Discourses on Cursory Curses, and Better Ways to Tempt PCs with Terrible Power

When a player new to modern D&D finds something confusing – vestigial rules, or weirdly specific mechanics – they may wonder why the writers put them in the game. A veteran player will just shake their head knowingly, and cite – chapter and verse – the edition or supplement that set the precedent that later designers felt compelled to follow, even if the game’s fundamental playstyle had since moved on.

D&D 5E.14 is the ultimate compromise edition. This is both its strength and its weakness. In contrast to D&D 4E, which was a stark break from previous editions, 5E sought to embrace and preserve room for any and every concept, playstyle, and idea from the game's history. So while cursed items don’t fit within 5E’s typical play culture – here they are anyway, conspicuous, purposeless, staring up at their ashamed creators. “Why, Wizards of the Coast? Why do we exist?” The cursed magic items receive no satisfactory answer.

The 5E.14 DMG contains a mere half-dozen cursed items. It’s not hard to imagine why 5E’s writers didn’t make more. To begin with, they are no fun. “A curse should be a surprise to the item's user when the curse's effects are revealed,” the DMG advises. This does not comport with modern play styles at most tables. "Gotcha" cursed items feel like a holdover from an adversarial style of play that worked in the tournament environment of early D&D, but made less and less sense as the play culture moved further and further away from that early model.

Sure, we could just leave the cursed items out of the game. I’m sure that’s what many (most?) 5E groups do. But how would we change them if we wanted to fix them instead? 

The Lure of Power

Cursed items in folklore and fantasy stories aren’t like 5E’s cursed items. They don’t masquerade as useful things until a character picks them up and the GM/storyteller shouts “it's cursed!” Instead, they offer legitimate power… at a price ultimately too dear to pay.

So the first part of the cursed item fix is “tempting the PC.” The cursed item must offer legitimate advantages. It must do things the PC normally couldn’t do. It should be a fast track to power.

Curse Removal Made (Too) Easy

Antagonist:

“Cursed be the hand that made these fatal holes!
Cursed be the heart that had the heart to do it!
Cursed the blood that let this blood from hence!
More direful hap betide that hated wretch,
That makes us wretched by the death of thee,
Than I can wish to adders, spiders, toads,
Or any creeping venom'd thing that lives!”

PC:

“I cast Remove Curse.”

Antagonist:

“Oh. Crap. Well, carry on then.” 

Removing a cursed item is too easy in 5E. If a party member stumbles into attunement with a cursed item, they only need to cast Remove Curse, a third-level spell, to remove it again. Clerics typically have access to all spells each time they take a long rest, so there isn’t a “spells known” opportunity cost here, as there would be for a wizard. A fifth-level cleric can select the spell on a long rest and cast it without much trouble (no material components required). In practice, most of these cursed items won’t bedevil their victims for more than a night’s sleep. So the second part of the fix is brainstorming ways to “break the curse” that are more interesting than casting a relatively low-level, catch-all spell.

Let’s tour through the cursed magic items from the 5E.14 DMG and think up some potential fixes.

Next week: Auditing the Cursed Items of 5E D&D