- Cool manta ray cloak. When you put it on, it bites your shoulders and halves a random attribute while doubling another. Taking it off requires surgery and a save vs death.
- Special jar into which you can put an organ. It makes you immune to getting that organ dismembered, but those who have the jar can smash it to really frick you up.
- Written curse near the entrance of a dungeon promising to bring pain and death to those who transgress the sacred environs within. When the PCs later return to their home, a giant wolf or an army of shrewmen arrive in fulfillment of the curse to ravage and slash at them.
- Clay jars full of angry flies are scattered around the room. The tomb robbers ready to fight the PCs for their claim don't intentionally shatter these jars, but it's likely to happen anyway, bringing sorrow to all.
- The tigerbrides want to kidnap a PC so they can wrap them in magic bandages which burn your flesh away and turn you into a hideous monster.
- The Haketzakata Sword doubles your effective level but reduces your HP maximum to 1.
- These warriors have a special swordfighting technique, with jagged slashes and lich-taught kicks. The death and dismemberment table is wildly different for wounds they inflict. To give an example drawn from G24:
- Riknoomai Style
- 1-4: Forget the Riknoomai Artist for 1 round
- 5-6: Heavily bleeding. Take [lethal] points of stat damage to a random [physical or mental] stat.
- 7-8: Torso disabled for 1 month.
- 9-10: Fatal Wound
- 11-12: Puckered: Roll a SAVE. If you pass, gain a massive, complex scar. If you fail, roll a Ruesome Injury to... (d6)
- 1: ... the Soul. Reduce a random mental stat by 1d4. When inconvenient, count as undead.
- 2: ... the Brain. Roll SKLL when insulted or immediately surrender.
- 3: ... the Chest. Feel increasing pain in an organ. Every month, SAVE or it bursts.
- 4: ... the Nerves. Always fail saves vs sleep or illusions. Whenever an ally is felled, an attack seems to transform into the Riknoomai Artist who injured you, and you must focus your attacks to or flight from them.
- 5: ... the Face. You can perceive no further than 40 feet with any sense.
- 6: ... the Tendon. Swelling reduces a random physical stat by 1d4. When you die, a new Riknoomai Artist will hatch from the limb.
- 13+: Fatal Wound and three random Madnesses
- Disturbing the room, even in some inoffensive way like picking up a book to examine it, causes you to be possessed by a ghost, frantically trying to use your body to slay the monster who killed it. Once this is achieved it will release its hold on you, so unlike most charm and domination effects you probably want the same thing, since you're both trying to end the effect as soon as possible.
- An unassuming wand, one half black and one half white. Difficult to identify, and contains only 3 charges. When brandished against another creature, relive the day over again but this time in each other's body. At the end of the day, switch back if both still live.
- The master of the dungeon had an edgy, cool swordswoman daughter. She didn't get on with her parent, but is certain she wants to avenge them and reclaim their gear and domain.
- Cave-in mechanic: a standard cave-sized cave has 48 Air Points (AP). Every person in the cave consumes 1 AP per hour. Every hour of digging at the entrance, make an Open Doors roll to try to get a Point of Progress (PP). A standard cave-in requires 16 PP to clear enough to get new air flowing into the cave. This means an average person has about a 50-50 shot if they have a 2-in-6 Open Doors roll and they don't sleep. Let people roll a d4 if they have a shovel, pick, or crowbar. You should also decide how many characters can work on a cave-in entrance at once. Make them sweat and think of something useful, like having the extra party members hold still and breath as little as possible, or killing the least liked hirelings.
- As the PC climbs some ill-secured rigging, it comes off the wall. By ill luck, they find themselves hanging by the throat or wrist or something in a way that's hard to quickly pull out of, and now the extremity is turning blue/they're seeing stars/they smashed their head and are bleeding in a way that can't be staunched in this position.
- A serrated knife leaves a wound that can't easily be closed. Lose 1 HP per hour as you decide what to do. Find a healing spell? Make a poultice? From what?
- A positive acquaintance from some earlier misadventure shows up proposing to fund an expedition sure to make you all rich, but it turns out they got bad directions and the supplies they brought aren't sufficient, and the people who made them promises upon which their plans were set weren't all that serious, and the whole thing goes pear-shaped in the middle of a hostile environment with no exit strategy.
- Orc bites can cause a hemophilic infection. Starting tomorrow, save each day or else all physical wounds against you deal +1 damage and dismemberment-level bleed effects cause a save vs death.
- Elf bites deposit immortal saliva in your bloodstream that doesn't filter out on its own. Elves can smell the saliva in you from more than 20 feet away, and they'll probably assume you're an escaped murderer or prisoner of war. If you get ghoul-paralyzed the area around the bite breaks out in a harsh rash, even if it has healed. A blood-alcohol level of about .2 is strong enough to drive out the saliva.
- Dwarf bites can cause a coagulating infection. Starting tomorrow, save each day or else take 1 damage to a physical stat of your choice whenever you run, swim, or roll a 1 on an attack roll. Some dwarves bite rats and then crack them open to use their blood as a poultice to close wounds.
- Gnome bites can cause a carbonating infection. Starting tomorrow, save each day or halve your weight and suffer horrific flatulance.
- This door's odd, tacky surface is an incredibly sticky glue. Even brushing your finger against it will indefinitely stick it fast to the door. Some kind of acid or something could free you, though painfully, but otherwise it's very hard to free yourself without losing even more of your fingertip.
- The DM will be careful to remember that you're carrying this unstable petard, and make a roll every time something happens that could set it off. For real, they're not going to forget this time.
- This special arrowhead sticks in the victim in a way that might be more "realistic" but which we normally aren't interested in modeling everytime someone is hit with an arrow. When someone diagnoses a friend's arrow wound (you can't do this for yourself), roll a d4:
- 1: You'll have to dig the head out and pull the arrow out the way it came in.
- 2: You'll have to push the arrow further in and pull it out the other side.
- 3: Shit! The shaft broke off but the arrowhead is stuck inside. Pepare for infections and pain.
- 4: Damn! it's hard to pull the arrow back out the way it came, but it can't get pushed straight through because it would hit an important organ.
- Instead of a trap room slowing filling with water, its floor slowly opens over a pool full of freak octopi. Bad enough, but imagine the poor fighter in plate armor who's liable to sink to the bottom if they're not careful!
- This plucky dog seems determined to follow you on your adventures and aid you in your battles. This always ends with a dead dog.
- Some Freak Fairy claims that when you got drunk together you made some unwise promises to them. You have no such memory, and in fact they're punking you, but they'll try to coerce you if you renege on the deal.
Wednesday, July 24, 2024
Some Bad Things that Could Happen to PCs
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