30 Day OD&D Challenge - Eldritch Wizardry - Artifacts & Relics (Part Two) - Day Twenty-Eight

Today's Topic is "Eldritch Wizardry - Artifacts & Relics - Part Two" as we continue our celebration of International Original Dungeons and Dragons Month!

Eldritch Wizardry also has this to say about Artifacts and Relics:

The abilities of all artifacts and relics must be determined by trial and error, by the players, and usually their effects are permanent and irreversible (due to the extreme strength of the magic used to create them). It is both unlawful and evil to give a relic to a non-player character because there may be danger involved. Non-player characters who are given artifacts to try out will, upon learning how to use them, attempt to dominate or destroy their masters/employers.

Many of the noted Artifacts and Relics are cursed items, but not just any curse because for some of the worst items, such as "The Hand of Vecna" it says:

NONE OF THE EFFECTS OF THE HAND MAY BE ALTERED IN ANY WAY, EVEN WISHES OR ACTS OF THE GODS ARE USELESS IN THIS REGARD.

Some of the items are EVIL, some are CHAOTIC, and some are both. Some will change the characters alignment and some will attempt to dominate the new owner, some will have a certain or an almost certain chance of succeeding. Compounding the situation is that detect Evil and similar spells will not work on these items due to their great power. Even some of the items that are not cursed per se may have some real downsides to their use.

The fact that wishes or acts of the gods are powerless to change the effects of the items on the user should make any player character think thrice before setting hand to one of these items. Attempting to wield an Artifact or Relic can be a thing of "be very careful what you wish for" type of situation.

This is another area that I suggest you may want to tweak how these items work in your campaign. For instance, IMO some/most Holy Swords should be Artifacts (or future Artifacts in the making) with downsides that are in keeping with being a Paladin, so from the Paladins perspective it is not cursed, but everyone else thinks that it is. So I tweak things based on what they are you their in game context.

For example it may not always be unlawful and evil to give a relic to a non-player character, there may be excellent reasons to do so that further the ends of Law and of Good. In those cases the NPCs attempting to dominate or destroy their masters/employers would not apply IMC. These items are so rare, the situation will likely never come up. 

In the next post I will look at some more of the dark side of Artifacts and Relics.