Cursed ventriloquist doll
Book of many cheeses: by reading the incantations written inside, the user can, once a day, sommon a wheel of cheese from the forgotten farms.
Here’s few of my goofy items over the years.
Lantern of in-sight: causes any object or entity you’re aware of and can keep a direct line of sight on to glow as bright as a non magical lantern. The lantern itself does not produce light. Had a player use it to highlight someone hiding in a crowd when the party failed to see them.
Jewel of Becoming: when activated the player became a gemstone for 1d6 hours. The rogue ended up exploiting this heavily by becoming a jewel and either having another player sell her or just being in the path of someone. Once she turned back she’d rob them blind and sneak out back to the party.
Immovable ladder: it was a rope ladder but the rungs in the middle and either end were immovable rods. This one the artificer cobbled together in game and I allowed for it. They spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to use it for more than a reliable way down from a second floor but never did manage anything wild. They couldn’t even really use it to go up because someone would still and go climb up there to set the top rod.
Maxwell’s Morning Tonic: a bitter, dark, and slightly oily potion that when drank, counts as a short rest or turns a short rest into a long rest. It also gives you a -1d6 to hit and sleight of hand. It’s just a strong coffee.
Curious what would happen if the jewel was stored in a small lockbox. That wouldn’t be pleasant.
We played it as the rogue would destroy the box in returning to normal size, but they take damage equal to the boxes health before it explodes.
My favorite situations were her getting trapped in a floor safe for an entire fight because the bandit immediately locked up the pretty stone, her erupting out of the pocket of a maid being interrogated for stealing from the Lord, and her exploding from a coin purse on a Duke nearly a county over because the he picked her up while leaving the bank instead of while entering.
I’m not sure how Immovable Rods work exactly, but presumably with three of them you could place two, stand on them, place the third at some reasonable height, move the first two to a new location and repeat as needed, then once at the appropriate height, “lock” the top rung and use the ladder proper to climb back down, setting the other immovable rungs as needed.
Like a climber tree stand for murder hobos.
That’s an idea, but the rods had 4 rungs between them that were just wood so they were about 6ft apart. They had used it by setting the bottom, having someone tall put the middle at full length away, then have that person climb up and balance on the top rung to then set the next one at full length. It often led to hilarious critical fails on the balance checks.
I’m genuinely surprised no one thought to hold them in place with a 10ft pole, that’s d&d 101 right there.
Could’ve held one rod end in each hand, letting middle of rope ladder hang down for standing on, like stirrups
Alternate left/right and you can step in any direction into the air
I suppose that’d be easier than free climbing with two rods, though you wouldn’t really need the full ladder for it.
Rod of animal control: it only works on dogs and it only makes them follow you and perform basic actions like sit and give paw.
On closer inspection it’s just a chew treat
It will be eaten if the dog gets a hold of it
The dog gains control of the dog. I understand.
Ring of Ringing. Causes wearer’s ears to ring. When removed the ring itself begins to ring.
Hammer of Dwarf Throwing.
Can only be attuned to by dwarves. As a bonus action, the user may expend a charge to be launched from the location of the hammer towards a target, leaving the hammer behind.
I once gave a player a ring that did something similar. It was a cursed ring of jumping. The player was able to jump 16 feet into the air, and/or 30 feet in distance… The curse was that the player was only able to jump 16 feet high/30 feet long.
Just need to hop over a small 5 foot wide pitfall trap? You’re taking a flying leap and slamming into the wall that is 10 feet behind it. Want to hop over a table during a tavern brawl? You’re slamming into the 12 foot ceiling of the tavern, hard enough for everyone to stop fighting and stare for a split second before resuming the brawl.
A bag of beach.
It’s a bag of holding that contains a pocket dimension, with a beach, some palm trees, and a cocktail bar run by an Orc who wanted to get away from all the violence in his tribe.
The characters can all crawl into the bag and the last to enter turns the opening inside out, making the bag disappear in the real world.
It only fits a light-hearted campaign cause it takes the tension out of a dungeon crawl and it’s insanely powerful cause it lets the characters rest, heal and replenish their spells.The bag is stolen by the main villain while you are in the pocket dimension, and he eats it.
Game over. Lol
You can fold the bag in on itself from the inside so it doesn’t exist in the real world anymore.
Don’t ask me how that makes sense, it’s magic.
In one of my dungeons, there was a trapped carpet which caused people who sat on it to belive they were riding a flying carpet. It was in fact an animated carpet, so the barbarian who believed he was flying around the castle was in fact just scooting forward an inch at a time
One I made up for a caster who always missed their rolls was a sentient wizards hat ‘clippy’. “I see you were trying to cast Eldrich Blast, do you need help with that” and occasionally giving them advantage (they really were rolling awfully)
I was bad at RPing it though and that campaign ended shortly after anyway
Crown of Good Buggy.
Crafted by a demented druid as a gift for a princess on her birthday. It was quickly regifted to a adventurer.
Once a day when the command word is spoken while worn on the head 10 bugs come quickly crawling out of the crown. Make a dex check -10 to see how many you catch (max 10) the rest skitter off.
Each bug lives a day and while alive can be eaten for 1hp healing and provides a full day of nutrition. The bugs taste of raspberry cream.
Ring of perception filter, when not visible (or mentioned recently) creatures forget it exists
Cursed variant applies this effect to the wearer
Sounds like something that would need to be secured by the Antimemetics Division.
Best part is you can say the pc was always wearing it from the beginning
A funny one i found on Reddit:
Glasses of hindsight: provide a passive perception of 20 of events suitably far in the past
Be careful with magic items, I let my guys buy a trident of fish command… In a desert. But it turns out lots of snakes etc have a swim speed…
*puts on glasses
Oh! Oh. My crush had a crush on me the whole time. Oh, I’m an idiot. My dog is not at a farm upstate. My day is ruined.
That would be wisdom! I tend to let it do that too as it’s funny
Just because something can swim doesn’t make it a fish.
It works on a beast with swim speed (doesn’t need to be a fish)
https://www.dndbeyond.com/magic-items/4784-trident-of-fish-command
Cursed ring of acrobatics.
Gives the player great acrobatic skill, but sticks to their finger when they wear it. And they can’t stop getting around acrobatically. Any action attempted fails, unless it is done acrobatically. Player has normal or only slightly improved stamina.
Player: i’ll get my rope and grappleing hook and scale the wall.
DM: lifts eyebrow you think so, do you?
Player: sigh I throw my pack into the air and leap after it. At the peak of its arc, I flip over it, grabbing my grappling hook and flinging it over the wall as I do.
DM: ok, sounds like difficulty of 15…
Maybe you can find inspiration in The Book of Wondrous Inventions.
Wand of paralyzing. Just tell them that. Then, when they get to use it, they find out that the wand actually just paralyzes itself and just floats in the air doing nothing. DM got me good there just as I had to perform a spell on a guard. Had to aggressively improvise afterwards.
It’s just an immovable rod disguised as a wand
Be careful in a more realistic setting, where the rod stays fixed in place (in its own reference frame) while the earth, the solar system and the galaxy all keep moving at thousands of km per second.
O I like this. Had my DM thought of this I would have succeeded in my first attempt at calling an Orc into the bathroom with me to “help me out with my orc problems”.
