Curses and Cursed Items in 5e Dungeons & Dragons | Web DM
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- Опубліковано 17 вер 2019
- Today, we're talking about CURSES- everything from Blackrazor to Lycanthropy and everything in between. Dungeon masters and players-- here's our tips on how we make curses and cursed items engaging, significant, and creative!
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some friends want to turn "The game" into a curse for our campaign
Can you guys discuss modify memory and the other mind altering spells. Things like uses and dangers and perhaps some stuff for players to get more out of these spells.
mind blew at the end there. I'm planning on introducing a ring of ... mind shielding isn't it? The mind in the ring is a decent ... foil? for the DM to aid the players with information. Got a question? Ask the ring, kinda thing. However having it try to change places with the wearer in a "here come the mind flayer" campaign seems about right. thx again.
Check out our video on the enchantment magic school, Keegan! ua-cam.com/video/DonrMR9NnFI/v-deo.html
I was really interested in hearing you guys mention GURPS in the video, I've been wanting to run a campaign but never played it myself and can't find anyone IRL who has either. Would you guys consider making a video about trying other tabletop RPGs when coming from D&D? It's hard to change gears, and I'd love to see you discuss how to deal with that and guiding players out of the D&D perspective when playing a completely different game. Also, getting people interested in a new system is hard, especially if it's not well known.
From the Channel that brought you "The End?!", and "Curses!" comes the sequel: "Foiled Again!"
lol
More like “Soiled Again!” as in my pants after the intro.
I honestly think it would be a great title about how to make a recurring villian without making them inept or just dead on contact.
"Fools! You don't realize what you done!" - About flipping the storyline near the end of an arc/campaign.
I had a human named Luther that was raised by a mercenary group with a magical pendant that he couldn't remove. His backstory involved his mercenary foster father finding him in the wreckage of a village that was attacked by orcs and he's the sole survivor. Naturally he grew up hating orcs and swearing vengeance against them. As the story goes on he explores his tie to his past and eventually unlocks the secret of his pendent. It's a cursed pendant of polymorph human and it's revealed that our hero is actually half orc. He seeks out a mighty seer and learns that his mother a powerful human illusionist married his orc father out of love. The town not understanding and fearful of the orc hired the mercenary band to slay the whole family. The mother was able to "hide" their child with the cursed pendant. The story ends with a final confrontation where Luther confronts his foster father and finds out that his foster dad actually killed his birth father.
Brilliant
Idea for another episode: "Blessings and Boons" - the counterpoint to today's episode.
Yes
We had a DM for our group who came up with a great cursed item, “The Sword of the Starfish.” It was a +1 longsword that on a crit gave you an extra 6d6 damage. However, on every crit there was a chance of spontaneous asexual reproduction. A character had it, and killed a flailsnail with a crit, only to have two more pop up.
It was hilarious.
Before I read the last line I thought you'd meant the PLAYER.
I thought you meant the sword
*Curse of Boredom:* The creature must reroll all natural 1s, and 20s.
*Curse of Ineptitude:* The creature must roll a d10 instead of a d20 for a specific skill.
*Curse of the Snake's Eyes:* Whenever the creature rolls for damage and two 1's are rolled at once, a hostile poisonous snake appears in the creature's space.
*Curse of Division:* The creature cannot be counted as a "friendly," "allied," or "willing" creature for the purposes of determining if they are affected by spells.
*Curse of Emptiness:* The creature's personality traits, flaws, bonds, and ideals are suspended.
*Curse of the Grave:* The creature's type changes to "Undead" (and therefore cannot be targeted by spells such as Charm Person or Healing Word) but is otherwise unchanged.
Does curse of emptiness translate to clinical depression?
... STOLEN!
I like it like the witcher that ANYONE can curse anything with sufficient emotion or actions
That's basically all ancient literature. I agree, it entwines magic into everyone and leaves it amorphous rather than making it the science people so often think it to be.
The evil eye is such a great thing. I wish that breaking curses wasnt so easy in 5e.
Curses seem like something that could be useful for flavoring regions. If they had a plague or famine, the region's curses center around the undying because that's how the survivors got through it and there's a lingering loyalty. Close to a forest might have curses associated with fey because of their dependence upon the forest for food and resources.
I love the idea of a progressing cursed item using a cataclysm die. The benefit of the item should also increase as well as the die gets smaller.
Curse:
You are unable to sleep (benefit from a long rest) at night (while the sun is below the horizon).
This is just my life
Neat, luckly my warlock doesn't need to sleep to get a long rest.
Vampire: Uh, okay...?
Every thing is awesome about this one
I'm pretty sure that that's an actual thing in Curse of Strahd. Either that or my DM just made it up to give consequence to another player's actions.
The party was unable to save a unicorn from a hag. What did 3 of them do with it, carved it up and ate it, right there in the hag’s cottage. The result: a reversed and permanent Protection from Good and Evil spell. So celestials, fiends, fey, aberrations and elementals we’re protected from them. There were stuck with that curse for weeks in game, months out of game. It really made the players work together to get around the new increased difficulty of the encounters. The cleric was multiclassed and so it took even longer to get that sweet remove curse spell. My players who didn’t eat the unicorn thought it was thematic and fair. The other three hated it.
Hey man, next time don’t eat tortured to death celestial being or pure innocence. At least not without properly cooking and blessing it
I'm guessing none of them saw or read Harry Potter? One would think not to indulge in the actions of Voldemort of all people.
@@jaeg.3806
But the dude improved on the phylactery concept!
@@sithis36 Genius level Lich: Binds a Death knight to his service and turns the Death Knights sword into his Phylactery.... (Though it might lead to some weird cross contamination to have two souls bound to the same item.... Wonder if it could lead to the Lich having the issue of sharing a body with a Death Knight..... With a split personality thing going on and the ability to basically summon his Phylactory the same way the Death Knight can summon his sword because it IS his sword...)
@@minnion2871 Phylactery as the DK's sword is really neat and I'm totally stealing that! Might make it something other than a sword though, maybe a circlet or piece of gear that players might want to keep and preserve... Or is the keepsake/regalia of royalty who may or may not know they're enabling the lich's survival. Or something to that effect.
I use Remove Curse as an Identifier and suppression for 1d4 days
I like your guys' point of view on curses being an almost living thing that you have to pass on. Dark Souls had the same idea with the purging stones.
I like the way the Witcher 3 did curses. A lot of times, people accidentally cursed someone else through powerful emotions, and you can fulfil some condition to lift it, or sometimes reflect it.
That talk about ‘folk cursing’ made me imagine a world where every curse word evokes a super minor effect, like in the Percy Jackson series. Every time someone goes “Styx” thunder rumbles. So imagine, a farmer stubs his toe, cries something out, and releases a few sparks from his lips.
My favorite curse so far was "your D20 works the other way around now, good luck", the frustration of rolling natural 20 was too genuine :D
I like the idea of Bestow Curse and Remove Curse being available in combat, but outside of combat you can pay an optional price (anything from drinking a minor poison to a human sacrifice depending on how potent you want it to be) and a similar price has to be paid to remove it. The best part of this is that you have to figure out on your own what price was paid for the curse, and then what would be considered equivalent (maybe you also drink a minor poison, or have to sacrifice your own life to remove the curse).
"I want people to go to the hospital afterwards, or to question their faith in god" - metalhead
I love the talk at 30:18 about curses that grow. That mechanic is great for player buy-in.
You guys need to invent a new spell called “Greater Curse” that’s level 7 or 8 anb does all the stuff you want a curse to do.
What is needed is not a spell. But a ritual. I guess both would be nice. But I would really like up to several different curse rituals. >.> In fact, why not make a whole separate school of magic dedicated to curses. The different stuff one should be able to do with them should be varied enough.
What perfect timing... My player's cleric's curse of insomnia has just come to fruition! As every shadow he sees tries to break out of their forms and his own shadow torments him, he, over the course of the next week, will begin to phase into the Shadow Plane forever. To stop the curse, he will have to figure out how to enter the Shadow Plane in time and defeat the Shadow Roper that curses the Amulet of the Unclosing Eye, alone.
Thanks for the rad relevant videos! They always inspire me
In my game, anyone can curse someone with a malicious indictment and a Charisma check, modified by the drama of the circumstances and the words used. Of course... My players don't know that.
yeah, I like the idea that, a curse is indeed powerful any oneone with strong enough intent or capacity for magic can cast but there's a reason no-one does it. why everyone calls it a "dark magic" or "blood magic" as I'd call it. It comes at a cost. a limb, a shorter lifespan, becoming infertile, a tied lifespan to another person, etc.
@@giraffedragon6110 That's a bit much for me, I think. I'm mostly trying to emulate, like, the Witcher, where magic stuff happens by accident, more or less. Murdered your brother? The vines that grow from his grave will turn into murderous, venom spewing abominations. Raped a priestess? She's cursed you and now you're the Beast from Beauty and the Beast (Yeah, that happens in The Last Wish). Spent your days watching for your ill-fated lover to return? Transform into a tree on the spot you kept watch to maintain you eternal vigil. That kind of thing.
If you're worried about people making technology out of it, well, for one, probably they don't. Actual *malice* is extremely emotionally intensive. Most people can't really work up the gumption, especially on command against a stranger. For two, the minority who can and do might make for notable antagonists indeed.
In my game, people on the ground mostly just have vague superstitious concern about words and how to use them... Which was pretty common in 5ue medieval period, I believe. For various reasons.
Now they know :-/
@@mussante My players don't watch Web DM and don't know my UA-cam username, soo... They don't.
@@MrSilvUr That's what you think you know.
I've enjoyed using Bestow curse a couple times before on my fellow party members.
One of the players had a one-night-stand with a girl, knocked her up and then ran away, right in the middle of the campaign. Most of us thought it was a love at first sight thing, until we started talking about it and it became apparent he was just in it for the sex. A lot of our characters were orphins of some sort, so him being a deadbeat dad really pissed my character off. So I tried casting bestow curse on him at night, to give him nightmares that invoked a sense of guilt in him.
Didn't work, though. I got the curse inflicted, but because he was a Shadow Sorcerer, he seemed like he was dead while he was sleeping, so I thought the curse was killing him and out of panic, I cast Remove Curse.
Playing through tomb of horrors now and there's a room with a DC 15 Con save, on a failure your Int and Cha are set to 1, you can't speak, communicate in any way, cast spells, or use magic items.
I like the idea of powerful curses being unbreakable, they can only be moved, such as to a sufficiently powerful magic item or a willing (though likely unwitting) person
i remember the drawbacks table for magic items. quirky interesting things like 'the item glows neon orange', 'your hair now grows ate the rate of one inch per hour', or 'now whenever people try to say/write your name they now use "specific name"'. not much mechanical drawback, but some interesting RP stuff.
One of my players would LOVE if their gear glowed neon orange!...I've got a boomerang to make...
Oh yeah the monkeys paw goes off if you wish for anything at all even subconsciously and it works in horrible ways lol a perfect kind of curse.
There is also a cool example of a cursed weapon in Brandon Sandersons Warbreaker, were one of the main characters carries around a sword that will effectively consume souls when it is drawn, and when you no longer have souls it will force you to kill yourself. The sword is 'awakened' and has a personality of its own because of the command or "magic spell" it was given/was used to awaken the object.
That's a lot like Elric of Melnibone's sword "Stormbringer" (actually the demon Arioch).
@@saeyabor If I recall it correctly Stormbringer isn't Arioch but his "Daughter"
It could be adapted into 5e like:
The sword does more damage against humanoid creatures. Whenever you draw the sword, it demands to be fed a soul. If you don't kill (deal the killing blow) at least one humanoid creature before sheathing it, it'll attempt to eat part of your soul. Taking the idea of the cataclysm die, you roll a d12 and on a 1 it succeeds and the next time it'll be a d10, d8, d6 and the final d4.
Every time it succeeds your max HP goes down 20%. Rolling a 1 on a d4 means the sword has finished consuming your soul. Maybe now that you're dead it can control your body.
It could also mean that if you keep feeding it souls, it's power grows but so does it's influence and you start becoming evil and become more reluctant to want to get rid of it
I like the idea of a curse being two-fold. You may get some power but it comes with a cost. In any case, give the players a choice, don't just give them a curse for touching the wrong thing. Present the benefits and give a hint of something else or if someone curses a player do it because of something the players did of their own choice
So basically warlock
As Pinhead says in "Hellraiser 2" --- "It is not hands that call us, it is .... desire." If you pick up something, you can get a CHA save to drop it. But if you research it, dig it up, and laugh maniacally when you finally hold it, sorry man, you're cursed.
My Barbarian got cursed so he could get two permanent hell hound companions. Of course the curse was just "billows acrid smoke whenever you speak infernal" which for a Barbarian is more of a boon. I did get turned evil too though which was fun
Omg I knew Jonathan looked familiar. One of my favorite fan films Three in the Afternoon a Star Wars fan film, instant sub.
I like to consider Remove Curse a Spell, which power escalates with the level it is casted. if a Curse took a Lv higher than 3 to be casted on an (N)PC, Remove Curse will only work if you cast it at that Lv or higher, like Counterspell.
I like to use this method on Identify too, so the abilities of a Magic Item can be uncovered as the PCs grow.
My DM lets me use a 9th level curse as an “anti-wish” type deal. Works a treat.
Finally a bit on Curses! Can't wait till my players get a hold of some tasty new gear.
In my mega fun house dungeon, one player picked up a tapestry, and instead of him getting cursed, it hit his best friend next to him. Now she has two invisible people that dance and kick things over. Impedes sleep and gives disadvantage to concentration and perception checks. Hasn't ruined gameplay, but it's funny as heck to play out.
"Fuck yeah" in the first 30 seconds, I loled and suddenly remembered to smash that like button
Perfect timing. I've been trying to work out an interesting slow burn curse for a party that fell asleep at a night hags house. I was thinking of a tattoo type mark that has a trigger which is hidden on the players shoulder blade. How often do the players actually undress in front of each other? Glows a couple of lumens brighter each time it activates. Feed the hag every time a spell is cast. Maybe something negligible like a couple of points of damage. I don't like the idea of the players not being able to take a long rest.
I think the curses should be minor but have affect regularly. Something annoying but only a little. A massive curse would be, as you pointed out, a plot hook that takes an adventure to remove.
Instead of preventing long rests, you could make the players paranoid of taking long rests overtime. On the first long rest they take after sleeping in the hag's house, just as they drift off to sleep, they hear the distant rustling of bushes or the creaking of floorboards. But finding nothing upon investigation.
With each further long rest, the noise draws closer: the rattle of the doorknob, a faint cackle of laughter, breathing coming from a dark corner of the room, something moving beneath their bed, a brief cold touch on their foot.
This finally culminates in a powerful hag ambushing the players during the night (or every night) unless the curse is removed.
I never knew how built Pruit looks in these recent videos. Like damn.... hey Pruit
How you do'n
I like to play where lycanthropy is something desirous and Remove Curse is something a player would avoid. Of course, I have my own charts where rarely really good or bad things happen...👾
PS: impressed you know the historical use of the evil eye in our world. Most people don't.
See for me when it comes to Lycantrhopy and certain other curses The longer you have it the harder it is to remove. Catch it rather quickly and you might be able to remove it with remove curse. But the more you suffer it's affects and the longer you have it the more difficult it becomes to remove and certain steps may be required to be taken to remove it. And it reaches up to a certain point where you can't actually get rid of it. You might cause the symptoms to no longer appear in some kinds of individuals (at lest for a while) but it's something that they still have and may even potentially pass on to descendants to crop up later.
Isn't there a supplement on the DM Guild that deals with curses?
Curse of Rastilin Majere... your eyes become golden hour glasses and everything you see is rotting and decaying.
My FAVORITE cursed item that I ever made was a potion of healing, it had charges and regained 1d6 charges every morning. It healed less then a normal potion, but you could take multiple drinks. Heres the 'curse' the more you drink the more addicted you become to it, if you dont heal enough damage from it (also meaning you need to hurt yourself to beable to heal) you suffer serious draw backs. It doesnt affect for a while and first stage isn't super bad. Thing is if a party is sharing it, suddenly they are at eachother's throats for it, I love it.
Oh god thats evil. A party of murderhobo crack addicts at each others throats and desperate for their next fix.
I like it
I got cursed to be hated by birds, and got swarmed and almost killed by birds....
and then came the roc...
I once had a low-level bad guy curse a character with "inappropriate laughter". Later in the story when the Duke asked them to investigate his son's death, because he knew "there was no way his son would have been in a situation to trampled like that" she (totally on cue) started laughing about the boy being trampled. The curse led to some bad consequences and a LOT of fun role-play. It was purely narrative and not mechanical, and probably the most fun curse I've ever used.
Thanks for making my Wednesdays better, y'all. Much love, you goobers.
in my games (5e) we have a home rule in order to give curses more potency:
Remove Curse works similarly to Dispel Magic.
~When you cast Remove Curse, you must know which curse you are removing - it no longer removes ALL curses in one go.
~Any Curse caused by a spell of 3rd level or lower ends immediately (for example, Bestow Curse).
~otherwise, the DC to remove a curse is dependent on the potency of the curse's source:
~~ for example, if you are bitten by a werewolf you must succeed on a DC12 con saving throw or be cursed with werewolf lycanthropy. In order to remove your werewolf lycanthropy curse, Remove Curse must be cast on you and the caster must make a DC 12 check to end the curse.
~~ However, if you are granted Lycanthropy by Shar herself, the DC to remove lycanthropy then is MUCH different (hazard a guess nearing the 25-30 range)
~~ Another example could be the Darkling Curse given by the Summer Queen to the Darklings. If you want to remove the curse from a darkling you better be ready to contest your spellcasting power against an Archfae.
But that's just a potential solution that our group made up and is heavily dependent on good storytelling, fair rulings by the DM and interpretations by the players, and clear communication among everyone that our group has spent a long time practicing. D&D is a social game that requires the consent and enables the comfort of its participants - none of us live in a vacuum, even when we play escapist adventures!
For curses that aren't really malevolent, but inconvenient, I always loved Puffin Forest's sentient magic items for their personalities, like a sword of warning that only warns of danger after it's presented itself … "I waaaarrrned yoou…"
Thank god for that sponsor, bc theres no ads lmao "oh, fuck yeah!"
One of the more prominent cursed item that keeps popping up in our table is the cursed "Cloak of Spiders" basically a cursed version of the "Cloak of Arachnida" it works exactly like the normal version save for a few spiders skittering through the folds and surface that you can't feel but can see. The cursed part is should you ever die while wearing the cloak you turn into one of the spiders.
I had offered my players a few cursed magical items, and those lames passed them up.
The first was an item where the downside is the effect.Similar to the cursed version of the arrow catching shield, where the arrows always come at you.
This was the Boisterous Bulwark, and basically its a shield which loudly talks in your best hero voice, with a personality that was your classic Lawful-stupid. Annoying but basically harmless. In a fight though, you could raise the shield as an action (mechanically the same as dodge), and the shield then taunted enemies which could attack you (were within move+attack range). They made a wisdom save to resist (like a reverse sanctuary) against a DC based on the shields charisma.
The other, which you guys mentioned something similar, and that is a curse that forces you to act like a monster or else you would become it. I liked this because it forces the player to perform the same sort of actions their character would if they had lost control of the character, so they can actually interact with the curse without completely avoiding the repercussions.
I was taking Flinds' flail and making it something the PCs could use, like many have. I tweaked some numbers on the heads of the flail, made it an action to use all 3, and had the attack hit the character who attacked on a 1, effect and all. Additionally, you had to basically continue to appease Yeenoghu. You had to regularly kill and consume the flesh of humanoids, or get increasing levels of madness and violence. To reduce the madness, you had to make offerings to Yennoghu of humanoid sacrifices.
My gripe with bestow curse mechanically is it isn't consistent with counterspell or dispel magic in the wording (If it's a higher level you roll for it) remove curse just cancel it. And it's frustrating as a dm to have to use wish for these effects
For the "possessive" curse, i make it a "incubation period" over a week, but it doesnt show itself until the player is no longer attuned to the item. Same for identify and remove curse, i homebrew them to kinda be counterspell-y, with spell slot determining how effective it is and up to x amount able to be improved with a skill check or challenge.
As far as other item curses: Weapon from x group that makes you only able to speak x language while holding it, Weapons +x modifier that starts to drop as a weapon gets bathed in blood (or sunlight), weapon that gains damage dice AND (perceived) WEIGHT (yes, i use encumbrance rules) as you swing it resetting after a entire round of not using it, armor which is difficult to put on and take off, but prevents you from eating and drinking, wand that has "universal charges" for spells known/prepped, but drains dry ink/coal/paint/anything but except blood that was used to write from the surroundings to recharge them, item/potion that gives bonus/advantage for interacting with x, but also makes x in all other forms cling to you (specifically useful vs bards trying to get love potions just for them to get humped by a honeypack of dire bears).
Oh and gamblers blade RAW doesnt have a downside since Death saves dont care for the save result, only roll value.
Fun ideas:
- Swap the values of the character's highest and lowest stat (bonuses are unaffected).
- Psychic damage (d4) every time they lie.
- Movement is allowed every other round.
- Dexterity Saving Throw (DC 8 + half player level, or proficiency) every time the Dash or Disengage action is taken or fall prone.
- Take a point of exhaustion every time the player's hit points reach 0.
There are a ton of creative ways to hide curses that may not be readily apparent when an item is obtained. With the DM's permission, these might be able to be used or modified with the Bestow Curse spell (which doesn't require concentration when cast at 5th level, and lasts until dispelled at 9th level, which is huge for villains).
In my latest campaign my PC got cursed from a Spider Amulet. Basically I saw spiders where there were none.
So whenever I was on watch for the night, I would sometimes see some spindly legs up on the trees, wake the party up only to find they where just some branches.
Or once at a party my PC thought he saw a giant spider under a table... So he blasted it to oblivion and got us kicked from it.
Maybe not very mechanics driven curse but the role playing of it can also play a huge part
The way I went about this was that curses were use of magic in a pure form, without a focus, without a bloodline, just grabbing magic itself and throwing it at something. It can backfire, but it can change the world without limit, a good example being a dethroned wizard king that drowned his whole empire with a curse, only for all those that contained a drop of his blood to have to deal with sunlight sensitivity forever more as he died. You can die without the curse even working, its dark power but its open to anyone.
Idea for a cursed item: Gloves of Deep Knowledge
The effect is only shown after being attuned to, after which one must make a DC 18 Wisdom Save or feel a clingy need to always wear them. Anything or anyone who even mentions or hints at taking them from you is almost immediately your enemy.
The benefit and the cause of it's namesake is the constant Legend Lore effect upon touching anyone or anything.
I don't know about you, but if every magic item I touched sent my mind into the past, or every person, wall, paper, whatever, the information overload would be an annoying headache.... and probably levels of exhaustion from the pain alone.
I personally use the curse rules in the 2nd edition book "Domains of Dread". It's pretty good though it could use some simplifying and conversion for 5e.
4:00 He wants the entro to Iron Maiden's number of the beast to start blasting lol
these convos get so intricate that i just have this channel playing in the background to make the day more interesting XDDD
Gave one of my players a cursed weapon. We all constantly forgot that he had it.
30 seconds in and already liked. Keep making awesome videos guys. 👍🏻
Thank you!!
Yes I was hoping an episode like this would come out especially since I just made a Half-elf Drow Hexblade warlock and I flavored all of her spells and in vocations as if they are curses even spells that affect her like blink I just flavored as her cursing herself to die and then be brought back repeatedly.
Cool talk, guys! Deeper than usual, as I see it.
I liked it very much.
Every thing is awesome about this one
As always an amazing and inspirational content.
I juste love your approach, casual but keeping the essential with a absolute positive energy and respect for everybody at the table.
I love how you are inspiring to think a various level of the curse and juste see more than a 1001 possibilities with your ideas of folk magic.
This is a Great channel and I always look forward to listen to it's content and humours (even some bad pun ;) )
Is it just me or is Pruett getting swol?
rickeymariu1 was thinking the same thing!
Its just his winter coat coming in.
he's huge now. looks like 6 months' work. maybe he's back into karate and a little lifting on the side. Can't take my eye off the guns! Proud of sensei. ;-D
I finished reading the Shining recently, and I feel like that’s an awesome example of a modern cursed place. Like to me the idea of a hotel haunted by the souls of dozens of clairvoyants that it harvested over the years just screams “Put me in an adventure!” Thanks for the video!
I wonder if some of the minimizing and de-emphasizing of curses in 5E is holdover from the dark days of BADD and the Satanic Panic around D&D. Didn't the girl in the infamous Jack Chick tract hang herself after a curse?. I wonder if there isn't some remnant antipathy towards curses on the part of the creator's of the game from all that.
Also, Mr. Pruitt, the pun about the person who sees spectral figures everywhere that aren't there was tasty. Fake boo-s indeed... Bravo.
Gonna go out on a limb and say that every word out of Jack Chick's sewer hole of a mouth was a lie, so I doubt that story had anything to do with it.
I feel like the lack of player-made curses in 5e is just becaus WotC didn''t wanna codify rules for casting curses, like many things in 5e they wanted it left up to DM fiat
@@DrakoVongola11 yeah but unfortunately a LOT of people listened to things like the Chick Tract and to people like Pat Pulling and there was a LOT of backlash against those of us playing back in the day, especially in the less-enlightened areas of the country.
I just wish there were a system or rules set for how to cleanse curses from items without removing the magic entirely outside of a Wish spell that might backfire. One of my favorite magic items is the Hellhound Cloak.. but that curse man, that curse..
Fantastic ideas, thanks for the inspiration!
For me, curses are almost always divinely-related. D&D is made of the stuff of myths and folklore and the fickleness of Gods is in all the good ancient stuff. A curse means you've violated, knowing or unknowingly, a truce or pact with a god or spirit and the curse is a consequence. It's a way to make your pantheon and god's real. Big and small. A mummy might foreshadow a death god and the BBEG of the campaign but a curse from the god of travel means you always travel in rain (survival checks/con checks to avoid bad travel conditions/roll for encounters at advantage) and the opposite can be bestowing good weather/allows the players to re-roll or avoid a random encounter. Blessings and boons. Characters are enmeshed in the world.
My other suggestion is to use more oracles and hags. Hags are THE arbiters (or brokers) of curses. Expert lawyers and fate-seers.
This channel is so great!
Thank you so much!
A sword of demon slaying which, in order to fulfill its purpose and kill as many demons as possible, magically attracts the attention of all demons in a 10km radius and draws them to its location.
One of my favorite curses I have pulled recently was I had two players have to roll for one another since their luck was swapped by a Hag.
One always seems to roll too well...
The other has long fits of bad luck. This one is still percolating, so we will see how it turns out.
My teifling cleric had a curse as his back story. His curse was always to show his true colors so he turn white and gold so did everything he wore until he hit the deck of many things and became super evil and turn black and purple
@Web DM I thought of these two things while listening to this video (and an excellent video too): the first is having a curse that the cursed character has to go on a significant quest to finally be able to remove the curse but then at the last second before the character is about to have the curse lifted, the character finds out that the curse does not just go away, but is instead automatically transferred to someone else randomly (I know you guys mentioned about a curse being transferred, but this is a bit more detailed of a description around that idea). This way lifting the curse on the character presents a moral dilemma b/c the character knows they are essentially now bestowing this curse on someone else. The effect of the curse should be something that isn't fatal or anything like that but that is pretty darn bad and life affecting - such that the idea of someone else having to suffer through these same symptoms b/c of the character's actions is enough to make the character (depending on their alignment) think twice about having the curse lifted/transferred.
The second thing is I thought of a possible cursed item while you were discussing items: "so and so's dagger of unraveling" (or some other name). The regular affect of the dagger is that it is a +1 dagger that when you hit will siphon off the life and add it to the wielder (not permanently subtracting HP) - but that is just the normal affect - the actual cursed affect only manifests on a crit success or crit failure: on a crit success you have to roll again (not sure what the roll needs to be - like a D4 where 1 out of 4 triggers the affect, or maybe it needs to be harder for it happen) and if the player makes the roll, the dagger steals 1 experience level from the target. target loses a level and wielder gains a level. Conversely, on a crit failure, you have the same chance (whatever you determine is appropriate) that a level is stolen from the wielder and transferred to the target. It is obviously a very powerful affect, but the idea is that if you actually gambled and used it frequently, you would end up losing as many levels as you gain and it pretty much balances out. But if the character only uses it every now and then or on a specific target that you really want to weaken, then potentially the wielder could come out 1 level up permanently if they never used the dagger again. Likewise, if the first affect they have with the dagger ends up being that they lose a level - they have to decide are they going to gamble on using the dagger more in order to try and recover that lost level - while taking the risk of losing another level instead. I think if you get the balancing right in terms of what someone has to roll *after* getting those crit successes/failures (meaning, should it be a 1 out of 4, or a 1 out of 10 etc) you can adjust the probability to ensure that the wielder isn't simply gaining levels left and right. I would say also that once a character attunes to the item, no other character may use its affects until the original attuned wielder has died - to prevent the party from just passing the dagger around to let each one potentially gain a level. Lastly, you'd have to say that no affects that allow a character to re-roll 1's will function when using this dagger *and* only a natural 20 crit success is viable (to prevent characters who can lower their crit requirement to 18 or 19 from gaining increased chance of triggering the main affect. Again, I'm thinking this up as I'm typing it and so I know I'm likely overlooking things, but this could be the framework for a really neat and potentially powerful, but also a very risky cursed item ability. Of course any type of weapon could be used for this, though I would suggest that it should be a melee weapon and not a ranged one, so that when you're sucking life or levels from the target it is directly flowing into you through physical contact with the target and your melee weapon. Curious for any feedback on this one. Also - if there is a weapon like this already then let me know so I can check it out, b/c I'd be interested in seeing what a theoretically balanced probability set-up would look like (what chance of triggering the effect did an official game dev think makes sense.
I always reference Tolkien for these things, the One Ring is such a bad thing to carry yet level 1 Frodo has to take it to Rivendell and then Mordor
If you need a fun curse, that scene from Hocus Pocus where they sing "I put a spell on you" is pretty good.
The very end of the Tomb of Horrors has some examples of what a higher-level Curse could be.
My party was traveling through an old mine filled with natural molds and slimes (from the DMG), but they hadn't yet figured out how to counteract them. I let them find a tool the miners had used to control these obstacles. They called it Flash Freeze, it would make a five foot circle of sunlight and dealt one cold damage per round in that circle. The "curse" of it, the drawback was that you could use it two rounds with no problem, but on the second round it dealt one fire to the wielder. On subsequent rounds it dealt 3, 5, 7, etc. fire damage to the wielder. After use it needed to rest for ten minutes, to cool off. What made this curse matter was that each cluster of mold/slime was at least 3-4 units large.
As a DM, I use a spell as a combination of bestow curse and gaes. Making it a higher level spell and only removable by wish, or by completing the gaes/curse condition.
They seem to synergize well, at least that's my opinion.
this channel is amazing
In a past campaign my Paladin got a shield that halved the damage from non magical projectiles, buuut it also attracted non magical missiles that targeted something within 10 feet of him. I don’t think our ranger appreciated it.
im really glad you brought up the wizard's death curse. have you guys come with your own version?
this video also reminded me of the witch class from pathfinder.
cursed items are great though has made me paranoid about treasure lol
I see Coriolis on the table! Just backed the Bitter Reach Kickstarter. Such good products!
Great discussion on curses. My current campaign is featuring dealing with a curse. The mechanics of the curse were effectively levels of exhaustion caused by invreasing paranoia and sleep deprivation. The party has compensated with a magical elixir and somehow become entangled with ab old god to remove the curse. Ultimatetly the campaign has developed a subplot around this curse that ties back into the metaplot.
In regards to cursed items just being unwanted and inconvenient, it reminds me of something my old boss told me when I landscaped back in high school: "a weed is just a plant that you don't want there. Even a rose bush might need to be removed from time to time."
So even a relatively beneficial item can have enough of a curse that one man's treasure could be another's trash.
Just the intro is enough to get me to click the Like button each and every time.
The Bastard’s Blade: Clarent
Classified a long sword
This sword if found is often mistaken as a flame tounge much to the wielder’s dismay. Those who are aware of the sword’s existence know of it’s troubled and dark history. Once a coronation sword wielded by the greatest of kings the strongest hero of the luck blade, this sword was given its name when Mordred the bastard son of Arthur killed his own father with this very blade. It was enchanted so that any cut made by this weapon would eternally bleed til one’s death. However this blade’s cursed past goes deeper. When Mordred was tried and condemned for the death of his father he was executed with the same blade and Merlin the Wise had sealed Mordred’s soul to the black iron blade. This blade is cursed by his eternal stay seeking the blood of kin and friend along with foe with no difference.
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Get your Arthurian fan-fic out of my gaming please. JK that's a great story.
Dying Ontheinside when you think about it D&D is the Tolkien tabletop fanfiction with everyone making an OC taking inspiration from all our favorite cultural sources be it books, shows, movies, or music.
So what your saying...
1+ longsword
@@spagandhi oh please make it a +3 with maybe the reach feature as bastard swords were stated to be just a bit longer than most longswords.
I love the clarent, gave it to one of my players' characters as their parting boon/bane of a campaign. we all loved it.
Great advice!! Lots of great ideas.
I gave my barbarian a vorpal sword that after each time it decapitated a foe the head mysteriously disappeared. Turns out the heads were going to a powerful wizard who was sewing them onto other creatures, causing the players to eventually fight multi-headed creatures they'd already defeated. The sword also couldn't be used against the wizard, he could animate it against the players.
i just finished the problem magic episode and was looking for another episode to watch... i have been blessed with this notification
Feelsgoodman
That opening was real subtle at first and they quietly slipped in the joke again. 👌👌👌
Haha, It Follows. What a movie reference. Been forever.
I played a LARP years ago, where in one of the available races was Gypsy, which had the racial power of Gypsy Curse that you could buy up w/ build points to get more powerful curses. I don't remember most of them; but the two most feared by players were Fumble Fingers (can't hold objects in your hands, i.e. weapons) and Stutter Tongue (must speak with a stutter and always flub your spell verbals.)
Love the video! The content is always useful......
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and I guess those voices are like honey too
28:49 I have thought this through to extend a spell effect you need to bind it to some of your stat points.For this to work properly this spell has hit points of it's own.Also to buy more power it can be clue doping or have frailty's...
Love this episode. I'm trying to think how to put more curses and enchantments into my games of WHFRP, Zweihander, and Dungeon Crawl Classics. Curses lack impact in 5e. A cursed village or an enchantress running wild creates a story that breaks the wall for even the most hardened murder hobo.
I saw a house rule one time where the Remove Curse spell did not remove the curse, but it did inform the caster of what is required to remove the curse. Easy curses = easy solutions. More complex curses = exciting side quests :)
On the topic of a weapon that transforms that user. I made a dagger that contain the trapped spirit of a yuan-ti interrogator.
It would whisper into his ear and tell him new concoctions for horrifying poisons. But slowly was turning him into a snake man.
Love cursed things
I love the idea of a monkeys paw works like this, once the paw is picked up by a player it disappears and a spirit monkey appears in front of the person who picked up the paw. Now the first 3 desires that player has no matter what it is real then you get a mark of the monkey paw on the player and then you can't fall victim to the paw again but the paw can give a + or - to luk
Recently I played a cleric with a Shield of Missile Attraction - gains resistance to ranged weapons, but all ranged weapon attacks target you instead of a target within 10 ft.
He had remove curse available, but didn't want to, because he saw the boon as better than the curse.
Of course that changed a little when I realized it's not just allies it attracts from. It's every one. 😅
I like this idea that casting remove curse the first time just reveals the circumstances necessary to remove the curse, or if cast on a cursed item maybe just reveals the nature of the curse in a way that identify doesn't. Then the players have to go and do the thing to remove it, and then cast it again to actually remove the curse.
Or maybe casting the spell only suppresses the curse for like the day or something, but until they go do the thing to fully remove it, they have to keep casting that spell every day, or pay a cleric or wizard to cast it for them.
These are cool ways to keep the spell useful, but also make curses more interesting than a long-term debuff that can be removed with a simple spell.
Granted, 3rd level spells are actually pretty powerful overall. By a certain level player characters aren't going to have a problem with curses, but you can also just have your curses be of higher level. Treat it like dispel magic, and require remove curse from a higher slot to remove them.