Stupid Magic Items III

I told you I'd never run out of these. While I'm removing the "In defense of the magic shop" descriptor as this goes forward, never forget that I do this to illustrate that giving players freedom to come up with their own magic items, or even just buying things off the shelf, is preferable to constantly getting random loot.


Lesser Poisoner's Jacket. Sometimes things look good because they fit a role well. Sometimes they look great because you don't see the need to do the math on it. You trust the designer to make sure the item is 'worth it' to buy. Fortunately for all of you, I like math. So, first off, you're going to be getting this item between levels 7 and 8, if you want it. It'd be a significant magic item in that range. Second, it costs 12,000 gold and lets you 'create' a 300gp(or less) poison three times a day. It sounds great, like I said. Well, the first problem is that you need to use this jacket 40 times before it was worthwhile to buy it over just buying the poisons outright. If you use all three of them in one combat(Likely, and even probable), that's fourteen encounters. That's not great, but none of it is a dealbreaker, exactly.

Your best options for poison are going to be Blood Leaf Residue(DC 16 contact poison for HP and CON damage), Giant Wasp Poison(DC 18 for DEX damage), and Large Scorpion Venom(DC 17 for STR damage). You can't actually make a decent poison that's going to directly help you kill someone, but that's okay. Debuffs can sometimes win you a fight.

Hopefully you see where I'm going with this. At level 8, someone with a "bad" fort save will have a +4 or so. Someone with a "good" fort save will have anywhere from a +8 to a +10. Monsters virtually never have a "bad" fortitude save, and their numbers at level 8 will ballpark around +12. So your significant expenditure item is netting you "free" poisons you have to use a ton of to get value from that will be obsolete even before you can reasonably get the item.

Oh, and the greater version is bad too. Repeat everything I said, and also there simply aren't very many decent poisons in the 2k-4k gold range that you'd be excited to use.


Volatile Vaporizer. I was gonna let this whole "stupid magic items" thing slide. I was. There's a lot of shit to talk about and I felt I made my point. Then I saw this abomination while gearing up a character and I got real mad. This thousand gold consumable item turns a potion into a 10ft radius cloud which affects everyone in it. It's an item which is consumable that costs a thousand gold or more that you use on a 50gp potion so it can affect multiple people.

Let's assume you need more convincing. For this item to be worthwhile, you'd need to fit twenty people in this 10ft radius. You can fit 12, if they're not ratfolk. Even then, they'd have to all be busy(unable to just drink a potion on their own) and all benefit from the potion for this to be worthwhile.

So this is the perfect item for your party of 24 ratfolk who all pack as tight as possible in a 10ft radius, who all have ranged attacks and all benefit universally from a cure light wounds potion that cost a thousand fucking gold. Great, we found a use.


Book of Extended Summoning. So this is where someone tries to make the argument that you're not "supposed to" buy everything in the book, and their value comes from finding them in a treasure hoard. My counter-argument is that finding something like this begs to be sold, and if it can't? It feels like being cheated out of loot.

This is a book which functions as a Metamagic Rod of Extend, but only for summoning spells, only of a particular alignment, and it crumbles when used. A Lesser Rod of Extend is 3,000 gold. The lesser book is a whopping 750 gold. Yes, that means Rod makes its money back in a mere four uses. In a busy dungeon, that might be two fucking days. Easily. The Standard and Greater versions fare similarly, losing value after four-ish uses. If it would be completely ludicrous to buy an item, it shouldn't be on the random loot table either. Whoever decided this item's cost has their head up their ass.


Cautionary Creance. This is a 100ft leash which only functions when you attach it to a flying animal companion or familiar. The leash then attaches to the master's arm, giving him a -1 penalty on skill checks and attack rolls with that arm. So you give up the significant range advantage of a flying companion by leashing them and take a minor attack penalty in exchange for...feather fall at will. They're...they're explicitly a flying creature, how often do you think you're going to need to cast feather fall on them? Other than that, once per day it lets you use Share Touch Spells at a range. So if you desperately need to buff your hawk once a day and don't mind carrying a ludicrous one hundred feet of leather strap around all the time, I guess this is your item.


Dust of Acid Consumption. This dust will absorb up to ten gallons of acid and turn it into a minor consumable acid attack item. It costs 1,600 gold. The lengths that you'd have to go to, just to render this item legitimately useful, are staggering. There's other ways to get rid of acid. Depending on the acid, buckets work. Those are five silver. A guy casting Protection from Elements probably works too. He's probably in your party. Just give him the two grand.


Efreeti Bottle. It's a 145 thousand gold item which you have a 10 percent chance of losing forever because he attacks you, or a 10 percent chance of losing forever because he granted you three wishes, which cost a little over half the price of this item. Great use of your gold. Again, I'm weighing this against selling the item. You could sell this and have most of the gold toward just buying three wishes.