Deck of several things

My party (cyberpunk.dieselpunk homebrew) was exploring tunnels that turned out to be part of an ancient crashed beholder ship....and we saw I tunnel veering sharply down..and we thought we saw something glitter. My gnome druid, a backliner wound up going down alone (I think the beefier party members thought it was a trap) so I am the one who found the young dragon's treasure horde. a few dragon scales, some items worth 100-300 G, an ioun stone of sustenance, and this deck.

I haven't read all the cards (I just took a peek). It's (i believe) a weaker, adventure specific (DM can adapt it to the ship) weaker version of the deck of many things. Looks like a lot of the cards are adventure long but this campaign is one long adventure (Lev1-20 and we are 9 now). You have to call out how many cards you are taking and if you don't pull that many....all the remaining cards hit you...but cards get put back in the deck when used...so that's a lot of cards. My current thought is it's too risky for my little gnome...and to just hand the deck to the wizard who is excited to use it. I'll tell people to call out one card at a time (I know they won't) in case a card stops them from drawing another card (imprisons them or something).

What do you think of this magic item? Worth the risk? is there a better strategy to using it? We can make a new character if PC dies (I'd rather not), but it would need to be a cleric or Druid because nobody else fills those roles. 

I kept a deck to myself once.

Then in the next big city I sold "pulls" to the those who could afford it.

"Just think of the fame the riches and power you could gain"

Sold quite a few until someone got greedy and "stole" it from me.(I let him have it). The cities Mayor disappeared the next day. I could have enlisted the party to go "find" it with me but we had better things to do.

The decks are wonderful things no matter what deck they are.

The deck of several things is a powered down version of the deck of many things.

Many things has a (justly earned) reputation as a campaign ender. It an agent of complete chaos in the form of a deck of cards and has draws that effectively kill a character or otherwise remove them from the campaign. Similarly it has draws that can really spike a character’s power level.

Several things, which is in the lost laboratory of kwalish has the same kind of stuff in spirit, but is more easily dealt with.

For example, in many things, there’s a card the imprisons you in some other plane. Even a wish spell can’t bring you back, it can just reveal the location of the prison. Several things imprisons you in a specific place in the adventure. It’s still a giant pain, and your character is out of commission for a while until the party finds you, but it’s more realistic that they will be able to find you. 
Beneficial cards are also powered-down. One in many things can give you a level up, in several things gives you advantage on a skill.

So, it’s still pretty chaotic, but not as likely to be the campaign ender as many things. 

Maybe we can sell it when we are done with it.