D&D is all about having some fun, often in unexpected ways, and magical items just help to bring that out. What are some items that you have been given (or have gifted to your party as a DM) that your party had a great time with?
Trying to find some great inspiration for items to maybe give to my party, homebrew items are more than welcome as suggestions!
The more chaos, the better!
There was a campaign a long time back where I gave the party something called the “Infinite Tapestry.” It was kind of a low-grade portable hole, a 10’x10’ tapestry that depicted an image of an empty stone masonry chamber with bare walls. If the tapestry was hanging vertically and you touched it while speaking a command word, you would appear inside the tapestry where there was another similar tapestry on the fourth wall of the chamber showing the outside world. Both tapestries had to be hanging flat and vertical for the connection to work, otherwise the other tapestry turned black and temporarily inert.
Basically, it was a portable clubhouse. They furnished it, went on a minor quest to get ahold of a magical hot tub to put in there, used it to store all the unwieldy things that parties liked to lug around. Since the connection was relatively “fragile” and could be disrupted easily, trapping whoever was in there until the tapestry could be hung from suitable supports again, they were always careful about using it as a literal camp - they slept outside of it whenever possible and took care not to all be inside at the same time. Which was a bit frustrating because there was a secret to the tapestry that I really wanted to force them to discover.
It wasn’t a portable hole, the chamber wasn’t an extradimensional space. The tapestry was actually a two-way portal to the Feywild, specifically to a chamber in the basement of an ancient abandoned castle that was the ancestral home of the secret Big Bad of the campaign. But they never examined the masonry inside to discover that the “back wall” was slightly different from the rest (it was a bricked-up corridor leading to the rest of the basement) and circumstances never arose where they’d be able to determine that they were on a different plane of existence in there rather than an extradimensional space.
Eventually, though, an opportunity arose. Through sheer happenstance a minor enemy of theirs discovered the secret of their tapestry, including the command word. He went into the tapestry to search through the party’s stuff, but the party spotted him entering it so they took down the tapestry to trap him in there. They spent a day prepping to fight the guy, and then when they were all good and ready they put the tapestry back up… and saw that during the day the guy had spent trapped in there he’d figured out the thing I had wanted the party to eventually figure out, breaching the back wall and escaping into the castle in the Feywild.
So now the party had to dungeon-crawl the ancient castle chasing the trail of this guy, discovering a bunch of stuff about the real Big Bad of the campaign in the process, and once that whole multi-session extraveganza was finished they had graduated from having a simple “clubhouse” to having a whole castle in their pocket. It became their major base of operations and many future adventure seeds focused around it.
It was a lot of fun, but if you’re a DM that likes a well-organized storyline it might be troublesome. I had no idea when exactly they were going to discover that whole new branch of the campaign they were carrying around with them.
That is a great idea, thanks for spending the time to share it!
This is such a great idea! I guess your party already knew about portable holes from previous campaigns and were just assuming that’s what it was? A tricky instance of characters acting according to player experience! Sounds like it worked out really well though.
Yeah, most of my players over the years have been veteran enough that the standard stuff can usually be assumed background knowledge. I think I even gave them a bag of holding so that they’d eventually have a clue from the fact that it didn’t blow up from being taken into the tapestry, but as soon as they realized what it was they got rid of it to be “safe” and never took it in there. In hindsight perhaps I should have had a bag of holding be already inside the tapestry chamber when they discovered it, left over in there as loot from the previous occupants. Though that may have clued them in too quickly. Always a balancing act. :)
I gave my party this Bag of Wonderus Randomization and reflavored it as magical D100 die that they were given and it spits out the results. Tons of fun to be had from it
A Wand of Wonder I gave them early on has provided my party with some hysterical moments.
A follower of Discordia had a kind of Slingshot of Wonder. Over 100 effects!
Oooh, that one is new to me, thanks for sharing!
The weapon of warning. I was fooled because it’s uncommon and didn’t read it closely enough.
I once decided to give all my players a single minor magical item at lvl 1 just to help their characters settle into their roles.
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The Ranger got a quiver of elven kind (guaranteed 20 non-magical arrows per day)
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The wizard got an indestructible spellbook (no need to worry about losing spells)
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The monk/rogue a cloak that made it easier to conceal his identity
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And the hobbit-like bard… a dagger of warning.
I thought they’d appreciate the LotR nod. Except I made a campaign of intrigue, where the baddies were hiding in plain sight. I dreaded that damn dagger. Somehow, through sheer luck, the bard immediately forgot about it after their first encounter. It never came up again.
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Immovable rod is so good I steal it for other games
