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Deck of many things is an Artefact an object of untold power, one of two exeptions to Anti-Magic Field, other being the Will of Gods. Moon and Void are horrible, but any other card can be dealt with. Balance is bad, but only because interpretation of how Alignment works. For me alignment is a personality, your goals should not change, a truly loyal person remains loyal. A Lawful Good Paladin who seeks justice will continue to seek justice, but they may be more ruthless then they used to. A Lawful Evil knight can be someone who will serve their master as long as their intentions are pure, like slaughtering people to stop the spread of disease or killing all life to end all suffering, but if they commit murder simply because they enjoy peoples suffering, then the knight would backstab their master.
What's the dated and offensive term? Since it was censored, my brain needs to know what it is. I can't find anything and I can't think of one that fits that starts with M. Ah, found it. Old term used for people with down syndrome. A bit of a barbaric term.
"I draw 2 cards. First card is Talons, and all your possessions become dust and disappear, including the deck. An hour later the donjon card is drawn and the character disappears without warning." The idea of the deck continuing to draw after it disappears is hilarious to me.
It's magic. You announce how many are drawn, and that is a magical obligation that forces you to "draw" that many cards (take that many effects). Other cards can cancel it or add to it. It's more odd to me that you can't stop drawing.
the deck of many things is awful and shouldn't be included in modern games, in a meaningless dungeon crawl with expendable characters the deck is irrelevant
In the old version of the game, finding treasure gave you xp. That's why some of those cards give you xp when they gave you treasure and the 5e version doesn't.
Yep spot on. I still remember my first draw as a noob back in middle school, gained INT for my MU 1st draw, and my 2 hireling ftr guards turned on me on the 2nd pull. That was a shocker and kept me from getting TOO deep into the Deck! Good times
In my very first campaign as a dungeon master, I was playing around with a lot of mechanics so that I'd be prepared if I ever had to deal with it again. I gave my players the Deck of Many Things at level 4. One of my players instantly drew the card that gives you a Fighter who believes it is his destiny to serve you. TL;DR version, he discovered he wasn't real and was created by magic and ended up becoming the BBEG of the campaign. It was AWESOME!
I've been playing since 1977, so I've seen the DoMT in every edition. Never had it break a campaign. But, have had incredible adventures because of it. My advice for DMs is to know the cards, and prepare for their consequences, before introducing it into the world. Also, make sure it is always in the possession of a NPC who appears once or rarely. That way, the party doesn't just decide to draw cards on a whim. 🤠👍
I have been playing since 1981 and have also seen it in every edition. It’s risk/reward structure do not fit well into a 5e play style and much like Global Thermal Nuclear War, the only way to win is not to play. I find this especially true with less experienced DMs.
Yes, knowing the cards is super important or it can really throw off any balancing or directing you’ve done. Balancing. Who even does that? You’d need to know the characters and player styles super well to even start trying to balance combat.
The best advice I can give is to never ever allow this to be rolled randomly. If you want this in your campaign, make it the focal point of the campaign.
This does encapsulate a lot of why players fear it. I think DMs fear it more due to their belief that the players might get upset if they don't get lucky or have drastic random consequences for their fun.
I think people get too attached to characters. So when something legitimately threatens the character that isn't the BBEG people sometimes get pissy. Its an adventurer sometimes you die. i do think if your DM is killing the party often, thats an issue.
@Rogue Barbarian is it really a win streak though. I want to know my character can make a bad choice, roll unlucky, stand and fight and may not live to see the morrow. Or even sacrifice himself for an innocent he just met without the table trying to stop it.
What I always tell people is to make their own decks that suit the campaign they are running. Customizability in all senses for the perfect wacky, random, helpful, hurtful, all around fun magic item.
I've been working on something like this, because I went down a rabbit hole and made a custom Tarot for my world with relevant symbolism, and using that as a DoMT seemed like a reasonable followup project...
13:54 Killing the devil after it comes to you is easier than finding it, yes. However, devils don't permanently die unless killed in the Nine Hells, so you will have to look for it if you want to get rid of it permanently.
I think the idea is, if you kill the devil, that ends the magic. It may return to life in the Nine Hells, but the magical enmity is broken. At least that's how I interpret it.
My favorite use of the FATES card was when I played as a teenager. We were using ADnD rules (and I'm not sure if this was the actual rules or if I had read it wrong at the time). One of my players used the FATES card to undo a deathblow on an enemy that another PC had landed.... Just so their character could be the one to land the deathblow and get the exp for the kill! 🤣
I remember reading that one guy's group had a homebrew version with extra cards, which include: Scales: Your body, over the course of 1d10 + 1 days, will slowly and painfully transform into a dragon, determined by the dm to be either metallic or chromatic, you will experience intruding thoughts that come with the dragon in question, i.e being more prone to deceptive tactics if turning into a green dragon. The Magician: Gain the alliance of a 4th level wizard, who believes you are the key to solving a mystery that they have been trying to solve. The Dagger: A PC or ally will suddenly gain a great hatred of you, and will seek your demise. If a PC is affected, they are not to reveal as such until the right time, where such a revelation will hurt their target the most. The Mimic: The next object you interact with, i.e doors or chests, will become a mimic, it will revert to its original state once it is slain. This card will act like another card, DMs choice, until it's effect takes place, then it will reveal itself as the Mimic card. The Outsider: You gain the attention of a god, either good or bad, determined by the dm, who seeks to interact with you to fulfill their own goals.
I gave my PCs the deck in our last campaign, they drew 9!!! cards in a single session, and completely bamboozled the campaign in the best ways, but it didn't end the campaign. I would have no reservation now, with the experience I have, throwing the deck at a party of any level, but I would *not* recommend it to a newer DM or someone who doesn't feel comfortable with extreme improv.
The thing to remember with the deck is a DCC canard: *anything* is *possible* if the players want it enough. Donjon’d and unhappy with that? Welp... recovering that character is now your next set of adventures.
My party drew 10 in a flurry of trying to fix after the Half-Orc Barbarian became a Kobold (I edited some of the cards). I definitely would use the deck again, but player knowledge of it is such a double-edged sword.
@@russellee5216 That's why I think it's good to always customize the cards in the deck. The players might correctly guess the item, but if the cards are always different, the surprise and chaos of the item remains.
The deck can be an amazing storytelling tool! In my last campaign, I played a Goliath Artificer named Kallus, who was inspired by Hiccup from How to Train Your Dragon. A runt of the litter who yearns to become a master of shapeshifting due to his own body insecurity. Party found a modified Deck of Many Things, and me being clueless and impulsive I drew one immediately. I rolled a nat 1, and drew the dreaded Void card. DM described me falling into a coma, and as my party dragged me back to a tavern and tried to make a plan to find a cleric to figure out how to heal me. DM described me slowly shrinking, growing strange hair, and sprouting ears and a tail. Apparently DM set the Void card to essentially randomly change your race, and I ended up as a Tabaxi. It was very ironic that my goal to master shapeshifting aligned so well with the card outcome!
I used a homebrew twist that the card takes effect when you look at it. This allows me to spread single cards out as loot that a “tarot” themed warlock faction can be found with and the players can kind of build their own deck card by card.
How does that work, exactly? The first person to find the card activates it? Wouldn't that make individual cards super powerful since you can repeatedly use them since it's the only option and if the card is bad and you stumble upon it does it automatically screw you? The Deck of Many Things working is based on it being a deck, so I'm interested to know if you have accounted for this.
@@backonlazer791 it's something I made up for our campaign so it can work however you like haha. I wanted to have the cards be kind of like a consumable item, no matter how you found it once you reveal it you activate it (unless it's already activated, then it's just a card, but detect magic would tell you if it was active or not) The way I have it working in my game is that the triumvirate of hags has the deck of many things. When they need a particularly important task accomplished by one of their hunters they allow the hunter to take a card as payment. This of course may be good or bad (the hags care not which) and activates once the owner "turns it over" or looks at what card it is. This can be done as soon as the card is drawn, or in the case of a bounty hunter NPC kept a mystery until an opportune moment (this guy was planning on saving the card he got until he was on deaths door to use as a hail mary, or possibly never looking at it...) Once the card is looked at and the power activates though, it becomes nothing more than a mundane card. One of the PCs stole the card from this dude and looked at it, promptly revealing the RUIN card haha. So it goes
@@bryansmith844 Hmm, interesting take. So if they're consumable will they reappear in the world after being used? Can there there be multiple copies of the same card?
@@backonlazer791 I don’t think I would have multiples floating around because I still like the idea that this is a super rare/powerful/weird item and after the magic effect is consumed, maybe it has to be shuffled back into the deck to become active again
Because of how saves in 1e worked, the Medusa was effectively "Take a penalty to all constitution based saves." As petrification was the save used to oppose spells such as polymorph as well.
im not 100% sure, but i think "petrification" saves in older editions was towards everything that could affect your movement, slow, frighten, actual petrification, etc
@@BobWorldBuilder In older editions the saves were not tied to Ability Scores, but rather a class-dependent set of 6 saves with somewhat confusingly specific names.
The one time I encountered one in a campaign, we didn't realize you decide from the get go, how many you draw, and then it disappears. We actually had it not disappear at all. But it was fun, because it gave the party a chance to see everyone else get cool stuff (we had incredible luck), which pressured everyone into taking a gamble. My character drew the knight card or whatever it's called, and said knight was now in my service. My paladin, not seeing anything bad happen from the deck and not knowing it's a possibility handed the knight the deck and invited him to draw a card. The knight drew the card that traps your soul in pandemonium. So from the party's perspective, he just poofed out of nowhere, and then immediately died.
I think it'd be fun to play a character who was a fighter created by the Knight card, and their master died so they're searching for a new purpose, and they have no memory before the moment that player drew the card.
It's exactly what I'm playing right now. We were at a climax of the campaign (we were all level 15), the DoMT was a big part of that, my character drew the knight card and made him draw more cards. The knight leveled up to level 9 because of the Sun (he also has a strength of 24 now because he drew 2 Star cards), and now I'm playing such character on a quest to retrieve the soul of another PC who drew the Void while my main character is recovering from some long term injuries. Fun times. PS: we immediatly knew where the soul of our friend went thanks to another PC that drew the Vizier card. It's been pretty wild.
Dude I'm doing that right now except my character has self worth/abandonment issues due to the fact that the original cardholder was such a high level they didn't want them. They straight up told my character to sit on a park bench for a bit and then left. It's been pretty fun and interesting to RP as this kind of character.
The Gem card is more powerful in 5e than it might seem on the surface to you. Yes, it's fifty gems worth 1,000 gp each, but if the player can choose... diamonds, for example, are worth their weight in, well, diamonds, for their use in resurrection spells and the like, and there are other gems that are needed as material components. And if you have spellcasters with you, those gems can be significantly more useful than mere coin. Also, I just got the idea for a campaign - the party must go out and find the physical manifestations of all 22 cards, to gather the complete Deck of Many Things and keep the stray cards from causing chaos and confusion in the world...
I introduced an item called the Deck of Fate into my homebrew 5e campaign. It was introduced as a plot device, most of the cards would introduce a new quest, or give the players a story point to follow, so it basically generated interest, hoping they'd use it when they were bored. The PCs learned little about it, just putting it away and never using it. I think that they were scared simply because it was a "deck", even though it had no relation to the Deck of Many Things.
That sounds fun! Definitely worth trying to bring back into your game--just assuring your players that it's not nearly as risky for them as *that other deck*
We used the deck. It was crazy, how lucky the orc who drew them. Got mostly good cards. He got the level 4 knight. This Knight named Bradford killed many of strong monsters. He became a legend after stopping the BBEG.
Give your players a set of cards "with many things on it", and instead of giving them the deck of many things, give them the deck of illusion. Best delivered on the first of April. :D
I think sumoning extra deaths is actually a good idea. The reason is that it makes it harder and easier, or easier with the right strategy and harder for exp, so you get more. In other words, you can all sumon your deaths far away, then run towards the dude and all destroy his death, then there are four of you and one three deths, or five and four, and you can do stuff like charge the middle, then fall back, while manuevering your ranged or others to the side so that if it falls back, it can be hit, then three are two, and you can have it so that the engagers are having one block the other, not to mention that you can kite them around and have a ranger shoot. Even come right at the ranger, and duck or dodge. So um That's not all. It's more simple too. Having an aoe fire on three of them after you deal with the one focused on the aoe guy, you can have him hit the three maximum times. Now, you all could get more xp if the monsters action ecconomy you. That is, four spawning four minis is 16 on one dude, and then you have three guys. So, it should help.
Great review of the Deck of Many Things. I am an old school AD&D DM, and have continued to DM a 1/2nd edition of AD&D. It is at heart, 1st edition while grabbing interesting elements of 2nd and Unearthed Arcana. To put things in perspective for old style D&D. 1. We played in groups, and we played for long stretches of time. We played many different sessions across many different characters. Because AD&D was fixed and abilities were tied to race and class, you wanted to experience more and thus you had to have multiple characters. 2. The Deck was highly feared and loved by everyone. Yes, in our games, you could lose the character, but this was not as a big deal when you only have a few months of experience with the character. It was almost never used by anyone who highly valued their character. No one touched the deck at level 9 plus. But, your henchmen might… 3. In my games, it is a level 4-7 item. Enough to make big strides for your character, but not enough time to get serious attached to it. 4. Everyone knew the effects of the deck, so there were zero surprises. People knew exactly what they were doing. 5. I imagine it is different for each group, but in our case, the DM would also allow you to roll up a new character and place it a couple levels behind the rest of the party. You might even get your stuff back depending on the party, but, most of the time the party would take all your valuables. \ 6. Since the modules were normally designed for 4-6 players, if you had a small group (2-3 people), we always had the characters play 2 players. 7. There were rules for henchmen, they do not count as a full character and certainly had no vote in party activities. They were passive and largely just around to fight. 8. In a 15th level party of 6 players, you might have 1-4 henchmen for EACH player. We had battles in the abys that lasted for 2 months… ok, that room is done. Next…. Really interesting to see how new games are played. Very different from my style and the sessions I still occasionally play. Thank you!
Yep, they can be fun and engaging, but only in certain types of campaigns with certain groups. It requires buy-in from everyone at the table. I imagine a lot of people's reservations have to do with how they have no agency in deciding whether or not another player does something that could completely derail/alter a campaign.
A truly wonderous magic item that I ran into for the first time back in middle school. I'll never forget my character's first encounter with a mysterious gypsy fortune teller!
Great tips! The deck sounds scary because it brings so much chaos. BUT, remember DMs: it's up to you when you give this out. And you can review the cards beforehand to brainstorm ideas how to work the card results into your campaign. When I've used it, I only let players draw cards at the ends of sessions, to give me time to think!
Listening in, but are games now very fixed? In my games, old school based, the DM balanced out the effects to allow the game to be playable. Someone dead, roll a up a new character, give him a few extra levels, off to the races again.
Great stuff as always, Bob. It’s wonderful to see your channel flourishing. I think the deck probably suits the more ‘gonzo’ style of play in which it originated, with everyone happy for the campaign to be led by wacky twists of fate. In more story-led campaigns it could be a step too far for some. But I say embrace the Chaos! Always look forward to your videos. Nice one! 🤓
Anything breaking a campaign is really down to the flexibility of the people playing. New situations popping up can definitely make things difficult for the DM but with endless options for creative solutions all the cards do is make new situations for the party to experience. Losing all your property can throw a situation on its head, can make a party that was rich and powerful have to work to build things up again. Fighting death can be incredibly character defining for someone who survives that.
Losing all magic items was ruinous in older editions. There was a 3.5 Living Greyhawk mod that caused characters to be enslaved and lose ALMOST everything. So many characters ended up ruined that they had to change the poverty rules to allow characters a chance in hell of recovering from the losses... and you'd still end up behind your level curve due to the loss. A LOT of the cards disrupt the current adventure/flow, or kill a character/remove RP opportunities or add complexity, so it's more brutal than it seems from this "BUT MUH FIFTH EDITION AND MILESTONES AND TOO MUCH MONEYS!" video makes it out to be.
@@hariman7727 I'm guessing you had a difficult experience with this in the past, which is why it seems to personal. I'm sorry you had to go through that. However, a good DM will give characters ways to work themselves back up. A good party will support them in that and a good player will use this as a formative arc for their character. Yes, no doubt they'll be frustrated at first - that's understandable. Adverse situations develop a character a lot more than the easy ones though - the deck gives some options for that. If you aren't willing to take those risks then perhaps don't draw from the deck. The impression of the video is wildly inaccurate, Bob compares 5e because it's the most common version. It's also a very childish way to put a grievance across, are you sure you're old enough to have played 3.5e?
@@davidjennings2179 you know you whipsaw between kindly compassionate and utterly rude backhanded insults, you do realize that? In the living grayhawk campaign, which was dungeons & dragons 3.5, there was a mod called "Barbarous Coast", if I remember correctly, which had a final battle where the party was teleported into a citywide invasion to attempt to stop at least part of the invasion. If you lost that battle, you were enslaved and you lost everything, and you were given 200 gold to start the rest of your adventuring career over. Because of the specific ruling at the time of that mod's release, and because living grayhawk had to follow those specific rpga rules because it was official campaign mods that were played nationally, for the first couple months at minimum players could not claim having utter poverty because they had a couple hundred gold and were not allowed to drop that gold to meet the poverty requirements. So many characters became unplayable because a fighter at the levels for that mod would lose all of their equipment, and wizards would lose their spellbook, among other things. It is about the fourth worst written mod in the entirety of living greyhawk that I played, and the only reason I have the ability to say fourth worst written is because I played in the sheldomar valley/Keoland, which were notorious because one of the mod writers in the area literally could not read the rule book to make a decent encounter. So there was no room for the DMs to adapt to that or allow leeway so the character could be recoverable. As for the deck of many things, I don't like it because I find the chaos of it off-putting. I don't want to lose a character because of a magic item that is designed to tempt players on a meta scale, that also affects the player Dynamics and DM so directly. Yeah, other people can have fun with it, but I hope I never see it again. Also you don't realize how much of a jerk you're being, because I'm 40, and the only reason I'm being nasty here is UA-cam is where I tend to let my brakes off a little. So please think about insulting a person and comments questioning someone's age, because they only make you appear... Well, read your comment into a mirror and ask how you'd feel if someone slaps you in the face with an insult, then tell me what word you'd use. Tl:dr: yes, I've had a set of bad experiences with deck of many things and other random bullshit that really hurt characters of mine. Also, read your comment into a mirror to yourself and consider how you sound, because your most recent comment was pretty rude.
@@hariman7727 Compassion doesn't mean we don't call people out when they're out of order. Yes you've clearly had a difficult experience and I'm sorry you had to go through that. However, it doesn't give you a free pass not to be called out when you lash out at others. You accept that you're being nasty on UA-cam, perhaps take your own advice and consider how your comment would affect Bob - he puts effort into these videos, they're his livelihood.
Backstory idea: you are the fighter made by the deck. After drawing your card, your old master drew another card and disappeared. Your bond is to find them
The item is interesting, it just shows its age from all the changes D&D has gone through as a hobby over the years. The character burn rate is a major thing. Players would most likely have to roll up new PCs all the time. And if that's the case, there's no sense in putting *too* much effort into a backstory for each one of them beyond the basics. Conversely, it's common now for players to write extensive and detailed backstories for their character. If you're told that your lawful good fighter is suddenly going to have to switch to behave in a chaotic evil manner, that probably wouldn't matter too much if you just rolled her up and slapped on a generic backstory. If you devoted a lot of energy to why the character is the kind of person they are, being told "just be evil now" on account of a random result from a magic item feels a lot different.
We were a group of 3 players, all level 2, alongside the DM. We came to getting a reward from a minor deity for services rendered. The DM gave us a choice that we needed to make as a party; either everyone draws a card each from the deck or we each gain an uncommon Magic item of our choice. I'm not too fond of gambling, so voted for the item, the other two voted for the deck - so deck it was. The first player drew Ruin, so lost some minor amount of gold and their possessions - they were quite irritated, but accepted it begrudgingly. I drew the Sun, instantly getting me up to level 9 as a Wizard and the DM gave me a Ring of Spell Storing - yup, I was both horrified and bemused, since you know, I'm already the Wizard in this party, let alone 7 levels higher with a very powerful item. The last player drew the Fates and instantly declared what one event was erased from existence - the deck appearing. DM was nice and decided that since that would mean there would have been only one option we get our magic items instead. Not sure how I feel about the deck, but one thing was for sure; Vindication was MINE!
I once built a character who wanted to find the Deck to draw the Moon and use a wish solve a mystery of his lineage. The DM was nice enough to run with it, so we had the Deck as a McGuffin for our campaign.
In the previous campaign I ran, I had given the party a deck. A while later I had an encounter (unrelated to the deck) where I had a character (who unannounced to the party was actually a goddess in disguise) do an interaction with the party and one member of the party did something completely unexpected, they asked this goddess (in disguise as an old man) if they wanted to draw a card from the deck. This was crazy but I decided to go with it, as luck would have it, the card that the goddess drew was the fate card. This immediately got my brain spinning and I let the use of the card stew for a while before using it. Then at a predetermined time, I had fate rewrite itself as the goddess used the card to rewrite a point in history decades before, resulting in a few things to change in the party, most notably one of the characters changed classes and partially changed species as I turned one of the characters into a Divine Soul Sorcerer (a demigod). It led to a pretty wild time for the party and completely took everyone (except that player which I did check with in advance) completely off guard.
Story time here: I've been DM'ing for over two years now a campaign that initially started off as a mixture of Lost Mine of Phandelver and Dragon of Icespire Peak that eventually turns into a condensed version of Tyranny of Dragons. In between my players wanted to run for the position of mayor of Phandalin and dive into one of the dungeons of the Undermountain of Waterdeep when I gave them a Deck of many things. The main plan was to try to stop the arising thread of Dragon Cultists to rise Tiamat from Avernus... however one of my players decided to draw four cards from the Deck... of course the first one was... The Void. At that point, the only point in the multiverse that would make story-wise was to send the soul to Avernus (also added bonus that the player once tried to steal an amulet that used to belong to Asmodeus, so this also made sense for the character to some degree). At that point the campaign shifted from a Tyranny of Dragons campaign to Baldur's Gate - Descend into Avernus. It took probably around 8-9 months of playsessions for my players to get Elturel back to the original place and the players soul back into the original character... However, they brought Tiamat with them... and now we're back to the original intended campaign but immensely higher stakes than before...
I gave it to my players at the e d of a campaign. Player drew one, change his alignment to evil. Pulled another, created a duplicate of himself with opposite alignment (creating an original good version). Evil version pulled another card, wiped his memory, pulled another card (not knowing what it was) bamfed himself elsewhere, pulled another card and turned his soul into a crystal in a location unknown. All this leaving the party exactly as they were immediately before finding the deck
i've literally seen this deck end a campaign, it was the 50k exp one, it rocketed one character into a whole different power sphere then everyone else. having henchmen and stuff though can be done right, the key i feel is just to make sure every player gets one. They also let you split the action cause the main party can do stuff and send off their b team to deal with other things in world at the same time. One campaign we started a fief and shipping port, our sidekicks ended up running our second ship.
You bring up a good point that just applying the affect to the whole party might help for some cards--as long as everyone agreed to use the deck I guess
Back in the day, chaotic and malicious magic from the dm was still super common. Player vs dm was very common. You were often playing him, not the adventure. There was often a “winner” of dNd at those tabletops. I’m not totally against that, but you gotta be open to losing like you’re playing a game if sorry.
If you had a DM that was going against you then that was just a bad DM. Same thing can happen today in 5e. Edition does not makes a difference. The difference was the players were not superheroes at lower levels. They were not even superheroes at higher levels. The game was never about creating superheroes, it was about surviving. You had to learn to run when were wandering through the forest and stumbled on the ancient green dragon at level 3. The other important thing you learned was avoiding the fights all together if you could. Because it was more about exploring the world and finding the weird things in it than fighting. It was about finding the loot, because that was so valuable, that was how you leveled up. Not killing monsters. That is my big issue with milestone xp. There is no insistence to adventure. Everyone just plods along with the story. Every few sessions the GM hands out levels and even if your character missed a session you get a level. Because everyone has to be equal.
@@burgsrus I agree completely on the shift in mentality. I myself am running a 3.5e campaign in a custom setting with a metric buttload of homebrew. The characters defeated a werewolf lord, 4 wargs, and a random owlbear drawn by the noise, at level 3 (6 player party) so yeah, the challenging encounters they were supposed to ‘run from’ turned into ‘one level-up per session’
The Deck is the only real world cursed magical item in existence. It's a real world cursed item as It plays on the greed of the player (not the character) drawing the cards. Even with the knowledge that it can cause ruin, it still pulls a real life persons innate greed and desires. It is effecting a real person in the real world, not necessarily a character in the game. So it is more real then any other part of dnd.
I remember that in one campaign I found a deck of many things. Since there is no effect if you don't announce the number of cards you are drawing, we just used it as a deck of regular playing cards. One time I accidentally said that I am drawing one card from the deck so I had to take a card that would have the magical effect. I got Moon, and I immediately use the Wish it gave me to remove the deck's magic.
I dont fear it because the one time it was brought in a campaign our dragonborn barbarian kept pulling out the good cards. We got a loyal companion, a bunch of treasure and wishes
I fear the balance card the most. Even though alignment isn't really used that much in 5e, I still use it as a guide for role playing, and this card will completely destroy my characters.
My thoughts exactly. I was under the impression that alignment was used primarily for roleplay in 5e, like an easy box to generalize your character motivations. Changing alignment changes the whole character! They'd be better of having died so you could at least make a new character that fits the way you want to play.
Love this history of the deck!! Great insights as always bob! You are so awesome at interacting with your community! If you have time will you share with us... What is your favourite card to draw? What is your favourite card to see another player draw?
Glad you enjoyed this video. It was fun to compare the past and present versions of this item, and I have a similar video coming up for one of the core classes! I'm the worst at picking favorites, but the first that comes to mind for either case would have to be Moon. Those wishes could be chaotic, but that's what I think the deck is for :)
@@BobWorldBuilder Love to see Moon in effect as well! My Favourite is when someone only wants to draw one card but picks the idiot! So Harsh and tense! And it's happened to me before It's so funny. Looking forward to the class breakdown history lesson too! Your content is always improving and I love watching the channel grow!
In a campaign I played in university, the DM introduced a mid-level quest where the reward was one draw from a Deck of Many Things that had been modified to remove perma-debuffs and give every card at least one benefit. I think that the flame card did a bunch of fire damage, but then the PC got fire resistance. Everyone liked how it had a lot of randomness without, for example, giving one PC a level boost while another lost all their magic items. (Note: this was Pathfinder, AKA D&D 3.75 so some of the cards, like Talons, had more bite.) Now, one of the players in that campaign was new to the game and didn't realize that the Deck had been modified. Shortly after, he ran a campaign and put the Deck in front of our level 3 characters. We were a bit hesitant, but eventually decided to each take one card... I pulled the Skull. Which in that system meant that I had to fight a CR 13 grim reaper. The DM looked at me and said "how about we swap that for a different card?"
I'm running a deck of many things in my campaign, but I'm using the book of many things, in a section about single effects for cards. It's kinda interesting so far, each card can be used once per day, for example knight if the player throws it the card starts folding itself but getting bigger before it becomes a deck defender lasting for 1 minute following the orders of the player who summoned it. Sage, cast contact other plane contacting a mysterious figure that the players can question once per day. Comet. As an action, you can hold this card aloft and call down a fiery meteor to a point you can see within 120 feet of yourself. Each creature within a 20-foot-radius sphere centered on that point must make a DC 17 Dexterity saving throw. On a failed save, a creature takes 6d6 bludgeoning damage and 6d6 fire damage, or half as much damage on a successful save.
In my experience, the 'fear' from the Deck of Many Things was the whole risk-reward aspect of the deck itself and the consequences that came from trying your luck. Nothing more, nothing less. In no instance that I can think of has a group resisted drawing from the Deck when offered the chance (one or two characters may not try their luck, but someone drew at least one card. Always.)
I don't think people are complaining that this shouldn't be put in everyone's campaign, I think they are usually targeted towards people who actually craft their own campaign/world. If you spend days or months crafting a home-brewed world where factions, bloodlines, and events color and pepper your world; then having a magical item that can randomly cause something to shift CAN ruin a story or consistent pacing/writing. I don't think this item is bad, it's fun watching players deal with the random chaos of gambling. Watching my crafted storyline of 3 years with players participation fall apart due to a card flipping an NPC to evil when they had literally no reason to be, that's a lot less rewarding. As I saw someone write down below if you're going to play "russian roulette", make sure you and everyone your playing with is ok with taking that chance, don't just pick it because you think it would be fun, or you'll find yourself holding people hostage.
I think the Fates card works best with a time limit. Prevent what's about to happen? Sure! Undo what just happened? Absolutely! Alter an event that took place weeks ago? Prevent something years in the future? No can do; fate only remains pliable for a moment.
My Pathfinder group encountered the Harrow Deck of Many Things, which is a bit different. It had some pretty interesting results, like turning the group's wizard into a werebear, but the funniest thing was when a card was drawn that raised one of their past enemies from the dead and, soon after, a card was drawn that turned a hostile NPC into a friendly one. So with this combo they actually gained an ally! The NPC couldn't help much because the campaign was in its final legs and they had looted his spellbook so he couldn't magic himself to their aid, but I think he eventually became a royal advisor when the werebear became a king.
I think the Deck of Many Things have suffered a kind of parrot effect of veteran players talking about their experiences and newer players taking their word for it, passing it along with exaggerated effects. More people should use the deck, it won't end their PC at all. 😈
I agree that it was/is more risky in old school games, and those stories were passed down, probably with embellishment too. Then today people are so afraid to use it that they don't know how it won't necessarily cause the major harm they've been "warned" about. I do think it can end a PC though!
I've used the deck twice in different games. Both were a lot of fun and I will use them again. As long as you understand whats in the deck you can prep for it and mix it into your world just fine.
I like the video for the most part. I know it's likely a play style thing but my groups aren't usually grossly wealthy by lvl 5. That's comes a it later. I also do not understand the issue with Knight. The way I see it, this is a follower/henchman with character levels that the DM runs and follows the PCs lead.
Yeah the wealth thing can vary a lot based on setting. For the knight card "You control this character." definitely refers to the player who pulled the card. It is essentially a henchman/sidekick, but if the party is only level 1-5, this knight is just a very powerful addition to the PC who gained it. Past those levels, it becomes less significant
@@BobWorldBuilder Fair points. I hadn't considered the lower level impact, based on my one time use it was higher level so I was skewed in my thinking. Also fair, I'd grant control in combat because you are right. I'd talk it over with the player to see what they wanted, but I'd be inclined to run them as an NPC outside of combat that follows the PC to the ends of earth. Or planes.
I ran a short (10 ish sessions) campaign that was partially built around a desire to run a deck of many things and it was wild. The party started at level 5 but so many Sun cards were drawn that by the end of it everyone was at least level 11 with two of them being level 16. The Skull is fine because if you're at the start of your adventuring day, the Avatar of Death is easy to defeat so it's only a punishment if you draw from the deck at low HP. The Knight cards are fun, and I ruled that drawing those cards again just leveled your existing Knight up 4 times and the players really loved their new NPCs. Definitely the most devastating combo is Vizier + Wish because it allows a player to find the optimal wording for their wish. This was used twice, once to make the Vampire Paladin lose his Paladin powers by making his Demon Prince master lose all her contracts and worshippers to the PC Warlock's Patron. The second time allowed them to stop the ritual that was going to summon said demon prince so they only had to fight a Nightwalker and a bunch of Vampire Spawn instead. They destroyed that combat encounter by a landslide. If I was to run a deck again I think I would change 3 things: 1. I dont think you're supposed to be able to declare draws from the deck after you've done it before. The deck should be a finite resource rather than a potentially endless supply of xp, magic items, and Wishes. 2. I love the original concept behind the Void where you still got to pilot your character but their soul was elsewhere. I think that makes for a potentially really cool arc if you have the right DM and Party. 3. The two cards I would remove are the Donjon and the Sun. The former is too similar to the Void without the potential fun of the soulless PC arc, meanwhile the later is just too much of a power spike. 1 or 2 levels of difference between the players is fine but leveling up 5 levels and getting a magic item everytime you draw that card is way too much. Having seen the deck drawn from about 30 times in that one campaign alone, I can firmly say the Sun card is stronger than 1d3 Wishes.
I had it (sorta) as a hidden treasure belonging to the BBEG. It was a d20. They knew it was radiating magic and no idea what it did. The wizard rolled the first one and got zapped into another universe. Then the die teleported to another dungeon.
One of my players jokingly asked me for a Deck of Many Things and until now, neither of uf really considered it. You definitely changed my mind on this one. Remember that no matter how "clever" you word your wish, according to the Players Handbook, the DM always has the option to say that the spell simply fails. So as DM you actually have very good control over wether a wish could be derailing your campaign.
16:57 The only characters it would affect greatly are usually lords and/or kings-and you don’t lose lord/kinship, the way it would happen is that your lands/fiefdom is seized.
You have excellent ears lol, I recorded this audio on an updated version of the same program I always use, and it seems to have some new automatic settings I didn't know about. Basically it had a super intense background noise cancelation that overcorrected in a couple spots. Overall I thought it still sounded okay, but it might also be that this was recorded in a different room than usual
Back when I used to play D&D 2e I gave one of my players this chaotic item of my own creation in which I made. It was a coin of Good & Evil. When flipped depending on which side it landed on would give and outcome, either good or bad. I had to roll a d100 for the result on each chart (I think each chart had 100 possibilities, too). Well, anyway, I got this idea from a coin I got in an EverQuest expansion box and physically handed it to the player, tell him anytime he flips it in real life his character flips it in the game if able to do so. One night he was feeling rather frisky and flipped it 16 times in a row without waiting for any of the results 🤣 I wonder if I still have the paperwork buried somewhere....?
My DM out the deck in our game. We found it by clearing out the shed of an old adventurer. There were warnings written in every language on the box saying “DO NOT DRAW FROM DECK”. My himbo half orc bard can’t read tho, all he saw was a deck of cards and he loves games. Thankfully, he drew the throne card.
The first time my brother played D&D he got a deck of many things at the end of the campaign and drew four cards: gem, moon, fates, and vizier. He traded the gems for armor (even though he was a warlock) and he only got one wish which he used to wish for a fortress to appear on some land my character bought. I don’t think he used the fates or vizier cards. Despite his surprisingly lucky draws the outcome was kinda mundane.
Great video, I have been avoiding giving my players the deck of many things, because of all of the negative things I’ve heard about it. Now I think it might just show up next session. I’m not worried about them defeating the BBEG with it. I already have another to rise up in its place,bwahahah.
My experience with the Deck of Many Things (from a player perspective) is from AD&D module I6, the original Ravenloft. Down in the dungeons of Castle Ravenloft, you could find a deck. We did, and as this was pre-internet days, and when only the DM had read the DMG, none of us knew what it did. Of the 6 of us, 2 got soul trapped, one lost a level due to xp loss, I forget what the others got, but Strahd picked off the rest of the party, campaign over. DM wanted to run us through three other adventures, finishing off with us fighting Flame (the red dragon on the cover of The Dragon #1). He really didn't want to run again, and I didn't play too much until I moved to a different state.
This was a good angle on the Deck! Although the chatty DM in me thinks it is worth mentioning that Ability Scores actually carried more weight in AD&D than they do in 5th Edition. While there are derived scores (like your attack bonus) for the ability scores, there was also the Ability Check roll: to accomplish any task related to an ability that was not covered by some other rule (and a lot of those rolls come up), you roll under your ability score. So every 1 point increase in an Ability Score was a flat 5 percentile point increase in being able to succeed on an ability check. This became even more valuable in 2nd Edition, when nonweapon proficiencies were introduced. Killer video!
The first I heard of the deck was on NADDPOD. It didn't break the campaign, it made it! A level 4 fighter was summoned and was not expected to survive the episode, but became a fan favourite.
I've always wanted to declare the full number of cards and then not draw and wait an hour. The wording "the remaining number of cards fly from the deck on their own and take effect all at once" would be incredible to watch a DM try and work out.
I'm only part way through but I have to disagree with you on a point. I do believe that having members of the party be different levels is potentially game breaking, not because it is unfair for certain members of the party to be more powerful than others, but because it makes designing encounters that will be challenging but not deadly for all members of the party rather complicated. Granted, the CR system for designing encounters is famously flawed to begin with, and I would love a better method for designing balanced encounters, but especially with some classes a single level up can make some significant changes to the capabilities and overall power level of that character, especially with certain multi-class combos.
We had a lot of fun with a DoMT in the first campaign I ever played in 5e. The whole scenario, from the theft acquisition followed by 2 character deaths and a lot of perks for other characters to the inevitable loss of the deck, was fantastic fun, even for those who lost characters.
My best "Deck" story involves the 3.5 Castle Greyhawk module. We found the machine of Lum the Mad (DoMT reskinned as a machine with a ton of levers) a ways in, played with it a bit and came out ahead, then went back to town for some downtime before we ventured deeper. The Mage and Priest left me (rogue with tendency to get in trouble) alone with the big, dumb, impressionable fighter so they could build us a tower making us SWEAR not to go use the machine while they were gone. I convinced the fighter that while we promised not to use it ourselves we didn't say anything about finding rich folk to pay us to guide them there, and that's what we did. After a couple runs and a big pile of gold, well the nobles were getting awesome draws and this angered Zagyg so he sent his castle soaring up into the sky. Fighter and I just barely got out before it took off. On returning to town the responsible party members asked a question that was heard a lot in that campaign. "Pohl! What did you DO?"
was watching a campaign where the deck was introduced in the middle of the feywild. they made a random NPC draw from it instead of them. the NPC picked balance and left suddenly before reappearing a bit later as a villain that k!lled dozens at a carnival. in the middle of the fight, one of the PCs drew and got rogue, joked about the person being hostile being an NPC that was part of the party. the dm made this canon. he drew again (for whatever reason) and drew...donjon. he suddenly vanished and was disappeared into a magical pearl they had gotten earlier in the campaign and had to undergo a trial to see if he was still worthy to be "the chosen one" by the elders of the underwater kingdom (as this guy was a triton paladin). once the rest of the party found him, that npc that got rogue'd stabbed him in the middle of the night, got his hatred removed, then immediately healed him back to life. this started a plot that spiralled into the deck coming out AGAIN, the NPC trying to get rid of the curse, a couple of party members drawing and getting harmless XP based ones, and then the NPC drew the flames card and was promptly kidnapped by the devil a couple days later and is still MIA, setting up for a great plot thread to snag later on. all in all, even though the scenes where they were drawing were TERRIFYING, ESPECIALLY after going through the 5 episode long donjon/faewild arc, but that just added to it. it made it a lot more fun to know that the DM wouldn't just let one of the characters or beloved NPCs straight up die. definitely didn't ruin this campaign! EDIT: how could i forget! the guy playing the PC that got donjon'd played a silly little experiment blob named goobleck for a few sessions while he was doing the trials separate from the rest of the group! great stuff, really fun time :]
"one character losing a few points ruin your campaign?" well, your, the dm, campaign may be not ruined, but any int using characters players character would be ruined, so i would say, it is ruined a character, which is more or less a tpk level disaster for most or my parties and i would consider it just as a tpk as a dm also.
Had an incident that went like this: Our party came together as generic adventurers. Our party's Paladin was of a special order to combat the undead, specifically to take down this Lich who kept coming back every century to lay waste to the lands. DoMT got introduced, and bucky pulled The Fates card. He has literally spent his whole life in service to destroy this lich... so yeah, he undid the Lich's birth. He'd been a Lich for 5,000 years, had destroyed multiple kingdoms and even empires in his time. The DM had to halt the game there, because the sheer implications of it were staggering. He then cancelled the next week's game, stating that he was working on the campaign, and then finally, I get a DM from the DM asking for help (I'm the one who had taught him to run). Essentially, 5 millennia of world history went up in smoke in moments. The equivalence would be if someone someone made the Roman, Egyptian, and Persian empires just... not have happened at all. We met up at IHOP, and worked on stuff. DM immediately nixed undoing the pull, since that would feel like a cheap cop out. The first problem was: How does the party still live? Cause yeah, that's a lot of change. We worked out that the Paladin's god essentially creates a temporal bubble to protect the party from the shift (he was, in fact, fulfilling his oath, and his choice wasn't based on selfishness, but in completing his duty). So that's the party still alive, at least. Then, there's everything else. He had to essentially rewrite his campaign world, and yeah, the old campaign was dead, but then we had a whole new campaign dealing with the consequences of The Fates card.
Idea to create an Enemy. At some point during the adventure, an important item a player owns suddenly becomes the item in which a Soul is contained, as another NPC Adventurer drew the last card. Their party is now hunting the party down
In addition, I have written my own, full modules with alternate rules, creatures (or creature statistics and abilities), races (or altered statistics and abilities), and items, such as a completely different set(s) of the Deck of Many Things... like one deck based on the various beneficial tomes and their opposites, or simply creating new decks that contain cards like random teleport, wild magic surge (randomly rolled on a wild magic chart), forced polymorph, and permanent regeneration, to name a few. It's a fun way to switch things up, keep them fresh and add some spice to things. Having multiple Decks can also be fun because all of the decks look identical, only being able to be revealed by an Identity Magic check, DC 13, or by picking one or more cards... Magical Contracts, Quest and Geas are also favorites to randomly slip into any deck, useful to the DM to force players on a side quest or to fulfill a contract, which is a great tool to get any wayward parties back on track with the campaign, lol.
My son drew The Void from the deck recently in our game and found himself separated from his body, one of those cards that you get warned about. It actually turned into a great adventure as the team worked to complete objectives that he normally would have completed. They actually talked about letting him die because of their love of that NPC. When they finally recovered his soul it was a tearful reunion, with consequences. I had his soul powering a powerful healing item so they had to decide of one life was worth the many lives he may have saved. In the end he was reunited with his soul and the story continues. I use the deck off and on with many twisted things happening. When I have a change to get it as a player I grab it and offer cards to all manner of NPCs. Orphans, hags, goblins recently taken captive, all of them have either been forced to draw or had the offer. It's a fun item but the DM and players need to accept what can come from it.
I didn't spend 6~ hours every week prepping and then 3 hours~ playing to hand my players a random number generator that can instantly destroy my or their hard work. D&D has parameters for randomness in its dice rolls which is plenty enough unpredictability for me.
I think there is a case to be made about the pathfinder 2e deck (technically legacy). I think it does a better job at translating the intent of some of the cards, most notably the fates, than the dnd 5e version while adding a campaign safety line in form of every character may only draw once. Interestingly, while keeping the XP aspects, pathfinder uses relative XP so 1.000 XP is equally valuable at any level. It also takes out some of the individual aspects, the skulls lesser death does not need to be faced alone for example, and there is nothing about control of the knight (just a loyalty pledge)
I find alignment to be important. Its important for role play. In my experience at least, many groups I have played with have characters. And the people don't want their precious character to get changed. They may change voluntarily, but they don't want to be changed by outside forces. A lot of people don't roleplay properly either, they create a character they think is cool but then roleplay as if they were themselves irl. The alignment shift would ruin that. I have many games where a so called "good person" tortures and abuses people, just because they are the enemy or they are wealthy. A good person helps othes, an evil person puts themselves first. There is a gradient to this of course, but its in general sense. Is the character your creating the type that will focus on themselves, such as trying to get as much money as possible and focusing on loot? Probably someone evil. I'd argue they are evil. The objective comes first then loot. Not enough people like to think of themselves as good or evil, "im just an asshole". Yea to me thats evil. It might not be evil in the villainesque way, but its evil in the fact you prioritize yourself. I like the idea of balance changing NPC"s, making someone evil good and good evil. Your loyal ally, might just be turned evil and now wants to abduct you to steal your shit or sees you as a threat. The evil bad guy now good tries to amend with you and might become a new patron. The card that gives a level, I would totally give a single person a level above others. Its a risk. I would change the talons card to affect magic items you own. Its magic.
somwhere I heard a person say a very good idea for the deck. It works like true Tarot cards, like maybe in the lore it is the original deck of tarot cards in that world, or only one that truely works.... anyways, the idea is the cards still do what they say but not immediately but soon so they are telling the future.... but instead of telling the future like normal tarot cards, these ones create that future. So for the friendly npc becoming hostile toward you, The next town you visit, the shopkeeper you have befriended takes offense to something you say. or do and stops selling to you and becomes even hostile to you, you might still keep it secret or maybe the secret part is why. The gaining a weapon card, you have first watch at night at camp. While wandering your camp find the weapon laying on the ground.... that kinda thing.
having played in a campaign where the DM let everyone have a go at it (5 PCs) the end result was 4 owning monster filled keeps, 2 getting free magic items, 2 losing Intelligence (both went to 8 from 10 and 12 origionally) I lost all possessions, 2 gained lvl 4 Fighters, all got the 50k in jewels (very useful after as we had access to a high magic city in a high magic campaign so "shopping session") I also did the Solo encounter for an extra lvl, we all got the free no strings attached wish and they were used to counter the negative card pulls for the most part. I lost alot of my magic toys in the pull but the gold allowed for me to get some different items and purchase the items we would need for the next part of the campaign including reequipping our new fighters and that left us still well off. admittedly all but two items were common to rare but that is a sidetrack. So we had 5 players draw from a 22 card deck each time and in the end it added two additional Party members (fighters) and added three side quests in the keep reclamation. now I will put this Warning on the use if the Deck, if you choose to introduce the deck I suggest waiting until after lvl 10 if you want them to have the best chance of resolving most negative results.
I recently had an NPC convince one of the PCs to get them to pull a card from the DoMT. For context, the NPC had severe amnesia and couldn’t remember his name, where he came from, his family, or why he was such a powerful wizard despite never having studied magic in his life. He was desperate for the truth and so convinced one of the PCs in this campaign to give him the chance to pull the Moon card (the card that lets you cast Wish). I rolled to see which card he pulled… he pulls the Moon and casts wish. One mysterious and horrific transformation scene later and it is revealed that in fact this powerful Mage was actually Vecna having had his memories wiped by the other gods of this world and being banished in this mortal body. Now, with his memories restored, he seeks his missing hand and eye. The objective of the next arc of the campaign has now changed from “stop the cult of Vecna from resurrecting their old master” to “stop Vecna from restoring himself to his former power so that he can begin his conquest of the Material Plane”. This is an example of the DoMT being used to completely upend a campaign in the most dramatic and incredible way that would never have been possible if it weren’t for me introducing it as a GM. It is an incredible tool for improv GMing and completely changing the stakes of a campaign.
I think a good alternative for the defeat the next hostile and level up is that the card summons a creature, then and there that the party has to deal with. As the DM you could have a boss like creature ready for each level your party is at just to simply pull it out. If they defeat it, they gain a level. This would specifically be difficult if they were due a long/short rest. I think that would be a good way of doing this one.
In a waiting room in Nirvana, my players met a wizard, who upon being informed that Primus is dead and he's been waiting 300+ years for nothing, teleported away, leaving behind his bag of holding. Among the various magical treasures, one object stood out the the party; a deck of cards, wrapped in adamantine chains, and sealed with three magical locks. That's the first time the party found it. The second time, it was because the first deck was destroyed. So the Artificer, who used a wish he got from the previous deck to become a noble genie, used his own wish granting ability to obtain the deck of many things once more. By the time that game had ended, they must have drawn over 50 cards from the deck between them and the NPCs they told to take one.
I'm running a campaign with my brothers and gave them the deck, and my brother drew Vizier. He asked what ten magic items would help them defeat the bbeg. Now the whole campaign is a race to find all the items before the bbeg gets to strong. It didn't derail the campaign, but it did change the tracks! Take it in stride and go for it. I have wanted to make an extreme 1d20 deck which is a fate die and by rolling it, an effect happens and it can't be rolled again till dawn. Effects from you get treasure and items and experience on a 20 to the roller dies and their soul is destroyed (no resurrection) on a 1, and everything in between
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Deck of many things is an Artefact an object of untold power, one of two exeptions to Anti-Magic Field, other being the Will of Gods.
Moon and Void are horrible, but any other card can be dealt with.
Balance is bad, but only because interpretation of how Alignment works. For me alignment is a personality, your goals should not change, a truly loyal person remains loyal. A Lawful Good Paladin who seeks justice will continue to seek justice, but they may be more ruthless then they used to.
A Lawful Evil knight can be someone who will serve their master as long as their intentions are pure, like slaughtering people to stop the spread of disease or killing all life to end all suffering, but if they commit murder simply because they enjoy peoples suffering, then the knight would backstab their master.
Find a Dungeon #19 and look at The House of Cards for a cool dungeon using the cards of the DoMT.
What's the dated and offensive term? Since it was censored, my brain needs to know what it is. I can't find anything and I can't think of one that fits that starts with M.
Ah, found it. Old term used for people with down syndrome. A bit of a barbaric term.
"I draw 2 cards. First card is Talons, and all your possessions become dust and disappear, including the deck. An hour later the donjon card is drawn and the character disappears without warning." The idea of the deck continuing to draw after it disappears is hilarious to me.
Oh man that's too good! xD
Wait, the deck can dissapear like that?
It's magic. You announce how many are drawn, and that is a magical obligation that forces you to "draw" that many cards (take that many effects). Other cards can cancel it or add to it. It's more odd to me that you can't stop drawing.
the deck of many things is awful and shouldn't be included in modern games, in a meaningless dungeon crawl with expendable characters the deck is irrelevant
@@XerrolAvengerII *-999 social credit* sorry but ur opinion is irrevelant
In the old version of the game, finding treasure gave you xp. That's why some of those cards give you xp when they gave you treasure and the 5e version doesn't.
Yeah I guess I forgot to clarify that. Thanks!
Yep spot on. I still remember my first draw as a noob back in middle school, gained INT for my MU 1st draw, and my 2 hireling ftr guards turned on me on the 2nd pull. That was a shocker and kept me from getting TOO deep into the Deck! Good times
@@crunchbar7995 Nah, milestones is better than tracking xp.
@Crunch Bar that’s a bit harsh
@Crunch Bar "He's out of line... But he's right!"
In my very first campaign as a dungeon master, I was playing around with a lot of mechanics so that I'd be prepared if I ever had to deal with it again. I gave my players the Deck of Many Things at level 4. One of my players instantly drew the card that gives you a Fighter who believes it is his destiny to serve you. TL;DR version, he discovered he wasn't real and was created by magic and ended up becoming the BBEG of the campaign. It was AWESOME!
Wow what happened for him to turn on the party and how did he gain power and a whole faction to do his evil bidding?
So wasn't he right about his destiny then? Why would that cause him to turn evil?
@@pinkliongaming8769 He wasn't evil. He was angry. You act like villains can't be layered.
I love that! haha
Wow, that's a crazy villain arc!
I've been playing since 1977, so I've seen the DoMT in every edition. Never had it break a campaign. But, have had incredible adventures because of it. My advice for DMs is to know the cards, and prepare for their consequences, before introducing it into the world. Also, make sure it is always in the possession of a NPC who appears once or rarely. That way, the party doesn't just decide to draw cards on a whim. 🤠👍
Very smart advice!
I have been playing since 1981 and have also seen it in every edition. It’s risk/reward structure do not fit well into a 5e play style and much like Global Thermal Nuclear War, the only way to win is not to play.
I find this especially true with less experienced DMs.
Yes, knowing the cards is super important or it can really throw off any balancing or directing you’ve done.
Balancing. Who even does that? You’d need to know the characters and player styles super well to even start trying to balance combat.
The best advice I can give is to never ever allow this to be rolled randomly. If you want this in your campaign, make it the focal point of the campaign.
Yeah I used it in my campaign. I planned for it and it ended up working great. Also I limited the characters to a single card each.
This does encapsulate a lot of why players fear it. I think DMs fear it more due to their belief that the players might get upset if they don't get lucky or have drastic random consequences for their fun.
Yep it's kind of a minefield haha
I think people get too attached to characters. So when something legitimately threatens the character that isn't the BBEG people sometimes get pissy. Its an adventurer sometimes you die. i do think if your DM is killing the party often, thats an issue.
@@MasterGhostf I'm on a two-year win streak of having my characters survive all their campaigns and one-shots. I want to keep it that way.
@Rogue Barbarian is it really a win streak though. I want to know my character can make a bad choice, roll unlucky, stand and fight and may not live to see the morrow. Or even sacrifice himself for an innocent he just met without the table trying to stop it.
@@MasterGhostf I mean, yeah. I get attached and see my characters and their party members as my babies. I love them.
What I always tell people is to make their own decks that suit the campaign they are running. Customizability in all senses for the perfect wacky, random, helpful, hurtful, all around fun magic item.
Great take! :)
I've been working on something like this, because I went down a rabbit hole and made a custom Tarot for my world with relevant symbolism, and using that as a DoMT seemed like a reasonable followup project...
So many complaints about D&D items and mechanics can be solved by being more creative
The idea to change the XP based cards into skill based cards is a really nice idea.
Yup
Thanks!
13:54 Killing the devil after it comes to you is easier than finding it, yes. However, devils don't permanently die unless killed in the Nine Hells, so you will have to look for it if you want to get rid of it permanently.
Good point!
Dimensional Anchor.
I think the idea is, if you kill the devil, that ends the magic. It may return to life in the Nine Hells, but the magical enmity is broken. At least that's how I interpret it.
@@michaelcohen8259 I think that's a fair interpretation. I suppose it's up to the DM.
My favorite use of the FATES card was when I played as a teenager. We were using ADnD rules (and I'm not sure if this was the actual rules or if I had read it wrong at the time). One of my players used the FATES card to undo a deathblow on an enemy that another PC had landed.... Just so their character could be the one to land the deathblow and get the exp for the kill! 🤣
Haha that might be the simplest use of the Deck of Many Things that I've ever heard!
That’s awesome, well earned Xp!
I remember reading that one guy's group had a homebrew version with extra cards, which include:
Scales: Your body, over the course of 1d10 + 1 days, will slowly and painfully transform into a dragon, determined by the dm to be either metallic or chromatic, you will experience intruding thoughts that come with the dragon in question, i.e being more prone to deceptive tactics if turning into a green dragon.
The Magician: Gain the alliance of a 4th level wizard, who believes you are the key to solving a mystery that they have been trying to solve.
The Dagger: A PC or ally will suddenly gain a great hatred of you, and will seek your demise. If a PC is affected, they are not to reveal as such until the right time, where such a revelation will hurt their target the most.
The Mimic: The next object you interact with, i.e doors or chests, will become a mimic, it will revert to its original state once it is slain. This card will act like another card, DMs choice, until it's effect takes place, then it will reveal itself as the Mimic card.
The Outsider: You gain the attention of a god, either good or bad, determined by the dm, who seeks to interact with you to fulfill their own goals.
I gave my PCs the deck in our last campaign, they drew 9!!! cards in a single session, and completely bamboozled the campaign in the best ways, but it didn't end the campaign.
I would have no reservation now, with the experience I have, throwing the deck at a party of any level, but I would *not* recommend it to a newer DM or someone who doesn't feel comfortable with extreme improv.
Haha oh man, yeah if a campaign can survive half the deck basically spilling out, it can survive anything.
The thing to remember with the deck is a DCC canard: *anything* is *possible* if the players want it enough. Donjon’d and unhappy with that? Welp... recovering that character is now your next set of adventures.
My party drew 10 in a flurry of trying to fix after the Half-Orc Barbarian became a Kobold (I edited some of the cards). I definitely would use the deck again, but player knowledge of it is such a double-edged sword.
@@russellee5216 That's why I think it's good to always customize the cards in the deck. The players might correctly guess the item, but if the cards are always different, the surprise and chaos of the item remains.
They drew the factorial of the factorial of the factorial of 9? Just say the number, I dont wanna do maths
The deck can be an amazing storytelling tool! In my last campaign, I played a Goliath Artificer named Kallus, who was inspired by Hiccup from How to Train Your Dragon. A runt of the litter who yearns to become a master of shapeshifting due to his own body insecurity. Party found a modified Deck of Many Things, and me being clueless and impulsive I drew one immediately. I rolled a nat 1, and drew the dreaded Void card. DM described me falling into a coma, and as my party dragged me back to a tavern and tried to make a plan to find a cleric to figure out how to heal me. DM described me slowly shrinking, growing strange hair, and sprouting ears and a tail. Apparently DM set the Void card to essentially randomly change your race, and I ended up as a Tabaxi. It was very ironic that my goal to master shapeshifting aligned so well with the card outcome!
I used a homebrew twist that the card takes effect when you look at it. This allows me to spread single cards out as loot that a “tarot” themed warlock faction can be found with and the players can kind of build their own deck card by card.
That's a fun twist. Leaning into the tarot theme is a great idea
How does that work, exactly? The first person to find the card activates it? Wouldn't that make individual cards super powerful since you can repeatedly use them since it's the only option and if the card is bad and you stumble upon it does it automatically screw you? The Deck of Many Things working is based on it being a deck, so I'm interested to know if you have accounted for this.
@@backonlazer791 it's something I made up for our campaign so it can work however you like haha. I wanted to have the cards be kind of like a consumable item, no matter how you found it once you reveal it you activate it (unless it's already activated, then it's just a card, but detect magic would tell you if it was active or not)
The way I have it working in my game is that the triumvirate of hags has the deck of many things. When they need a particularly important task accomplished by one of their hunters they allow the hunter to take a card as payment. This of course may be good or bad (the hags care not which) and activates once the owner "turns it over" or looks at what card it is. This can be done as soon as the card is drawn, or in the case of a bounty hunter NPC kept a mystery until an opportune moment (this guy was planning on saving the card he got until he was on deaths door to use as a hail mary, or possibly never looking at it...)
Once the card is looked at and the power activates though, it becomes nothing more than a mundane card.
One of the PCs stole the card from this dude and looked at it, promptly revealing the RUIN card haha. So it goes
@@bryansmith844 Hmm, interesting take. So if they're consumable will they reappear in the world after being used? Can there there be multiple copies of the same card?
@@backonlazer791 I don’t think I would have multiples floating around because I still like the idea that this is a super rare/powerful/weird item and after the magic effect is consumed, maybe it has to be shuffled back into the deck to become active again
Because of how saves in 1e worked, the Medusa was effectively "Take a penalty to all constitution based saves." As petrification was the save used to oppose spells such as polymorph as well.
Ahhh that certainly changes things!
im not 100% sure, but i think "petrification" saves in older editions was towards everything that could affect your movement, slow, frighten, actual petrification, etc
Ahh, I'm not sure either. I took it at face value
@@BobWorldBuilder In older editions the saves were not tied to Ability Scores, but rather a class-dependent set of 6 saves with somewhat confusingly specific names.
The one time I encountered one in a campaign, we didn't realize you decide from the get go, how many you draw, and then it disappears. We actually had it not disappear at all.
But it was fun, because it gave the party a chance to see everyone else get cool stuff (we had incredible luck), which pressured everyone into taking a gamble. My character drew the knight card or whatever it's called, and said knight was now in my service. My paladin, not seeing anything bad happen from the deck and not knowing it's a possibility handed the knight the deck and invited him to draw a card.
The knight drew the card that traps your soul in pandemonium. So from the party's perspective, he just poofed out of nowhere, and then immediately died.
That part about the knight is awesome! xD
I think it'd be fun to play a character who was a fighter created by the Knight card, and their master died so they're searching for a new purpose, and they have no memory before the moment that player drew the card.
It's exactly what I'm playing right now. We were at a climax of the campaign (we were all level 15), the DoMT was a big part of that, my character drew the knight card and made him draw more cards. The knight leveled up to level 9 because of the Sun (he also has a strength of 24 now because he drew 2 Star cards), and now I'm playing such character on a quest to retrieve the soul of another PC who drew the Void while my main character is recovering from some long term injuries. Fun times.
PS: we immediatly knew where the soul of our friend went thanks to another PC that drew the Vizier card. It's been pretty wild.
Dude I'm doing that right now except my character has self worth/abandonment issues due to the fact that the original cardholder was such a high level they didn't want them. They straight up told my character to sit on a park bench for a bit and then left. It's been pretty fun and interesting to RP as this kind of character.
Thanks for all you do Bob
You’re a real asset to the D&D community.
Much love.
Thank you very much! :)
The Gem card is more powerful in 5e than it might seem on the surface to you.
Yes, it's fifty gems worth 1,000 gp each, but if the player can choose... diamonds, for example, are worth their weight in, well, diamonds, for their use in resurrection spells and the like, and there are other gems that are needed as material components. And if you have spellcasters with you, those gems can be significantly more useful than mere coin.
Also, I just got the idea for a campaign - the party must go out and find the physical manifestations of all 22 cards, to gather the complete Deck of Many Things and keep the stray cards from causing chaos and confusion in the world...
Great point about the diamonds!
I introduced an item called the Deck of Fate into my homebrew 5e campaign. It was introduced as a plot device, most of the cards would introduce a new quest, or give the players a story point to follow, so it basically generated interest, hoping they'd use it when they were bored.
The PCs learned little about it, just putting it away and never using it. I think that they were scared simply because it was a "deck", even though it had no relation to the Deck of Many Things.
Awww - that sounds awesome! Sorry your players didn’t take it up! What were some of the cards?
That's when you have it start flipping cards off the top of itself on its own.
That sounds fun! Definitely worth trying to bring back into your game--just assuring your players that it's not nearly as risky for them as *that other deck*
@@Stray7 Jumanji style
We used the deck. It was crazy, how lucky the orc who drew them. Got mostly good cards. He got the level 4 knight. This Knight named Bradford killed many of strong monsters. He became a legend after stopping the BBEG.
Awesome!
@@BobWorldBuilder Yeah it was awesome. He should have died like 10 times but luck prevailed
Give your players a set of cards "with many things on it", and instead of giving them the deck of many things, give them the deck of illusion. Best delivered on the first of April. :D
Haha very nice
I think sumoning extra deaths is actually a good idea.
The reason is that it makes it harder and easier, or easier with the right strategy and harder for exp, so you get more.
In other words, you can all sumon your deaths far away, then run towards the dude and all destroy his death, then there are four of you and one three deths, or five and four, and you can do stuff like charge the middle, then fall back, while manuevering your ranged or others to the side so that if it falls back, it can be hit, then three are two, and you can have it so that the engagers are having one block the other, not to mention that you can kite them around and have a ranger shoot. Even come right at the ranger, and duck or dodge.
So um
That's not all.
It's more simple too.
Having an aoe fire on three of them after you deal with the one focused on the aoe guy, you can have him hit the three maximum times.
Now, you all could get more xp if the monsters action ecconomy you. That is, four spawning four minis is 16 on one dude, and then you have three guys. So, it should help.
Action economy is the name of the game haha
Great review of the Deck of Many Things. I am an old school AD&D DM, and have continued to DM a 1/2nd edition of AD&D. It is at heart, 1st edition while grabbing interesting elements of 2nd and Unearthed Arcana. To put things in perspective for old style D&D.
1. We played in groups, and we played for long stretches of time. We played many different sessions across many different characters. Because AD&D was fixed and abilities were tied to race and class, you wanted to experience more and thus you had to have multiple characters.
2. The Deck was highly feared and loved by everyone. Yes, in our games, you could lose the character, but this was not as a big deal when you only have a few months of experience with the character. It was almost never used by anyone who highly valued their character. No one touched the deck at level 9 plus. But, your henchmen might…
3. In my games, it is a level 4-7 item. Enough to make big strides for your character, but not enough time to get serious attached to it.
4. Everyone knew the effects of the deck, so there were zero surprises. People knew exactly what they were doing.
5. I imagine it is different for each group, but in our case, the DM would also allow you to roll up a new character and place it a couple levels behind the rest of the party. You might even get your stuff back depending on the party, but, most of the time the party would take all your valuables. \
6. Since the modules were normally designed for 4-6 players, if you had a small group (2-3 people), we always had the characters play 2 players.
7. There were rules for henchmen, they do not count as a full character and certainly had no vote in party activities. They were passive and largely just around to fight.
8. In a 15th level party of 6 players, you might have 1-4 henchmen for EACH player. We had battles in the abys that lasted for 2 months… ok, that room is done. Next….
Really interesting to see how new games are played. Very different from my style and the sessions I still occasionally play. Thank you!
campaign ending? perhaps not.
but the benefits are mid
and the downsides can easily end any enjoyment a player may have in their character
Yep, they can be fun and engaging, but only in certain types of campaigns with certain groups. It requires buy-in from everyone at the table. I imagine a lot of people's reservations have to do with how they have no agency in deciding whether or not another player does something that could completely derail/alter a campaign.
Exactly
A truly wonderous magic item that I ran into for the first time back in middle school. I'll never forget my character's first encounter with a mysterious gypsy fortune teller!
Great tips! The deck sounds scary because it brings so much chaos. BUT, remember DMs: it's up to you when you give this out. And you can review the cards beforehand to brainstorm ideas how to work the card results into your campaign. When I've used it, I only let players draw cards at the ends of sessions, to give me time to think!
Listening in, but are games now very fixed? In my games, old school based, the DM balanced out the effects to allow the game to be playable. Someone dead, roll a up a new character, give him a few extra levels, off to the races again.
Great stuff as always, Bob. It’s wonderful to see your channel flourishing.
I think the deck probably suits the more ‘gonzo’ style of play in which it originated, with everyone happy for the campaign to be led by wacky twists of fate.
In more story-led campaigns it could be a step too far for some. But I say embrace the Chaos!
Always look forward to your videos. Nice one! 🤓
Thanks very much! Yeah I think it's all a matter of taste--like just about everything in D&D haha
... but, the GM sets the scene & the players write the story; no?
Anything breaking a campaign is really down to the flexibility of the people playing. New situations popping up can definitely make things difficult for the DM but with endless options for creative solutions all the cards do is make new situations for the party to experience. Losing all your property can throw a situation on its head, can make a party that was rich and powerful have to work to build things up again. Fighting death can be incredibly character defining for someone who survives that.
Bingo!
Losing all magic items was ruinous in older editions. There was a 3.5 Living Greyhawk mod that caused characters to be enslaved and lose ALMOST everything. So many characters ended up ruined that they had to change the poverty rules to allow characters a chance in hell of recovering from the losses... and you'd still end up behind your level curve due to the loss.
A LOT of the cards disrupt the current adventure/flow, or kill a character/remove RP opportunities or add complexity, so it's more brutal than it seems from this "BUT MUH FIFTH EDITION AND MILESTONES AND TOO MUCH MONEYS!" video makes it out to be.
@@hariman7727 I'm guessing you had a difficult experience with this in the past, which is why it seems to personal. I'm sorry you had to go through that.
However, a good DM will give characters ways to work themselves back up. A good party will support them in that and a good player will use this as a formative arc for their character. Yes, no doubt they'll be frustrated at first - that's understandable. Adverse situations develop a character a lot more than the easy ones though - the deck gives some options for that. If you aren't willing to take those risks then perhaps don't draw from the deck.
The impression of the video is wildly inaccurate, Bob compares 5e because it's the most common version. It's also a very childish way to put a grievance across, are you sure you're old enough to have played 3.5e?
@@davidjennings2179 you know you whipsaw between kindly compassionate and utterly rude backhanded insults, you do realize that?
In the living grayhawk campaign, which was dungeons & dragons 3.5, there was a mod called "Barbarous Coast", if I remember correctly, which had a final battle where the party was teleported into a citywide invasion to attempt to stop at least part of the invasion.
If you lost that battle, you were enslaved and you lost everything, and you were given 200 gold to start the rest of your adventuring career over.
Because of the specific ruling at the time of that mod's release, and because living grayhawk had to follow those specific rpga rules because it was official campaign mods that were played nationally, for the first couple months at minimum players could not claim having utter poverty because they had a couple hundred gold and were not allowed to drop that gold to meet the poverty requirements.
So many characters became unplayable because a fighter at the levels for that mod would lose all of their equipment, and wizards would lose their spellbook, among other things.
It is about the fourth worst written mod in the entirety of living greyhawk that I played, and the only reason I have the ability to say fourth worst written is because I played in the sheldomar valley/Keoland, which were notorious because one of the mod writers in the area literally could not read the rule book to make a decent encounter.
So there was no room for the DMs to adapt to that or allow leeway so the character could be recoverable.
As for the deck of many things, I don't like it because I find the chaos of it off-putting.
I don't want to lose a character because of a magic item that is designed to tempt players on a meta scale, that also affects the player Dynamics and DM so directly.
Yeah, other people can have fun with it, but I hope I never see it again.
Also you don't realize how much of a jerk you're being, because I'm 40, and the only reason I'm being nasty here is UA-cam is where I tend to let my brakes off a little.
So please think about insulting a person and comments questioning someone's age, because they only make you appear...
Well, read your comment into a mirror and ask how you'd feel if someone slaps you in the face with an insult, then tell me what word you'd use.
Tl:dr: yes, I've had a set of bad experiences with deck of many things and other random bullshit that really hurt characters of mine.
Also, read your comment into a mirror to yourself and consider how you sound, because your most recent comment was pretty rude.
@@hariman7727 Compassion doesn't mean we don't call people out when they're out of order. Yes you've clearly had a difficult experience and I'm sorry you had to go through that. However, it doesn't give you a free pass not to be called out when you lash out at others. You accept that you're being nasty on UA-cam, perhaps take your own advice and consider how your comment would affect Bob - he puts effort into these videos, they're his livelihood.
Backstory idea: you are the fighter made by the deck. After drawing your card, your old master drew another card and disappeared. Your bond is to find them
That’s amazing! I’m a permaDM, but this is a cool NPC idea as well.
The item is interesting, it just shows its age from all the changes D&D has gone through as a hobby over the years.
The character burn rate is a major thing. Players would most likely have to roll up new PCs all the time. And if that's the case, there's no sense in putting *too* much effort into a backstory for each one of them beyond the basics.
Conversely, it's common now for players to write extensive and detailed backstories for their character.
If you're told that your lawful good fighter is suddenly going to have to switch to behave in a chaotic evil manner, that probably wouldn't matter too much if you just rolled her up and slapped on a generic backstory. If you devoted a lot of energy to why the character is the kind of person they are, being told "just be evil now" on account of a random result from a magic item feels a lot different.
We were a group of 3 players, all level 2, alongside the DM. We came to getting a reward from a minor deity for services rendered. The DM gave us a choice that we needed to make as a party; either everyone draws a card each from the deck or we each gain an uncommon Magic item of our choice. I'm not too fond of gambling, so voted for the item, the other two voted for the deck - so deck it was.
The first player drew Ruin, so lost some minor amount of gold and their possessions - they were quite irritated, but accepted it begrudgingly. I drew the Sun, instantly getting me up to level 9 as a Wizard and the DM gave me a Ring of Spell Storing - yup, I was both horrified and bemused, since you know, I'm already the Wizard in this party, let alone 7 levels higher with a very powerful item. The last player drew the Fates and instantly declared what one event was erased from existence - the deck appearing.
DM was nice and decided that since that would mean there would have been only one option we get our magic items instead. Not sure how I feel about the deck, but one thing was for sure; Vindication was MINE!
I once built a character who wanted to find the Deck to draw the Moon and use a wish solve a mystery of his lineage. The DM was nice enough to run with it, so we had the Deck as a McGuffin for our campaign.
I like this. Gives a sense of nobility and purpose, like the first and third Indiana Jones movie. Yes you are happy go lucky but you are a good guy.
I thought this was a strange Homebrew thing someone made. Turns out this Item was here the whole time.
Everytime I have run into the deck, its needed to be retconned that we didn't find it
Sorry for your loss
In the previous campaign I ran, I had given the party a deck. A while later I had an encounter (unrelated to the deck) where I had a character (who unannounced to the party was actually a goddess in disguise) do an interaction with the party and one member of the party did something completely unexpected, they asked this goddess (in disguise as an old man) if they wanted to draw a card from the deck. This was crazy but I decided to go with it, as luck would have it, the card that the goddess drew was the fate card. This immediately got my brain spinning and I let the use of the card stew for a while before using it. Then at a predetermined time, I had fate rewrite itself as the goddess used the card to rewrite a point in history decades before, resulting in a few things to change in the party, most notably one of the characters changed classes and partially changed species as I turned one of the characters into a Divine Soul Sorcerer (a demigod). It led to a pretty wild time for the party and completely took everyone (except that player which I did check with in advance) completely off guard.
Story time here: I've been DM'ing for over two years now a campaign that initially started off as a mixture of Lost Mine of Phandelver and Dragon of Icespire Peak that eventually turns into a condensed version of Tyranny of Dragons. In between my players wanted to run for the position of mayor of Phandalin and dive into one of the dungeons of the Undermountain of Waterdeep when I gave them a Deck of many things. The main plan was to try to stop the arising thread of Dragon Cultists to rise Tiamat from Avernus... however one of my players decided to draw four cards from the Deck... of course the first one was... The Void. At that point, the only point in the multiverse that would make story-wise was to send the soul to Avernus (also added bonus that the player once tried to steal an amulet that used to belong to Asmodeus, so this also made sense for the character to some degree). At that point the campaign shifted from a Tyranny of Dragons campaign to Baldur's Gate - Descend into Avernus. It took probably around 8-9 months of playsessions for my players to get Elturel back to the original place and the players soul back into the original character... However, they brought Tiamat with them... and now we're back to the original intended campaign but immensely higher stakes than before...
man...
I have been playing D&D since 1978 or so
I remember all the starting and what not
I am a generational player? Damn... I feel old now
I've been playing since AD&D and used the deck in most of my campaigns. I love it and so have most of my players
Glad to hear it!
I gave it to my players at the e d of a campaign. Player drew one, change his alignment to evil. Pulled another, created a duplicate of himself with opposite alignment (creating an original good version). Evil version pulled another card, wiped his memory, pulled another card (not knowing what it was) bamfed himself elsewhere, pulled another card and turned his soul into a crystal in a location unknown. All this leaving the party exactly as they were immediately before finding the deck
Okay that's hilarious.
i've literally seen this deck end a campaign, it was the 50k exp one, it rocketed one character into a whole different power sphere then everyone else.
having henchmen and stuff though can be done right, the key i feel is just to make sure every player gets one. They also let you split the action cause the main party can do stuff and send off their b team to deal with other things in world at the same time. One campaign we started a fief and shipping port, our sidekicks ended up running our second ship.
You bring up a good point that just applying the affect to the whole party might help for some cards--as long as everyone agreed to use the deck I guess
You’re right. These are almost all useable! I felt the Death fight should have a reward and… a scythe that never misses or something like that.
That would be a great reward!
Agreed, but I would then scale the death to be equal to players.
Lol, DoMT is great, I had my players play gin rummy with the DoMT. All the cards are great and DM’s should feel free to ADD more cards.
Now that's a bold move! haha
Back in the day, chaotic and malicious magic from the dm was still super common. Player vs dm was very common. You were often playing him, not the adventure. There was often a “winner” of dNd at those tabletops.
I’m not totally against that, but you gotta be open to losing like you’re playing a game if sorry.
Yep the more I read of Gygax's work, the more it seems like he would have been a pretty harsh DM lol
If you had a DM that was going against you then that was just a bad DM. Same thing can happen today in 5e. Edition does not makes a difference.
The difference was the players were not superheroes at lower levels. They were not even superheroes at higher levels. The game was never about creating superheroes, it was about surviving. You had to learn to run when were wandering through the forest and stumbled on the ancient green dragon at level 3.
The other important thing you learned was avoiding the fights all together if you could. Because it was more about exploring the world and finding the weird things in it than fighting. It was about finding the loot, because that was so valuable, that was how you leveled up. Not killing monsters.
That is my big issue with milestone xp. There is no insistence to adventure. Everyone just plods along with the story. Every few sessions the GM hands out levels and even if your character missed a session you get a level. Because everyone has to be equal.
@@burgsrus I agree completely on the shift in mentality. I myself am running a 3.5e campaign in a custom setting with a metric buttload of homebrew. The characters defeated a werewolf lord, 4 wargs, and a random owlbear drawn by the noise, at level 3 (6 player party) so yeah, the challenging encounters they were supposed to ‘run from’ turned into ‘one level-up per session’
My DM loves giving us separate exp and splitting our levels it make us compete against each other for the power boost and is hilarious
With the right group, it sounds like fun! :)
The Deck is the only real world cursed magical item in existence. It's a real world cursed item as It plays on the greed of the player (not the character) drawing the cards. Even with the knowledge that it can cause ruin, it still pulls a real life persons innate greed and desires. It is effecting a real person in the real world, not necessarily a character in the game. So it is more real then any other part of dnd.
I remember that in one campaign I found a deck of many things. Since there is no effect if you don't announce the number of cards you are drawing, we just used it as a deck of regular playing cards. One time I accidentally said that I am drawing one card from the deck so I had to take a card that would have the magical effect. I got Moon, and I immediately use the Wish it gave me to remove the deck's magic.
I dont fear it because the one time it was brought in a campaign our dragonborn barbarian kept pulling out the good cards. We got a loyal companion, a bunch of treasure and wishes
Those are VERY lucky pulls!
@@BobWorldBuilder extremely!
I fear the balance card the most. Even though alignment isn't really used that much in 5e, I still use it as a guide for role playing, and this card will completely destroy my characters.
My thoughts exactly. I was under the impression that alignment was used primarily for roleplay in 5e, like an easy box to generalize your character motivations. Changing alignment changes the whole character! They'd be better of having died so you could at least make a new character that fits the way you want to play.
@@boksman Yeah, exactly.
Love this history of the deck!! Great insights as always bob!
You are so awesome at interacting with your community! If you have time will you share with us...
What is your favourite card to draw?
What is your favourite card to see another player draw?
Glad you enjoyed this video. It was fun to compare the past and present versions of this item, and I have a similar video coming up for one of the core classes! I'm the worst at picking favorites, but the first that comes to mind for either case would have to be Moon. Those wishes could be chaotic, but that's what I think the deck is for :)
@@BobWorldBuilder Love to see Moon in effect as well! My Favourite is when someone only wants to draw one card but picks the idiot! So Harsh and tense! And it's happened to me before It's so funny.
Looking forward to the class breakdown history lesson too!
Your content is always improving and I love watching the channel grow!
In a campaign I played in university, the DM introduced a mid-level quest where the reward was one draw from a Deck of Many Things that had been modified to remove perma-debuffs and give every card at least one benefit. I think that the flame card did a bunch of fire damage, but then the PC got fire resistance. Everyone liked how it had a lot of randomness without, for example, giving one PC a level boost while another lost all their magic items. (Note: this was Pathfinder, AKA D&D 3.75 so some of the cards, like Talons, had more bite.) Now, one of the players in that campaign was new to the game and didn't realize that the Deck had been modified. Shortly after, he ran a campaign and put the Deck in front of our level 3 characters. We were a bit hesitant, but eventually decided to each take one card... I pulled the Skull. Which in that system meant that I had to fight a CR 13 grim reaper. The DM looked at me and said "how about we swap that for a different card?"
I'm running a deck of many things in my campaign, but I'm using the book of many things, in a section about single effects for cards. It's kinda interesting so far, each card can be used once per day, for example
knight if the player throws it the card starts folding itself but getting bigger before it becomes a deck defender lasting for 1 minute following the orders of the player who summoned it.
Sage, cast contact other plane contacting a mysterious figure that the players can question once per day.
Comet. As an action, you can hold this card aloft and call down a fiery meteor to a point you can see within 120 feet of yourself. Each creature within a 20-foot-radius sphere centered on that point must make a DC 17 Dexterity saving throw. On a failed save, a creature takes 6d6 bludgeoning damage and 6d6 fire damage, or half as much damage on a successful save.
In my experience, the 'fear' from the Deck of Many Things was the whole risk-reward aspect of the deck itself and the consequences that came from trying your luck. Nothing more, nothing less. In no instance that I can think of has a group resisted drawing from the Deck when offered the chance (one or two characters may not try their luck, but someone drew at least one card. Always.)
I don't think people are complaining that this shouldn't be put in everyone's campaign, I think they are usually targeted towards people who actually craft their own campaign/world. If you spend days or months crafting a home-brewed world where factions, bloodlines, and events color and pepper your world; then having a magical item that can randomly cause something to shift CAN ruin a story or consistent pacing/writing.
I don't think this item is bad, it's fun watching players deal with the random chaos of gambling. Watching my crafted storyline of 3 years with players participation fall apart due to a card flipping an NPC to evil when they had literally no reason to be, that's a lot less rewarding. As I saw someone write down below if you're going to play "russian roulette", make sure you and everyone your playing with is ok with taking that chance, don't just pick it because you think it would be fun, or you'll find yourself holding people hostage.
I think the Fates card works best with a time limit.
Prevent what's about to happen? Sure! Undo what just happened? Absolutely! Alter an event that took place weeks ago? Prevent something years in the future? No can do; fate only remains pliable for a moment.
Great point!
My Pathfinder group encountered the Harrow Deck of Many Things, which is a bit different. It had some pretty interesting results, like turning the group's wizard into a werebear, but the funniest thing was when a card was drawn that raised one of their past enemies from the dead and, soon after, a card was drawn that turned a hostile NPC into a friendly one. So with this combo they actually gained an ally! The NPC couldn't help much because the campaign was in its final legs and they had looted his spellbook so he couldn't magic himself to their aid, but I think he eventually became a royal advisor when the werebear became a king.
I think the Deck of Many Things have suffered a kind of parrot effect of veteran players talking about their experiences and newer players taking their word for it, passing it along with exaggerated effects.
More people should use the deck, it won't end their PC at all. 😈
I agree that it was/is more risky in old school games, and those stories were passed down, probably with embellishment too. Then today people are so afraid to use it that they don't know how it won't necessarily cause the major harm they've been "warned" about. I do think it can end a PC though!
I have a home brew “Deck of All Too Many Things” that uses a full deck. I love giving it to my players
I've used the deck twice in different games. Both were a lot of fun and I will use them again. As long as you understand whats in the deck you can prep for it and mix it into your world just fine.
Bingo!
@@BobWorldBuilder really enjoy your content. Thank you for all the hard work that goes into it.
I like the video for the most part. I know it's likely a play style thing but my groups aren't usually grossly wealthy by lvl 5. That's comes a it later.
I also do not understand the issue with Knight. The way I see it, this is a follower/henchman with character levels that the DM runs and follows the PCs lead.
Yeah the wealth thing can vary a lot based on setting. For the knight card "You control this character." definitely refers to the player who pulled the card. It is essentially a henchman/sidekick, but if the party is only level 1-5, this knight is just a very powerful addition to the PC who gained it. Past those levels, it becomes less significant
@@BobWorldBuilder Fair points. I hadn't considered the lower level impact, based on my one time use it was higher level so I was skewed in my thinking.
Also fair, I'd grant control in combat because you are right. I'd talk it over with the player to see what they wanted, but I'd be inclined to run them as an NPC outside of combat that follows the PC to the ends of earth. Or planes.
I ran a short (10 ish sessions) campaign that was partially built around a desire to run a deck of many things and it was wild. The party started at level 5 but so many Sun cards were drawn that by the end of it everyone was at least level 11 with two of them being level 16. The Skull is fine because if you're at the start of your adventuring day, the Avatar of Death is easy to defeat so it's only a punishment if you draw from the deck at low HP. The Knight cards are fun, and I ruled that drawing those cards again just leveled your existing Knight up 4 times and the players really loved their new NPCs. Definitely the most devastating combo is Vizier + Wish because it allows a player to find the optimal wording for their wish. This was used twice, once to make the Vampire Paladin lose his Paladin powers by making his Demon Prince master lose all her contracts and worshippers to the PC Warlock's Patron. The second time allowed them to stop the ritual that was going to summon said demon prince so they only had to fight a Nightwalker and a bunch of Vampire Spawn instead. They destroyed that combat encounter by a landslide.
If I was to run a deck again I think I would change 3 things:
1. I dont think you're supposed to be able to declare draws from the deck after you've done it before. The deck should be a finite resource rather than a potentially endless supply of xp, magic items, and Wishes.
2. I love the original concept behind the Void where you still got to pilot your character but their soul was elsewhere. I think that makes for a potentially really cool arc if you have the right DM and Party.
3. The two cards I would remove are the Donjon and the Sun. The former is too similar to the Void without the potential fun of the soulless PC arc, meanwhile the later is just too much of a power spike. 1 or 2 levels of difference between the players is fine but leveling up 5 levels and getting a magic item everytime you draw that card is way too much. Having seen the deck drawn from about 30 times in that one campaign alone, I can firmly say the Sun card is stronger than 1d3 Wishes.
I had it (sorta) as a hidden treasure belonging to the BBEG. It was a d20. They knew it was radiating magic and no idea what it did. The wizard rolled the first one and got zapped into another universe. Then the die teleported to another dungeon.
Sounds about right lol
One of my players jokingly asked me for a Deck of Many Things and until now, neither of uf really considered it. You definitely changed my mind on this one.
Remember that no matter how "clever" you word your wish, according to the Players Handbook, the DM always has the option to say that the spell simply fails. So as DM you actually have very good control over wether a wish could be derailing your campaign.
I've been a part of three games that included the Deck of Many Things. None of them were ruined in any way.
Glad to hear it! :)
16:57 The only characters it would affect greatly are usually lords and/or kings-and you don’t lose lord/kinship, the way it would happen is that your lands/fiefdom is seized.
Did something happen to the audio? It kinda sounds like a recording through a phone from a year or 5 ago
You have excellent ears lol, I recorded this audio on an updated version of the same program I always use, and it seems to have some new automatic settings I didn't know about. Basically it had a super intense background noise cancelation that overcorrected in a couple spots. Overall I thought it still sounded okay, but it might also be that this was recorded in a different room than usual
my barbarian drew two cards and was granted a boost to his charisma and he also gained a keep.
Nice!
Back when I used to play D&D 2e I gave one of my players this chaotic item of my own creation in which I made. It was a coin of Good & Evil. When flipped depending on which side it landed on would give and outcome, either good or bad. I had to roll a d100 for the result on each chart (I think each chart had 100 possibilities, too).
Well, anyway, I got this idea from a coin I got in an EverQuest expansion box and physically handed it to the player, tell him anytime he flips it in real life his character flips it in the game if able to do so. One night he was feeling rather frisky and flipped it 16 times in a row without waiting for any of the results 🤣
I wonder if I still have the paperwork buried somewhere....?
My DM out the deck in our game. We found it by clearing out the shed of an old adventurer. There were warnings written in every language on the box saying “DO NOT DRAW FROM DECK”. My himbo half orc bard can’t read tho, all he saw was a deck of cards and he loves games. Thankfully, he drew the throne card.
The first time my brother played D&D he got a deck of many things at the end of the campaign and drew four cards: gem, moon, fates, and vizier. He traded the gems for armor (even though he was a warlock) and he only got one wish which he used to wish for a fortress to appear on some land my character bought. I don’t think he used the fates or vizier cards. Despite his surprisingly lucky draws the outcome was kinda mundane.
Great video, I have been avoiding giving my players the deck of many things, because of all of the negative things I’ve heard about it. Now I think it might just show up next session. I’m not worried about them defeating the BBEG with it. I already have another to rise up in its place,bwahahah.
And my players already have NPCS they run in combat, so if someone dies they have characters they can pick up and keep moving with.
I do highly recommend choosing a few cards and preparing potential results for them! But give it a shot! :)
@@BobWorldBuilder will do!
My experience with the Deck of Many Things (from a player perspective) is from AD&D module I6, the original Ravenloft. Down in the dungeons of Castle Ravenloft, you could find a deck. We did, and as this was pre-internet days, and when only the DM had read the DMG, none of us knew what it did. Of the 6 of us, 2 got soul trapped, one lost a level due to xp loss, I forget what the others got, but Strahd picked off the rest of the party, campaign over. DM wanted to run us through three other adventures, finishing off with us fighting Flame (the red dragon on the cover of The Dragon #1). He really didn't want to run again, and I didn't play too much until I moved to a different state.
This was a good angle on the Deck! Although the chatty DM in me thinks it is worth mentioning that Ability Scores actually carried more weight in AD&D than they do in 5th Edition. While there are derived scores (like your attack bonus) for the ability scores, there was also the Ability Check roll: to accomplish any task related to an ability that was not covered by some other rule (and a lot of those rolls come up), you roll under your ability score. So every 1 point increase in an Ability Score was a flat 5 percentile point increase in being able to succeed on an ability check. This became even more valuable in 2nd Edition, when nonweapon proficiencies were introduced.
Killer video!
Excellent points! I am definitely not well versed in the actual gameplay mechanics of these older editions!
Start off a level one module with players let them choose from the deck of many things might be interesting
Yeah the cards are certainly more devastating (or amazing) at level one!
The first I heard of the deck was on NADDPOD. It didn't break the campaign, it made it!
A level 4 fighter was summoned and was not expected to survive the episode, but became a fan favourite.
If I where to use this I would use xp progression
That would make it easier to implement for sure!
I've always wanted to declare the full number of cards and then not draw and wait an hour. The wording "the remaining number of cards fly from the deck on their own and take effect all at once" would be incredible to watch a DM try and work out.
I'm only part way through but I have to disagree with you on a point. I do believe that having members of the party be different levels is potentially game breaking, not because it is unfair for certain members of the party to be more powerful than others, but because it makes designing encounters that will be challenging but not deadly for all members of the party rather complicated. Granted, the CR system for designing encounters is famously flawed to begin with, and I would love a better method for designing balanced encounters, but especially with some classes a single level up can make some significant changes to the capabilities and overall power level of that character, especially with certain multi-class combos.
That's a graet point!
We had a lot of fun with a DoMT in the first campaign I ever played in 5e. The whole scenario, from the theft acquisition followed by 2 character deaths and a lot of perks for other characters to the inevitable loss of the deck, was fantastic fun, even for those who lost characters.
My best "Deck" story involves the 3.5 Castle Greyhawk module. We found the machine of Lum the Mad (DoMT reskinned as a machine with a ton of levers) a ways in, played with it a bit and came out ahead, then went back to town for some downtime before we ventured deeper. The Mage and Priest left me (rogue with tendency to get in trouble) alone with the big, dumb, impressionable fighter so they could build us a tower making us SWEAR not to go use the machine while they were gone. I convinced the fighter that while we promised not to use it ourselves we didn't say anything about finding rich folk to pay us to guide them there, and that's what we did. After a couple runs and a big pile of gold, well the nobles were getting awesome draws and this angered Zagyg so he sent his castle soaring up into the sky. Fighter and I just barely got out before it took off. On returning to town the responsible party members asked a question that was heard a lot in that campaign. "Pohl! What did you DO?"
was watching a campaign where the deck was introduced in the middle of the feywild. they made a random NPC draw from it instead of them. the NPC picked balance and left suddenly before reappearing a bit later as a villain that k!lled dozens at a carnival. in the middle of the fight, one of the PCs drew and got rogue, joked about the person being hostile being an NPC that was part of the party. the dm made this canon. he drew again (for whatever reason) and drew...donjon. he suddenly vanished and was disappeared into a magical pearl they had gotten earlier in the campaign and had to undergo a trial to see if he was still worthy to be "the chosen one" by the elders of the underwater kingdom (as this guy was a triton paladin). once the rest of the party found him, that npc that got rogue'd stabbed him in the middle of the night, got his hatred removed, then immediately healed him back to life. this started a plot that spiralled into the deck coming out AGAIN, the NPC trying to get rid of the curse, a couple of party members drawing and getting harmless XP based ones, and then the NPC drew the flames card and was promptly kidnapped by the devil a couple days later and is still MIA, setting up for a great plot thread to snag later on.
all in all, even though the scenes where they were drawing were TERRIFYING, ESPECIALLY after going through the 5 episode long donjon/faewild arc, but that just added to it. it made it a lot more fun to know that the DM wouldn't just let one of the characters or beloved NPCs straight up die. definitely didn't ruin this campaign!
EDIT: how could i forget! the guy playing the PC that got donjon'd played a silly little experiment blob named goobleck for a few sessions while he was doing the trials separate from the rest of the group! great stuff, really fun time :]
"one character losing a few points ruin your campaign?"
well, your, the dm, campaign may be not ruined, but any int using characters players character would be ruined, so i would say, it is ruined a character, which is more or less a tpk level disaster for most or my parties and i would consider it just as a tpk as a dm also.
I’ve never used or run into the deck of many things but I may throw it into my game just for fun
I think everyone should give it a shot--with thorough preparation though haha
Had an incident that went like this: Our party came together as generic adventurers. Our party's Paladin was of a special order to combat the undead, specifically to take down this Lich who kept coming back every century to lay waste to the lands. DoMT got introduced, and bucky pulled The Fates card. He has literally spent his whole life in service to destroy this lich... so yeah, he undid the Lich's birth. He'd been a Lich for 5,000 years, had destroyed multiple kingdoms and even empires in his time.
The DM had to halt the game there, because the sheer implications of it were staggering. He then cancelled the next week's game, stating that he was working on the campaign, and then finally, I get a DM from the DM asking for help (I'm the one who had taught him to run). Essentially, 5 millennia of world history went up in smoke in moments. The equivalence would be if someone someone made the Roman, Egyptian, and Persian empires just... not have happened at all.
We met up at IHOP, and worked on stuff. DM immediately nixed undoing the pull, since that would feel like a cheap cop out. The first problem was: How does the party still live? Cause yeah, that's a lot of change. We worked out that the Paladin's god essentially creates a temporal bubble to protect the party from the shift (he was, in fact, fulfilling his oath, and his choice wasn't based on selfishness, but in completing his duty). So that's the party still alive, at least.
Then, there's everything else. He had to essentially rewrite his campaign world, and yeah, the old campaign was dead, but then we had a whole new campaign dealing with the consequences of The Fates card.
Don't fear the cards. Embrace the randomness!
Woo!
I only embrace randomness in roguelikes.
Idea to create an Enemy. At some point during the adventure, an important item a player owns suddenly becomes the item in which a Soul is contained, as another NPC Adventurer drew the last card. Their party is now hunting the party down
In addition, I have written my own, full modules with alternate rules, creatures (or creature statistics and abilities), races (or altered statistics and abilities), and items, such as a completely different set(s) of the Deck of Many Things... like one deck based on the various beneficial tomes and their opposites, or simply creating new decks that contain cards like random teleport, wild magic surge (randomly rolled on a wild magic chart), forced polymorph, and permanent regeneration, to name a few. It's a fun way to switch things up, keep them fresh and add some spice to things. Having multiple Decks can also be fun because all of the decks look identical, only being able to be revealed by an Identity Magic check, DC 13, or by picking one or more cards... Magical Contracts, Quest and Geas are also favorites to randomly slip into any deck, useful to the DM to force players on a side quest or to fulfill a contract, which is a great tool to get any wayward parties back on track with the campaign, lol.
My son drew The Void from the deck recently in our game and found himself separated from his body, one of those cards that you get warned about. It actually turned into a great adventure as the team worked to complete objectives that he normally would have completed. They actually talked about letting him die because of their love of that NPC. When they finally recovered his soul it was a tearful reunion, with consequences. I had his soul powering a powerful healing item so they had to decide of one life was worth the many lives he may have saved. In the end he was reunited with his soul and the story continues.
I use the deck off and on with many twisted things happening. When I have a change to get it as a player I grab it and offer cards to all manner of NPCs. Orphans, hags, goblins recently taken captive, all of them have either been forced to draw or had the offer. It's a fun item but the DM and players need to accept what can come from it.
I didn't spend 6~ hours every week prepping and then 3 hours~ playing to hand my players a random number generator that can instantly destroy my or their hard work. D&D has parameters for randomness in its dice rolls which is plenty enough unpredictability for me.
I think there is a case to be made about the pathfinder 2e deck (technically legacy). I think it does a better job at translating the intent of some of the cards, most notably the fates, than the dnd 5e version while adding a campaign safety line in form of every character may only draw once. Interestingly, while keeping the XP aspects, pathfinder uses relative XP so 1.000 XP is equally valuable at any level. It also takes out some of the individual aspects, the skulls lesser death does not need to be faced alone for example, and there is nothing about control of the knight (just a loyalty pledge)
I find alignment to be important. Its important for role play. In my experience at least, many groups I have played with have characters. And the people don't want their precious character to get changed. They may change voluntarily, but they don't want to be changed by outside forces. A lot of people don't roleplay properly either, they create a character they think is cool but then roleplay as if they were themselves irl. The alignment shift would ruin that. I have many games where a so called "good person" tortures and abuses people, just because they are the enemy or they are wealthy. A good person helps othes, an evil person puts themselves first. There is a gradient to this of course, but its in general sense. Is the character your creating the type that will focus on themselves, such as trying to get as much money as possible and focusing on loot? Probably someone evil. I'd argue they are evil. The objective comes first then loot. Not enough people like to think of themselves as good or evil, "im just an asshole". Yea to me thats evil. It might not be evil in the villainesque way, but its evil in the fact you prioritize yourself. I like the idea of balance changing NPC"s, making someone evil good and good evil. Your loyal ally, might just be turned evil and now wants to abduct you to steal your shit or sees you as a threat. The evil bad guy now good tries to amend with you and might become a new patron. The card that gives a level, I would totally give a single person a level above others. Its a risk. I would change the talons card to affect magic items you own. Its magic.
somwhere I heard a person say a very good idea for the deck. It works like true Tarot cards, like maybe in the lore it is the original deck of tarot cards in that world, or only one that truely works.... anyways, the idea is the cards still do what they say but not immediately but soon so they are telling the future.... but instead of telling the future like normal tarot cards, these ones create that future. So for the friendly npc becoming hostile toward you, The next town you visit, the shopkeeper you have befriended takes offense to something you say. or do and stops selling to you and becomes even hostile to you, you might still keep it secret or maybe the secret part is why. The gaining a weapon card, you have first watch at night at camp. While wandering your camp find the weapon laying on the ground.... that kinda thing.
Hi Bob, generally all the OP complaints are actually story telling tools. I hope the new generation learns this.
having played in a campaign where the DM let everyone have a go at it (5 PCs) the end result was 4 owning monster filled keeps, 2 getting free magic items, 2 losing Intelligence (both went to 8 from 10 and 12 origionally) I lost all possessions, 2 gained lvl 4 Fighters, all got the 50k in jewels (very useful after as we had access to a high magic city in a high magic campaign so "shopping session") I also did the Solo encounter for an extra lvl, we all got the free no strings attached wish and they were used to counter the negative card pulls for the most part. I lost alot of my magic toys in the pull but the gold allowed for me to get some different items and purchase the items we would need for the next part of the campaign including reequipping our new fighters and that left us still well off. admittedly all but two items were common to rare but that is a sidetrack. So we had 5 players draw from a 22 card deck each time and in the end it added two additional Party members (fighters) and added three side quests in the keep reclamation. now I will put this Warning on the use if the Deck, if you choose to introduce the deck I suggest waiting until after lvl 10 if you want them to have the best chance of resolving most negative results.
That's a lot of keeps! lol
I recently had an NPC convince one of the PCs to get them to pull a card from the DoMT. For context, the NPC had severe amnesia and couldn’t remember his name, where he came from, his family, or why he was such a powerful wizard despite never having studied magic in his life. He was desperate for the truth and so convinced one of the PCs in this campaign to give him the chance to pull the Moon card (the card that lets you cast Wish).
I rolled to see which card he pulled… he pulls the Moon and casts wish. One mysterious and horrific transformation scene later and it is revealed that in fact this powerful Mage was actually Vecna having had his memories wiped by the other gods of this world and being banished in this mortal body. Now, with his memories restored, he seeks his missing hand and eye. The objective of the next arc of the campaign has now changed from “stop the cult of Vecna from resurrecting their old master” to “stop Vecna from restoring himself to his former power so that he can begin his conquest of the Material Plane”.
This is an example of the DoMT being used to completely upend a campaign in the most dramatic and incredible way that would never have been possible if it weren’t for me introducing it as a GM. It is an incredible tool for improv GMing and completely changing the stakes of a campaign.
I think a good alternative for the defeat the next hostile and level up is that the card summons a creature, then and there that the party has to deal with. As the DM you could have a boss like creature ready for each level your party is at just to simply pull it out. If they defeat it, they gain a level. This would specifically be difficult if they were due a long/short rest. I think that would be a good way of doing this one.
In a waiting room in Nirvana, my players met a wizard, who upon being informed that Primus is dead and he's been waiting 300+ years for nothing, teleported away, leaving behind his bag of holding. Among the various magical treasures, one object stood out the the party; a deck of cards, wrapped in adamantine chains, and sealed with three magical locks.
That's the first time the party found it.
The second time, it was because the first deck was destroyed. So the Artificer, who used a wish he got from the previous deck to become a noble genie, used his own wish granting ability to obtain the deck of many things once more.
By the time that game had ended, they must have drawn over 50 cards from the deck between them and the NPCs they told to take one.
Most cards in the deck are entirely negative and the few cards that are positive are nowhere near positive enough to risk the negatives.
Yeah but like I said it in the video, many of the negatives depend on the group's playstyle
I'm running a campaign with my brothers and gave them the deck, and my brother drew Vizier. He asked what ten magic items would help them defeat the bbeg. Now the whole campaign is a race to find all the items before the bbeg gets to strong. It didn't derail the campaign, but it did change the tracks! Take it in stride and go for it.
I have wanted to make an extreme 1d20 deck which is a fate die and by rolling it, an effect happens and it can't be rolled again till dawn. Effects from you get treasure and items and experience on a 20 to the roller dies and their soul is destroyed (no resurrection) on a 1, and everything in between