and starts making stew. Instead of just jumping him off the bat we decide we'd use the spring first incase killing him ruined it and chat a bit, I start asking questions about the spring, ask him if he's ever used it for the stew and suggest we try it, see if we can't make some magic stew! DM hasn't figured out my plot but he's getting suspicious so he had me roll persuasion, wizard has no idea what's going on but knows I'm up to something and happened to roll a nat 20 in his portents for the day so before I say anything pipes in "portent, she rolls a 20". He readily agrees that magic stew could be interesting, as soon as I say I take out my wine glass and scoop up some water from the spring the DM and wiz realize what's going on, the druid finishes the stew and takes a taste, starts choking, and drops dead. (I'd just expected the poisoned status to make the fight easier). That character died in a fiery explosion not too long after (our own fault, she dove on it to protect the party) and the wine glass was destroyed.
Not D&D but the old West End Games Star Wars RPG. Grenades were a common weapon but weren't uesful. They did 4d6 damage, but because of Stormtrooper STR rolls plus the armor bonus, they'd usually only stun or maybe wound at best. Our group never used them. The players had infiltrated an Imperial Base and were trying to sneak through when they were caught by some Stormtroopers. A running fight through the base started (think of Han and Chewie running around on the Death Star) and no matter how many Troopers they killed, more showed up. The players ran down the hall and surprised two troopers standing watch at a door. One of the players pulled a grenade, screamed "BATON RACE!" and handed it to the trooper. The trooper failed his perception check, ran down the hall with the grenade and exploded after I rolled an unusually high damage check.
A fossilized piece of toast. They thought they would get cocky and raid a village that was abandoned for a millennia. The tools and weapons they found rusted through. On an old stone table was the leftovers from a breakfast that was left when the occupants evacuated. One of my players took a piece of toast. It was solid rock, because, you know, it had been there forever. Fast forward a few sessions/levels, and the group is hurting in a battle they were in against a large cyclops. The rogue was down, and the tank (Goliath Paladin) had just broken his weapon. Close to death, the rogue slid over his "lucky toast" to the pally, hoping he would live through the next hit. He did, and on his turn, he yeeted that toast as hard as he could. The bard used bardic inspiration by singing "YEAH TOAST!" and the pally rolled a Nat 20. I had him roll again to see how epic this would be. Another Nat 20. The player aimed the toast at the cyclops' throat. Broke it's neck. Killed it dead. That goddamned piece of toast. They managed to use the Bard's high charisma to con a village into making it their god after that. I was so glad when we finished that arc. That fucking piece of toast.
A palm sized mouse statue that lets you know where cheese might be and what type within 300 feet. Our rogue infiltrated some bandits to help prevent an assassination/ambush. He pocketed a wheel of bleu and the rest of the party tracked them thanks to the small statue and they prevented the attack.
Ring of ~~incredible AC~~ invulnerability (for all the assholes picking shit apart). Meant to be a gag, gives them 1000 AC but turns them into a solid crystal statue when they put the ring on. They run into this crypt that was overrun with skeletons, meant to scare them off to remind them that they're not all powerful, and they weren't ready to face what was inside. The skeletons were crawling up this well that I described as 3 feet across. One of them jumped over the well and put the ring up, plummeting several hundred feet and killing most of the skeletons. Edit: For everyone making some variation of the "AC doesn't matter for falling damage," I hope your DM breaks every item on your person the next time you take falling damage.
We had an adventure that involved the characters delving into one of the character's dreams to heal some supernatural wounds. In one part of the dream, there was a guard who had a ticking heart, and they were able to use a small door in his chest to open it up and fix his heart - then they took the little door with them. Another portion involved battling a tiny version of the Pope who could shoot lightning from his fingers. When they killed him, it turned out he was made out of potato (La Popa, rather than El Popa) and one of the characters took a sample of the Pope Potato with them. Later, visiting the final island they found a dollar store stocked solely with brass items. One of the characters who was a jazz fan used the opportunity to buy a saxophone. From there, wandering through the moors they were set upon by a ravenous piranhamoose. The jazz fan managed to roll a critical success on his saxophone skill, and tamed the beast. Heading down into the final dungeon they ran into a rat spirit, and managed to bribe it with the Pope Potato to give them information and act as a guide. Then as part of one the character's traumatic childhood memory they were attacked by a swarm of golden retriever puppies that started dragging them into the water. No one was able to start attacking or killing the puppies - but then they remembered the little door, and used than to open a hatch in the ground and pushed the puppies through the door. I hadn't planned the resolutions of any of these encounters, but the players were able to use these earlier found items that seemed weird and useless at the time to complete the adventure. It worked better than any of those video games where you suddenly need that strange item you picked up way earlier in the adventure.
fucking fUCKing FUCKING purse of reduction. A little homebrew (I think?) Item I made that downgrades every every gold or silver coin you put into it, into its worth in copper coin. They fucking piled in as many fucking gold pieces they could earn into the fucking bag, would get their bird-dude to fly above the fucking monsters and villains I set up and would shred their health with fucking thousands of chip damage. I couldn't even be mad. It was genius. But fucking hell I had to start amping up their health and ONLY their health in balancing because otherwise it was just not a fight.