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From: srt@ucla-cs.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.games.frp
Subject: Re: Killing off characters
Message-ID: <1662@ucla-cs.ARPA>
Date: Tue, 16-Oct-84 18:20:45 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucla-cs.1662
Posted: Tue Oct 16 18:20:45 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 20-Oct-84 06:44:36 EDT
References: <3905@decwrl.UUCP>
Organization: UCLA CS Dept.
Lines: 34

I think magical items of the sort posted are perfectly legitimate for many
reasons:

(1) If you've got powerful characters, it is probably because you handed out
    a lot of nice magic.  This gives characters instant death potential
    against their opponents.  It is only fair that some of the items they
    find have instant death potential against them.

(2) Powerful characters should have plenty of ways to detect cursed items or
    to counter their effects.  If they kill themselves off through stupidity
    or laxity, then they didn't deserve to be high-level.

(3) The spice of role-playing is risk.  These magic items put some risk in to
    the lives of high-level characters, who may not otherwise be challenged.

(4) I don't buy the theory that such items would not exist because no one
    would make them.  Perhaps no one would make such an item intentionally
    (though I doubt that too), but suppose magic item creation has a 1 in
    10 success ratio (seems reasonable) and that 7 of the other 9 are cursed?
    Or suppose that magic items tend to `go bad' over time, so that the magic
    items you find lying in dungeons deep are likely to be bad.  Or imagine
    that magic items are powered by chained demons from another plane, and
    as time goes on, many of them manage to pervert the magic that binds them.
    And so on, and so on.  No problem justifying bad magic.

It all comes down to a question of balance and reasonability.  Cursed magic
items should not be out of line with the power level of your campaign, and
they should be justified within your framework of magic.  So why not?

    Scott R. Turner
    UCLA Computer Science Department
    3531 Boelter Hall, Los Angeles, CA 90024
    ARPA:  srt@UCLA-LOCUS.ARPA
    UUCP:  ...!{cepu,ihnp4,trwspp,ucbvax}!ucla-cs!srt