Cursed*: Once you put it on you will not let anyone take it off, it can only be removed by wish or Remove curse spell
When you say the amulets activation word(Pending) your next hit will be a critical,* But what ever damage you do you take half of your own damage(Part of the curse)
So is this to overpowered or underpowered, what do you guys think?
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All men can see the tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved.
The curse is immaterial, since it's an amulet. If you made the item something annoying so the owner would genuinely want it gone sometimes - e.g. cursed underwear you won't willingly remove, good luck pooping - the curse would be relevant. Instead, you've buffed it, since you made it impossible to remove without spell assistance.
It's wildly overpowered once the party identifies it, because you didn't make the activation word cost any action economy. Imagine this on the infamous gloom stalker battlemaster assassin build only the assassin has identified their amulet and is showing up to the party with resistance to piercing damage and a pile of temporary hit points, and the cleric behind them has a bag of diamonds just in case.
The curse is immaterial, since it's an amulet. If you made the item something annoying so the owner would genuinely want it gone sometimes - e.g. cursed underwear you won't willingly remove, good luck pooping - the curse would be relevant. Instead, you've buffed it, since you made it impossible to remove without spell assistance.
It's wildly overpowered once the party identifies it, because you didn't make the activation word cost any action economy. Imagine this on the infamous gloom stalker battlemaster assassin build only the assassin has identified their amulet and is showing up to the party with resistance to piercing damage and a pile of temporary hit points, and the cleric behind them has a bag of diamonds just in case.
It would cost an action or something it is also just a draft of it, next what person is going to use this with the possibility of them being killed by a monster once they use it
also you can make it so if they use it the gain vulnerability to any damage till the start of their next turn or something
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All men can see the tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved.
I feel like this doesn't really feel "cursed". Sure, it harms the user when activated, but the wearer has complete control of when it activates, and it doesn't even require attunement, so it doesn't occupy the wearer's attunement slots in the event that they do manage to come across it. All in all it's just giving the wearer a very powerful attack they can trigger at will, assuming they're willing to take some damage of their own, and making it impossible to have that item taken from them.
I think it's not horribly unbalanced, but I think if you're going to make it cursed you need to give it more downsides. Giving the wearer vulnerability for one round is a good start. All in all, though, I think you'll find that, if someone gets this item, they're going to just save it for the end of a conflict against a powerful foe, spend their HP to unleash some devastating attacks, and then just leave it alone the rest of the time. If I had an item like this with my Barbarian character I would be using it regularly and I know I'd be just fine.
This amulet has 3 charges. You can expend a charge to inflict a critical hit with your next attack.
Curse:
By attuning to this amulet, you become cursed, and cannot remove the amulet until the curse is removed by a remove curse spell or similar magic. When you roll a natural 20 on an attack roll, if this amulet has less than 3 charges, this amulet gains one charge and the additional damage dice from the critical hit is instead dealt to yourself, as necrotic damage.
This way you can "store" your critical hits for later use, but have no control over the storage - if you use the amulet, you line yourself up to be hurt and have your critical hits nerfed until it's recharged - at which point, you will want to use it again because you feel like you've lost out on your critical hits before...
This amulet has 3 charges. You can expend a charge to inflict a critical hit with your next attack.
Curse:
By attuning to this amulet, you become cursed, and cannot remove the amulet until the curse is removed by a remove curse spell or similar magic. When you roll a natural 20 on an attack roll, if this amulet has less than 3 charges, this amulet gains one charge and the additional damage dice from the critical hit is instead dealt to yourself, as necrotic damage.
This way you can "store" your critical hits for later use, but have no control over the storage - if you use the amulet, you line yourself up to be hurt and have your critical hits nerfed until it's recharged - at which point, you will want to use it again because you feel like you've lost out on your critical hits before...
So Pretty much when the store a critical hit they take half damage, but will anything happen if they use the critical hit or is it just to store it?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
All men can see the tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved.
This amulet has 3 charges. You can expend a charge to inflict a critical hit with your next attack.
Curse:
By attuning to this amulet, you become cursed, and cannot remove the amulet until the curse is removed by a remove curse spell or similar magic. When you roll a natural 20 on an attack roll, if this amulet has less than 3 charges, this amulet gains one charge and the additional damage dice from the critical hit is instead dealt to yourself, as necrotic damage.
This way you can "store" your critical hits for later use, but have no control over the storage - if you use the amulet, you line yourself up to be hurt and have your critical hits nerfed until it's recharged - at which point, you will want to use it again because you feel like you've lost out on your critical hits before...
So Pretty much when the store a critical hit they take half damage, but will anything happen if they use the critical hit or is it just to store it?
No, so using the charges means a guaranteed critical hit without rolling, but it also means your next natural critical hit recharges the amulet and deals the extra damage to you instead of the enemy.
After 3 of these, you'll feel so cheated out of your critical hits that the temptation is to use the amulet again to get a guaranteed one, but doing so means you are back to hurting yourself when you roll a natural 20. I expect this will cause a vicious cycle of constantly using it because of the side effects of using it.
You also need to figure out how you get the cursed item into play. No one puts on a magic necklace without identifying it first, and as soon as you reveal that it is cursed the players will likely chuck it away. Then in reverse you don't want to force the players to be cursed by something that is impossible to avoid. You can go the route of "Upon contact with your skin the curse is activated and the item magically appears on you" but it always should have a warning in advance that must be ignored "You see a ring, black smoke wafting from the pitch black gem. You can feel powerful magic radiating from it" add some time pressure so they have to choose to take it or run and the curse becomes a punishment for greed.
You also need to figure out how you get the cursed item into play. No one puts on a magic necklace without identifying it first, and as soon as you reveal that it is cursed the players will likely chuck it away. Then in reverse you don't want to force the players to be cursed by something that is impossible to avoid. You can go the route of "Upon contact with your skin the curse is activated and the item magically appears on you" but it always should have a warning in advance that must be ignored "You see a ring, black smoke wafting from the pitch black gem. You can feel powerful magic radiating from it" add some time pressure so they have to choose to take it or run and the curse becomes a punishment for greed.
Hiding curses from identification is a fairly popular GM houserule, so far as I know. I think I've encountered it at least once in every campaign.
You also need to figure out how you get the cursed item into play. No one puts on a magic necklace without identifying it first, and as soon as you reveal that it is cursed the players will likely chuck it away. Then in reverse you don't want to force the players to be cursed by something that is impossible to avoid. You can go the route of "Upon contact with your skin the curse is activated and the item magically appears on you" but it always should have a warning in advance that must be ignored "You see a ring, black smoke wafting from the pitch black gem. You can feel powerful magic radiating from it" add some time pressure so they have to choose to take it or run and the curse becomes a punishment for greed.
Hiding curses from identification is a fairly popular GM houserule, so far as I know. I think I've encountered it at least once in every campaign.
You could make the curse not seen by identify but to my mind that comes off pretty mean. The party can take every precaution, do everything right and still end up struck down. Punishment for bad decisions is great, punishment for good ones less so.
You could make the curse not seen by identify but to my mind that comes off pretty mean. The party can take every precaution, do everything right and still end up struck down. Punishment for bad decisions is great, punishment for good ones less so.
You also need to figure out how you get the cursed item into play. No one puts on a magic necklace without identifying it first, and as soon as you reveal that it is cursed the players will likely chuck it away. Then in reverse you don't want to force the players to be cursed by something that is impossible to avoid. You can go the route of "Upon contact with your skin the curse is activated and the item magically appears on you" but it always should have a warning in advance that must be ignored "You see a ring, black smoke wafting from the pitch black gem. You can feel powerful magic radiating from it" add some time pressure so they have to choose to take it or run and the curse becomes a punishment for greed.
Hiding curses from identification is a fairly popular GM houserule, so far as I know. I think I've encountered it at least once in every campaign.
You could make the curse not seen by identify but to my mind that comes off pretty mean. The party can take every precaution, do everything right and still end up struck down. Punishment for bad decisions is great, punishment for good ones less so.
Depends on the expectations of the players. If they expect Identify to work flawlessly at all times, that'd be a nasty surprise. If you houserule a check for Identify (Arcana, presumably), then they know there's always a risk.
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You also need to figure out how you get the cursed item into play. No one puts on a magic necklace without identifying it first, and as soon as you reveal that it is cursed the players will likely chuck it away. Then in reverse you don't want to force the players to be cursed by something that is impossible to avoid. You can go the route of "Upon contact with your skin the curse is activated and the item magically appears on you" but it always should have a warning in advance that must be ignored "You see a ring, black smoke wafting from the pitch black gem. You can feel powerful magic radiating from it" add some time pressure so they have to choose to take it or run and the curse becomes a punishment for greed.
Hiding curses from identification is a fairly popular GM houserule, so far as I know. I think I've encountered it at least once in every campaign.
Hiding curses from identification is RAW, not a houserule.
Page 139 of the DMG
"Most methods of identifying items, including the Identify spell, fail to reveal such a curse, although lore might hint at it. A curse should be a surprise to the item's user when the curse's effects are revealed."
You don't cast identify and get told the entire story, you only get told the good bits! Let's be honest - curses would be quite rubbish if you know they are there!
In this case, Identify would reveal this as an amulet with 3 charges which allow you to make your next attack roll a critical hit without rolling. The players will be fighting over it - though more canny players might suspect a curse. The curse itself will not take effect until they have used the amulet at least once, then roll a natural 20 for an attack.
So i have this idea for a magic item
Cursed Amulet of Double Edge(Name Pending)
Cursed*: Once you put it on you will not let anyone take it off, it can only be removed by wish or Remove curse spell
When you say the amulets activation word(Pending) your next hit will be a critical,* But what ever damage you do you take half of your own damage(Part of the curse)
So is this to overpowered or underpowered, what do you guys think?
All men can see the tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved.
-Sun Tzu
The Art Of War
The curse is immaterial, since it's an amulet. If you made the item something annoying so the owner would genuinely want it gone sometimes - e.g. cursed underwear you won't willingly remove, good luck pooping - the curse would be relevant. Instead, you've buffed it, since you made it impossible to remove without spell assistance.
It's wildly overpowered once the party identifies it, because you didn't make the activation word cost any action economy. Imagine this on the infamous gloom stalker battlemaster assassin build only the assassin has identified their amulet and is showing up to the party with resistance to piercing damage and a pile of temporary hit points, and the cleric behind them has a bag of diamonds just in case.
It would cost an action or something it is also just a draft of it, next what person is going to use this with the possibility of them being killed by a monster once they use it
also you can make it so if they use it the gain vulnerability to any damage till the start of their next turn or something
All men can see the tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved.
-Sun Tzu
The Art Of War
I feel like this doesn't really feel "cursed". Sure, it harms the user when activated, but the wearer has complete control of when it activates, and it doesn't even require attunement, so it doesn't occupy the wearer's attunement slots in the event that they do manage to come across it. All in all it's just giving the wearer a very powerful attack they can trigger at will, assuming they're willing to take some damage of their own, and making it impossible to have that item taken from them.
I think it's not horribly unbalanced, but I think if you're going to make it cursed you need to give it more downsides. Giving the wearer vulnerability for one round is a good start. All in all, though, I think you'll find that, if someone gets this item, they're going to just save it for the end of a conflict against a powerful foe, spend their HP to unleash some devastating attacks, and then just leave it alone the rest of the time. If I had an item like this with my Barbarian character I would be using it regularly and I know I'd be just fine.
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this is just a draft but i see where your going with it, Thanks for the feedback
All men can see the tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved.
-Sun Tzu
The Art Of War
I would go for this instead:
Double edged amulet:
This amulet has 3 charges. You can expend a charge to inflict a critical hit with your next attack.
Curse:
By attuning to this amulet, you become cursed, and cannot remove the amulet until the curse is removed by a remove curse spell or similar magic. When you roll a natural 20 on an attack roll, if this amulet has less than 3 charges, this amulet gains one charge and the additional damage dice from the critical hit is instead dealt to yourself, as necrotic damage.
This way you can "store" your critical hits for later use, but have no control over the storage - if you use the amulet, you line yourself up to be hurt and have your critical hits nerfed until it's recharged - at which point, you will want to use it again because you feel like you've lost out on your critical hits before...
Make your Artificer work with any other class with 174 Multiclassing Feats for your Artificer Multiclass Character!
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So Pretty much when the store a critical hit they take half damage, but will anything happen if they use the critical hit or is it just to store it?
All men can see the tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved.
-Sun Tzu
The Art Of War
No, so using the charges means a guaranteed critical hit without rolling, but it also means your next natural critical hit recharges the amulet and deals the extra damage to you instead of the enemy.
After 3 of these, you'll feel so cheated out of your critical hits that the temptation is to use the amulet again to get a guaranteed one, but doing so means you are back to hurting yourself when you roll a natural 20. I expect this will cause a vicious cycle of constantly using it because of the side effects of using it.
Make your Artificer work with any other class with 174 Multiclassing Feats for your Artificer Multiclass Character!
DM's Guild Releases on This Thread Or check them all out on DMs Guild!
DrivethruRPG Releases on This Thread - latest release: My Character is a Werewolf: balanced rules for Lycanthropy!
I have started discussing/reviewing 3rd party D&D content on Substack - stay tuned for semi-regular posts!
You also need to figure out how you get the cursed item into play. No one puts on a magic necklace without identifying it first, and as soon as you reveal that it is cursed the players will likely chuck it away. Then in reverse you don't want to force the players to be cursed by something that is impossible to avoid. You can go the route of "Upon contact with your skin the curse is activated and the item magically appears on you" but it always should have a warning in advance that must be ignored "You see a ring, black smoke wafting from the pitch black gem. You can feel powerful magic radiating from it" add some time pressure so they have to choose to take it or run and the curse becomes a punishment for greed.
Hiding curses from identification is a fairly popular GM houserule, so far as I know. I think I've encountered it at least once in every campaign.
You could make the curse not seen by identify but to my mind that comes off pretty mean. The party can take every precaution, do everything right and still end up struck down. Punishment for bad decisions is great, punishment for good ones less so.
My GMs just like punishment.
Depends on the expectations of the players. If they expect Identify to work flawlessly at all times, that'd be a nasty surprise. If you houserule a check for Identify (Arcana, presumably), then they know there's always a risk.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Hiding curses from identification is RAW, not a houserule.
Page 139 of the DMG
"Most methods of identifying items, including the Identify spell, fail to reveal such a curse, although lore might hint at it. A curse should be a surprise to the item's user when the curse's effects are revealed."
You don't cast identify and get told the entire story, you only get told the good bits! Let's be honest - curses would be quite rubbish if you know they are there!
In this case, Identify would reveal this as an amulet with 3 charges which allow you to make your next attack roll a critical hit without rolling. The players will be fighting over it - though more canny players might suspect a curse. The curse itself will not take effect until they have used the amulet at least once, then roll a natural 20 for an attack.
Make your Artificer work with any other class with 174 Multiclassing Feats for your Artificer Multiclass Character!
DM's Guild Releases on This Thread Or check them all out on DMs Guild!
DrivethruRPG Releases on This Thread - latest release: My Character is a Werewolf: balanced rules for Lycanthropy!
I have started discussing/reviewing 3rd party D&D content on Substack - stay tuned for semi-regular posts!