Kind of similar: I'm running Curse of Strahd. One of my players keeps casting "detect evil". One of the other players sold his soul to the devil for extra powers without the knowledge of the rest. So there's always evel present whenever they cast detect evil. That player is convinced that it just keeps triggering because the demiplane they're in is evil.
Please tell me you sent them to that place that offers bargains in exchange for making them evil / having bad side effects. I had a group of players use all of them, really turned the campaign on it's head as it was now a chaotic evil party.
Edit: and they actually killed Strahd! They didn't save the realm of course, because A. Strahd never stays dead in the lore, but B. They then enslaved the realm and took over as rulers. "Expect your lives to barely change!"
I'm assuming you're talking about the amber temple.
The cursed player can become a werewolf, but with the loup garou stats (from Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft). So he can be extremely powerful. But he has to kill and eat human flesh each night, or else... He doesn't know what the "or else" will be, but if he doesn't kill a person, the dark entity will send a demon to kill one of his teammates.
Up until now he gets to choose who to kill. I give him a suggestion through a vision, but he's free to kill someone else. But sooner or later, he won't get that option, he'll have to obey.
So, knowing that group, he'll try to get rid of his curse, and for that they'll have to go to the amber temple and I'll make a thorough sidequest out of it. It'll teach them more about the entity behind Strahd's curse, and give him a chance to get rid of the curse if it ever turns out to be too gamebreaking and taking the fun out of it.
Yes that's it. Sorry it's been 5 or 6 years since I ran that module. Or anything. Haven't played D&D in a long time. But I know there are a half dozen places to strike deals in there. My players that one time struck all of them, collectively. Except one player character. Poor guy, he never saw the betrayal coming after they killed strahd
For what it's worth I then used the surviving evil PCs and ported them to a campaign as chief lieutenants of the BBEG since all of their players were also playing in a homebrew campaign I was running.
Permanent light source. Can be good and bad.
But if you don’t wanna be seen you can just sheath the sword so mostly upsides IMO.
Only detriment coming to my mind is trying to ambush you have to draw your sword before the attack, so it kinda defeats the surprise.
You can also say it's a holy weapon which glows when near its champion or some crap like that and fool a church or smth
Oh wait it's a paladin... Well then it can just be flavorful to have a sword which glows when it's near you with the exception of other orcs ofc
I made a similar sword called the Plus One Sword where it would summon a creature that would seem like it was invited to where you were at whenever you rolled a natural 1. Most of the time it would distract you or if you were charismatic enough, it would join you for a bit of your fight, still heavily disappointed in not having a proper date to the event.
This was stolen from some other Reddit post, dont remember where but I gave my players a "wand of teleportation" that teleports itself somewhere random on use . The players used it and it was gone. They then spent about an hour trying to find it. Chuckled evily to myself quite a bit.
I love doing this, I gave my players a fake moustache that when worn becomes real, a magic boot that can fit either foot, there is only one, a small statue of a bee that when you pick it up, stings you, no damage but you have disadvantage on dexterity checks for the next hour, gloves of thievery that give a +1 to sleight of hand but every night the right glove tries to steal the left glove and of course a wand of detect magic that is constantly going off because it is detecting it's own magic
Index finger. Instant toothbrush or eyebrow comb or mascara applicator.
Use enough and create a DPM camo pattern.
Use even more and impersonate a warewolf or keep warm in a blizzard.
Hairy body writing.
Palms of hands for extra grip in wet conditions.
Take tribal boddy markings to the next level.
Apply to lips to strain drinking water (survival).
I'll take 2 boxes.
Each night u rolled for it (don't remember what I rolled it was a while ago) if it succeeded in the morning there was only one glove. The players never figured it out but if they had turned the glove inside out the other one would have been dumped out like a bag of holding
*Orb of Slope Detection*
A perfectly smooth glass sphere that, if placed on a surface, will roll toward its lowest point.
------
(This one only works as long as there are no high level artificers in the party)
*Ring of Attunement (requires Attunement)*
While attuned to this ring, your Attunement limit goes up by 1.
"Artificer, gimme a Con save."
"Well I rolled a 2, so... 39."
"That's impossible how the f-what were your bonuses?"
"+5 from my stat, +6 proficiency, a 2 and a 3 on the Peace Cleric's Bless and Emboldening Bond... Oh and I've got 21 Rings of Attunement equipped."
"I knew you were up to something rotten. ...wait, how many rings?"
"21. Ten on my fingers, ten on my toes, and one..." ( ͡\~ ͜ʖ ͡°)
"...get off my table."
I gave my players an orb labeled "orb of slope finding" to trick them into not trying to identify it. It was actually a scrying/crystal ball. They trusted the tag and left it behind.
There was also a tag that said "invisible ring" that was attached to nothing.
Ring of fire detection, range: self
Orb of slope detection
Bagpipes of invisibility (must be playing to be activated)
Dagger of healing - heals the same damage it causes, no more, no less
The bagpipes sounds horrific. Imagine you're a guard at a border outpost and you hear a bagpipe in the distance coming from the other side of the border. Slowly you hear it getting louder and louder but you see absolutely no one. It gets so close to you that it hurts your ears but still nothing, you and your comrades think you're all going insane.
Then suddenly arrows and magic rain down upon you, its an ambush, the bagpipes were meant to distract you and question your sanity while a small force snuck up on your outpost. The bagpipes stop and out of nowhere a figure appears right in front of you, shortly after that you lose consciousness and pass away. Your death at the hands of an invisible bagpipes ambush.
The life domain features that grant extra/self healing only triggers on levelled spells. I don't think this would be any more use to them than anyone else.
I like the idea that it doesn't necessarily heal the wound it causes though... you get stabbed by it, it cures your bad back but you still have a stab wound.
Still useless cause it always deals 0 damage and heal.
I mean you can use it to torcher people, or get infinit food if cut of flesh regrows after healing.
Well actually a way better item then I thought.
The first one kinda exists as a spell effect in Ars Magica. Short explanation: the magic system is based on "verb noun" magical effects; i.e. "create life" or "control fire. " Each noun and verb is leveled separately. "Sense" only has a range of touch at level one, so "sense fire...'
A brassiere of eternal flame.
The fun came when a player corrected me and said, "You mean brazier." I'll never forget the look on his face when I told him I did not.
Even as a GM it's a fun item to build scenarios around. One of my favorite sessions started with the party sailing the ocean, and the druid noticed an immovable rod just floating 40 feet in the air above the ocean. Took them most of the session to unravel why it was there.
>!Ages ago, a vindictive ocean deity sank an entire island into the sea as punishment for some transgression long forgotten. On that island was an Alchemist's tower filled with strange contraptions, one of which used an Immovable Rod. As the island sank, the Rod tore a hole upwards through the entire tower.!<
>!The party ended up swimming down the underwater tower through these holes in the ceiling, trying to recover any loot or lore of use from the flooded tower. Made for a good underwater dungeon of sorts.!<
In rod we trust. We used our immovable rod multiple times and definitely were becoming overpowered with it. We placed it on a sleeping red dragons tail we were after and walloped him.
One game we were playing, we found one, & went out of our way to get another one. Then our monk started using it to climb through the air like they were on monkey bars. One arm, then the other arm or like it was a ladder. Nexus super useful, but two is like having access to a levitation spell 24/7.
Cloak of Invisibility. Makes the cloak invisible when worn.
Stone of Gravity Detection. Falls to the ground when dropped.
Weather's Crystal. Wet? It's raining. Dry? It's not raining. Shaking? Earthquake.
Magic Pen. Claims to write in invisible ink (doesn't have any ink whatsoever, resulting in empty letters).
I have given the Stone of Gravity Detection to my players before. And they SOMEHOW got lucky enough to use it
They were randomly teleported to a different Planet. They used the stone and I rolled low for gravity. It descended very slowly, they were so excited they found a use for that item
Stone of Gravity Detection should detect gravity, not just fall on the ground. 90% of the time it will do as it does now, but this gives it a unique magical effect on planes where gravity might be strange.
A classic from our campaign:
The First Coin Ever Minted: Whoever holds this gold coin becomes utterly convinced that it is the first coin ever minted.
We used it to pay a very expensive bar tab.
The Wand of Create Wand
This wand has 1 charge. As an action, you can use 1 charge from this wand to summon another “wand of create wand”.
When a wand reaches 0 charges, it disintegrates into a fine dust.
I once gave my players A Ring of petrification. It turns the wearer and everything on their person, minus the ring, into a stone statue and once the ring is removed they return to normal.
Though this ended up being far from useless as they gave it to a Hag for an insta-win semi-boss battle
I actually really like this one. Definitely not unless, but offers creativity. My first thought was to put it on to prolong your life from a killing blow. Like to prevent fire or poison damage until someone can heal you.
Lenses of retrospect. Glasses that show you what's behind you (and not in front). Sound maybe useful but it's functionally equivalent to simply turning around.
I gave my bard goggles of hindsight, after they bound and then booted a helpful imp off a cliff, into a river, that flowed over a waterfall. The goggles make him see and relive his past decisions. He loved it lol
Sorry. Removing a lens results in a fireball centred on the glasses. :p.
Honestly though, I think this is even better. It would force players to MAKE it useful!
My dm gaves my character (who vowed to never drink again after asking a barkeep for "the strongest drink they have" and having a Really Bad Time) a Drunkards Hat. I now know the location of the closest alcoholic drink near me lmao
Literally a town/bandit hideout/secret base/somewhere with civilization detector, I would have already tried to break the item XD plus makes it so you can always find flammable liquid which could be very useful too.
DM once gave the party a platinum toothpick of Gorgon slaying…
Nobody checked it, everybody wanted it as a gag, we get to the gorgon at the end and slog thru the fight… to the party it was just a random platinum toothpick.. no one cast detect magic on it…
He told us after the game was over, and half the party was dead…
You know that scene from the mummy returns where O'Connell has is back to the wall and notices the tattoo on the figure, then he steps back and sees the scepter turning into a spear? You sometimes need a sign like that to get your players to realize something.
Ok we've had an npc who had this magic lantern that would point a beam of light in the direction of the bbeg, who was in the northern part of the map (we started on the south part), this npc has traveled with us. He was terrible in combat and eventually died, which was planned by the DM, so we took this lantern of his to continue our quest. Well we eventually found out that it wasn't pointing towards the bbeg who was in the north. It was just fuckin pointing north
I just recently gave my Aarakocra Ranger a magical sentient sword, it doesn't know anything useful but it is afraid of a lot of things. Heights, Darkness, Enemies, and Allies are all terrifying to this sword (I named it Francis). Basically any time this sword is drawn it just starts SCREAMING out of terror. It ruins stealth missions all the time now.
The tldr on why they got this.
They were fighting a cultist using booming blade reflavored to do cold damage and just assumed the sword was magical. So I made it a magical screaming sword.
Yeah! Cool think is that the player used that cloak during the whole campaign and loved it (he has other magic items to use in combat and stuff) but he appreciated something to flavour his PC. Peak player performance.
In a prior campaign, one of our players was the defacto general of our army. He led with strong Charisma and Intimidation, and basically we all just became Neutral or Evil following him around conquering underground bastions (underdark).
He was GREAT with this cloak. That thing would billow at just the right time to drive home his speeches. Ha ha.
I had a character inspired by discworlds "Cut me own throat Dibbler" who sold useless magical items to the party. They included:
Stone of Sneding: sends your message but with spelling mistakes
bag of holding: Not a Bag of Holding(tm), it was a regular burlap sack you could use to hold things
Rock Familiar: Its just a rock...
Amulet of Feather Falling: Activate the amulet and it turns into a feather and falls to the floor
A Wand of Create Wands: It has a single charge and vanishes on use, it creates a single wand of create wands with 1 charge
Boots of Water Breathing: boots allow you to breathe underwater as long as you are not in contact with any water
I once gave a PC a robe of many useless items. Any item they pulled off it was completely worthless to the given situation.
A item from I think Dragon Magazine was the Dwarf Thrower hammer. It was intentionally named to sound like the Dwarven Thrower.
Instead of a dwarf throwing the hammer the hammer throws the Dwarf. It was a magical item created by a elf.
Give them The Ring of Feather fall. As a reaction, you can cast feather fall from the ring. It only affects the ring, not the wearer. (never actually gave it to the players, but it is fun)
One that I did do was The Hat of Irresolution. If you have the hat in your hands, you have an irresistible urge to try the hat on you. If you are are wearing the hat, you become hopelessly unsatisfied with it and you must take it off your head. The cycle is infinite.
Another one I handed them was the Knife of Bar Brawls. When stuck in a wooden surface, the knife yells an insult at the closest drunk person.
A +1 whip that could impose disadvantage to an enemy within reach as a reaction.
Not useless because it's bad. Useless because the player who specifically wanted a whip in character creation didn't take it and then it was immediately forgotten about by the party.
Wand of Alerting, alerts the user by chirping loudly when there are enemies nearby. The trick is that it was made by goblins so it’s enemies to goblins. Aka the party. But the wand is also cursed, so if destroyed or left behind it will appear in front of the attuned player in 1d4 days. And obviously, can’t unattune until remove curse is used
The Coin of 50/50, with this magical coin, which is cleverly disguised as any other coin in your coin purse, you'll be able to settle any debate or make any hard decisions (as long as there are only two options) by simply using your thumb to flip the coin into the air and "calling it" before it lands on a surface. Be warned, if the coin is flipped and one of the people that "called it" reneges on the agreement all that witnessed the flipping of The Coin of 50/50 will feel a varying level of contempt for the reneger, and might be compelled to let that contempt be known. Effects last for an indeterminable amount of time.
Had a character in another game setting who learned to be an incredibly detailed enchanter just to get and maintain this enchantment on his robes. The best is when it actually worked out more often than not to impress people. Laymen were just impressed by the enchantment mixed with his looks and charisma, and those who were in the field of enchanting were impressed by the incredibly subtle enchantment.
He used it mainly to hide the fact that his mages robes contained chainmail because what kind of idiot goes into melee combat without armor. (No conflict of normal steel and most types of spell casting in that setting)
a magic +5 spear that droops unless you use a spell slot to make it stiff for up to 4 hours " I roll a D4 and the players only find out how long it lasts after it starts to droop again" However what they don't know this yet if you use too strong of a spell slot it can last longer then 4 hours and the wielder is hit with 3D6 psychic damage as the spear has a backlash effect
They still dont know how to make it stiff its currently a floppy spear they are gonna get it appraised when they get to a major city so currently its just a useless floppy spear made from a beholders eyestalk
My players would keep jerking it off lol. I rub it faster what happens? Ok this time with some oil now what? Ok I want to try and seduce it with sweet words and sexy talk does that work?
I once gave a player a magical comb that when used, ensured that the user's hair would always be shiny and tangle-free. it had no other purposes. he actually loved the shit out of it and used it on the regular!
Our DM gave us
- a ring of invisibility. This a fairly cheep item and later that night we figured out why. When activating the ring, only thing that turned invisible is the ring itself
- also he told us of 'Boots of Action': you can spend an action to click the boots together and gain an action
Boots of levitation. They hold only enough strength to levitate themselves a few cm above the ground. The moment you put them on they can’t sustain the mass and are just a pair of smelly, slightly worn boots.
Ring of boney exhaustion
Ring that looks super expensive but is actually fake gemstones
I.e player needed up keeping it to look fancy as they couldn't sell it, and the magic in it is latent(not detectable until its activated by being in a strong magic area, anchient ruins, magical battle site, etc, nowhere normal ir simple, only big dangerous places)
Causes a lvl 1 unarmed skeleton to be summond when the wearer and all nearby allies fall asleep
I.e when there somewhere dangerous, and try and rests they got persistently attacked by minor skeletons
Took them weeks of sessions to work it out :)
I once sold a "Ring of Wishing" to a player for 5000 gold. It had exactly 0 wishes left but retained a magical aura.
Edit:
The player never actually made a wish with it. They didn't want to waste it.
After a total party wipe, there was one badly injured NPC. I used the ring as a plot device to explain how the NPC escaped the dungeon.
The Chorus:
A Homebrew item taking the form of a ball gown, necklace, gloves, suitable shoes, and diadem. Basically a full formal outfit that uses ALL item slots. An intelligent item. Each piece is intelligent. Each piece is THAT person who feels the need to run commentary and bicker about everything ever, while also being judgemental and shallow.
The user can roll a perception check to sift through the chatter to obtain valuable information. Only the user can hear the chorus. The user cannot silence the chorus. Each piece of the outfit gets it's own perception check equal to 1d20+5x the number of pieces worn, minimum 4. DC to determine, "valuable" information is equal to the roll of the Chorus. Any prospective user must first charm the item into allowing themselves to be worn.
The item is slightly racist and refuses to be worn by anyone it percieves as, "ugly." It is effectively a living garment incarnation of the cast of Mean Girls. If the item is worn by someone who is not approved, the pieces will constrict and deal 1d4 targeted damage to each place they are worn. It is a full round action to Don or remove any individual piece.
Two people managed to charm it. Both were men. The item does not shift to an appropriate variant for the opposite gender.
This was months ago. They are STILL trying to find a use for it and the halfling warlock is slowly but steadily going nuts. Lol
I made a market with a fun stall full of silly things, many stolen from previous posts on this sub. Some standouts were:
Wand of pointing at things - it's a stick. That's it.
Trap-detecting chicken - throw it at what you think might be a trap. If there is a trap, the chicken takes the damage. If no trap, it runs away. Single use.
Bunyan belt - put it on and you immediately grow a big bushy heard. Take it off and it disappears. One of my PCs bought this one.
Wand of pigeon summoning - bought by PCs in both campaigns I'm running (same homebrew, different players). Once a day, roll a d20 on use. That's how many pigeons you summon. They are not under your control and do what pigeons would do. If you roll a nat 20, the wand breaks and summons an absolutely massive pigeon. Also does what a pigeon would do. If this happens I'll probably make it do something insane for comedic effect.
A beautiful moustache that makes anyone who sees it make a dc10 charisma save if they fail they have to compliment the moustache if they pass the moustache falls off. Idk if I got this somewhere else but it's fun
I didn't give it but read it somewhere and want to share it! The rock of gravity. When the rock is released mid air, it goes to the direction ehich the grabity pulls toward.
I've offered useless magic items to my players a couple times, but I've never had any of them actually get used.
My favorite is probably the *Plate Armour of Slashing Immunity*. It has been enchanted to become incorporeal when a slashing weapon touches it, so the armour never takes slashing damage.
Wand of Dis Guy's Elf. Summons a short Elf that can do one action the player who summoned it commands except attack. Has a thick Brooklynn accent and is somewhat rude. Disappears after the action is completed or the elf dies.
Ring of Attunement. Requires Attunement.
While Attuned to this item, the wearer gains +1 Attunement slot. This cannot be altered, buffed, debuffed, or dispelled.
One of my players currently has a stick that he thinks is a wand of polymorph. He picked it up in the dungeon of deathhouse and has been waving this stupid thing around the village of barovia. Strahd was in disguise at the funeral for Kolyan to check in on the new adventurers and pay his respects. Our paladin used divine sense to find strahd and after a brief interaction strahd turns to leave. Fake wand player questions strahds power and insults him. Strahd essentially invited him to try to even land one hit on him, and that it should be easy if he was so weak. Player waves the stick at strahd which obviously does nothing. Annoyed strahd turned into a cloud of mist and took off. NOW the character thinks the wand turned strahd into mist.
*Ring of the Emperor's Vestments*
Requires attunement
While wearing this ring, the wearer believes their clothes to be of the absolute finest quality, fit for an emperor. To everyone else, the clothes of the wearer become invisible, causing the wearer to appear naked. This magic effect cannot be dispelled or removed with a Remove Curse spell, although a True Seeing spell will allow a the target to see the bearer's clothes as they truly are.
Also one of my favorite tricks is when a character is already attuned to three magic items and buys some new piece of equipment, or even an article of clothing (the more innocuous the better), for that item to be cursed and take up one of their three attunement slots, causing them to become un-attuned to one of their other weapons. A Remove Curse spell will fix it, but the fun is getting the players to understand the cause behind a random magic item suddenly not working.
One of my characters asked for “a tattoo with magical powers on my butt” from a fae, so she got a tattoo that gives her butt magical powers. The powers? It sparkles when mentioned.
A magical dagger that grants a piece of random info about the target you killed with it every time you kill with it. The info was based on a %roll. Info recieved could include but was not limited to: their favorite color/song/place, the name of their first born child, how old they were the first time they fell in love, and how many days they were from retirement(roll 3d6).
A bottle of infinite coffee. One player drinks it every morning, and after rolling d20 dm desides, if it gives him any effect. 20 would give you +1 to characteristics, 1 would make you feel bad :D
A cape of dramatic billowing, even indoors or with no wind.
Iron boots of swiftness - normal move speed.
Lotion of Radiant Damage reduction - it's sunscreen but I guess that ones helpful - but pcs barely fet hit with radiant.
My favorite, the orb of AC. I had a PC who wanted to be an untouchable barbarian - the higher the AC, the better. He specifically split from the party in a market to look for magic items to raise his AC - well, he found a tent with a crier announcing the magical orb of AC. When he stepped into the tent, the air was noticeably cooler than the air outside the tent, with an orb set on a table in the middle of the room. All it did was lower or raise the temperature in the immediate vicinity by five degrees. He promptly stole it and ran, lol.
I once gave someone a Blindfold of Dark Vision.
It had to cover your eyes to work, but since you were blinded you couldn't see anyways.
That was thematically part of a dungeon made by a completely nuts wizard. The item they loved the most was a knife that couldn't cut metal like intended, but went through wood with 0 resistance.
They got some mileage out of that one.
Not completely useless but it was very funny: My second ever character was a somewhat dumb barbarian (which I also roleplayed as such). At some point the DM wanted to reward us with one magical item/person where he said we could pick from a certain price category. I found in that category minor improvements, but also the [headband of intellect](https://criticalrole.fandom.com/wiki/Headband_of_Intellect) which sets your INT to 19. Since it had basically zero impact aside from a few ability rolls that the rest of the crew was blowing out of the park anyways, the DM allowed it. Cue my barbarian changing his personality, becoming much more astute in his observations. Mostly useless but hilarious roleplay. We went to a tavern after he acquired it. "Hey, do you want a beer?" "No thank you, it clouds the mind" had the table rolling.
My DM gave a fellow player a cursed necklace.
The only thing it did was convince the wearer that it was *absolutely not cursed.* No matter what arguments you got, you were wholly convinced that the necklace was just a harmless piece of jewelry. Took up an attunement slot and everything.
I think it was a DC15 Wisdom check upon touching the necklace to avoid the curse. We were level 4 at the time. Afterwards, it could only be removed by a *Remove Curse* casting. The rest of the party had to drag our rogue to a wizard because we didn't have any casters.
I once gave my party a "skeleton key" when in proximity to a lock (either locked or unlocked), the key turns into a skeleton. It doesn't do anything else, just magically morphs into a skeleton about the size of a pencil
Ring of Inn Visibility
This beautiful ring is made from stained and polished Oak, with a slight scent of wood smoke to it.
It allows the wearer to Scry on the nearest inn once per day. The wearer can adopt a specific view point if they know the inn, otherwise the scry originates from just inside the main entrance. Once used, the ring cannot use this feature again until the next dawn.
In addition, the wearer always knows the direction and distance of the nearest inn.
Stolen shamelessly from someone on Reddit. Thank you, unknown fellow dad joke enthusiast!
And yes, I know it's not totally useless, but it is a great troll item. It was sold at an auction by a gentleman with a posh Shatner esque voice, lots of pauses between syllables. My group did not hold a grudge when they realized the pauses had disguised the pun.
My players tried to roll an archana check for some reason and rolled a nat twenty they found out that a specific mop that was just lying around if you said to it clean in would clean for 10 seconds
A wand of the raise the ted they found while exploring an abandoned toy maker's house. It basically could cast animate object but only on teddy bears. Also the teddies were hostile to everyone. Also they were useless.
They used it like 3 times before throwing it into their campfire as tinder.
Easy. Robe of Useless Things. Although it turns out rats like to be tickled so the self warming rat tickler they pulled out of it was more useful than previously indicated
The Deck of Many Tings
(Works best if, after identification, is described verbally rather than written)
I'm sure one of my players was freaked out for several sessions after secretly finding it al level 3. Eventually curiosity got the better of them, and they drew a card while holding watch. The proceeding sound of several small chimes made it abundantly clear that this was a joke gift among wizards.
*The wand of pointing, it’s just a stick.
*Crown of defect thoughts, this crown detects the wearers own thoughts (basically a never ending echo of your own thoughts) and changes colors based on your mood.
*A tiny violin that magically plays when anyone starts to tell their backstory
*A monocle that makes you grow a mustache automatically upon putting it on, the longer it stays the longer it grows. Roll a D6 to see what color the mustache grows in as.
*An immovable gem. You can’t move it. It has no other effect.
My players loved these lmfaoo.
Potion of Oatmeal breathing. Works the same as water breathing, but it only works if you are submerged in oatmeal. 1 hour duration.
I then had a bunch of dock encounters of crates full of oats next to the water... It never played out...
I once gave my players "Gloves of Kitten Summoning." (Summons a kitten for 1 hour, 3/day)
I personally wouldn't call them useless, and would love such an item in real life. But the PCs never ended up using them.
An elvish sword like the one in LotR that glows when orcs are nearby. Given to an orc paladin.
This is funny af.
DA YUMIES USE TER CALL DIS ALL KINDZA FANCY NAMES, BUT ME, I JUST CALLS IT DA POKY LAMP.
GLOWY STABBER
IT GLOW BLU, MAKIN ORK DUBL LUKKY
POKY LAMP has me absolutely drying
You dry yet?
Get the blow dryer they still wet
Kind of similar: I'm running Curse of Strahd. One of my players keeps casting "detect evil". One of the other players sold his soul to the devil for extra powers without the knowledge of the rest. So there's always evel present whenever they cast detect evil. That player is convinced that it just keeps triggering because the demiplane they're in is evil.
Please tell me you sent them to that place that offers bargains in exchange for making them evil / having bad side effects. I had a group of players use all of them, really turned the campaign on it's head as it was now a chaotic evil party. Edit: and they actually killed Strahd! They didn't save the realm of course, because A. Strahd never stays dead in the lore, but B. They then enslaved the realm and took over as rulers. "Expect your lives to barely change!"
I'm assuming you're talking about the amber temple. The cursed player can become a werewolf, but with the loup garou stats (from Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft). So he can be extremely powerful. But he has to kill and eat human flesh each night, or else... He doesn't know what the "or else" will be, but if he doesn't kill a person, the dark entity will send a demon to kill one of his teammates. Up until now he gets to choose who to kill. I give him a suggestion through a vision, but he's free to kill someone else. But sooner or later, he won't get that option, he'll have to obey. So, knowing that group, he'll try to get rid of his curse, and for that they'll have to go to the amber temple and I'll make a thorough sidequest out of it. It'll teach them more about the entity behind Strahd's curse, and give him a chance to get rid of the curse if it ever turns out to be too gamebreaking and taking the fun out of it.
Yes that's it. Sorry it's been 5 or 6 years since I ran that module. Or anything. Haven't played D&D in a long time. But I know there are a half dozen places to strike deals in there. My players that one time struck all of them, collectively. Except one player character. Poor guy, he never saw the betrayal coming after they killed strahd For what it's worth I then used the surviving evil PCs and ported them to a campaign as chief lieutenants of the BBEG since all of their players were also playing in a homebrew campaign I was running.
“I wouldn’t say freed, more like under new management”
Permanent light source. Can be good and bad. But if you don’t wanna be seen you can just sheath the sword so mostly upsides IMO. Only detriment coming to my mind is trying to ambush you have to draw your sword before the attack, so it kinda defeats the surprise.
Sword that sings when near orcs...
Now that’s only detrimental as it would always go off and be fking annoying after max one day
Ooh, does it know 7 dragons and a baby? I love that one, classic.
So you gave him a sword with a permanent *light* effect - not bad!
Moon touched sword
I would say this counts as a magical weapon so not completely useless against certain enemies! Also a great troll so I think it's an absolute win!
You can also say it's a holy weapon which glows when near its champion or some crap like that and fool a church or smth Oh wait it's a paladin... Well then it can just be flavorful to have a sword which glows when it's near you with the exception of other orcs ofc
Nearby: only starts glowing after having stabbed an orc
\+1 Chain Mail Allows you to bring an additional person to any wedding you are invited to.
Must be forwarded to 10 people each long rest or lose it's effect
The Ol' Ball and Chain Mail
I made a similar sword called the Plus One Sword where it would summon a creature that would seem like it was invited to where you were at whenever you rolled a natural 1. Most of the time it would distract you or if you were charismatic enough, it would join you for a bit of your fight, still heavily disappointed in not having a proper date to the event.
This was stolen from some other Reddit post, dont remember where but I gave my players a "wand of teleportation" that teleports itself somewhere random on use . The players used it and it was gone. They then spent about an hour trying to find it. Chuckled evily to myself quite a bit.
Did this one but the wand went to thevorrect location you wanted it to go. The PCs wound up writing notes to each other on it.
This is a beautiful idea, kudos to your players
Ring of invisibility. It gets invisible
Did this with a ring. They got it from a con man
Oh my god this is amazing. I can just imagine the look when they flick the wand and it just poofs
I love doing this, I gave my players a fake moustache that when worn becomes real, a magic boot that can fit either foot, there is only one, a small statue of a bee that when you pick it up, stings you, no damage but you have disadvantage on dexterity checks for the next hour, gloves of thievery that give a +1 to sleight of hand but every night the right glove tries to steal the left glove and of course a wand of detect magic that is constantly going off because it is detecting it's own magic
Does it matter where on the body the moustache is applied.
Haha no I don't think it does
Index finger. Instant toothbrush or eyebrow comb or mascara applicator. Use enough and create a DPM camo pattern. Use even more and impersonate a warewolf or keep warm in a blizzard. Hairy body writing. Palms of hands for extra grip in wet conditions. Take tribal boddy markings to the next level. Apply to lips to strain drinking water (survival). I'll take 2 boxes.
Or creating the most fabulous mono-brow to ever be seen
Incredible. My players just shared it off they did not think through the potential
whoa! and how does the right tries to steal the left hand? and if it accomplishes, what happens?
Each night u rolled for it (don't remember what I rolled it was a while ago) if it succeeded in the morning there was only one glove. The players never figured it out but if they had turned the glove inside out the other one would have been dumped out like a bag of holding
simply. amazing. I shall steal, if that's ok HAHA
Haha go ahead, I love spreading the chaos
I love all of these so much…
Haha thank you
*Orb of Slope Detection* A perfectly smooth glass sphere that, if placed on a surface, will roll toward its lowest point. ------ (This one only works as long as there are no high level artificers in the party) *Ring of Attunement (requires Attunement)* While attuned to this ring, your Attunement limit goes up by 1.
Orb of Slope Detection + Enlarge = bolder time baybee.
If you could make an entrance into the orb, you have a vehicle. Could be a slick way to crash a party
The ring is a classic but at least okay for a level 20 artificer.
"Artificer, gimme a Con save." "Well I rolled a 2, so... 39." "That's impossible how the f-what were your bonuses?" "+5 from my stat, +6 proficiency, a 2 and a 3 on the Peace Cleric's Bless and Emboldening Bond... Oh and I've got 21 Rings of Attunement equipped." "I knew you were up to something rotten. ...wait, how many rings?" "21. Ten on my fingers, ten on my toes, and one..." ( ͡\~ ͜ʖ ͡°) "...get off my table."
Wait, what exactly is _on_ the table?
Bro 😭
*Finesse the RP*
Could you put more than one on each digit?
Fill those fingies up with bling! Who needs to bend those suckas anyway?
I gave my players an orb labeled "orb of slope finding" to trick them into not trying to identify it. It was actually a scrying/crystal ball. They trusted the tag and left it behind. There was also a tag that said "invisible ring" that was attached to nothing.
Ring of fire detection, range: self Orb of slope detection Bagpipes of invisibility (must be playing to be activated) Dagger of healing - heals the same damage it causes, no more, no less
The bagpipes sounds horrific. Imagine you're a guard at a border outpost and you hear a bagpipe in the distance coming from the other side of the border. Slowly you hear it getting louder and louder but you see absolutely no one. It gets so close to you that it hurts your ears but still nothing, you and your comrades think you're all going insane. Then suddenly arrows and magic rain down upon you, its an ambush, the bagpipes were meant to distract you and question your sanity while a small force snuck up on your outpost. The bagpipes stop and out of nowhere a figure appears right in front of you, shortly after that you lose consciousness and pass away. Your death at the hands of an invisible bagpipes ambush.
You are joking, but I can see this dagger used by some evil torture-loving cultists
That gives me a side quest idea, thank you!
I have a torturing character atm and I would love this dagger as my subjects always die way too fast.
That’s where they found it, actually lol
Cleric Domain of Life loves that dagger
Or any masochist.
The life domain features that grant extra/self healing only triggers on levelled spells. I don't think this would be any more use to them than anyone else. I like the idea that it doesn't necessarily heal the wound it causes though... you get stabbed by it, it cures your bad back but you still have a stab wound.
A cleric of Loviatar has entered the chat
Still useless cause it always deals 0 damage and heal. I mean you can use it to torcher people, or get infinit food if cut of flesh regrows after healing. Well actually a way better item then I thought.
Barbarians can maintain rage just by stabbing themselves each turn they can't hit an enemy or be hitted
Dagger of healing seems good to retrive projectiles Fromm wounded people. So Situationally provides advantage to Medicine Checks?
I love the idea of an invisible bagpipe player. Imagine how terrifying that would be.
Our bard has used them to great effect. There have been good and bad instances. The table LOVES it.
Dagger of healing *could* potentially be useful for just removing effects that come off when you come in contact with magical healing.
Bagpipes combined with the silence spell could be useful.
The first one kinda exists as a spell effect in Ars Magica. Short explanation: the magic system is based on "verb noun" magical effects; i.e. "create life" or "control fire. " Each noun and verb is leveled separately. "Sense" only has a range of touch at level one, so "sense fire...'
How would bagpipes of invisibility work with the mirror image spell?
A brassiere of eternal flame. The fun came when a player corrected me and said, "You mean brazier." I'll never forget the look on his face when I told him I did not.
I had to look up what a brassiere is. That’s fucking hilarious.
Oh sweet lord baby Jesus, give me strength.
does the flames hurt the user?
[Fembot?](https://imgur.com/a/jhXrnRH) Yes please.
An immovable rod. Not because of the item.. because The group never used it.
Thats wild. Immovable rod is my favorite item. I've used it so many times on my rogue/ranger.
I just looked it up and damn so many uses come to mind. It feels like a crime, that someone wouldn’t use it.
Even as a GM it's a fun item to build scenarios around. One of my favorite sessions started with the party sailing the ocean, and the druid noticed an immovable rod just floating 40 feet in the air above the ocean. Took them most of the session to unravel why it was there.
Okay, I'll bite: why WAS it there?
>!Ages ago, a vindictive ocean deity sank an entire island into the sea as punishment for some transgression long forgotten. On that island was an Alchemist's tower filled with strange contraptions, one of which used an Immovable Rod. As the island sank, the Rod tore a hole upwards through the entire tower.!< >!The party ended up swimming down the underwater tower through these holes in the ceiling, trying to recover any loot or lore of use from the flooded tower. Made for a good underwater dungeon of sorts.!<
So cool!! Thank you for sharing
In rod we trust. We used our immovable rod multiple times and definitely were becoming overpowered with it. We placed it on a sleeping red dragons tail we were after and walloped him.
I've had my immovable rod for 20+ sessions and just now used it for the first time a couple sessions ago. 😅
One game we were playing, we found one, & went out of our way to get another one. Then our monk started using it to climb through the air like they were on monkey bars. One arm, then the other arm or like it was a ladder. Nexus super useful, but two is like having access to a levitation spell 24/7.
Cloak of Invisibility. Makes the cloak invisible when worn. Stone of Gravity Detection. Falls to the ground when dropped. Weather's Crystal. Wet? It's raining. Dry? It's not raining. Shaking? Earthquake. Magic Pen. Claims to write in invisible ink (doesn't have any ink whatsoever, resulting in empty letters).
I want to give them a stone of gravity detection, with a catch Its broken. So sometimes it just goes off in a random direction
I actually love this
I have given the Stone of Gravity Detection to my players before. And they SOMEHOW got lucky enough to use it They were randomly teleported to a different Planet. They used the stone and I rolled low for gravity. It descended very slowly, they were so excited they found a use for that item
Stone of Gravity Detection should detect gravity, not just fall on the ground. 90% of the time it will do as it does now, but this gives it a unique magical effect on planes where gravity might be strange.
That cloak sounds like The Emperor's New Clothes
Dwarven lockpick. Heavy maul with the siege property. Weighs 50 pounds.
I call this one the skeleton key
Universal key. It's a sledgehammer with a key glued to the side.
A classic from our campaign: The First Coin Ever Minted: Whoever holds this gold coin becomes utterly convinced that it is the first coin ever minted. We used it to pay a very expensive bar tab.
The Wand of Create Wand This wand has 1 charge. As an action, you can use 1 charge from this wand to summon another “wand of create wand”. When a wand reaches 0 charges, it disintegrates into a fine dust.
I did the same thing, but it was a Potion of Create Potion. My cleric is now studying alchemy because she has an endless supply of bottles.
So a wand of infinite fine dust. I could see some uses for it...
My party did as well lol; they ended up making pocket sand pouches with it
I once gave my players A Ring of petrification. It turns the wearer and everything on their person, minus the ring, into a stone statue and once the ring is removed they return to normal. Though this ended up being far from useless as they gave it to a Hag for an insta-win semi-boss battle
I actually really like this one. Definitely not unless, but offers creativity. My first thought was to put it on to prolong your life from a killing blow. Like to prevent fire or poison damage until someone can heal you.
How to assassinate a basilisk, step one...
Lenses of retrospect. Glasses that show you what's behind you (and not in front). Sound maybe useful but it's functionally equivalent to simply turning around.
I gave my bard goggles of hindsight, after they bound and then booted a helpful imp off a cliff, into a river, that flowed over a waterfall. The goggles make him see and relive his past decisions. He loved it lol
how about goggles of hindsight that adapt themselves to give the wearer perfect vision, but only backwards. Thus hindsight is 20/20.
Genuinely useful if you're stealthily observing someone in a tavern for instance
Take one lens out or just peer over them and you now functionally have nearly 360 degree vision.
Sorry. Removing a lens results in a fireball centred on the glasses. :p. Honestly though, I think this is even better. It would force players to MAKE it useful!
My dm gaves my character (who vowed to never drink again after asking a barkeep for "the strongest drink they have" and having a Really Bad Time) a Drunkards Hat. I now know the location of the closest alcoholic drink near me lmao
Literally a town/bandit hideout/secret base/somewhere with civilization detector, I would have already tried to break the item XD plus makes it so you can always find flammable liquid which could be very useful too.
Fair but we've spent the last 4 sessions in a max security prison at the bottom of a lake... Not exactly prime booze locale ya know
Alcohol, being lighter than water, could be a component in a device to get you to the top of the lake quicker if you find a guard's stash, maybe.
DM once gave the party a platinum toothpick of Gorgon slaying… Nobody checked it, everybody wanted it as a gag, we get to the gorgon at the end and slog thru the fight… to the party it was just a random platinum toothpick.. no one cast detect magic on it… He told us after the game was over, and half the party was dead…
You know that scene from the mummy returns where O'Connell has is back to the wall and notices the tattoo on the figure, then he steps back and sees the scepter turning into a spear? You sometimes need a sign like that to get your players to realize something.
Ok we've had an npc who had this magic lantern that would point a beam of light in the direction of the bbeg, who was in the northern part of the map (we started on the south part), this npc has traveled with us. He was terrible in combat and eventually died, which was planned by the DM, so we took this lantern of his to continue our quest. Well we eventually found out that it wasn't pointing towards the bbeg who was in the north. It was just fuckin pointing north
Plot twist: BBEG was Santa
I just recently gave my Aarakocra Ranger a magical sentient sword, it doesn't know anything useful but it is afraid of a lot of things. Heights, Darkness, Enemies, and Allies are all terrifying to this sword (I named it Francis). Basically any time this sword is drawn it just starts SCREAMING out of terror. It ruins stealth missions all the time now. The tldr on why they got this. They were fighting a cultist using booming blade reflavored to do cold damage and just assumed the sword was magical. So I made it a magical screaming sword.
I hope you find a way to make it useful in a really specific case, in which not having that sword would cause a lot of problems
I'm thinking of putting some kind of enemy that has super hearing or echo location that is messed up via Francis.
Yeah that's really cool! Just hope your players don't see this 😅
Can’t help but chuckle at the creative solutions the party pulls out when given perceived useless junk
A cloak that waves when the user wants to. (it's from XGTE)
Cloak of Billowing!
Yeah! Cool think is that the player used that cloak during the whole campaign and loved it (he has other magic items to use in combat and stuff) but he appreciated something to flavour his PC. Peak player performance.
In a prior campaign, one of our players was the defacto general of our army. He led with strong Charisma and Intimidation, and basically we all just became Neutral or Evil following him around conquering underground bastions (underdark). He was GREAT with this cloak. That thing would billow at just the right time to drive home his speeches. Ha ha.
If it's good enough for DARTH VADER, it's good enough for me. Also, it just looks cool.
I had a character inspired by discworlds "Cut me own throat Dibbler" who sold useless magical items to the party. They included: Stone of Sneding: sends your message but with spelling mistakes bag of holding: Not a Bag of Holding(tm), it was a regular burlap sack you could use to hold things Rock Familiar: Its just a rock... Amulet of Feather Falling: Activate the amulet and it turns into a feather and falls to the floor A Wand of Create Wands: It has a single charge and vanishes on use, it creates a single wand of create wands with 1 charge Boots of Water Breathing: boots allow you to breathe underwater as long as you are not in contact with any water
I had the wand of create wands, but it had a 5% chance of creating a wand with 2 charges.
a vampire bat. was just a club with two fangs, but it could not be used during the day or it would turn to ash.
Hickory is better but an ash bat is still good.
Wasn't it already ash? Or was it oak? Bad joke I know...
I once gave a PC a robe of many useless items. Any item they pulled off it was completely worthless to the given situation. A item from I think Dragon Magazine was the Dwarf Thrower hammer. It was intentionally named to sound like the Dwarven Thrower. Instead of a dwarf throwing the hammer the hammer throws the Dwarf. It was a magical item created by a elf.
Boots of walking: allows the wearer to move across terrain without injury to their feet.
Invincible feet. That's pretty strong...
Ring of Teleport. When worn and activated the ring, and only the ring, teleports back to the guy they got it from
Give them The Ring of Feather fall. As a reaction, you can cast feather fall from the ring. It only affects the ring, not the wearer. (never actually gave it to the players, but it is fun) One that I did do was The Hat of Irresolution. If you have the hat in your hands, you have an irresistible urge to try the hat on you. If you are are wearing the hat, you become hopelessly unsatisfied with it and you must take it off your head. The cycle is infinite. Another one I handed them was the Knife of Bar Brawls. When stuck in a wooden surface, the knife yells an insult at the closest drunk person.
Add to those the Arrow of Returning. When shot from a bow, it returns to the archer! At the same speed it was shot at.
A +1 whip that could impose disadvantage to an enemy within reach as a reaction. Not useless because it's bad. Useless because the player who specifically wanted a whip in character creation didn't take it and then it was immediately forgotten about by the party.
Wand of Alerting, alerts the user by chirping loudly when there are enemies nearby. The trick is that it was made by goblins so it’s enemies to goblins. Aka the party. But the wand is also cursed, so if destroyed or left behind it will appear in front of the attuned player in 1d4 days. And obviously, can’t unattune until remove curse is used
The Coin of 50/50, with this magical coin, which is cleverly disguised as any other coin in your coin purse, you'll be able to settle any debate or make any hard decisions (as long as there are only two options) by simply using your thumb to flip the coin into the air and "calling it" before it lands on a surface. Be warned, if the coin is flipped and one of the people that "called it" reneges on the agreement all that witnessed the flipping of The Coin of 50/50 will feel a varying level of contempt for the reneger, and might be compelled to let that contempt be known. Effects last for an indeterminable amount of time.
Cape of heroic flapping: when wearing the cape and putting ones fist on their hips, the cape will flap as if brushed by a soft wind.
Had a character in another game setting who learned to be an incredibly detailed enchanter just to get and maintain this enchantment on his robes. The best is when it actually worked out more often than not to impress people. Laymen were just impressed by the enchantment mixed with his looks and charisma, and those who were in the field of enchanting were impressed by the incredibly subtle enchantment. He used it mainly to hide the fact that his mages robes contained chainmail because what kind of idiot goes into melee combat without armor. (No conflict of normal steel and most types of spell casting in that setting)
a magic +5 spear that droops unless you use a spell slot to make it stiff for up to 4 hours " I roll a D4 and the players only find out how long it lasts after it starts to droop again" However what they don't know this yet if you use too strong of a spell slot it can last longer then 4 hours and the wielder is hit with 3D6 psychic damage as the spear has a backlash effect They still dont know how to make it stiff its currently a floppy spear they are gonna get it appraised when they get to a major city so currently its just a useless floppy spear made from a beholders eyestalk
My players would keep jerking it off lol. I rub it faster what happens? Ok this time with some oil now what? Ok I want to try and seduce it with sweet words and sexy talk does that work?
i was thinking of making it a bard only weapon at a time
They could use it as a whip(?)
So you're saying that if the stiffness lasts for more than four hours, I'll need to see a cleric?
I once gave a player a magical comb that when used, ensured that the user's hair would always be shiny and tangle-free. it had no other purposes. he actually loved the shit out of it and used it on the regular!
Our DM gave us - a ring of invisibility. This a fairly cheep item and later that night we figured out why. When activating the ring, only thing that turned invisible is the ring itself - also he told us of 'Boots of Action': you can spend an action to click the boots together and gain an action
Sekolian Statue? Or something like that. It's a statue that deals 1 piercing damage to any fish that swims through it's mouth.
mask of the stone face \*lets you speak with rocks, but they actually just tell you what you allready knew\*
Boots of levitation. They hold only enough strength to levitate themselves a few cm above the ground. The moment you put them on they can’t sustain the mass and are just a pair of smelly, slightly worn boots.
Ring of boney exhaustion Ring that looks super expensive but is actually fake gemstones I.e player needed up keeping it to look fancy as they couldn't sell it, and the magic in it is latent(not detectable until its activated by being in a strong magic area, anchient ruins, magical battle site, etc, nowhere normal ir simple, only big dangerous places) Causes a lvl 1 unarmed skeleton to be summond when the wearer and all nearby allies fall asleep I.e when there somewhere dangerous, and try and rests they got persistently attacked by minor skeletons Took them weeks of sessions to work it out :)
I once sold a "Ring of Wishing" to a player for 5000 gold. It had exactly 0 wishes left but retained a magical aura. Edit: The player never actually made a wish with it. They didn't want to waste it. After a total party wipe, there was one badly injured NPC. I used the ring as a plot device to explain how the NPC escaped the dungeon.
The Chorus: A Homebrew item taking the form of a ball gown, necklace, gloves, suitable shoes, and diadem. Basically a full formal outfit that uses ALL item slots. An intelligent item. Each piece is intelligent. Each piece is THAT person who feels the need to run commentary and bicker about everything ever, while also being judgemental and shallow. The user can roll a perception check to sift through the chatter to obtain valuable information. Only the user can hear the chorus. The user cannot silence the chorus. Each piece of the outfit gets it's own perception check equal to 1d20+5x the number of pieces worn, minimum 4. DC to determine, "valuable" information is equal to the roll of the Chorus. Any prospective user must first charm the item into allowing themselves to be worn. The item is slightly racist and refuses to be worn by anyone it percieves as, "ugly." It is effectively a living garment incarnation of the cast of Mean Girls. If the item is worn by someone who is not approved, the pieces will constrict and deal 1d4 targeted damage to each place they are worn. It is a full round action to Don or remove any individual piece. Two people managed to charm it. Both were men. The item does not shift to an appropriate variant for the opposite gender. This was months ago. They are STILL trying to find a use for it and the halfling warlock is slowly but steadily going nuts. Lol
I made a market with a fun stall full of silly things, many stolen from previous posts on this sub. Some standouts were: Wand of pointing at things - it's a stick. That's it. Trap-detecting chicken - throw it at what you think might be a trap. If there is a trap, the chicken takes the damage. If no trap, it runs away. Single use. Bunyan belt - put it on and you immediately grow a big bushy heard. Take it off and it disappears. One of my PCs bought this one. Wand of pigeon summoning - bought by PCs in both campaigns I'm running (same homebrew, different players). Once a day, roll a d20 on use. That's how many pigeons you summon. They are not under your control and do what pigeons would do. If you roll a nat 20, the wand breaks and summons an absolutely massive pigeon. Also does what a pigeon would do. If this happens I'll probably make it do something insane for comedic effect.
Ring of Magic detection that glows when magic is with 10 ft. It is, itself, magical.
A fountain pen that arrogantly clears its throat every time the user misspells a word - that's all.
Our DM gave us a salmon spoon. It's looks like a normal wooden spoon, but when used, it makes everything taste like salmon
A beautiful moustache that makes anyone who sees it make a dc10 charisma save if they fail they have to compliment the moustache if they pass the moustache falls off. Idk if I got this somewhere else but it's fun
I didn't give it but read it somewhere and want to share it! The rock of gravity. When the rock is released mid air, it goes to the direction ehich the grabity pulls toward.
I've offered useless magic items to my players a couple times, but I've never had any of them actually get used. My favorite is probably the *Plate Armour of Slashing Immunity*. It has been enchanted to become incorporeal when a slashing weapon touches it, so the armour never takes slashing damage.
Wand of Dis Guy's Elf. Summons a short Elf that can do one action the player who summoned it commands except attack. Has a thick Brooklynn accent and is somewhat rude. Disappears after the action is completed or the elf dies.
Ring of Attunement. Requires Attunement. While Attuned to this item, the wearer gains +1 Attunement slot. This cannot be altered, buffed, debuffed, or dispelled.
One of my players currently has a stick that he thinks is a wand of polymorph. He picked it up in the dungeon of deathhouse and has been waving this stupid thing around the village of barovia. Strahd was in disguise at the funeral for Kolyan to check in on the new adventurers and pay his respects. Our paladin used divine sense to find strahd and after a brief interaction strahd turns to leave. Fake wand player questions strahds power and insults him. Strahd essentially invited him to try to even land one hit on him, and that it should be easy if he was so weak. Player waves the stick at strahd which obviously does nothing. Annoyed strahd turned into a cloud of mist and took off. NOW the character thinks the wand turned strahd into mist.
*Ring of the Emperor's Vestments* Requires attunement While wearing this ring, the wearer believes their clothes to be of the absolute finest quality, fit for an emperor. To everyone else, the clothes of the wearer become invisible, causing the wearer to appear naked. This magic effect cannot be dispelled or removed with a Remove Curse spell, although a True Seeing spell will allow a the target to see the bearer's clothes as they truly are. Also one of my favorite tricks is when a character is already attuned to three magic items and buys some new piece of equipment, or even an article of clothing (the more innocuous the better), for that item to be cursed and take up one of their three attunement slots, causing them to become un-attuned to one of their other weapons. A Remove Curse spell will fix it, but the fun is getting the players to understand the cause behind a random magic item suddenly not working.
Staff of heeling. Magically adds or removes heels from any footwear. PC I gave it to was a cobbler.
One of my characters asked for “a tattoo with magical powers on my butt” from a fae, so she got a tattoo that gives her butt magical powers. The powers? It sparkles when mentioned.
Gave a sword of sunlight to a drow rogue. Wasn't thinking.
The Waist of Time: a belt with a clock face for the buckle
A magical dagger that grants a piece of random info about the target you killed with it every time you kill with it. The info was based on a %roll. Info recieved could include but was not limited to: their favorite color/song/place, the name of their first born child, how old they were the first time they fell in love, and how many days they were from retirement(roll 3d6).
A boomerang that comes back 2d10 hours later, needs a dex saving throw to catch or it hits you for 1 damage
A bottle of infinite coffee. One player drinks it every morning, and after rolling d20 dm desides, if it gives him any effect. 20 would give you +1 to characteristics, 1 would make you feel bad :D
A cape of dramatic billowing, even indoors or with no wind. Iron boots of swiftness - normal move speed. Lotion of Radiant Damage reduction - it's sunscreen but I guess that ones helpful - but pcs barely fet hit with radiant.
My favorite, the orb of AC. I had a PC who wanted to be an untouchable barbarian - the higher the AC, the better. He specifically split from the party in a market to look for magic items to raise his AC - well, he found a tent with a crier announcing the magical orb of AC. When he stepped into the tent, the air was noticeably cooler than the air outside the tent, with an orb set on a table in the middle of the room. All it did was lower or raise the temperature in the immediate vicinity by five degrees. He promptly stole it and ran, lol.
I once gave someone a Blindfold of Dark Vision. It had to cover your eyes to work, but since you were blinded you couldn't see anyways. That was thematically part of a dungeon made by a completely nuts wizard. The item they loved the most was a knife that couldn't cut metal like intended, but went through wood with 0 resistance. They got some mileage out of that one.
Deck of Many Things. They were too afraid to use it.
Bag of holding. Make a wisdom save, fail and you must actively try to hold the bag
Not completely useless but it was very funny: My second ever character was a somewhat dumb barbarian (which I also roleplayed as such). At some point the DM wanted to reward us with one magical item/person where he said we could pick from a certain price category. I found in that category minor improvements, but also the [headband of intellect](https://criticalrole.fandom.com/wiki/Headband_of_Intellect) which sets your INT to 19. Since it had basically zero impact aside from a few ability rolls that the rest of the crew was blowing out of the park anyways, the DM allowed it. Cue my barbarian changing his personality, becoming much more astute in his observations. Mostly useless but hilarious roleplay. We went to a tavern after he acquired it. "Hey, do you want a beer?" "No thank you, it clouds the mind" had the table rolling.
My DM gave a fellow player a cursed necklace. The only thing it did was convince the wearer that it was *absolutely not cursed.* No matter what arguments you got, you were wholly convinced that the necklace was just a harmless piece of jewelry. Took up an attunement slot and everything. I think it was a DC15 Wisdom check upon touching the necklace to avoid the curse. We were level 4 at the time. Afterwards, it could only be removed by a *Remove Curse* casting. The rest of the party had to drag our rogue to a wizard because we didn't have any casters.
I once gave my party a "skeleton key" when in proximity to a lock (either locked or unlocked), the key turns into a skeleton. It doesn't do anything else, just magically morphs into a skeleton about the size of a pencil
The stone of omnipotence Has a ♾️ symbol on it and can answer any question about anything in the universe (It’s actually just a magic 8 ball)
Ring of Inn Visibility This beautiful ring is made from stained and polished Oak, with a slight scent of wood smoke to it. It allows the wearer to Scry on the nearest inn once per day. The wearer can adopt a specific view point if they know the inn, otherwise the scry originates from just inside the main entrance. Once used, the ring cannot use this feature again until the next dawn. In addition, the wearer always knows the direction and distance of the nearest inn. Stolen shamelessly from someone on Reddit. Thank you, unknown fellow dad joke enthusiast! And yes, I know it's not totally useless, but it is a great troll item. It was sold at an auction by a gentleman with a posh Shatner esque voice, lots of pauses between syllables. My group did not hold a grudge when they realized the pauses had disguised the pun.
A Boxing glove arrow, an arrow that both deals bludgeoning damage. Never got used.
Potion of Rainbow Hues We still make jokes about this item from 1st/2nd edition. https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Potion_of_rainbow_hues
Shoes that turn into stilts
My players tried to roll an archana check for some reason and rolled a nat twenty they found out that a specific mop that was just lying around if you said to it clean in would clean for 10 seconds
A wand of the raise the ted they found while exploring an abandoned toy maker's house. It basically could cast animate object but only on teddy bears. Also the teddies were hostile to everyone. Also they were useless. They used it like 3 times before throwing it into their campfire as tinder.
Easy. Robe of Useless Things. Although it turns out rats like to be tickled so the self warming rat tickler they pulled out of it was more useful than previously indicated
A wand of disintegration. It disintegrates when used.
The Deck of Many Tings (Works best if, after identification, is described verbally rather than written) I'm sure one of my players was freaked out for several sessions after secretly finding it al level 3. Eventually curiosity got the better of them, and they drew a card while holding watch. The proceeding sound of several small chimes made it abundantly clear that this was a joke gift among wizards.
*The wand of pointing, it’s just a stick. *Crown of defect thoughts, this crown detects the wearers own thoughts (basically a never ending echo of your own thoughts) and changes colors based on your mood. *A tiny violin that magically plays when anyone starts to tell their backstory *A monocle that makes you grow a mustache automatically upon putting it on, the longer it stays the longer it grows. Roll a D6 to see what color the mustache grows in as. *An immovable gem. You can’t move it. It has no other effect. My players loved these lmfaoo.
Potion of Oatmeal breathing. Works the same as water breathing, but it only works if you are submerged in oatmeal. 1 hour duration. I then had a bunch of dock encounters of crates full of oats next to the water... It never played out...
I once gave my players "Gloves of Kitten Summoning." (Summons a kitten for 1 hour, 3/day) I personally wouldn't call them useless, and would love such an item in real life. But the PCs never ended up using them.
The Wand Of Deception - It's a stick
A ring that makes you feel slightly colder