Palladium is just a big tease

[Jimbo]

What adventures have you been reading? I am fairly familiar with most of them and can only come up with two off the top of my head that the players are severely penalized for taking the "prize". One is the Eternity sword in the Place of Magic. And even then if you can kill the Hunter, you may be able to keep it without penalty.

The other is in Adventures in the Northern Wilderness (Wolfen Empire). The sword of Necrom the Undying. The rest of the rune weapons have curses on them, but don't most powerful magic items have a downside?

Maybe I missed something. Please enlighten me.

[Natasha]

I've liked all adventures I've seen from PFRPG.
I don't mind playing Principled characters, either.

[Natasha]

We if it's all about the loot, then these scenarios are not for you.
If it's all about the role, then these are really great scenarios.

[Natasha]

Well, in all honesty, if you want the really basic, "Find Monster --> Kill It --> Take It's Stuff" games, you can do it with Palladium, but several other systems (Munchkin, D&D) tend to have more 'basic' (though that's not quite the right term) adventures of that type.

Palladium adventures tend to have more of a role playing element.

I do agree with one thing though, too many rune weapons and items. To read the adventures as published, you'd think folks on Palladium were tripping over the things.

Well that is basic, but let me ask you this? How does a game work where you dont get any rewards except the adventure experince work?

Playstyle.

The big powerful stuff should be cursed and deadly for mortals to handle, in my opinion. Minor magical items are abound though. The GM shouldn't be so miserly that the PCS can't acquire some magical items.

By the way, nothing prevents a character from keeping the doubling sword of chaos from the Tombs of Gersidi. That thing could kill a mid-level knight in one strike.

[ghost2020]

Just remember those rune weapons are minor and major artifacts.

I usually treat a lot of them as left over tool from the elf/dwarf war, time of a 1,000 magics etc.

I have an article that deals with some quick random magic item generation. I really should get that sent in.

It lets the GM make minor magic items to hand, consumable ones (potions, etc) and some simple items.

I also tend to level the characters after a decent amount of story or time has passed, not really doing the experience point thing. Otherwise it's too slow.

[Reagren Wright]

Well if the weapon didn't have curses and lots of protection on it, why would it be sitting in
a tomb for 1000 years for? What sense does that make if anyone good or evil can just walk
up and take it. Palladium is not Diablo when you just kill a Tusker and have a chance of finding
a +6 to strike and parry Greatest Runesword. Nor is it World of Warcraft or D&D where people
walk around with 10-20 magic items on them that enables them to kill a dragon with a single
blow. Its about the growing and developing the character. What would be the point of Frodo's
adventure in Lord of the Rings if all he had to do was toss the ring into the ocean
or bury it under a rock. And if you don't like the cannon weapons in the book, make one up
yourself or tell you GM too. Playing Palladium doesn't require one just to use what they
have available.

[zor_prime1]

Hello.
As I was reading this, I couldn't help but think that there could be subtle ways around some of these dilemmas. I'll say that I'm not familiar with the quests to get the rune items, but there could be ways around those kinds of things. Ways that could further the plot or challenge the character's scruples.

For example with the mummy crown, why not have the guide of the group be evil at heart but playing as a nice guy? He's and the town have been telling the players that it's the only way to save their city. When he finally sees the crown, he could be the one to foolishly take it off the head before anyone could stop him. The group of players would have to deal with the consequences like a caving-in tomb or mummys. --They should always have a way out when you do this--. As for the item itself and being runed or cursed, have the curse be on the NPC, who dies. "He who removes this from the mummy's head..." But what about the next person who didn't? During the commotion and heroic deeds, have the runed crown fall into the custody of a player. Maybe the curse is broken when the wielder shows mercy on someone who doesn't deserve mercy, like the tour guide... This could happen in the battle. Or maybe the curse is broken when the person who took it is destroyed or consumed by the mummy army just before getting out. As he is about to get out he is killed or worse, looses grip of the crown and the crown rolls outside. When it does it's power to curse people is now void. Maybe he was cursed and now the curse is gone because he now is suffering the curse and is now a mummy.

Unnoticed fine print is a fun way to get out of most GM dilemmas.

Another scenario is that they could be questing on behalf of someone who actually could break the curse, but hasn't told the group that they can. It's a test of faith. Maybe it really is the decrepit woman's great grandfather's scepter and she wants it back only to bestow it on someone who is worthy before she dies. The quest was a test. Sure the curse was real, but it may be broken when the item was restored to it's rightful heir.

My point is, you're the GM. These items should and can be obtained. But the quest and the game isn't just about getting to the item. It may be about playing in character to appease the item. Runed items have some intelligence. They may be looking for someone who matches them, someone to corrupt or a suitable master. Maybe it's evil can only be nullified by a pure in heart person. Maybe the evil rune is looking for someone who is just as evil. Everyone up until that point wasn't worthy of it.

The curse could be a play on words that someone in your group may not apply to. Think of the Witch King in LOTR - "You fool! No man can kill me." But Aowyn (sp?) was no man. She didn't apply to the curse.

Again, fine print is a fun way to get the GM the results he or she wants. And the best part is that you can make the fine print up as you go.

Another thing I might suggest if you're looking for cool items that the group can quest for is to read the last article in the latest Rifter (#42). It has the means for gaining enchangted leather items that are harder than plate, can self-heal, and provide abilities of the creature that they make the leather armor/item out of. The article provides enough information for the requirements to give the GM ideas on how to generate quests around obtaining these.
There are also ideas on how to obtain super strong cloth. These quests can lead to the "accidental" acquisition of minor runed items. Think of how Bilbo obtained Sting because he defeated the trolls. This article is meant to give the GM ideas on how to provide hooks into other adventures while rewarding them for completing the tasks.

Good luck whatever you decide.

[Entiago]

Risk vs Reward


and its not always about the loot. I mean not for the principled characters anyway. Sometimes its about freedom of the people the quest is for. Sometimes there is gold, silver, gems, ect found within so that could be your loot to speak of.

As far as "one sidedness" of adventures, I never seen it that way. I have had players take a cursed item to benifit themselves. afterall, most priests can cure a curse. And sometimes they would rather see it in thier hands than in the hands of soemone else who could do harm with it.

[Veknironth]

Well, I don't know if that adventure rewards the "good" character as much as it does the careful one. Any theif worth his or her salt won't just walk into a room and grab whatever he or she sees. I can't remember exactly, but I think there is a warning about touching the gold. There are a lot of rune weapons in the books that are essentially unobtainable, but that's ok with me. I always worry about the power creep in the books and a campaign can be ruined quickly by the PC's becoming too powerful too quickly. Having a character with a major rune weapon should end up with people everywhere trying to kill that PC and take the item. But few GM's want to continuously attack thier PC's with assassins.

I've always thought that making your own magic item is generally superior to owning a rune weapon. It's certainly easier. You can create a serious combat advantage by combining drwaven weapons with a few enchantments. You won't be able to obtain the spell powers of a rune weapon, or some of the insane special abilities, but you'll never have to worry about curses, battles of will, or a leagion of treasure hunters looknig for your head.

-Vek
"I thought this would be about the Old Kingdoms Books."

[Natasha]

Rember just cause someones a great person dosnt mean they dont drink a 5th of vodka before noon and slap their wives up.

I wouldn't call this guy great.

[Vidynn]

In comparison to other settings, Im always surprised at how many magic items Palladium Fantasy scenarios tend to hand out.

[Library Ogre]

How many of you are familiar with old Gygaxian dungeons?

[Natasha]

I crawled a few; the thing I remember the most are the traps and a goblin behind every wine barrel hehe.

[Library Ogre]

Then y'all don't recall the tons of magic items strewn about them?

[Natasha]

I suspect the GM stripped them out.

I'd have to go back and re-read them as printed; I'm pretty sure they're still around.

[Entiago]

AH yes the old days, I remeber when you searched everyroom for traps, secret compartment, secret passages, and for magic more then once also going into them a ways then coming back out to get healed and such then going back in.

LOL I LOVE THESE. my favorite "crawls" are the unsuspecting and trap laiden. Once when a group first started they were all about the traps, I didnt put many in a few adventures when they began, so they lost focus on searching for them. Then one night *BAM* almost a trap in every room- that got them back on their toes real quick.

[Vidynn]

How many of you are familiar with old Gygaxian dungeons?

yeah, of course...and I guess that's one of the reasons why PF has a similiar approach to magic items in adventures. KS must have loved the old ways...but still wanted to create his own.

@ Last Darkness: can't compare it to RIFTS as I dont play that...IMO the PF items are very powerful but, yes, I do agree, many of them are cursed or have other "side-effects". That, on the other hand, is my main reason to even keep them in the game, otherwise I would strip most of them out.

My fav one was "Eternity" - never had so much fun playing an item.

[Library Ogre]

Well, as you may recall, Gygaxian dungeons dripped with magic items.

[Avatara]

Has any one else wonderd why the dwarves cursed more or less all of the rune weapons they created? You would think that they would only curse some of the ones they give away, or allow to fall into the enemies hands. As a trap of some sort, not curse their own champions. Especialy during the elf/dwarf war.

[Library Ogre]

Has any one else wonderd why the dwarves cursed more or less all of the rune weapons they created? You would think that they would only curse some of the ones they give away, or allow to fall into the enemies hands. As a trap of some sort, not curse their own champions. Especialy during the elf/dwarf war.

I figured that they've been cursed at some point in their long history, not at creation. It's also possible that some of the curses result from flawed creation processes, or flaws inherent in the spirits used.

[Probitas]

I was reading the Nimro book, and if you want an example of a carrot being dangled, check out the adventure about acquiring the rune swords dropped into Mount Nimro, and the horrible consequences of attempting to retrieve certain artifacts.

[Probitas]

Not all rune weapons need be cursed in my view, and in fact the Greater Rune Sword Castlerake has NO curses, beyond its value and the likelihood that anyone who knows about it will attempt to purchase, steal or otherwise remove it from the players.

The Game Rules ARE just suggestions after all, there is no need to follow them to the letter, that is the death of imagination.

[bradshaw]

Not all rune weapons need be cursed in my view, and in fact the Greater Rune Sword Castlerake has NO curses, beyond its value and the likelihood that anyone who knows about it will attempt to purchase, steal or otherwise remove it from the players.

The Game Rules ARE just suggestions after all, there is no need to follow them to the letter, that is the death of imagination.

Rules are not the death of imagination, but yeah do what you want

[Probitas]

When you think about it though, you have to wonder, why would the dwarves create all these weapons cursed in the first place? It would make them difficult to use during the Great Wars would it not, having your soldiers loop out and run amok on your own troops, or nasties like Necrom the Undying deciding you were traitor for not being ruthless enough, and even minor things like having your armor fall apart, or food spoil, make logistics a nightmare for the quartermaster.

I understand that the intent is to control the prevalence of powerful artifacts in the game, but it's easy to deal with that. Just don't give it to them in the first place. And remind the players that anything they can do, so can NPCs.

[runebeo]

So im reading through several of the Palladium fantasy books I recently aquired and noticed that in almost all of the adventures there are lots of great magical gear thats fully stated out and given background/history but is also made so that a player group can never actualy get them. I keep seeing adventure after adventure that has tons of cool stuff in it but you cant touch it or take it from the place without being pretty horribly cursed or killed and thats just for the stuff you can actualy get.
It really seems like theres a carrot on a stick being dangled in front of your face and if you ever figure out a way to actualy get the carrot you are beaten to death for it.
Several of the adventures ive read arnt even worth doing as unless everyone is playing Principled characters playing good and true to a T you wont even get any rewards.

In our Rifts campaign our GM gave our two True Atlanteans in our group cursed rune weapons. One was a sword with Misshapen curse and the other was a Necronstaff the undeath curse. theses curses cannot effect the Atlanteans. The GM has used the curses as a story device that has worked out very well. The undeath curse is great for creating vampires and other undead that can be cured by a remove curse spell and players that really want to try out the vampire R.C.C. without the vampire intelligence link part. The best part of the curse is if they die they are reborn as the real undead this time and no cure is waiting. Its like rent to own.

[The Dark Elf]

Just to say that if Palladium was a tease then as GM, just alter it.

Im not a fan of lots of magical items but I like the rewards to be great truly great) but very hard to get.

Some PCs I GM for have a holy crusader with a greater holy weapon and an 8-legged horse, a priest with a greater rune weapon (Beklethek) and both the light and dark prayers, and a wizard with one of each crystal weapon!! (well he did have, but he needs to go to hades to retrieve them).
Each of these have 3 multiple OCCs, they went back to the Valley at the top of the world 3 times in this campaign plus doing other adventures in between.
How long did it take them IRL to do all this - 14 yrs!

Point being theyve earnt their promotions, fame, fortunes, rewards.

So in the IATEOW adventure how did they "defeat" (if thats the right term for freeing him). I changed the rule - I made him leave the crystal palace to view the recently discovered crystal gateway with one activation and a runnig bodyblock from a troll he was over 30 miles away and the snow began to fall.

Dungeon crawls dont use the best of what PFRP system has to offer or the best for ur imagination so I dont use em. But I reckon if Id played any fantasy game (or RPG) then I couldnt have the complaint that the loot was impossible to get cos that is totally up to me!

[Jerell]

I was always in favor of a few powerful weapons for the right people. In Western culture Arthur had Excaliber and Aragorn had Narsil. In the east, Monkey had his staff. It seems more epic, with the right weapons in the right hands. I favor having magic weapons and a rune weapon or 2 in my party some times so they can fight bigger, badder enemies, and it let's me stage more epic personnal combats.

I don't hand these things out like candy though, I've been running the same campaign for over 10 years now. Besides, rune weapons with curses are fun for the GM.

[The Beast]

What adventures have you been reading? I am fairly familiar with most of them and can only come up with two off the top of my head that the players are severely penalized for taking the "prize". One is the Eternity sword in the Place of Magic. And even then if you can kill the Hunter, you may be able to keep it without penalty.

The other is in Adventures in the Northern Wilderness (Wolfen Empire). The sword of Necrom the Undying. The rest of the rune weapons have curses on them, but don't most powerful magic items have a downside?

Maybe I missed something. Please enlighten me.

My own guess is that you missed pretty much all the other adventures. IMO, Palladium has its Reward vs Risk scale skewed toward the "There's No Money In This" end.

However, I do agree that most, if not all, of the most powerful rune weapons should have "problems" with them. However there's times when even the lesser ones have curses, and the time there aren't any the PCs are in situations where it's either leave them alone or die.

I'm just saying that it would be nice to see a few rune weapons from PFRPG that would let those who don't get anything special from leveling up aside from more hit points & skills something that wouldn't hurt them in some way.

[Jerell]

Well, I created a rune weapon for my game called, "The Axe of Triumph." It doesn't talk and does 1D6x10 damage, and has no curse. It also has the power to one-shot demons if it hits at the same time as this other holy weapon sword in my campaign. The Axe of Triumph was a dwarven weapon and the sword that combines for the extra power is elven, so it's kind of an added bonus to get the two owners working together.

The rules for rune weapon creation are easy enough. I've made a few myslef, and nothing says you have to put a curse on them.

[Natasha]

What are your combat house rules for allowing two fighters to strike at the same time?

[RockJock]

We have played a few games where we picked up rune weapons and carried them around wrapped up without using them for months. Eventually we went on a series of quests to free each weapon from it's curse. It was a great series of games.

[KillWatch]

One of the reasons I like Palladium is that the magic items are of great consequence, and the game is mostly about skills and abilities rather than wha you have. The game seems themed after Michael Moorcocks Elric, where the sword grants great power, but is terribly cursed. Great stories ensue in the suffering and conflicts

[FreelancerMar]

What almost nobody mentioned is the probable fact that the Origional Owners of these rune weapons(Most of which were invariably dwarves) did not suffer any of the curses placed upon them by their creators. The Curses were placed on these items to make any would be thieves suffer. Power has it's price.

On a side note. There is 1 curse that will always invariably find it's way onto a souldrinker in my games. If you draw this weapon, you will be unable to put it away until after you have Killed someone with it, and this means a living sentient creature.

[PhellaOne]

Well if the weapon didn't have curses and lots of protection on it, why would it be sitting in
a tomb for 1000 years for? What sense does that make if anyone good or evil can just walk
up and take it. Palladium is not Diablo when you just kill a Tusker and have a chance of finding
a +6 to strike and parry Greatest Runesword. Nor is it World of Warcraft or D&D where people
walk around with 10-20 magic items on them that enables them to kill a dragon with a single
blow. Its about the growing and developing the character. What would be the point of Frodo's
adventure in Lord of the Rings if all he had to do was toss the ring into the ocean
or bury it under a rock. And if you don't like the cannon weapons in the book, make one up
yourself or tell you GM too. Playing Palladium doesn't require one just to use what they
have available.

Ahhh...! A thinker!!! You have just been friended (for whatever it's worth). One of my goals on the Forums is to meet people with your sense of logic.

[PhellaOne]

One of the reasons I like Palladium is that the magic items are of great consequence, and the game is mostly about skills and abilities rather than wha you have. The game seems themed after Michael Moorcocks Elric, where the sword grants great power, but is terribly cursed. Great stories ensue in the suffering and conflicts

[Saitou Hajime]

Several Adventures in Yin-Sloth Jungles, Mt Nimro, and Island at the edge of the world ive read so far.
Common theme seems to be Crypts/Tombs that are almost always filled with great stuff but your severaly penalised for taking anything if not outright killed along with your group. One adventure has this neat mummy with this great magical headress thats powerful but not too powerful that It hints at "If theres any good players in your group they will not allow anyone to remove the headress from the tomb"

I know which one you are talking about and the Mantle of the Gods is tainted and will only inflict misery. You can't take the Weapons because they are lent to you. There is a ton of gold to be found in many adventures, find an Alchemist and buy stuff.

[FreelancerMar]

There are some folks here that basically do not understand how curses on rune weapons and more powerful weapons work. These curses are a Permenant part of the items that cannot be removed under most conditions(as in cannot be removed from the items in question). For Rune weapons, under most conditions, even the gods themselves cannot remove these curses. The Reason is because during the creation of such weapons, those making them were drawing upon the power of the slumbering old ones to create them.

Also a clearification on the Curse of Rags. Unless an item is indestructable, the curse will eventually and permenately destroy EVERYTHING the cursed individual OWNS! This means that even if you stuff it under a rock or hide it somewhere the curse will still destroy it no matter where it may be.