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Cursed item creation


Atuft

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I am looking for rules to create cursed items for the players.

 

one of my players wants to create a ceremonial dagger. She has to draw blood in order to use her spells.  I get how that works, giving the spells she is casting a disadvantage that she has to draw blood, even her own if necessary.  However, there is a thought to add a summon onto the dagger that once a threshold is reached it will automatically summon a monster of some form which the PC will have no control over.  

 

I have started researching but haven’t found the rules that satisfy me.  Any help would be greatly appreciated.

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I don’t think that there are any hard and fast rules for what you want. That being said, do you know what threshold you want? You could put an automatic side effect on the dagger that triggers a transformation attack. I’m thinking once you transformed the dagger into cursed dagger, then it gains the summon monster power. This could be a rewritten of the original side effect being summon monster.

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1 hour ago, Atuft said:

one of my players wants to create a ceremonial dagger. She has to draw blood in order to use her spells.  I get how that works, giving the spells she is casting a disadvantage that she has to draw blood, even her own if necessary.  However, there is a thought to add a summon onto the dagger that once a threshold is reached it will automatically summon a monster of some form which the PC will have no control over.  

 

The curse itself would probably be built as some sort of Side Effect, with the details depending on how you want it to work. How does the player want it to work?

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  • 3 weeks later...

The uncontrolled Summon would be a side effect in most cases.

 

If Blood is simply a material component, and if the character is only using the knife as a means to draw blood; the side effect would go on any powers of hers that have a chance of triggering the Summon. The trigger condition for the side effect is going to have to be arbitrary, as the system's only real advise is that it must be reasonably common (comperable to a fairly easy activation roll).

 

If we are talking about a cursed dagger that might summon something when used... I would treat the Foci as an encounter. The Summon would simply be Linked to the dagger's HKA, and would likely take No Consious Control and perhaps an Activation Roll. The fact that such a dagger paid CP to be cursed is irrelevent, just like the point values of any other form of encounter. Making a player pay CP for a worse than normal dagger would be a giant dick move though, so I generally wouldn't charge players CP for the curse in a campaign that pays for magic items with points.

 

Alternatively if, despite being initially uncontrolled/antagonistic, there are easy methods of manipulating the Summoned Being (such as Mind Control)... I would make the player pay for the Summon as a fairly Limited Power (Linked to the dagger as appropriate).

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On 4/16/2018 at 9:17 PM, Atuft said:

We’re not sure yet. That’s why I am looking for some rules now.  I was thinking of using boost or aid power to fuel the summon, slowing the point bleed down over time. 

 

One of the neat things about Hero is that you build the power you want, rather than picking from a list of existing powers. You have to approach this from a different angle.

 

So, leaving the game mechanics aside for the moment, how do you want this power to work?

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  • 2 weeks later...

I usually build stuff like cursed items with complications: the item has a complication such as "hunted by" or "distinctive appearance" which affects the user as well.  In this case you could build it as a side effect to the KA but a susceptibility could work built as a transform like 1d6 per x body the weapon deals transforming the air by the dagger into a monster.

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  • 2 months later...

You could use a multiplier for the dagger with the standard effects, and one for the curse. The curse could have the disadvantage for a charge pool,  starts at zero, requires multiple charges and recover a charge on draws blood (does body). Might require GM permission (little hazy one multipower and charge rules)

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For cursed items in general, I've done Side Effect, costs extra END, and a Transform which makes the character unwilling to get rid of the item and have a burning desire to use it.

 

What the item does really doesn't matter. If the Side Effect happens, using it drains his END to the point of stunning him, and he wants to keep and use the item anyway, it is sufficiently cursed for almost any purposes.

 

For Side Effects, I'm particularly fond of Flash (sound or sight) if it's a combat item or long-term INT drain for non-combat items. You can make the effect of the item "awesomely powerful" if he gets to use it once then falls to the ground deaf, blind, 0 END, and stunned. If you want, you could add mental illusions which affect only the user so that he only thinks something powerful is happening. In that case, a long-term EGO drain might be more appropriate than an INT drain.

 

For completely useless items you could also make them AoE one hex attacks (RKA, Blast, Transform, etc.) which affect only the user, which cost massive amounts of additional END, and which has extra Side Effects. Those are always good items to leave lying around a wizard's lab to deter intruders and is very much in flavor from various fantasy novels. If you go the Transform route, it might be a suitable punishment item for stealing from a temple (or otherwise dealing with an obnoxiously greedy player): the thief wakes up from a very long "nap" and suddenly finds himself cursed with a significant amount of Unluck.

 

As for the original question, I did like the earlier suggestion about the item having its own Hunted. I think that's a more elegant way of having the item "summon a monster" than a straight summoning spell. You could work the Hunted into the campaign and make it seem more realistic than just a straight summon (perhaps whoever shows up hunting the weapon is appropriate to the area or lets you play keep away with the McGuffin rather than doing the traditional "adventurers have to find the McGuffin").

 

If you use it for a certain period of time or a certain number of times then a monster shows up, most of the people I've played with would try to game the system and try to trigger the summon when its convenient for them rather than have it happen at an inconvenient time ("Hey, it hasn't happened for a while so lets fight something that's a pushover repeatedly until it triggers so we know we're safe in the upcoming boss battle.") And that's not really the effect that you're looking for. Hunted is already supposed to be completely under the GM's control and the players aren't supposed to be able to figure out a pattern and exploit it. You aren't going to have a player with an Examine Magic Artifact skill devote three months of research (extra time) into increasing his skill roll and figure out exactly how and when the item is supposed to trigger if it's written up as a Hunted. ;)

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Ideally, the cursed item is so useful and powerful that the player doesn't want to part with it no matter how miserable it makes their character.  Like Elric with Stormbringer; its just too useful to him despite its evil and treacherous nature.  Curses are usually more subtle than a big blast of power, things like "turns your money to ashes" or "ruins your love life" are more common.  Ill health, poverty, loneliness, unhappiness, bad luck, that kind of thing.  Yeah, this ring gives you levitation and +5 DCV vs arrows, but it also gives you 2d6 of Unluck.  Is it worth it?

I've never really liked the D&D system of making cursed items impossible to remove.  Its more interesting and useful to make the player(s) have to decide between the item's utility and its drawbacks.  Is it really worth it?  In one scenario I gave the party a very, very powerful item that had random but very nasty effects on targets, like "the earth opens up and swallows them."  But it was constantly hunted by invisible demons and so evil it made them uncomfortable to hold (and, had they encountered civilization, would have made them the target of witch hunts and shunning).  They finally decided it just wasn't worth keeping and honestly were kind of afraid of it.

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I would definitely use Side Effect, and have the Side Effect effectively be points that add to a Summon. When there are enough points for the Summon, the monster appears. 

 

I would *not* expose all of this to the player - all they need to know is that there's a side effect, and if you are feeling nice you can tell them what the result is. Or they can find out the hard way!

 

If the players try to manipulate the Disadvantage (say, by drawing blood out of combat to get the monster to show up), I would respond by varying the time required to summon, increasing the power level of the monster each time it is summoned, or something more sinister. (Maybe a much more powerful demon senses all this blood magic and takes an interest...) 

 

In the end, what matters is the overall impact on the PC and the value of the Disadvantage. 

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