Dungeon masters of reddit, what is the most USELESS item you gave your party that they were still able to exploit?
Bagpipes of Invisibility.
They grant invisibility as long as they're played.
Silence is one hell of a spell.
I gave my players a "pig whistle".
Once a day, they could blow the whistle and summon a pig.
I hadn't given too much thought about it but they used it CONSTANTLY!
They would send pigs off to spring traps.
They would have impromptu luaus to curry favor with peasants.
They never had to worry about rations again.
Pork for dinner!
I thought it was just a useless throw away item, but they sure proved me wrong!
good times.
One time our DM gave us a Rod of Summon Boat as a joke except we rolled a nat 20 for the summon and got a whole ass galleon.
The campaign quickly became pirate-themed as we became privateers
Player here.
Once upon a time I was playing a supernatural western game and we received a "magic bullet" early on that, when dropped onto the ground, will point in the direction of true north.
We received this bullet in session 1 and promptly forgot it existed.
We then went on a two year long campaign of tracking down an evil time travelling wizard with antics that included poisoning a bunch of rich people with ice cream, crashing a zeppelin, a player character going insane and trying murder his way to the presidency, fighting a train monster, then finally confronting the evil wizard in a pocket dimension.
We were, somehow, woefully underprepared to fight the bath robe wearing wizard as he was immune to all forms of damage.
We were at a loss to what to do, until the wizard shouted that he can only be hurt by magic.
We paused and looked at our inventories for a few minutes.
Suddenly my buddy shoves his character sheet in my face and points out the word "magic bullet."
We then proceeded to shoot the boss in the face, killing him instantly.
Our GM was reasonably upset since we were too stupid to figure
out his puzzle fight and just cheesed the final boss of a two year campaign.
But, in the end, it was our most memorable climax to a campaign.
Edit to Answer some common questions:
\- The system was a heavily modified Unknown Armies 2nd Edition, it's a phenomenal occult horror game that I'd recommend to anyone interested in magic being dictated by the collective unconscious with lots of urban decay.
But for all your western needs I'd go to Savage Worlds / Deadlands.
\- My GM let this pass because it was fun way to end the
campaign that rewarded our fast thinking.
\- We were supposed to break some pots to dispel the pocket dimention.
\- We did not suplex the train.
I now wish we did.
\- It seems we accidentally plagiarized the Dark Tower, well beep
The jar of endless lard.
I put it in as a joke and somehow they managed to set a Forest in fire with a timed fuse.
Also having them covering various body parts in said lard just to set it in fire for extra damage wasn’t good.
Father of a DM here.
During lockdown our 24 year old son was living at home, so could't play with his usual crew, so we agreed to Sunday morning family D and D sessions and actually quite enjoyed it.
His mum was a cook who had a magic ladle that could produce any liquid; I asked if she could throw the contents.
He said it would have a 5 metre range.
He was expecting her to produce a healing soup, and he had to google hydrofluoric acid when I said she should lob that at some Kobolds...
Maybe not exactly what you were looking for,but I've been looking for an excuse to tell this story.
I had a party of Wizard, Ranger, Druid, Summoner and Barbarian back in Pathfinder 1e.
All of the party members except for the barbarian had some kind of pet, be it an animal companion, familiar, or just the menagerie of animals the druid accumulated.
A few sessions in, and my barbarian sends me a text while the party's setting up camp.
The barbarian volunteers to take a watch, and the next morning the rest of the party wakes up to
the Barbarian's new pet, "Brock da Rock."
Brock was a stone with eyes and a mouth crudely carved into him.
Brock goes on adventures with the party and is mostly forgotten about until a premature fight with that arc's endboss.
The boss wipes the floor with the party, leaving everyone unconscious except the barbarian who has single digit hp.
Not wanting to tpk, and with the boss in surprisingly worse shape than I expected, I have him taunt the Barbarian and start to fly away.
"Brock is going to take his attack" the barbarian says, throwing his pet with all his might.
Crit, max damage on the roll, boss drops to -1 hitpoints and faceplants at the Barbarian's feet for the coup de gras, also performed by Brock to "finish what he started."
And that's how our party's pet rock gained a temporary flight speed of 40 feet, and "favored enemy: verbose sorcerers."
One of the players had gotten married to a pretty young NPC who wasn't an adventurer.
So I gave him a Ring of Conjugal Visits that would transport him to his wife for an hour, then send him back to the adventuring group.
The ring worked twice a week and was intended as a joke.
When the party was beaten up from a hard combat he used the ring and asked his wife where the nearest temple was, then bought healing potions from the local cleric.
Soon this became a thing: Cure Disease, Healing, whatever.
The ring became this guy's quick trip to the pharmacy--although he
also always found a few moments for a quickie with his wife.
Eventually he woke the up cleric at 3 am to buy more potions.
So I had the cleric throw a fit and yell at him never to come back.
The player went back anyway, and the next time there was a bouncer at the temple door telling him to get lost.
We had a rock that if you were knocked out with it, you were completely invulnerable while unconscious.
You had to successfully hit yourself or whoever AND take damage from being knocked unconscious from a rock to the skull.
That rock caused so much chaos.
And death.
And life.
And permanent head trauma to NPCs we were trying to rescue.
Not mine, but the question reminded me of [this and utmmedium=web2x and context=3) by u/nikoberg
>I created an NPC werewolf character that was supposed to be a major villain in the campaign and stalk the players.
It was a higher level than the PCs, so the idea was that they would need to flee every encounter and take measures to avoid being followed; having someone on their tail constantly tracking them that could and would actually kill them was supposed to inject a sense of urgency into the game.
>On the first encounter, the werewolf was shown methodically slaying a large group of town guards and a high-ranking paladin.
The characters were around level 5 or so, the NPC was probably CR 12 and would scale as they leveled.
They interrupted the combat, and the idea was that they would attempt to fight the werewolf (who didn't consider them a threat initially, and so wouldn't just murder the whole party), see it killing a high-level character, and go "Oh beep we need to run from it" while it slaughtered the rest of the guards.
>So at first, they rush in to help and attack the werewolf, doing little damage because they don't have silver weapons and I gave this particular NPC a regeneration ability only stopped by silver.
I have the werewolf attack one of the players with a secondary bite attack, which should put them to fairly low health without killing them outright.
>That player pauses for a moment, and then asks if he can try to block the attack with his hand.
I'm not sure what he's getting at, but I humor him and say he can do that with a DC 10
Dexterity check, although it won't affect what kind of damage he takes.
He succeeds.
He then asks if he can jam his hand into the werewolf's mouth.
I say... sure, but he's probably going to bite it off, and you'll need a new hand.
He says "Even better."
>I describe the werewolf doing so.
The rest of combat continues until the player's turn, who seems undisturbed by the loss of a hand, and on his turn he says "I activate Quaal's feather token to make a tree."
>This token is a magic one-time use item that creates a 5 foot diameter, 40 foot high tree.
It's a handy utility item that our playgroup was fond of- previously we'd used it to do things from just making bridges and crossing walls, to providing a druid with a way to use a particular spell in plant-less areas that require trees.
It didn't seem to have much use here.
>I ask him where on the board he's activating it.
He points at the werewolf.
I say that the most that's going to do is knock the werewolf prone, and he gets a fairly easy save to prevent that.
He smiles.
"No, it's in the werewolf."
>"What?
How?"
>"I was holding it when he ate my hand."
>Me and the rest of the party are kind of silent for a second.
I'm trying to think of a valid reason why this won't work.
I fail.
The werewolf now has a five foot wide tree growing out of him.
The fact that he has regeneration doesn't particularly help when little bits of him are plastered on walls twenty feet away.
>The entire party celebrated and they got a reward from the
town and an ally in the paladin who was supposed to be dead.
>I had to make a new NPC.
>Clever players are awesome.
I gave them a folding boat.
Say a magic word and the small shoe box magically expands into a boat.
Not 5 minutes later (IRL) the beep rogue has thrown this box from the roof and said the magic word, creating the only instance of 20 dice rolls I've ever had to do.
I don't know RAW (Rules As Written) or RAI (Rules As Intended) if this is allowed but dammit, throwing a boat at people is too damn fun to not allow it.
I gave the party a tiny bag of holding made of human skin.
I don’t remember why.
They were trapped in a house fighting a zombie hoard and they used the skin bag, turned it into a sort of molotov bomb, used a spell to have it fly over the zombies, who followed the human skin away to be blown up.
It was a 45min saga to get to that point and it was easily the funniest and most creative moment I’ve seen from the DM side.
Gave the party a magic whistle that summons pigeons, the party somehow used it to murder an orc commander by turning his armor into bread , having the pigeons eat it all , and then shooting him in the face with a blast of lightning..
Not a DM but my friend is and he told me about a sword he gave a party.
He called it "the normal sword."
When his players asked if there was anything special about it, all he would say is, "its just a normal sword."
In practice it was so normal that it would negate all magic.
His party never figured that out though.
Players: I'm sorry, but this incredibly easy and obvious puzzle can't be solved.
Also players: Yes, this useless item can be used for genocide.
We used a jug of alchemy to waterboard someone with vinegar.
It's also been used to create mayo
My DM allowed our thief to own an incredibly stale baguette.
We murdered and tortured so many orcs with stale bread
Edit: spelling
Obligatory “I’m a player not a DM”
My DM once let me design my own weapon as reward for being the only person of seven to show up to a session.
Only rule was it had to be silly and useless.
I created “Archibald the World’s Greatest Ladies-Man!”
He was the soul of a super charismatic elf trapped in a tiny little iron lantern.
Basics the flame was a little ghostly elf’s head that would act as my wingman but only when I tried to romance monsters.
Dumb, borderline useless, and led to a lot of silly role playing
opportunities!
Perfect!
Then one day, months later, our party got into a fight with a hydra.
No one had any caustic or flame-based attacks to cauterize the necks, so the heads kept growing back.
Then our barbarian noticed that technically Archibald was a little flame, so bludgeoning the hydra with his lantern would count as burning damage!
Proceeded to beat every head to pulp with a screaming elven smooth-talker.
Peak D and D right there.
Edit:
Wow!
Thanks for my first Reddit gold, kind stranger!
Also, this comment now officially has more upvotes than every
other comment and post I’ve made in my 6 year Reddit career COMBINED!
After all these years, Archibald is still working his magic to make me more popular!
!
Not a DM, but the last campaign I was in, the DM gave us a regenerative oasis that only appears to people that need it.
The party was messing around with throwing bones in it and bringing the animals they belonged to back to life.
One of the other players had the thought to throw the hat of the deceased king into the water, and brought the king back to life because of a single hair.
The DM hadn't even considered that possibility, because the session was supposed to be our "beach episode"
My favorite magic item my players found was a totally homebrewed item with no real productive function, but they still got creative with it.
They found the Pie Stone.
Holding this stone in your hand and concentrating will fill a 25ft radius area with the stone as the center with the smell of a pie of your choice.
This effect lasts for 10 minutes or until you dismiss the effect.
The rogue used it to sneak past guard and as a distraction tactic when scouting and such.
I gave my players a chalice that, when drunk from, caused the user to sweat fat profusely.
They used it to overcome a cold-based trap in the dungeon.
It was a hallway that got progressively colder.
So they emerge on the other end, covered in fat, into the chamber of the dungeon boss.
It was a slippery fight.
I found a homebrew item someplace called a used bag of holding.
It basically covers everything you put in the bag with a thin layer of glitter.
One of my players took this and began scraping off the glitter and collecting it.
Eventually he had enough glitter bags to where he could use animate objects on it.
The little beep would have several of these bags fly around and dump their contents on people causing great confusion as the glitter would get in their eyes and hardly come off because it was sticky
Edit: I don’t normally like to edit posts but I just want to encourage everyone interested in playing D and D to play it.
I
stared over quarantine and have enjoyed myself immensely!
If you’re looking for a place to start and don’t have a group of people that you can play with in person I would recommend checking out TheDungeonDudes on YouTube.
While their guides are mostly meant for experienced players they also run a Discord Server that has hundreds if not thousands of players.
As long as you are willing to learn and come with an open mind I don’t see why you can’t start playing DND!
Edit 2: Here is a link I found to a server very welcoming to newbies!
Check it out if you want to learn.
Not a DM but a player.
DM let us keep a discarded clam at a fish market that we then used to trap the soul of the main antagonist into a clam.
Gave them a wagon.
They made a tank.
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