Friday, May 19, 2023

My Top 10 Favorite D&D Magic Items (Part II)

Part I is here

5. Portable Hole

One of the strengths of Dungeons & Dragons is that its conception of fantasy is quite broad, drawing not merely on the works of pulp fantasy, but also, in the words of Gary Gygax, on "countless hundreds of comic books ... [s]cience fiction, fantasy, and horror movies ... fairy tales ... books of mythology ... bestiaries ... compilations of the myths of various peoples" – and, if the portable hole is any indication, Looney Tunes cartoons as well! This is a terrific example of a magic item that is both genuinely useful and fun and I wish there were more like it in the game.

4. Wand of Wonder

I love a little bit of randomness and unpredictability in my games. The wand of wonder brings them in spades. Every time this magic item is used, percentile dice are rolled to determine which of nearly twenty different effects occur: anything from summoning a rhino (or a mouse) to a stream of 600 butterflies pouring forth to a fireball – and more. This is another fun item, one that I've enjoyed seeing used in play many, many times over the years. 

3. Ioun Stones

This is a double cheat, I suppose, since it's both a collection of related items and not original to Dungeons & Dragons, since ioun stones first appeared in the work of Jack Vance. Of course, these facts are a big part of why I so love ioun stones. Like figurines of wondrous power, the variety of the stones is a point in their favor. The same is true of their Vancian origins, since Vance is one of my favorite Appendix N authors (and Gygax's too). Consequently, I've included numerous ioun stones in my campaigns over the years and imagine I will continue to do so in the future.

2. Bag of Holding

I almost placed this in my number 1 spot, since it's one of those magic items that has appeared in nearly every D&D campaign I've run or played in since 1979. The reason I didn't is that the bag of holding is a thoroughly gamey magic item, one that exists almost entirely to circumvent a very common problem, namely, how to lug around large amounts of gold and other treasure without becoming encumbered. There's nothing wrong with that. D&D is a game, after all, but I generally like my magic items (and monsters and spells ...) to exist largely, if not solely, for setting reasons rather than game reasons. Still, this is a great and iconic magic item and deserves to be on this list.

1. Deck of Many Things

Depending on your point of view, the deck of many things is either the most entertaining magic item in all of D&D or a Killer DM's dream come true. In my opinion, it's both, at least potentially so – and that's why I've given it the top spot on my list. I can think of no other magic item that simultaneously elicits both greed and terror in players. The potential rewards for drawing a "good" card are great, as are the dangers of drawing a "bad" one. The discovery of a deck of many things in a treasure hoard is practically an adventure unto itself, as players tie themselves into knots trying to decide whether or not their characters should risk picking a card (or four). This is everything a good magic item should be – wondrous, dangerous, capricious.

25 comments:

  1. Hmmm. I think I'd have found room for the Robe of Useful Items and the Rod of Lordly Might, both of which are pretty much unique to D&D and combine a nice mix of oddball effects rather than just doing one thing. And if we're talking Loony Toons stuff, Nolzur's Marvelous Pigments definitely deserve a nod too.

    I would have said the Iron Bands of Bilarro are iconic too, but I don't see them listed in my battered second-hand copy of the AD&D DMG so maybe not as classic as I thought they were. When were those introduced?

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    1. The iron bands of Bilarro are from Unearthed Arcana, I believe.

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    2. Huh. Weird, I would have sworn we ran into them before UA's release. Must be getting my dates wrong.

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    3. The Rod of Lordly Might is a nice example of a puzzle device the PCs have to play with to figure out what the switches do, hopefully without hurting anyone. Very old school.

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    4. The Rod reminds me of Gamma World or Barrier Peaks tech in some ways. Some of that may be due to one of my GMs actually sticking a Rod in his GW game back around 80-81. :)

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    5. The Apparatus of Kwalish gives me similar vibes but feels sillier.

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  2. I think you're in the clear with the IOUN Stones, as they are somewhat different from the ones in the Dying Earth stories anyways (just like the Excellent Prismatic Spray was used with a similar name, but a different outcome).

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    1. Which story explains what the Prismatic Spray does? (I’ve only read “Turjan of Miir” from The Dying Earth plus the first collection of Cugel stories.)

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  3. The bag of holding has some decent precedent in post-Tolkien/Second Wave fantasy literature, though this early in the morning the only instance I can distinctly recall is in the Alfar stories of Elizabeth Boyer. I recall it, and similar backpacks and satchels, being not uncommon on worlds where magic and wizards existed in reasonable numbers. And yet most of these works still avoided the "industrial magic" so common to post-TSR fantasy fiction.

    And of course, there's certainly a cartoonist element to it, as well.

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  4. I'd always thought the Bag of Holding was proof that even Gary's players got sick of resource management at some point.

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  5. The Portable Hole has Vancian origins as well -- in the story "Liane the Wayfarer," which is also one of the greatest fantasy stories ever.

    One of my favorites is the Glove of Storing, which appeared in 3rd Edition, I think. Obviously it's a handy way to keep your weapon ready -- but you could use it just as well to smuggle magic items, treasure, or even a small animal!

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    1. I suppose Liane's ring could indeed be seen as a precursor to the portable hole. It feels different to me somehow, but its use is much the same.

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    2. I came to the comments to post the same thing about Liane's ring. Bug Bunny uses his holes to punch people through. The Beatles in the animated Yellow Submarine movie use theirs to go through barriers.

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    3. Yellow Submarine! How could I have forgotten that?

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    4. The portable hole is definitely an interesting one. It is interesting that the D&D portable hole seems actually be more like a giant bag of holding than something that lets you make a hole in, say a wall, and go through the wall.

      I changed the portable hole to being just that and NOT an extradimensional space you can put things in (why essentially duplicate the bag of holding).

      The original hole also doesn't say what happens if you pull it in from inside, only that you can do so...

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    5. One of my GMs in the old days threw the text on Portable Hole out completely and treated it pretty much as Passwall spell, ie a proper Loony Toons hole. Definitely gave it more character.

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    6. Another way of looking at the near duplication is that the hole and the bag are independent attempts to solve the same problem. It allows each to be unique, keeping the production of magic items cottage rather than industry.

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  6. All fun items. One thing I miss when I play RuneQuest or Cold Iron (a college friend's home brew) is D&D magic items. There are some nice mundane items like +1 swords and even wands of fireballs, but there are also these wild and crazy items. But RuneQuest and Cold Iron have lower power magic, and, especially for Cold Iron, a more grounded magic. On the other hand, I HAVE used the odd D&D magic item in Cold Iron, and no reason I couldn't in RuneQuest either). A D&D magic item would very much break the rules of magic in those games, but could add an element of the fantastic without breaking things if care is taken in choosing the items to import.

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  7. Where, and when, did Ioun Stones appear? I remember them in a game I played in when the universe was young but not the timeframe or siurce.

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    1. They're from Jack Vance's story "Morreion" (collected in Rhialto the Marvellous). There is a very elaborate science fantasy backstory for the IOUN stones there and they are quite different from their D&D counterparts.

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  8. Not to mention that the bag of holding (or the ring/brooch/jewelry variant) is a staple of most high-fantasy/LitRPG books. It strikes at a core issue of people, 'how do I move more crap from place to place without a team of large, sweaty men'

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  9. A great list but I think you wasted a slot not combining the portable hole and bag of holding, especially given how they interact.

    I’m surprised you find the bag of holding gamey but not the deck of many things. How are PCs to know they have to choose in advance how many cards to draw and not more than four? And it seems odd to me that there would be multiple copies of the deck. It strikes me as something a god would make to vex mortals.

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    1. I always assumed that the deck imparted that knowledge when someone picked it up. I also assumed that there was only one Deck of Many Things, since it vanishes when someone draws from it (presumably to appear somewhere else).

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    2. That there are 13 and 22 card versions made me think there were multiple copies, but I like your interpretation better. I still think the rules about card draws seem gamey, though if ignored the point of the Jester is obviated. I’ll have to think more about that point.

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