I sent my players through a dungeon with two Decks in it. It was the absolute last fall-back position of the lich they were pursuing, and used to hold all the magic items too unstable and/or dangerous for him to risk keeping near him. Naturally, all the good cards (and several of the bad ones) had already been drawn from both. They had sufficient warning about the nature of the dungeon by then that no one drew from them, but they kept them on the off-chance they’d meet someone they disliked enough to give them to.
This was also the dungeon where they found the cracked Wand of Wonder that leaked an extra effect–summon rhino, 50 feet straight up–every time it was used.
We had some characters that encountered Decks 2 or 3 times. It was always interesting when it was time to decide about drawing. Everybody always drew at least 1, and we usually used the results as a hook for another adventure. 1 paladin drew the henchman card when I was DMing. I rolled him up between sessions so he could appear at the end of the campaign. I rolled 3d6, 6 times: 18, 18, 18, 18, 18, 16. :eek: Those dice never rolled that well for me when I was creating my characters.
I think the most interesting use of the Deck of Many Things would be as an NPC’s nuclear deterrent. A lord has a lot of level one commoners under his stewardship, so if it came down to the wire, have them come up and take as many cards as they want. Some will die, some will be rendered comatose, but others will become powerful warriors or be granted powerful magic items.
Most of even the beneficial effects aren’t all that great to a commoner. Gaining an experience level or getting a +2 to a primary attribute won’t turn a herder or even a guardsman into a mighty warrior. Other effects are things like avoiding or “rewinding” an event for the drawer; hard to make that a big advantage for the lord. Aside from the couple that grant gems/jewelry or magic items, it’d be pretty slim drawings. And I wouldn’t be too excited about potentially giving one of my serfs a couple Wishes.
I thought I read somewhere (though it could have been in Dragon) that you couldn’t force someone to draw from the deck by magical compulsion. Since the decks are blessed by the gods of fate, I would personally rule that anyone forced into a draw would receive the benefits of the cards and those who forced them would receive the negative effects. Such are the penalties for trying to subvert and cheat fate.
They (like any other minor artifact) can also be used as a different sort of nuclear deterrent, at high levels: Carry one on your person, and make that fact publicly known, and no mage is ever going to want to take the risk of casting Disjunction on you.
(For those not conversant in D&D, Disjunction is the ultimate in a line of spells that turns off magic: It automatically shuts down all active spells in an area, and has a chance of permanently de-magicking magic items, with very little defense possible. It even has a small chance of de-magicking artifacts, but if this happens, it’s very likely to attract the unwelcome attention of some very powerful entity, and also has a chance to permanently and absolutely irrevocably remove all spellcasting ability from the caster of the Disjunction, a fate far worse than death.)
Disjunction shouldn’t be a combat spell in the first place. The game would be better if it had a casting time of, say a minute, instead of four seconds.
Yep. I got around to remembering that Tree Stride used to be called Plant Door. A bit like dimension door for druids, with the built-in disadvantage that you needed to have some big trees handy.
Well, truth be told, Shadow Step (or whatever his ability was called but still mimicked that spell) is pretty terrible a spell. You spend a full round travelling about a hundred feet, admittedly not incurring however many attacks of opportunity stood between you and the Big Bad.
However, most D&D fights take place either within a contained 15x15*5 feet square grid tops, or in the great outdoors where you could just fly over the opposition (which also helps with a number of things Shadow Step doesn’t. Such as, say, falling from a great height).
Transport via Plants is also terrible - it merely lets you travel from one oak to another oak (or one fern to another fern, or… yes) which is a lot more limited than one shadow to another. However, it doesn’t have a max range, which lets you win quite a few more bets, such as “around the world in two consecutive rounds !” :p. Also carry the Artifact of Evil to the Volcano of Doom quite a bit faster, even if the Artifact of Evil itself precludes most teleportation spells (campaign makers ALWAYS forget about TvP, because it sucks so hard). And unlike other TP spells, you can use it even if you’re wholly unfamiliar with the target destination without a risk of getting flung into the Plane of Ranch Dressing.
Technically it also allows you to straight up planehop, since the Powers That Be have decided that some of the outer planes were as pedestrian and Earth-like as 6th century Vikings figured they would be.
You don’t have to use Shadow Jump in the open, you can use it to teleport through walls up to sixteen times a day. And of course, you still have Hide in Plain Sight, so you’re teleporting from one place where you’re invisible to another place where you’re invisible, which is sure to make things difficult for your enemies.
Yeah, I’m guessing whatever the psionic equivalent of Dimension Door is (probably creatively called “Dimension Door”). At first I wondered how Durkon was still alive, having thought he’d need to scurry for the airship shade but I see the ship moved to a point where the whole group is shaded.
Edit: Tarquin lost his whip and now Greenhilt’s sword. Is he back to his dagger, i.e. the most dramatic weapon of all?
What’s with massively pissed off Vampire Durkon and the (I presume) negative energy drain? Can he do that? He’s Undead, but not a ghoul, right? Is that a vampire power?
