Category: Tabletop RPGs

Malfunctioning Magical Items

Just in case your D&D/Pathfinder game needs a little levity:

  • Helm of Teleportation
    Acts like a normal Helm of Teleportation, but ONLY the helm teleports. The player stays behind. When attuning to the helm, language used should avoid pointing this out without actually lying about the helm’s ability to teleport.
  • Deck of Just One Thing
    Appears to be a Deck of Many Things, but every card drawn awards the player with an additional Deck of Just One Thing. They cannot draw cards from the new decks as they are identical in every way to the deck from which they drew.
  • Sleeping Bag of Holding
    At a random time during use, and until dawn, this sleeping bag constricts in such a way as to make the player feel like someone is in the bag with them and hugging them as they fall asleep. This can actually be quite comforting, unless you weren’t expecting it.
  • Carpet of Flights of Fancy
    Anyone using this carpet will feel and act like it is in fact a flying carpet. The best, flying carpet, in fact. Never has the player flown so fast, with such great maneuverability. Why, they can even do a barrel roll. In reality, they will be sitting on the carpet wherever they placed it while onlookers wonder if a high level cleric should be brought in.
  • Goggles of Night
    Traditional Goggles of Night give darkvision up to 60 feet. THESE goggles make it look like it’s midnight, though characters who have darkvision may use that ability when wearing these goggles in well lit areas.

Lesser Villain Weaknesses

In case the chart on page 96 of the DMG is too serious…
1. Seasonal allergies
2. Gives up evil ways if hugged
3. Immune to magical weapons, mundane ones do 2x damage
4. Dangling participles deal 2d8 damage
5. Can be defeated by democratic vote
6. Unable to resist or win dance competitions
7. Homeopathy (Take a sword, put it in water…)
8. Pictures of cats

Official D&D Character Sheets? Yes, please!

(I usually assume that if you’re into Dungeons & Dragons you already know about the cool things on their official website, but last I checked this was a little buried so I figured it was worth pointing out.)
In recent years, the good folk behind D&D have made a LOT of their material freely available. Turns out, this also includes 5th edition character sheets.

The neat thing about this article on their website is that it doesn’t JUST have blank, printable generic sheets. It also has a PDF with editable forms, which is great for people like me who have less than stellar handwriting, AS WELL AS pre-generated characters. Each character on the site also includes multiple levels, so if you need to quickly add an orc paladin to the party it doesn’t matter if it needs to be level 1 or level 10 – there’s a sheet ready for you.

Download them all here.

Pathfinder Crashbang

I’ve scored the opportunity to join a Pathfinder game, so naturally I rolled up a gnome fighter named Crashbang Gearcrunch.

Why not a paladin, you might ask? Well, he WANTS to be a paladin, but his personality tends to make the clerics and paladins of multiple faiths much more interested in sending him to OTHER churches. He’s essentially a hot potato.

He also has zero ranks in Knowledge: Religion, so he tends to invoke deities that no one’s ever heard of before. Naturally none of the ones he calls upon exist in the game world, so nothing happens when he calls upon them other than a fellow player chuckling or facepalming. Both are good.

My favorites that aren’t just in-jokes are:

  • Arthur, God of Sufficiently Advanced Technology,
  • Deedee, Goddess of Less than helpful Lab Assistants,
  • Geordi, God of Large Power Sources and Literature, and
  • Ginsburg, Goddess of Justice

But I have a whole “pantheon” laid out in a spreadsheet ready to use whenever I have the opportunity to make a pop culture reference.

Bonus image: an in-progress version of the above picture: