Thread 96378125

How harsh should cursed items be?
Minor inconvenience?
Serious crippling effect?
Binding gain-some-lose-some tradeoff?

Look man, you have a fetish and just wanted an excuse to post that on blue board. Please go away and have a wank on the appropriate fetish board.

>>96378170
how far has /tg/ fallen...

>>96378125 (OP)
Cursed items should basically be one step away from ruining the users life at all times. It's cursed for a reason.

What is the tone of the game?
What is the level of difficulty the players agreed on before playing the game?
Did the group agree to play a game that would feature curses?
What game are you asking about?
Do you even play games?

>>96378540
>Did the group agree to play a game that would feature curses?
Do you hand your players those consent forms for arachnophobia and racism and stuff? Because that's just weird.

>>96378212
this

>>96378707
>setting expectations for a game is the same as handing out faggy sensitivity checklists
Can't wait to hear the logic behind this retarded take.

>>96378780
it's the exact same shit

>>96378125 (OP)
What game?

>>96378212
counter question, how hard should it be to remove or uncurse curse items?

>>96379203
It should depend if it was intentionally made as a cursed item and how powerful the curse/curser is or if it was intended as a normal magic item but something got fucked in its creation and ended up with detrimental effects.

>>96378170
/thread

>>96378707
You seem to think those are for the players. Tell me, when you DM, do you shift your story for your players? Or shift your players for your story? If a player is not willing to interact with an aspect of your world, figure out why, and then lay down the fact that, no, the story isn't being rewritten. If they don't want to be part of this campaign, they don't need to be. You'll run new games. But if they're willing to immerse- maybe as a hero of justice against such injustices, or by making a sheer joke of it all- you've found someone who can properly role play.
Those checklists are to find out who's willing to actually tell a good fucking story.

>>96379346
Various levels / tiers of curses is good idea, certainly better than DnD's "Remove Curse" working on pretty much everything.

>>96379130
>no logic
k retard

>>96378125 (OP)
If it's a surprise for equipping them because the players are starved for new equips, from minor annoyance to something so inconvenient that would force them to go back to take it away instead of crippling or killing the character.
If the item is useful like the super strong evil sword make it double edged: the better positive effect, the worse the bad effect.

>>96378125 (OP)
Depends on level and obviousness.
High level players/items? Yeah those penalties should be harsh, they have the ability(presumably) to deal with it.
If it's OBVIOUSLY cursed then anything goes. If the players know that everyone who owned a given item died a mysterious death and decide they want to keep it, then they're made a decision to do something stupid.

>>96379568
>If a player is not willing to interact with an aspect of your world
They can leave the table. I'll find someone who is willing.

>>96378125 (OP)
Terrible animation quality

>>96378170
fpbp

>>96378202
>nogames yapping

>>96378125 (OP)

I mean, in practical terms a cursed item is just going to bring the adventure to a halt while the players go find a temple to cast remove curse.

And then they'll go around in paranoia mode and carefully make sure all treasure is safe.

>>96380366
Unless it's a module, then it'll explicitly say that Remove Curse doesn't work on it.

>>96379203
It should require some kind of quest, either a side quest or a portion of the main adventure depending on what the curse does/how integral it is to the story. If it's something that can just be removed by a basic spell as >>96381012 and >>96381172 are saying, then it's not really interesting, it's just a mechanical obstacle placed on a piece of loot. You might get players who still show interest in why the item was cursed, but odds are good if there's a spell in the rulebook to make a problem go away, it's not going to be interesting to anyone.

>>96378125 (OP)
Cursed items should completely disable slutty witches (bitches) like Elaina who sell their bodies to old men

>>96378125 (OP)
any more cursed items animations like this one?

You don't care. You just wanted to post you jackoff materials on /tg/ for reasons I'm not comfortable speculating on.

So anyway, what was the game you're asking about? Because the answer to your retarded question depends a lot on the game.

>>96378125 (OP)
Look at Fire Emblem's permadeath mechanic. Many times, it creates a cost-benefit analysis of "do I push on" or "do I stop and reset". Think of it that way. The cursed item should have a penalty, but not so much it screwed the character to the point where they make a new character... or to the point where they drop everything to go fix it (unless you want that to happen).
It needs to be enough that it can hinder them, potentially a weakness that doesn't pop up all the time, but when it does it's trouble.

>>96378125 (OP)
It depends. Which is an answer to many questions you can ask about things in your games.

I generally try to gauge things so that curses will not be more inconvenient than players will be down to put up with. Not because I don't want them to have to deal with the challenges, but because I want those challenges to be impermanent.

Though, in the case of gain/loss trading, I want that to last until the character realizes that they should give it up. And it will be harder to proportionately to how long they held onto it for.

>>96378125 (OP)
Above all else, the curse should be interesting. Getting slapped for a potentially lethal debuff is simply not fun.
For example, a cursed blade that allows for an exceptionally satisfying ability, but risks corruption or insanity on use. This makes curse exciting and engaging.

>>96378125 (OP)
Why would someone make this and how did it end up here?
Deraged wizard may collect or make cursed items just because. Treasury keeper may plant some cursed jewel in his vault as additional burglarly countermeasure (but coins are probably safe. Evil overlord geat that trades brief ower boost for long term consequence, and so on...

>>96381967
Zanki Mugen-chan has some neat curses and traps - ranging from entrapment to dissolvement or plushification.

This is part of a broader discussion about fairness in games. I think when it comes to fairness, the question is: "What is the likelihood of one or more characters dying from encountering something they've never dealt with before?". The other question is: "How much unfairness are your players willing to put up with?".

The really nasty cursed items (the kind that will fuck up an entire party) are specifically calibrated for OSR-style play, which is very much doing its own thing. Outside of that context, cursed items should probably just have amusing gimmicks.

>>96381172
just kill the wearer take cursed gear off and revivify him, most let go once they've succeeded in killing you

>>96378125 (OP)
I like gain some lose some since it makes sense for me from a logic sense. Who would design an item to harm the person using it? So I generally do "the effect is beneficial to someone" or "the creator couldn't get the exact effect he wanted and had to make these tradeoffs."

>>96378125 (OP)
They should always have some kind of significant impact. What that impact is depends on how powerful the PCs are. As PCs gain power, cursed items should also become more potent because players should have enough experience to avoid being cursed. Cursed items that are powerful but balanced by their curse could also be fun but again I would recommend them more for higher levels, since PCs will be able to assess their value and deal with the curse better.

I was playing Ghosts of Saltmarsh and I really appreciated how, for a low level adventure, there are things there that will teach new players how to be careful when exploring. In the first adventure someone might have, they can find both a cursed item (a cursed luckstone which has no penalty as long as you don't use the item, which is kind of lame) and rot grubs.

>>96395849
>they can find both a cursed item (a cursed luckstone which has no penalty as long as you don't use the item, which is kind of lame) and rot grubs.
What do those two things do

Depends where you find it:
>mundane box of discounted shit at the local wizard swap meet?
The ring of sneezing every 6 words
>we found this jet black stone chess peice sitting alone on a pedestal in the evil sunken temple of the thousand scream god
The game peice grants the ability to obliterate any monarch in screaming distance (the party did not know they became 'kings' to thebant folk they saved that one time).
Better yet, roll a d20 whenever they find one, and -1 from the roll for every diety they pissed off since the last time they found one. Lower is worse.

>>96378125 (OP)
Cursed Items are actually a really interesting design space discussion for modern TTRPGs(focusing on D&D 5e and PF2e for this).

They basically only fully work in a game where the player characters are constantly dungeon delving, but also on enough of a time constraint that they need to equip things without thoroughly checking if they're cursed or not, either because there is simply not time to sit down and make the skill checks or cast the spells to do it or because doing so would require backtracking with consequences. I'd say they work best for megadungeon campaigns.

Now, that previous paragraph is only really for "generic" magic items, you know the type, stuff that appears to be normal loot but that belt of giant's strength is actually a girdle of the opposite gender and if you put that shiny helmet on suddenly your noble paladin is pure evil.

You can get a lot of mileage out of bespoke cursed items for a more narrative focused game, but then that ultimately comes down to what the story is.

>>96379203
I'm of the opinion that ditching a cursed item should be a quest unto itself, like in Lord of the Rings ("take this evil ring across the land to unmake it in the one place it can be destroyed")

>>96378212
the player's life*

>>96397734
The cursed luckstone magically attaches itself to you and can't be discarded. If you use it, you gain advantage on one roll but the next two rolls are made with disadvantage. Not really a dangerous cursed item since you aren't compelled to use it and thus the worst that can happen is you're stuck with it. I found it to be more of a helpful tutorial to teach party members to not pick up everything they see since there can be consequences.

There is also a corpse in the house infested by a swarm of rot grubs. Rot grubs, if they attack you, attempt to burrow into your skin. If you don't remove them by your next turn, they burrow below your skin. Once under your skin, if you dont quickly have a means to cure disease, they burrow to your heart and kill you. However, rot grubs only move 5 feet a turn and will only show up if you didn't inspect the corpse carefully before disturbing it. They can be easily avoided by kiting them or inspecting the body before touching it, again teaching players to be smart and prepare for bad things to happen even when they may not be in obvious danger.

>>96380960
That's kinda what he said, anon.

>>96378170
fpbp

>>96378125 (OP)
I'm really not a fan of cursed items that are not plainly and obviously cursed upon inspection. And you should have good reason to inspect it too. Only by ignoring obvious warning signs intentionally or by ignorance should you become cursed by an object.
Otherwise it's just a cheap gotcha and it diminishes the actual interesting aspects of cursed items.

>>96378170
>implying
this is a time honored fa/tg/uy tradition

The old-school D&D "belt that genderbends you and you need aid from a priest to take it off" was regarded as one of the best-designed cursed items for a variety of reasons

>Effect dramatic enough that players have to actually engage with the curse rather than just forget it exists - they'll get constant reminders both from the other players and how NPCs interact with them
>Despite this it usually has no mechanical effect and doesn't impair the player's agency in any real way
>Once you've identified the belt's true effect, you could believably sell it for a high price (since it's something which can't be replicated by standard magic) - whether to a researcher, a collector of rare things, someone who wants to use it themselves, a powerful figure who wants to use it on one of their kids for political reasons, etc.
>It's not exactly dangerous so it's unlikely that you'll get in trouble for carrying/selling it either.
etc.

>>96378125 (OP)
Sliding scale: the less often the cursed item triggers, the more severe it gets to be. Anything that is active all of the time has to be extremely minor, because otherwise the character is crippled without any chance to do anything about it (cosmetic changes, like genderswap, are ideal for this because they provoke a roleplay response but not mechanical impact. Being changed to another fantasy race with stat changes is more impactful, but usually won't make or break any individual situation or roll). However, a curse that only activates under certain circumstances can afford to be absolutely brutal. A curse that drags you to the bottom of any body of water you enter is absolutely terrifying in a river, but completely inconsequential on land. Conditional curses are a setup and payoff promise, where they get warning what kind of situation will fuck them over in advance and then you can threaten them with that situation in the future and reap the rewards of them having to find a way to avoid their extremely brutal curse. Great player engagement.

This board sucks and it's cause of shit like this

>>96378170
>>96403878
>this is a time honored fa/tg/uy tradition
He's right you know.

>>96394093
>Why would someone make this and how did it end up here?
>Deraged wizard may collect or make cursed items just because.
I mean it's likely a sexual fetish.

>>96395589
>I like gain some lose some since it makes sense for me from a logic sense.
Especially if it gives benefits for playing into said fetish.

>>96405558
Kill yourself ND

>>96378170
First post WORST post.

Magical necklace that allows you to subtle cast any spell you know for free, once every long rest. But every time you do so, the chain gets smaller. Obviously you can't remove it by normal means and if you do manage to get it off, it breaks.

>>96404705
We still don't have conclusive answer what happens when you try to wear two of them...
Also, where does it originally come from? I've first seen it in BG1, but I'm sure there has to be older precedent in tabletop proper.