I’m still committed to our D&D 5E Ruins of Chult campaign in case anyone wondered with our recent foray into OSR. Proof is in the pudding as the English say (I love these kind of silly sayings), here’s a little post about something that happened not too long ago.

I’d messed up badly with a magic item that the players looted in their last dungeon-crawling. I had put an Oathbow in the Master Archer’ sarcophagus fittingly enough; the fight was difficult and warranted a good reward. Sooo, I read the description of the Oathbow a bit too fast and ended up involontarily boosting it a lot. The Oathbow gives a potent bonus to damage (3d6) to an opponent that its wearer chooses as its « sworn enemy ». There’s an important drawback: as long as your enemy lives you have disadvantage on attack rolls with all other weapons (if an enemy ever succeed in fleeing you’re in for a rough time). If your enemy dies, you can choose another next dawn. And that’s the last part that I’d skip. Félix’s character, the owner of the Oathbow switched from one dead enemy to another continuously for a few fight at least, until I realized my mistake…

I could have just corrected it, adding the limitation I forgot earlier but it felt kinda wrong as it was my mistake and not the player’s. But then I had an idea, what if it’s not really an Oathbow but an Hatebow, its more powerful but cursed (homebrew) version?! The Hatebow causes its wearer to be so full of hate that he sees enemies everywhere! Use it too much and you won’t distinguish between friends and foes…

I LOVE cursed items.

Anyway, we have had similar situation earlier in the campaign with Rufb’s berserk axe and the players broke the curse with a suitable quest. This time I just told the player, Félix, that his character felt the danger posed by the Hatebow, that he had to be careful less he succumbed to the dark side so to speak. No mechanics, just roleplay, as long as the character behave accordingly. And young Félix was excellent all along, limiting himself and roleplaying an increasingly morose character when he did use it. It proved to be a very good decicion I think.