Golden rings with writing that appears in the flame, bags that are bigger on the inside, and glowy screwdrivers that supposedly work on sound waves. This week, we’re talking about magic items. Specifically, magic items that aren’t weapons or armor. Mostly. We discuss what role these enchanted doodads play in their stories, how best to use them, and what the risks are. And of course, which items we’d want in real life.
Show Notes
- Transporter Gun
- Self-Replicating Mines
- Using Multiple Wands At Once
- Time Turner
- Wallet of Okay Food
- Light Bauble
- Harp of Lie Detection
- Dresden’s Chicago Model
- The Pensieve
- The One Ring
- Betrayal at the House on the Hill
- The Deck of Many Things
- Bag of Holding
- Portable Hole
- Alchemy Jug
- Feather Tokens
- Apparatus of the Crab
- Gem of Amara
- Dorothy’s Ruby Slippers
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My favourite magic item ever is the Jovial God Straunmauss’s Laughing Amulet, which heals the user or deals damage depending on whether their victorious one-liner is funny, from The Adventure Zone Podcast. It works really well cause its a comedy podcast and making witty comments into a mechanical effect fits in great. Also the concept of a God that punishes you for being unfunny is amazing.
Love your podcast and your blog!!
The double wand thing happened in prisoner of azkaban when someone shoots like 3 expelliarmus spells at snape and knock him out.
Does it also happen in book 3? I was able to find it in book 7.
My headcanon about the ruby slippers is that the Wicked Witch of the West was once like Dorothy; she came to Oz by accident as a young girl. She’s lived in Oz for decades and grown old there. All she wants is to go home to Little Chute, Wisconsin where horses are only one colour, and you aren’t compelled to sing and dance your feelings.
The magic item I would take from Oz would be the Magic Belt, which transports you instantly from one place to another. Also, it can produce fancy chocolates from thin air, and who can say no to that?
I’m totally on board with the “slippers do nothing” theory.
I have to rant about the necklace of +2 charisma thing that Jinna gave to Fitz in the Tawny Man trilogy. It was just terrible, and Fitz threw it out pretty quickly. What I don’t get is why they felt he needed it – he’s been training to lie convincingly and persuade people for years, why is he suddenly an unlikable grouch with no social skills?
I believe the idea behind Little Chicago was that it could be continually in use, like a normal tracking spell used more power and wore off too soon (which isn’t exactly watertight, but hey).
Regarding wearable magic items that change size (love that gold and spandex alloy!), I was once in a D&D game where we were doing a dungeon crawl and found a sleeping dragon. He was sleeping on a good sized pile of treasure, so we put together a plan to sneak up on and kill the him. We got half way across the cavern floor when the dragon opened one eye and said, “I wish all your weapons and armor were several levels down.” Poof! Suddenly we were being attacked by a very annoyed, very awake dragon who happened to be wearing a ring of wishes on one claw and ring of regeneration on another. Not fun. We managed to scramble and pick up random weapons for the fight. Most of us survived – until the dragon’s mate showed up. She was…not pleased.
You better believe the players respected the heck out of dragons after that. The DM reasoned that an intelligent creature was going to use magic items in their possession as intended, not just for butt-warmers.
Can I borrow the gold and spandex alloy line?
Borrow away! :)
The Tree Feather Token featured prominently in one of my favorite games I ever played. I carried that thing around for nearly an entire campaign, and then we had to escape an inn (I forget the reason why). A 50 foot tree appearing in the middle of an inn makes for a huge distraction.