Back in my high school days I had a bard character that I played in one of our campaigns. The bard had a name, but for the life of me, I can't remember it. He was always just called "The Bard" (due to a high mortality rate, we weren't all that concerned about character).
Anyhow, I cam across a Wand of Wonder in one of our treasure hauls, and I convinced the DM to allow me to influence the outcome by coming up with a rhyme for the effect that I wanted to happen, in lieu of using a normal command word.
For example, if I wanted to heal somebody I might use this:
Boon companions to the end,
use your power to heal my friend!
Then the DM would roll the dice, consult the table, apply some DM bullshit and either my buddy would be healed or the wand would do something weird, like cover my buddy with nacho cheese.
If I wanted to use it offensively, I might use a rhyme like this:
Ashes to ashes, and dust to dust,
make the knight's armor turn to rust!
Hopefully, the knights armor would rust, but the wand might just as easily shoot him with 1d10 pickles.
The catch was that I could never use the same rhyme twice, so I had to be very clever about the effects I desired and the rhymes I used, and I had to think up something BEFORE I needed to use it.
Sometimes the effect would be different than what I wanted, but would accomplish something useful. If I called for a lightning bolt to zap a pursuing enemy, I might get a spray of marbles that tripped up the bad guys. If I tried to turn somebody into a toad, they might turn into a giant flametoad that would start breathing fire all over the place, turning on friend and foe alike.
The best thing about it was that this was always a FUN and entertaining magic item to use. I had to be creative in coming up with rhymes, and the DM had to be creative in coming up with silly or interesting things for the wand to do.
No comments:
Post a Comment