Cursed Items Mini-Handbook

[Akalsaris]

Cursed Items Mini-Handbook

Cursed items: http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/cursedItems.htm

Looking through the cursed items section, I noticed that a lot of them are cheaper than normal items of their quality.  With that in mind, it's worth looking at them in order to consider their benefits for low-level characters who can't afford an item they might want.  In other cases, the drawbacks can be turned into benefits or ignored with some preparation.

As a note, I'm not going to cover the situations where you can buy a cursed item and give it to an NPC with sleight of hand or bluffing or what-have-you. 

Good buys:

Item: Armor of Rage (+1 Full Plate)
Cost: 1,600gp (compared to 2,650 for +1 full plate or 1,650gp for masterwork full plate)
Drawback: -4 penalty to Charisma, and enemies gain +1 morale to attacks.
Notes: If you don't care about charisma (like most fighters), this could be worth purchasing, since your armor is magical and will have better saving throws, etc.  The morale bonus against you won't stack with bless or other morale bonuses, and frankly your DM is likely to forget it half the time. 

Item: Bag of Devouring
Cost: N/A
Drawback: eats stuff
Notes: Great for garbage disposal in a stronghold if you can get one.

Item: Dust of Sneezing and Choking
Cost: 2,400g
Drawback: none if used correctly
Notes: Probably the best cursed item on the list.  Stuns targets in a big spread for 5d4 rounds if they make their save, and massive constitution loss if they don't.  2,400g is pocket change by the higher levels anyhow.

Item: Flask of Curses
Cost: 2,000gp
Drawback: All within 30ft when it's opened must make a DC 17 will save or be cursed, taking a -2 penalty on attacks, saves, or skill checks.
Notes: useful for a debuff build such as a hexblade - charge forward and open your flask in the middle of a crowd of enemies!  Also good if you're almost guaranteed to succeed on the will save, like a high level wizard whose familiar opens the flask. 

Item: Gauntlets of Fumbling/Ogre Power
Cost: 1,300g (compared to 4,000g)
Drawback: they fail in combat
Notes: as long as they aren't used in combat, these gauntlets are a pretty good purchase.  Dexterity is useful for open locks and disable device, for example, and strength can be good for swimming, jumping, and climbing, or for friendly barroom brawls.

Item: Medallion of Thought Projection
Cost: 1,800gp
Drawback: you project your thoughts and can't actually read thoughts.
Notes: you might be able to use this to communicate without languages, if you can project general friendly emotions into the mind of an ooze or something.  Might even work for a wildshaped druid.  Reminds me of E.T. or Star Trek too.

So-so buys:

Item: Helm of Opposite Alignment
Cost: 4,000g
Drawback: change alignment!
Notes: Good if you need an in-game excuse to change alignments.

Item: Armor of Arrow Attraction
Cost: 9,000g (compared to 9,650g for +3 full plate)
Drawback: -15 AC against ranged weapons.
Notes: this could be worthwhile if you have a persistent protection from missiles or entropic shield up, but overall the price isn't low enough to warrant it.  The 3.0 version, however, is excellent for tanks, as the drawback is a benefit if you want people to target you!

Item: Sword, Berserking
Cost: 17,500g (nothing to compare directly to, but probably around the 36,000g mark for a +2 sword that lets you rage without killing your allies)
Drawback: you go berserk and gain barbarian rage! 
Notes: possibly good for a solo game.  Also decent if you're a frenzied berserker, because hey, the party's already going to try and calm you down!  Iron Heart Surge for a warblade can probably remove this effect, since unlike a frenzied berserker it was forced onto you.

Very situational buys:

Item: Amulet of Inescapable Location
Cost: 1,000gp
Drawback: you're easy to scry on.
Notes: This has an advantage if you want people to scry on you for whatever reason, like if you're infiltrating a thieves' guild while the rest of the party watches.

Item: Mace of Blood
Cost: 16,000gp (compared to 16,310g)
Drawback: might turn evil (very low DC), must dip in blood
Notes: the price isn't lower enough to warrant the cost in most cases.

Item: Net of Snaring
Cost: 10,000gp
Drawback: only works in water
Notes: who the hell pays 10,000 GP to get +3 to attacks with a freaking net?  This isn't cursed, it's stupid!

Item: Ring of Clumsiness
Cost: 500g! (compared to 2,000gp)
Drawback: you're clumsy and get 20% spell failure
Notes: good to have around if you expect to be jumping off from cliffs and tall buildings quite often.  At 500g, it's pretty cheap to have.

Item: Spear, Backbiter
Cost: 7,500g (compared to 8,302g for a +2 shortspear)
Drawback: hits you on a natural 1
Notes: the 3.0 version is only 2,000g and was worth buying.  This one...ehh.  Not so much.

Item: -2 Sword, Cursed
Cost: 1,500g
Drawback: pretty obvious.
Notes: hey, at least you can hit incorporeal opponents with it!

Well, that's it for the SRD items worth buying.  If anyone has some more cursed items from other books or other good uses for stuff, just post and I'll add them in!

[The_Mad_Linguist]

-2 sword, cursed:

Make it out of adamantium.  Enchant it further with fun abilities, like eager or spell storing or something.  Give it to the party wizard.  Put a compartment in the hilt, and store scrolls in it.

Now, next time you're in an antimagic field, the wizard has a normal adamantium weapon.  Since this is the only time he'll be doing melee combat, the drawbacks don't matter at any other point (well, unless you're abusing magical hypodermics)

Let's say your dudes get locked in prison, and all their gear is stripped.  If only there were some way to carve through the prison walls.  Oh, wait, looks like they couldn't take your weapon away after all.  And these scrolls of greater teleport and mindblank will come in handy, when you return to where you buried the sapphire for word of recall and get your spellbook back.  Eight hours later, you're loaded for bear, and can get down to the business of saving the big dumb fighter and the rest of your party.

Basically, there are all sorts of things you can do with a weapon that nobody can remove from you.

Helm of opposite alignment:
Not for you, silly.  For your enemies.  Since they'll fully enjoy their new alignment, and most adventuring parties are good, any evil NPC you alignment switch (helm goes on, helm comes off, helm goes on, helm comes off...) will be extremely grateful you redeemed them.  BAM! New ally!  Now, let's take Mr. Chaotic Good lich down to the bar, and introduce him to the abeloth and mindflayer from a couple of weeks back.

Gauntlets of fumbling:
Well, they could be worse.  As long as you use them in downtime for skills or something like that, and not for a life/death situation.  I could see a kobold using them in conjunction with tactile trapsmith, particularly if they imitated the +6 gloves of dexterity.

Boots of Dancing:
Mimicing Boots of Teleportation.  As long as you don't get into combat with them on, you've saved 19,000 gp.  If you must show people around your castle/wizard tower/hollowed out moon, and they need to teleport to do so, you can make sure your honored guests won't leave with their borrowed footwear.  Dunno if there are any more expensive boots usable out of combat.

Scarab of death
Way too expensive to use, really, but if you can slip this onto an enemy's person (perhaps with a construct or unseen servant), you can hit them with a reflex save DC 25 or die.

[Rymosrac]

There's GOT to be a way to get some mileage out of the necklace of strangulation.

I mean, the use is obvious, but I'm short on ways to force someone worth using it on to actually wear it. The fact that it's very difficult to ID as a cursed item helps, but still - the thing ain't cheap.

[Thinblade]

This handbook reminds me of the article in Dragon 215 specifically about finding good uses for cursed items. Of course, 2e had a lot more of those, and they showed up more often. Some of my favorites:

* Use a dimensional mine as a "hand grenade" to send people escaping through extradimensional spaces on a one-way trip to the Astral.
* Dagger of Venom filled with holy water
* Combo: make yourself deaf using drums of deafness, then play all day with the pipes of pain. Especially good against armies of weak guys.

edit: Oh, and another use for the bag of devouring: sneak up behind someone and pull it over their head. Bag gets a meal, and you're down an enemy. Ah, fun times. Do the same with the necklace of strangulation or the helm of opposite alignment (and in 2nd, the helm didn't give you a saving throw!)

[PhaedrusXY]

The Stone of Weight (Loadstone) seems promising, given that you can further enchant magic items. Add some other useful properties to it, like making it a Figurine of Wonderous Power, and if you don't actually ever use your land speed (for characters with a fly speed not dependant on it, like from Overland Flight for example), it becomes a magic item that noone can actually take away from you. At 1000 gp, this could be a bargain for some characters.

[nijineko]

arms and equipment has about 10 more cursed items... several of which are +6 to a specific stat, and only flip to a -6 on a specific condition... which could be avoided by a clever player. only cost 1300-1500gp on average. cheapest stat boost out there.