What makes for an interesting permanent magic item?

[Peter Knutsen]

What makes for an interesting (and fudge-free, or at least fudge-light) permanent magic item, such as a magic sword, magic staff, magic bracelet, or similar?

I've got some ideas of my own (hop to the RPG-Create mailing list, and read my two-part post on "cool abilities" from about a year ago, to get a fairly good sense of those), but I'd like to hear other suggestions and opinions.

One thing strikes me as obvious, though: It has to be a complex item, combining at least two different Enchantment-elements, and preferably 3 or 4, or even more. Anything simple is highly likely to be boring and to lack in "personality".

[Anders]

A good backstory is more important than cool powers. Although cool powers are never wrong.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Asta Kask

A good backstory is more important than cool powers. Although cool powers are never wrong.

Cool powers are important, but I've found that when I create a permanent magic item for (or by) a specific character, it's easier to make it more complex, because it is made to serve that character's agenda. I.e. it's not just a Flaming Sword, or a Troll-Bane Axe, or an Anti-Undead Mace. Not a single-power or dual-power item, but a poly-power item.

It contains the Enchantment elements that the creator thinks the character will find useful in his (daily and/or adventuring) life, and even more so if the character creates the item for himself (no misunderstandings, then, apart perhaps from repressed subconscious desires somehow influencing the choice of elements, if one feels like going Freudian).

[Graham]

Backstory. The most enduring magic item in my 30 year campaign is the wizard's backpack. He cast a Magic Mouth on it which went badly wrong and the backpack became sentient. It can give him backchat as long as it's not buckled (even then it can mumble at him).

It called itself 'Madin', as it could just about read part of 'Made in Akbul' on its stitching.

It ended up saving the party's lives at a major climax of the campaign by reading a powerful scroll when the rest of the party were prisoners, and the wizard was laid out on the altar in the giant head of a demonic statue about to be sacrificed, surrounded by the hordes of chanting Drow.

Graham

[The Final Door]

Backstory AND powers, interlinked. Some of my best items have involved a backstory that, when pieces of it get understood, let the players figure out new powers in the item. Maybe a name from long ago unlocks a power, or some strange folklore hints at a way the item could be used that would not otherwise occur to the players.

[LemmingLord]

Backstory is key. If enchanting an item takes the kind of effort it does in most game systems, the enchanter must have been well motivated to make the item.

This is why, to me, most cursed items seem a little petty to me. Imagine spending 100 man hours on an item you are going to give away and probably just make your enemy's life more interesting for awhile.

This doesn't mean that backstory has to come first. If your player says he wants a magic sword that gives him magic resistence because you've been throwing mind control wizards at him left and right, start witht he ability (magic resistence) and concieve of why a wizard spent the time on creating such an item AND how it ended up available for purchase or as loot in some bad guys hands.

The great wizard wizardo was the protector and advisor to the throne of the ancient kingdom of goodbeeria. Unfortunately for him and his reputation (not to mention the kings and the kingdom) they had run up against problems with the fairy kingdoms who would invariably turn the current king into a poodle if negotiations didn't go the way they wanted. Wizardo was having a hard time finding good royalty for the throne and so found someone very resiliant to magic to found a new blood line as "regent" while he "sought the oracles" and "fasted in his study" to determine the next king. He spent forty days and forty nights enchanting the bejeweled goodbeeria sword of champions with magics to protect the next ruler from the predicaments that led to their requiring a royal dogwalker.

So wizardo returned to his people and said the lord of the pond held from the water this magical weapon handed down for each generation in the presence of Gilbert of Sullivan, declaring him the next ruler (who incidentally had paid wizardo a nice some of money for the privilege).

Gilbert completed the negotiations with the fairies and neither he nor future kings of goodbeeria had any more troubles themselves with being shapeshifted.. though the fairies did have a terrible tendency to want tobe invited to the blessings of their young ones and put divine curses on them for the amusement of them and readers of children's stories for millenia to come.

The bejeweled goodbeeria sword of champions gives its wielder (or carrier) a +2 magic resistence at all times, an additional +2 magic resistence against fairy cast spells, a +2 will in the presence of fairies, and once per day gives its wielder the fairy empathy advantage for ten minutes.

Of course kingdoms come and go, and when goodbeeria was sacked by Groinslash the Purer-Then-You-Anyday led orcogoths, the weapon was found to be too frilly and girly for the orcs, and was traded, along with 100 goodbeerian bodies, to the necromancer Richter Mortis, who made for them a small army of zombies.

Richter discovered the swords properties through much study and had a swordmaker rework the hilt to look more diabolical - with snakes ensnaring the beat up figure of a fairy.

Richter added his own magics to the blade, making it glow in the presence of fairies, and allowing all of its magics to be turned off or on with a twist of the hilt. He enchanted the snakes and fairy figure to continually writhe and depict the fairy screaming or shaking in death throws on occasion.

This he gave to the greatest of all of his achievements, his first vampire Bruce. He wanted Bruce to lead a great army against someone to acqure a great horrible reputation for himself, but as with many goals, he never got around to it and after a falling out between Bruce and Richter, Bruce went out to be sulky and seek redemption in the prime time world of sundalia where he fought along side muffy the killer, protecting the world against monsters that came out of the gateway of plot contrivences.

Because of the really high cost of insurance rates in sundalia, Bruce moved to his own television program with a very similiar plot in the city of similiar plot contrivences. Bruce was made human at the finale to his story arc, but only after destroying the latest big bad, who had destroyed the entire city with his earthquakes, laying it to ruins.

Now the sword lies with Bruce's other bad-guy-fighting mundane gear in the basement of what remains of the keep that served as his headquarters.