*”If you defeat the next encounter single Handley, it gives you a level-up”* ......... OH NO! THAT BLADE OF GRASS IS EVIL!

"What is the villain planning?" "To take over the world" "No, like: what are the next steps the villain will take in his plan?" "You get one question"

I once had a character by the name of Rodrik Ironheart. Dwarven barbarian. We were higher level at the time, around 15. We had just encountered a mindflayer who had been separated from the mother brain by a planar shift. Using telepathy they mindflayer conveyed to the party that it did wish any harm as it was enjoying a peaceful life outside of its mother brain. As a deal to the party the mindflayer was able to take one magic item each from its collection if we just let the mindflayer be. Rodrik was happy with his war hammer and didn't feel the need for armor or items so as the party was going through items, he picked up a deck to play with. On the first draw Rodrik pulled the card to get a magical item and got a flaming sword. Enthralled with the idea, he immediately drew another card before the rest of the party noticed and took the deck away with a promise of ale. Rodrik had drawn the wish spell card and with a roll on the side got 2 wishes. He wasn't aware what it was and didn't use the wishes for so long it was forgotten about. About 20 sessions later and the party had just routed a hobgoblin encampment. Not satisfied with the battle Rodrik announces, "I wish we had a stronger foe to fight." Cue the DM to summon a dragon for us to fight. After a long and arduous battle, we defeated the dragon. Rodrik then in a fit of elation exclaims, "I wish we could have fights like that forever." Cue the DM to fulfill the second wish. Rodrik's diety Surtur had watched the battle and was overwhelmed by the display, immortalizing the party so we could wage war with him.

"The entire point of the knight’s quest for the holy grail is the young adventurer never finds it." Sir Galahad enters the chat.

Our GM introduced the thing to us without us knowing anything about it. So after our warlock summoned a level 3 fighter, or rogue wanted to pick a card too. We don't have a rogue anymore.

"If you win the next encounter single handedly" Players do not have to wait around for GMs to sent encounters at them, just attack something helpless.

What about gandalf? He was able to get comet out easily! He single handedly fights the Balrog, gets a level up, and new armor and weapons.

Pulls vizier "Why are we here?" "You're not, you're just small figurines on a matt being controlled by Titans and your fate is not your own. You don't exist, your lives are a lie and I'm your god. I tell you what to do next and torture you for my own amusement" ...... ...... *Eye twitch* "What?!" That's right all of us are just small figurines in a fucked up d&d game that just keeps going.

We had this in our last campaign, mostly because my DM loved messing with his players. For some reason, my group decided to give me, an emotionally unstable Pixie, the deck. I actually defeated a boss using the deck in the most beautiful way. This Nobel had a gambling problem but had a brooch of luck, however, it didnt work with the deck. I didnt know this until AFTER I challenged the guy to pulling cards. We each pulled one, he going first... and proceeded to say "oh dear," and vanished into an abyssal prison leaving behind all his clothes. I now had the deck and the brooch. It was a pretty great session.

Imagine Balance hitting the one character who was secretly Evil the whole time, and about ten seconds from enacting his evil plot. Rest of party: "Oh, SHIT! Our warlock is gonna betray us!" Warlock: "Ahhhhaha, funny thing about that--see, I was ALREADY planning to betray you."

*party draws Vizier* Party: What's the villain planning? GM: Which villain? Gonna need to be more specific.

I actually did what you suggested with making my own deck of many things. Did it for the first incarnation of HackMaster. Full 52 cards to pick from. Called it "The Dwarven Deck of Blessings and Curses". The thing was, all red cards were good, all black cards bad, but all card results were from the dwarven perspective. There was one that would have you grow a foot long beard. Great if you're a dwarf as it'd extend your beard that length, bad if you were an elf as it'd make you start growing facial hair (an elven prince PC in the group drew that card). Kept the potential for wishes and curses in it by having the dwarven gawd of magic "Murgain" descend from the heavens to bestow/grant the boon/bane but "he could only stay a minute". So the player had 60 seconds to convince the DM to either grant or remove the option. I drew the ungodly curse and he came down to punish me. Had a +5 magic axe which was part of my treasure and the GM said in Murgain's voice, "My, that's an AWFULLY nice axe you have there..." Gave him the axe, avoided my fate, but still hate the fact I missed out on cashing that bad boy in for the money. Submitted it to "Knights of the Dinner Table" gaming magazine and they printed it as an official magic item for the system (Issue 95 if anyone's interested). Would later get messages from DM's about how it made their players cringe from all over the world. Good times...good times...

The Deck of Many Things is a good way to end a campaign: "Hey guys, it's been a good run. We're all high level and have done just about every adventure we could do in this world; how about we fuck around with this magical deck of cards in a Russian roulette style?"

Ok, it's 2nd edition, the party is still low level (somewhere from 1-3, I forget.) We came across a caravan of gypsies. We are invited to camp with them for the night and party and such. One of them is an old lady, who, some time into the night, offers to let us each draw from this magical deck of cards she has. Now, out of game, most of the players had been wanting to draw from the DoMT. (Our GM likes putting it in games, but refuses to actually give one to the players, they just have a chance to draw 1-5 cards.) I, however, had heard about it, weighed the good I could expect to get from it against the bad, and had decided that if I came across one, I would decline to draw. Most of the players decide to draw, and I believe they all took the full 5 cards. There were a couple 'gain a level if you beat the next monster you fight single handedly' (I'm not sure if it was worded differently, or we just interpreted it differently, but you didn't have to beat ALL the foes in an encounter, just the first one you fought.) I think there was one 'get a magic item', and maybe one or two other good ones. Now, there were 2 or 3 people drawing, and they all elected to draw 5 cards. So that's 10 or 15 cards, with only about 5 good ones. Not terrible odds, right? EXCEPT, it wasn't just 10 or 15 cards. See, in the old DoMT, not sure about the new ones, but in the old one, there were some cards, that, in addition to whatever effect they had, they also made you draw an extra card, usually on the bad cards. And once you said how many cards, you wanted, you couldn't stop drawing until all of your cards were drawn. So it was actually about 4 good cards to about 15-20 bad ones. Now, at the time, I was playing a very anti-social Wizard. I did't like people, and went to great lengths to ensure nobody approached me or talked to me unless they had a good reason to. This included: mumbling under my breath to myself, keeping raw fish in the pockets of my robes, snarling, and being generally rude. I wasn't really mean to my party members, but I didn't chat much with them either. I did, however, have good enough stats that, even as a first level Wizard, I was the party's tank. So, add to that my magic, and I was worth putting up with. Now earlier, I said 'Most of the players decided to draw'. I was asleep at the time, and had no intention of getting back up. However, when one of the party came and told me they were in some trouble, I grouchily went out to see what was happening. While one person, (the rogue, I believe,) had gotten a bad card or two, it was stuff that could be dealt with. She used the cloak of teleportation (a charged item, not unlimited) that she had just gotten from the deck to show back up after getting spirited away to some tower somewhere. The cleric, however, was another story. He had gotten really bad luck. One card took all of his worldly possessions, and another had separated his soul from his body. I don't recall his other draws, but those were the worst ones, and I don't think any of them were good. Now, I wasn't happy about this, because this cleric was decent enough at healing, and, perhaps more importantly, didn't bother me much. So I didn't want to have to go get a new one that I'd have to learn to deal with. So, with that in mind, and the knowledge that one of the cards gave 1d4 wishes, (plus a feeling that all the bad luck had been taken, so I would be fine,) I decided to draw 3 cards. The first was a magic item, although I didn't get mine right away, but would surely find it soon. The second was the 'level for winning...yada yada yada' And the third was the wishes. Now, the DM had told me that each wish could only undo one card, so I needed two to fix the cleric and get his stuff back. (If I wanted him to be able to cast, he need his holy symbol and possibly material components. Plus, you know, that way he wouldn't be naked anymore.) So, of course, I got exactly two wishes. Without a second thought, I fixed the cleric, and told the party I was going back to bed, "Don't wake me up again." Luckily for me, this particular DM liked to make it where wishes could be much more powerful if uses for selfless things, and so since it looked like to everyone else I had just given up a chance at great personal power, wealth, and/or fame, just to help a friend, he made that magic item I was gonna get a whoooole lot more powerful than it would have been. Before we left the gypsies, one of them came up to me and handed me map and a box. I don't remember the reason he gave for giving them to me, but this was how I was getting the item. In the box was a single Gauntlet of the valorous, with the added effect that they MAXIMIZED ALL MY SPELLS. I fairly quickly became the most powerful person in the party. However, something else that was just as much of a bonus, the cleric felt indebted to me for the rest of the campaign, even though I considered it something I was doing just so I wouldn't have to deal with more people. After a while, we ended up pretty close as comrades go. I still didn't talk to him much, but we trusted in each other unflinchingly, and he dealt with people so I didn't have to, and I let him point me at things he didn't want to exist anymore. It was nice.

draws comet okay so I go to a bar, insults someone's mother, get into a fight that I win handily because he's drunk and I'm not, and gain a level. easy peasy

I was thinking how I as a player would deal with Balance while playing a good character. The character’s personality doesn’t change much, but every now and then they will feel the urge to do something terrible. I don’t think the character would instantly become a murderer, but the character would slowly start acting like a worse person.

My PC drew the avatar of death one, and also drew the large exp boon (50k I think?) so he went from a 40hp lvl 6 bard to I think a 80hp lvl 11 or something close. He basically just dropped a high level fireball on it killing it. Oh, did I mention he got the single handed encounter level up before all this? He then said oh my lucks great, fuck it I'll go again. He got 3 wishes.

My level 15 Barbarian drew the Ruin card, immediately lose all wealth and property... However the wizard got the Throne card, so she killed all the monsters in his castle under the condition that he let her live there

Me: "I drew Balance." DM looks to the others: "Okay, you see your friend draw from the deck. His eyes seem to turn dark and a cruel smile forms upon his face as he..." Me: "No, I don't." DM: "Uh... what?" Me: "I look at the card, shrug, put the card away into the deck, and look to the others saying, 'Alright. Let's continue.'" DM: ".... oh shit."

If I ever get this deck in a game, I intend to persuade my enemies to draw a card from it. Because that I feel would be even more hilarious than drawing for myself, even if it ends in a TPK.

The party I play with uses the deck as a weapon by tricking NPCs into drawing from it. There was a fight with a demon we were loosing badly and it was looking like three characters were going to die, when our fighter throws down his sword, takes out the deck, holds it out to the demon, and (on an intimidation check) yells "WHAT'S THE NUMBER OF YOUR GOD?" Demon fails an intelligence check and yells "MY GOD IS NUMBER ONE!" and draws one card. It's the Void. Fight over, party saved.

I once witnessed a single level 3 gnome defeat an Ogre by herself I got crazy scared of that character, and I'm THE DM!

There is this sweet level one paladin spell called ceremony. It has a list of effects one of which just restores your alignment!

"If you singlehandedly handle the next encounter." Warlock accidentally insta-kills the end-boss while he is disguised.

I find the deck of many things is best when the players don't know it's the deck. And I always put a delayed effect on the cards drawn, and instead if weird shit just happening it's more like the card sets things in motion that get you there. Like one of my players who was a paladin and staunch crusader of Justice and Good had drawn Balance, nothing happened and he laughed it off but on their next quest he had to catch a thief and in the ensuing struggle he had accidentally pushed the thief off the ledge of a building killing him when he inspected the body the thief was revealed to be a kid and he found the card on the kid... Multiple situations like this kept happening like turning a corner in a dark hallway weapon drawn only to accidentally stab some innocent person etc. But the card kept showing up... He eventually started becoming extremely nihilistic and cynical and eventually went full evil and became an Oathbreaker and after that his character became a Death knight NPC bad guy. I find the card is best interpretted as something that changes your destiny and is best utilized when the players don't know what it is doing to them.

I always loved the concept of the DoMT, but would never dare use such a ridiculous item, so I made my own lighter version. I called it 'The Jesters Deck' and made some tweaks. Firstly, the deck is contained inside a small wooden box that only opens when it chooses to, and only allows a certain number of cards to be drawn before snapping shut. I had card effects for a full classic card deck, but all of them were far more minor in scope. The good cards were minor happy boons or curious quirks (gaining an animal friend, learning to sing, minor enchantment on a non combat item, card turns into a few gold coins, etc), whilst all the bad cards were either inconveniences, or temporary problems. (eg, the card attempts to bite the character with a wisdom/dex based poison, the character randomly changes race and/or gender in their sleep but only for 1d8+1 days, the character turns blind for 1d8+1 days, a misc item owned by the character falls apart.) It worked pretty well, since whenever the card box hummed and opened up, the PCs were excited to draw some. They were always somewhat wary, but there was never any fear of destroying either the campaign or anyone's characters, only derailing it a little. The boons were generally lesser than the "pranks" but given the non permanent nature of the bad cards, it sort of became a thing of risking their dignity in return for fun little bonuses. And whenever things started getting too chaotic, the box would simply remain closed and let things calm down.

About avatar of death: mid level wizard can easily take it on with magic missiles. It will have a very low HP (half of your wizard's) but you'll also only be able to stand up to it for a couple of rounds. Upcasting magic missiles to max available level seems like a very good strategy for automatic hits.

Nope. Any time I get one it becomes a nuclear weapon. "DO IT OR I DRAW~"

I love giving, "fake magic items." My favorite being the Deck of Many Cards. It looks identical to a Deck of Many Things at a glance, but all actuality, it's a normal deck of cards. Or the Eye. People think it's the Eye of Vecna. It's just a glass eye.

i like how u have the deck being shown with magic the gathering cards

There is a card that actually gives you XP automatically in 5e. It's called jester which gives you 10,000 XP and lets you draw 2 additional cards. The funny thing is, Fool can't take away levels. It says that specifically in the description no matter what. It's mainly made to slow down character progression.

I actually drew Balance in one of mt last games, and I am having a lot of fun with the change of spectrum of my character. I began the adventure as Chaotic/Neutral, and for a year (IRL) I worked to be better and do good deeds, I’ve saved cities, the damn world more than once and even united divided nations, therefore I became Neutral/Good. One of the players asked me to draw a card from this new deck he found, and baaaaam. Instant Neutral\Evil AKA True Evil, I am actually having so much fun now RPing and making everyone else clueless about why I am such a jerk/evil dude out of nowhere. I am a level 17 Sorcerer that always wanted to learn as much as possible about the Arcane and Magic in general, now I want to be the most powerful spellcaster in the world, and nothing is going to stop me, also started to use a lot of Necromancy, I just cloned myself and I hope the Paladin never finds out. 🤗

First card i ever drew from the deck of many things? Void never touched that shit ever again.

"What are the odds?" A million to one. Even though there is only one void. Luck is never on your side. Never. Unless it comes to Whimsy.

Another interesting thing about the avatar of death is whenever someone else tries to hit it, another avatar is summoned for that creature.. I can just imagine adventurers using that to their advantage. What they would do is when they are going up against an army, if they draw that, they make it seem like it is an ally of the party, so the army attacks it too, summoning more, attacking the army.

I draw vizier. GM whats your credit card number and security code?

One of the guys that I play with made himself a "deck of critical fails" where if someone rolls a one, the person closest to them draw a card, and something crazy happens. Once a large water elemental rolled a one, and ripped open a tear in space, which went to the elemental plain of dice, causing 3 dice elementals (which were d4s) to fall out. Apparently dice elementals are extremely carnivorous. They still helped kill the water elemental, though.

Player in my game drew Vizier. He was playing a barbarian. Me: "Okay you can ask me any one question and I will answer it." Barbarian: "What should I ask?" Me: "You should ask where the lich keeps his phylactory." Barbarian: "I do that." Me: "With what question?" Barbarian: *internal screaming while everyone collectively facepalms* That could have pretty much been the end of my campaign if he didn't muck it up.

I would just make the deck of monsters, it summons monsters during battle, and half of the time they fight for you, and the other half they fight against you

I once gave my players the ‘Ever Useless Item’. A magical artifact that, was, no matter what you might need or want at any given moment, something entirely useless. They eventually managed to destroy (?) or at least rid themselves of it when they tracked down a collector of magical curiosities, and arranged a sale. At that point, it vanished, never to be seen by them again.

I've always found the Deck to be an encounter in and of itself. Let it fall into the players hands, with an 'instruction' page of sorts. The previous owner madly circled the card that will grant a wish, but the scribbles and scratches conveniently block out the more terrible fates. First player to draw, immediately gets the void. After that, it's a mad dash to draw the wish card, reversing time to before they found the Deck, with only the one member having any memory of the event at all.

0:57 "And introducing irrelevant plots" Percy lost an arm Grog! Those bugbears came out of nowhere.

*TLDR; Read the last line xD* I played with a GM for a long time that at the beginning saw the Deck as annoying but ok, he asked people if they preferred to play with or without it and only added it when at least 1 person wanted to play with it. The players were scared in a good way of it, scaroused?, because they feared a lot of it's effects but they obviously wanted to benefit from the good ones, so it always became an off character discussion on who should draw or possibly keep it, if anyone. We had a ton of fun with it because of some really ridiculous draws and some very interesting role playing surrounding the Balance draws, to the point the GM stopped fearing the deck all together and even made some house rules for it. For example, my very first time finding one was with this same GM, my party members gave me the deck because they didn't want to mess with it themselves and i was the only one that urged the GM to let me try it at some point in this or another campaign, i drew 4 cards in this order, Star>Talons>Balance>Key. Just try to imagine the reactions in that order, the first time i drew a card from a Deck of Many Things in my LIFE, and it was a STAR, nobody could believe it, i was a bard that decided to have a natural score of 20 STR lol, so many laughs. Then imagine drawing Talons next, literally the second draw of my life and i lost all my items, again, imagine the laughs....... Now try to imagine drawing Balance after that, the gaping mouths in unbelief, the raised eyebrows, the "oh my god" 's.......................... and if that wasn't enough, the fourth card? KEY, mother f**** noob bard with 20 STR draws Balance and Key.... At this point they didn't know if they wanted to kill me and steal my only item just to be sure, or let me keep playing pretending their PCs knew nothing of what the balance card meant, this was their choice. So i had lost all my shit to the Talons card, and i thought it wasn't a big deal since we could buy my equipment back, but then they chose to split the gold of the party, this was after they agreed to share in the spoils if the Deck drew a Gems or a Throne (stupid me for agreeing), but saying we didn't agree to share the losses too, till that point we had a communal fund, with the rules that anyone could leave the party or withdraw from the communal fund by withdrawing their equal share and every spending was approved by vote, so they basically decided to just split the fund to pretend they weren't forsaking my character to loot based survival lol..... (still with the party but wearing rags rofl) So I was suddenly a Neutral Evil Bard conniving against my own party members, leading them into traps, trying to gain political power, tricking monster villages into thinking I'm Ghaunadaur reborn (even if this wasn't the Underdark derp) etc. Trying to get revenge on his party members for not helping him out of bankruptcy (LOL). This was sort of fun and hilarious at times, everyone thought the drawing this time was completely worth it and enhanced the game and put a twist to the regular party-internal interactions, as well as the combat itself. That was part of the reason we kept playing with the Deck of Many Things, every single session trying to decide who would draw from it and why (RP wise and otherwise). Most of the time people feigning ignorance and just drawing one card for fear of drawing Balance. At this point, the Deck of Many Things was a penalty kind of thing, someone had to draw from it just for the lulz, more than a Yolo thing, and sometimes, just sometimes, people going YOLO crazy bold and deciding to draw 6 cards (facepalm), just because it was a short campaign and they weren't too attached to the PC/party. Basically most of us avoided it like the plague just because Balance existed, unless we had plans for it. One such time was when I was playing a Druid, i was true neutral, because i was neutral and everyone was afraid of drawing balance it was decided (or more like i pleaded) that i should draw from it (i was the only crazy one who wanted to use the deck like 50% of the time, the others were like once every 2 or 3 campaigns, and would still wuss out and pull just one card most of the time). Anyway, here i was, Druid, True Neutral, convinced everyone else if they didn't have the balls to draw the earnings from this should be mine.... certainly not going to draw Balance on the first draw right? wrong, Balance first draw, we drew from the top instead of handpicking cards which made me suspicious even if though shuffled, but i let it slide, then i drew Joker, not relevant, third i drew Fates, which to us is one of the most awesome cards you can draw from an role playing perspective, good so far, so i drew Gems, this in and off it self was good, but even better was the fact that nothing bad happened so far, and that i had a free Fates card to choose what to do with, at this point all i wanted was any kind of good card or just mildly bad, guess what the last card was, thats right, Donjon.... I immediately used Fates to negate the effect of the last draw, honestly i could have used Fates on something else if it was a different party and just let them rescue me, but i was the only one with the Wish spell... so nope, not going to wait forever, I'm not a Lich. This was hilarious because we never had such a mild draw, normally you draw more than 4 cards you are very likely to be screwed, i drew 5, should have drawn 4 only lol. *Plus i had to roleplay a rich druid U>_>* Blyat. At least i didn't get Gems AND Throne, how do you role play a druid with a Keep and 50K gold??? *Point is* the same GM from both my Bard and Druid draws went from not desiring but just allowing the Deck of Many Things to exist in his campaigns; To developing house rules and even adding the Deck of Many Things to almost all his campaigns. Because of the low possibility of drawing too many good cards, spoiling a game, he decided on a rule that you can only use the deck once (you can't draw one at a time indefinitely), you have to choose how many cards to draw, and once the deck is used (after auto drawing if necessary), the deck is randomly teleported away from the individual that used it, he wouldn't say what randomly meant, we asked if it was to another plane or within X kilometers or to a random place in the continent/plane/etc. He wouldn't say, all he would answer when asked was, either "It's a mystery, nobody knows." or "Why not pull a Vizier card and ask?". Guy literally introduced house lore into his house rules, if it's a mystery, its nobody's business knowing i guess. *So basically the Deck of Many Things became a D&D version of Shen Long's Dragon Balls to us LOL.*

Alternative to balance card from me: When this card is drawn, an exact replica of you and your non legendary/unique equipment appears within 300ft/ somewhere in the world. This replica has the opposite of your alignment and seeks to stop your goals at the time of drawing. This replica retains all your present memories and believes it is the original affected by the original use of the balance card. This gives an all new opponent on equal footing of the player, the balance is represented by their characters being opposing and balanced, the player faces someone who can be a true threat with the knowledge they have aquired and the player can act as them if they want to try out an evil character for once.

See balance is my favorite, because my players always just play chaotic neutral assholes. The idea that one day they might have to actually play sensibly for once is like a dream come true for me. lol

I just recently started playing pathfinder, and our GM gave our dwarf a deck of many things at level 3... that dwarf is gone now... and so is my monk. but hey, at least theres a castle that he owns that no one knows about now.

The first time I heard of the deck of many things was actually from Spoony who told this amazing story about how one of his Co players, vegan Steve drew nearly every single good card in a row. It was a funny story.

Alright, here's my view on the card "Comet"... "Single-handedly" doesn't necessarily mean "doing it all by yourself." I interpret it as "using only one hand during the encounter". During the next encounter, you tie one hand behind your back and proceed as normal. Maybe I'm only reading what I want to read...

IN one game I ran, a player drew the next encounter gain a level card. He suddenly decided that our friend who had their soul devoured by the void (the body still lives on according to that card’s description) was the next encounter.

Currently running a campaign where the deck was powered by 22ish souls(it might be 21, I got rid of one of the joker cards) and they all scattered across the land distorting nature, bonding to things, and sometime creating their own physical forms based on what the card did and who was sacrificed. Cut time down by having a few card encounters grouped up(lorewise the deck wishes to reunite and release the souls back into the cycle) and it's been received very well. They also only need 13 cards to use the deck, so collecting the good ones became a great hook and with the encounters' flexibility great run could be had. Most recently they fought the comet; his main Ability was that he forced equal number combat if the duel was interrupted. Bit of backstory; the party had already encountered but lost to tpko (comet treated their wounds and left after duel, he was actually a pretty great guy.) Back to present; comet had been attacked by a village to the north, and had completely annihalated it. With his psyche spread so thin, packs of lvl 20 fighters roamed the land attacking and pillaging. Mind you; no finishing blows ever dealt, just moving on to the next moving Target.(this was about happy mile from PC forward base, they could hear it and saw large pools of ink rising to the sky.) After a few rounds, nearby allied troops(not informed of the cards beyond legend) took arms to aid the PCs; Now the party, who originally had only come across one, were facing 39 Comet clones. All seemed lost, but, comet had a huge weakness. Simple, but very deadly. There are many rivers in this land, and comet packs had been following the riverbanks south, to the next closest settlement. The druid used a water spell to bring a large pool of water and attempted to catch the current horde; I rolled Dex saves and smiled as many failed the 17 check with disadvantage. The party watched the druid move the pool back into the river, carrying 13 or 14 or them. The other comets advanced, but the river was calm, stained an inky black. Comet focused his whole life on swordplay. They laughed as I confirmed it appears they can't swim. After disposing of all I with, they didn't even loot the bodies. "We won, f*** that guy" /says the druid, one of the 2 in the first encounter(comet had also been lvl 2 at the time). Druid was only remaining PC alive since beginning. I knew his hatred then. Good stuff though, just one card from that silly deck. Have 5 more stories so far about their card adventures(side quest to my silly main plot that ended up being really, really important once they got a certain card.)

Use magic missile against the Avatar of Death. Done. Problem solved.

I've only ran into the Deck of Many Things once, and it was amazing. So in this world the Deck of Many Things was explicitly owned by a character named Pan. Pan was known to the party as the god of time and fate, but he was really more of a trickster god, though he definitely had time magic. Over the course of the adventure (starting with my own character, Vere) he would hand out cards that had various powerful magical effects. It was only later we learned this was basically the deck of many things. One day he shows up in town and a big stink happens. Eventually, he starts offering the chance to draw from the deck of many things. Now, OOC the GM had hinted pretty heavily to the group that Pan controls the deck. Vere explicitly figured this out in character. She knew Pan could cheat by pausing time and one of his cons saved her from Death. (Long but great story, she kinda pissed off the Death.) She failed to tell others about that though. What Pan did was really more of a fortune teller's act. He would have us draw three cards out, show them to us. Act if we wanted to swap any of the now facedown and shuffled cards with three random cards, then we would point and exchange as we wanted. Then a random card would be given to us. Except remember, he controls the deck. It was always the card he wanted to give us. Most of the time this was seemingly beneficial, but came with severe downsides none of us knew about. For example, I had a pair of backup characters because this game would let us swap characters out. This guy was the only one of mine to draw from the deck. He got the card that lets you draw two more times, a MASSIVE Xp bonus shooting him from lvl 1 to 5, and had his class changed to a martial class as a knight under Pan's service and rule. When Pan later turned out to be the real big bad, all of it was put into a new context and we got screwed hard. After a bit, characters asked to draw from the deck again. They insisted after being told no. My complete idiot character said yes. A lot of card were pulled out of the deck, and we got to point and pick which one we wanted. Expect, of course it was every BAD card he pulled from the deck. So, no matter what it would be a bad fate. As a side note, both of my main characters had the wisdom to not draw from the deck. Though, Vere needed her dragon ex-girlfriend to remind her it was a bad idea when her vision got to big for reality. (In character, Vere didn't know that not even wishes could make her into a dragon in this universe and she didn't know what cards were in the deck so she assumed there was a dragon card or some such. She also eventually figured if Pan really wanted her to have a card he would gift it since they were friendsish.) So, yea, that's one way to run the deck of many things. It wasn't really random, it was explicitly the GM cheating, but that was because the character was cheating. He kept giving off fake good cards to string people along. Kinda cool.

So I ended up using the DoMT in my first ever campaign, which I ran in 5e. While one PC was imprisoned in an extradimemsional bubble (and as such was considered retired) another managed to reach level 23 (That is, level 20 with 3 epic boons). This epic level sorcerer also had the avatar of death after him. He magic jarred death. He really enjoyed that new body... Up until a solar attempted to assassinate him. Then he had two fun bodies.

Vizier Me: "Where is the nearest wheel of cheese?"

I used to play a game: Kingdom of Drakkar. It had a "deck of many things" system. Multiple, in fact. The most common one, drinking from the fate pools, was reserved for either griefing other players by emptying out healing or stat-increasing potions and filling it with fate water (could get you banned) or just messing around with a level 1 character. The fate pools could increase stats, lower stats, increase skills, lower skills, give experience, take experience, change race or gender, or any number of other things. I think it could even change the character's name. Fate cards were the same thing, but they were bought at a secret shop that required a lot of effort to get to. The only fate mechanic people would ever use were Dion pots, which were the only way to get stats past 21 (maximum 23), and could ONLY increase or decrease stats. So if you were at 21 in strength and Dion didn't like you that time around, you'd just drink a strength pot and try again. The point is: I learned long ago that fating is never worth it.

I drew 4 cards from a deck in my game and they were all good. A buddy of mine stole it from me while I was sleeping and DREW 10 CARDS. All of them were bad and the 10th card was the void

PF: "Worst card is the Balance card which makes good characters evil. Which in my opinion is the worst thing" me: *laughs nervously as she is playing an evil campaign who's whole point is for her to start a war to watch the world burn for the sole purpose of saying she caused the world to burn*

Wizard is probably best for fighting the avatar of death. Just spam magic missile They auto hit and deal 1d4+1 force damage and a 1st level cast makes 3 darts so...

I'd love to see more episodes like this exploring famous items/monsters etc. :)

Our DM recently broke our game because he got a little too spontaneous, and decided one of the NPCs had a DOMT. And then begged some of us more cautious types to draw from it. He's been trying to do cleanup for weeks. One of our players has left the group in the process. And we mostly got good cards, amazingly. But they unbalanced everything and made enough of a mess that certain hard resets were necessary. Playing the deck straight out of the DMG is a good way to just mess up everything. My advice: avoid.

One time I was DMing a game of D&D 5th Edition and one of my players who I'll name Alex ended up getting balance and became evil, but he did it in secret. Now, we we're pretty wild that game (it was only gonna go on for a couple of days) and so I let them make there own moves (as long as they weren't OP)! Alex's said that he could summon a creature the same lvl as him. So my now evil man Alex is pretty high lvl (this was at the end of the campaign) and began to act more aggressively, gradually adding on to the aggressiveness. Finally, we got to the main villains Temple and beat them. Alex was a Wizard, and he ended up unleashing all his magic power at this moment, and you know what he summons? He summons a MOTHERF***IN TARRASQUE. We hadn't lost any party members throughout because we had a mad OP mage with healing abilities, but in that battle alone we lost our Mage, then our Rogue, then our Warlock and the only 2 people at the end of the battle left were our Paladin and our Fighter. Then they had to fight our crazy powerful Wizard. Our Paladin was able to kill him with a well placed thrown sword to the chest, but not before he absolutely wrecked our Fighter. The Wizard was dead. The Tarrasque was dead. Our Mage, Rogue & Warlock were dead. Our Fighter was within one inch of his life. Then.... the room started collapsing. Listen, Tarrasque's are BIG, so it's pretty obvious that the room would start crumbling. Our Paladin grabbed our Fighter and bolted for the exit. He couldn't find a door, so he ended up jumping out of window 🤦. Now the Paladin had broken legs. Overall a bitter end for everyone involved.

My DM used the Deck of Many Things in a previous campaign. He used it as a Hexblade Warlock Patron and the Character who had it, drew a card at every level, and then the DM would use the card he drew as the task he had to do before he was able to level up. It was a pretty cool character. We did have to have to have an intervention though because one of the tasks required him to trap a soul, and i think eat it as some point.

One of my groups found a Deck and one of the players got the perfect combination of cards: The wishes, then the one that lets you know the answer to your next dilemma. So he knew exactly how to word the wishes to fix a couple of bad draws the other players made. It was brilliant.

My DM once used this on a level 3 group. Two members outright died and one got untold riches. The rest got prophesies that never went anywhere and one guy got stuck in a shield. HE WAS SOUL TRAPPED IN A SHIELD FOR THREE SESSIONS

The vizier card is actually a way to open new storylines, "whats that guy planning?" "Nothing, someone is planning for him" or "where is that really cool item we were tasked to find?" Someone in town has it, it causes u to rethink some things but thats what the deck IS. Everyone changes, everyone

I handed this deck to my party during our first adventure. It has been the crux of the campaign so far and was essentially how they singly defeated an entire dungeon and shadow demon boss without combat. They also resurrected the creator of the dungeon from his ghost and he became a party member that was now almost a millennium out of sync with the “modern” world of the game setting. It has been fantastic. Also, no one has died yet, but the same character inherited 3 keeps (not all cleared yet) and they got the treasure card twice (as a group they split it up). It’s been fun, that’s for sure. One also drew flames, but the big bad was already a devil, so I didn’t actually have to change my adventure at all.

I do remember Wild mages I believe having a bonus in drawing from that deck in 2e at least. Simply put they can control the result 50% of the time and flat out pick their reward. Which is pretty powerful, though the bad cards still exist. My problem with the item is that DM's tend to hate it. They give you monkey paw wishes and twist all the good results as much as possible to screw you over while enforcing the maximum penalty for the bad cards.

The trick is to rig the deck. Then the players get that feeling of mystery and risk but everything still goes to plan.

We had this deck in an old 3.5 game. I got so lucky with it. It got me leveled up so I could multiclass and gave me some cool loot. It also switched my alignment from chaotic neutral to lawful neutral but we played it as I was cursed to follow the laws of wherever we were, but I still had my chaotic nature so I wasn't a 'must uphold the law's kind of person but rather a 'gosh dang it all, I would really like to just pick up a guy at a bar, and steal all his money while he sleeps, but I literally can't force my hands to take his coin pouch.' Kinda thing.

Eberron(3.5) has an interesting version of the deck of many things which focusses more on transforming your character. Basically you can switch race, gender, get or loose stats. Much more moderate. It is also has a role in the lore and tends to disappear when you don't look at it.

I just joined a game where the previous session a warrior drew from the deck and must have got void... now we are just running around trying to find her soul gem because the party wants to save her.

I actually added a rule to the deck that drove a campaign forward. I had a campaign that was very home cooked and rather backward being based almost entirely on greek myths with different names. The gods had fought the titans and saved humanity from destruction only to have two of the three fates create a prophecy that would eventually bring the titans back and ended the world as it was known. One of the fates fell in love with a human orical and decided to edit the prophecy to include the adventurers. The story was lots of fun and odd without being Dr Seuss crazy. One of the first things the party did was enter a cleshay ruined tempe in the desert and fight to cleanse the temple of its evil. As a reward the goddess gave the players tw magic items. To the oricle in the group she gave a deck of fate (aka deck of many things). The players were terrified and excited at the same time. The rule was that only one card could be pulled per lunar cycle and the card would force fate upon the chooser, but instead of an instant action being taken magically the deck would lead the party to this eventual fate. They would have to complete a task to get the reward or to avoid a hideous fate. In one case one of the party members was plucked off of the road by a dragon rider and captured. This caused the party to have to go rescue him and lead to one of the most ridiculously fantastic sessions ever. Another time someone pulled the death card. They were forced to contend with death in a game but managed to win the game and the party was able to gain a resurrection from death if needed. This thing played right can actually do all the plot work for you if you let it lol.

I was in a campaign where my GM made his own deck of many things that was tarot themed, and my lawful good dragonborn paladin pulls The Devil, a card that made her an evil demon dragon which buffed her, but as she was the moral compass of the group, the campaign got very derailed. However there was also a card that didn’t get drawn that would have made her good again, but she would have to hold an unmelting ice cube in her hand forever. It was the Justice card... Just Ice

I'm planning on using a tarot deck in my next campaign, and I'm currently writing a bunch of effects for it. I came back to this video for some grounding and a reminder of what exactly was so bad about the deck of many. Thanks in general for your contributions to RPG culture.

Rewatched years later and that ending is still hilarious.

When I ran my very first 3.0 game (which also was my very first non-Al-Qadim Forgotten Realms game) after 6+ years of DMing AD&D 2nd Ed, I included a magical deck of cards during the campaign that was protected by a box enchanted with a modified Guards and Wards spell which created a sequence of spell effects, one per round, until it was dispelled or all effects ran their course. Since all detection and divining spells only read the box's magic and NOT that of the deck, the party of 11 players (yes, eleven. Never again, though running for that group was incredibly fun) ASSUMED that it was a Deck of Many Things. The party, which was already essentially divided into sub-groups (mostly split by Good and Evil) with only one Neutral character universally liked and respected by everyone else, could not make a group decision on whether to open the box and attempt to use the deck. They kept it put away until they reached the next town (I forget which one). The selfish, evil wizard of the party managed to sneak away with the deck and decided to pay some poor child in town to open the box - after giving him time to get a block or two away. Please note that this occurred on a relatively busy street, though not near the marketplace. One Cloudkill, a Summoned Monster (I forget what got summoned), a spot-on Web spell and two Suggestions (causing party members who were attempting to end the ongoing magic/save the town to see hostile monsters everywhere instead of allies) later, the party had one casualty and many wounded in their number, not to mention the dozens of dead townsfolk including the boy. The deck was, itself, never used as the majority of the party worried about what further damage it might do. The party's Lawful Evil cleric did what she could to heal the injured party and townsfolk (secretly attempting to save their reputation) and was joined by the Paladin of Sune and the aforementioned beloved Neutral character - a Halfling Barbarian/Cleric - in doing this. The casualty lost the party a Fighter but gained it a Rogue. The selfish wizard, realizing he screwed up big time, skipped town and was retired. The wizard's player made the conscious decision to bring in a new, less- selfish wizard (though he caused some less severe trouble later on as well). The party was about 5th or 6th level at this point. For the record: it was a Deck of Illusions, enchanted so that a small percentage of the cards - predetermined by me, though somewhat randomly - would instead summon the actual creature which would then be under the user's control for a short time before being banished back to its home. :) Apologies for the block of text and possible grammar errors/run-Ons. Typing on a touch screen is a royal pain.

Just get a character with an intelligence of 6, preferably a Goliath Barbarian, and your game will continue indefinitely.

Me: draws 5 random cards Cards: I’m about to end this man’s whole career.

"Most of the characters in d&d are good." Lol not in any d&d group I've been with

An excellent discussion. I could never get ANYONE to use a deck of many things when I was GM-ing. The 3.5e one was pretty half-and-half, good to bad cards. But no one wants to take the risk. Friggin' cowards...

The backfiring wish is actually pretty uniquely western. In most mythologies, getting a wish granted is 100% badass. We tend to see the “ironic wish” as ubiquitous because we see foreign myths rewritten to fit western enculturation. As an example: in the pre-Christian version of Aladdin, he gets a ring with a spirit that does cool stuff for him, and uses it to get the lamp. There are no ironic consequences.

I remember that Item in the game Baldur's Gate. And I loved the randomness.

We had a deck of many things in our campaign recently. I missed it, my tiefling cleric/fighter got cursed instead of finding it. The party member that laughed at me for being cursed with wild magic ended up getting the deck of many things drew a card and was permanently cursed with decreased intelligence. My campaign loves your videos so many of your topics touch on our own adventures like the deck of many things or too many pets. Keep it up, also could we have more Abserd?

So my GM have my current game a deck of many things with most cards having doubles and some homebrew thrown in. My ended up drawing 7 cards total due to reasons. The first have me a boat load of xp, the second forced me to draw more cards, the third gave me a minus to my stats (my divine intervention fixed that one quite fast), fourth was a card that slowly turned me into an evil lich, fifth made an evil clone of me (most difficult boss fight my party has ever fought) sixth have me an insomia curse and 7th was balance turning me back to the good allignment. Our barbarian drew 5 cards, one destroyed all his material possesions, next one his magic items, next one was flames, then avatar of death, then donjon (we rescued him later), our spell sword drew 2 cards, one gave him 3 wishes, and two gave him the one question (saved our butts in a dungeon designed to kill us), and our assassin drew two cards, one gave him 2 levels, the other dropped his INT to just below literate

Vizier is very easily dodged by the GM. When you roll the dice to determine the card, and it comes up Vizier.. don't tell the player.. just look at him, slowly shake your head, and grab some scissors or perhaps slowly start shredding a piece of paper... then when he worriedly asks, "what card did I pull", you answer the question :P

i love the knight card, I ended up with two knights protecting me when i was a cleric during a campaign a friend of mine did.

Loved 1st edition, Gary instructed a few ideas for playing, the most advantageous was that the rule books were merely guidelines, the DM held the last word on which rules applied and which didn't and suggested they be amended to fit the game and players along with the GM's idea of what should or shouldn't be. As such, my deck of many things wasn't nearly as ruthless as what the books gave, but still had it's dangers to the players, and I couldn't agree more about wishes, it's the duty of the GM to twist the wish as much as possible given the pc's wording of the wish, my players learned fast to be very specific and even then, you could still twist it if inclined to do so.

My old group had a tradition. Every DM, every campaign, every party, you /had/ to encounter the Deck before 5th level. And there was always an additional gimmick that /forced/ you to draw at least two cards. Usually it was the White Rabbit, pocketwatch and all, trapping the players in a demiplane until they drew and he permitted them to leave. Once, anytime a number was spoken, the Deck automatically shot that many cards at the speaker. Once the Deck produced a bubble of Time Stop that didn't subside until all participants had drawn. The effect was always devastation. One player would jump to 15th level with a pile of money and his own kingdom, and the DM would force-retire them because they were too powerful for the rest of the party. One player would accrue six Knights and four Flames, giving him weak allies and extremely powerful enemies. One would draw so many Rogues that all of the previous player's Knights hated him. Wishes would be used to undo bad draws, wealth would be gained and lost, and most characters walked away with heavy permanent penalties (Multiple Euryales). But the tradition continued.

I actually recreated the concept of the deck for my own game, but instead of cards, it's 3 gemstone dice (6-sided dice). They're stored in an ivory case, and a single character can only roll for an effect once per day. Each result of the dice has an effect (yes, I have a chart for every single result). Some are incredible, some are monstrously "The GM just hates us", and a few I dread anyone ever rolling. Some rolls result in a permanent black band snapping around the character's forearm like a magic tattoo. If a character gets three of these, they can never roll the dice again. If the dice go 3-days without being rolled, the artifact begins calling out for someone to roll it (compulsion effect: DC = 10 + [Days not rolled]). I've had so much fun with this item that I don't even care about what other GMs say about balance for it...the thing is a center point of discussion for EVERY new character or player to my game since I made it...

The wizard would actually have an easier time though Just fling a fireball at it, it already has low health... I mean, half of a wizard's HP

The Comet (defeat a creature to gain a level) needs to be cheesed to take proper advantage of it: Use divination and transportation magic to find a low-level encounter that the recipient can beat easily. The keep was a lot more convenient back in the 1e era: It appeared close to any strongholds the PCs already controlled, and was _not_ stuffed with monsters to plague the land until destroyed.

I love the phrase "Bitchin Magic SWAG". Mind if I use it?

I remember my encounter with the Deck of Many we found them soon after we hit lv 5. Our rouge got the keep, a magic weapon and the encounter, our cleric got 3 wishes, then was sent to the void. Our fighter got his alignment swapped, which was funny cause he was lawful neutral. And then my character, my poor, poor bard was forced to pick 4 cards, the first broke and shattered ALL magical gear in my possession, the second, made a high level being my enemy (my dm chose a god cause I pissed him off a lot and survived what should have killed me), the third card, was DEATH INCARNATE, or the avatar of death, it failed all its wis saving throws and psychic damage of a bard does wonders, the fourth card, after we had a laugh about my bad luck, I drew the flames card...... a high lv demon/devil has made it his life goal to kill me and those around me... I just dropped my lute and walked away after that, while everyone else killed themselves laughing.

For fun I've included it in non-serious oneshot sessions, and also had it in my first campaign I ran as a GM, people drew a couple of cards which I think was a magic weapon and a stat increase, then one character drew the void card. I let them use a backup NPC character while the party went on a quest to free their original, and they ended up liking the replacement so much it became their main character, even after they finally rescued the original.

Got board and came up with two additional versions of the deck I called the deck of generosity and the deck of malice. The deck of generosity has ivory cards, and every one of the cards is positive, it also has an enchantment on it so that it is perceived as the deck of many things. The deck of malice is the same way except all the cards are ebony and every card is bad, but there is a twist in addition to it being perceived as the deck of many things, if someone attempts to draw from the deck it compels them to draw one more card then they originally had in mind.

I personally LOVED playing with any Deck of Many Things my group found. At one point in a campaign that spanned 3 years my character came across an artifact that was a Deck of Many Wondrous Things. Best part of this deck was it had unlimited uses but it took a month (actual real life time) to restore its magic to be used again. That deck gave us many many good things and moments in our campaign. Some of the better things to pull was +100,000 exp, +50,000 exp, +10,000 exp. +1 Major Magical Item, + Personal Keep in separate dimension. But at the same time it also almost caused a complete wipe because even though 18/22 of the cards were wonderous items / gold / exp / whatever. The 4 cards that weren't were extremely horrid. Like you must fight Death, if you lose you are permanently dead. Or "You are being hunted. You do not know who is hunting you or why but you have 4 days until you meet this person." And this was outside game knowledge that you were being hunted. So your character had no idea what had happened when you pulled the card. Another horrid card was you lose 1 item from your possession. (Usually equipment. Rolled a D-4 to determine where the item was taken from. Person, Equiped, Bag, or Storage). And IMO the absolute worst was "You feel weaker when you gaze upon this card." You instantly lost 1 lvl and 2 points of Con. Good good times. And I so do miss playing DnD. Moved 2 years ago and since moving I've had no one to play DnD with.

I've made some spin-off decks: The Deck Of Useless Things (spawns items from the trinkets table), The Deck Of Mundane Things (spawns items from the equipment table), The Deck Of Shiny Things (spawns temporary magic items), The Deck Of Many Blings (spawns temporary riches), The Deck Of Animal Stings (throw them like daggers to do random animal attacks), The Duck Of Many Sings (a singing duck),

It's funny you talk about the card the void. I had a player that was going to be leaving us and I was trying to find a way to send her on her way out. Another player has the deck of many things and she pulled the void card. In sheer amazement I sent her on her way out without having to kill her or coming up with this big reason and didnt lose any of my other characters.

I played with the deck of many things a few times. Usually, it's in games without a direct plotline (my last game for exemple was that a group of adventurers (us), got teleported into a different dimension with 8 different zones to explore. By exploring the zones, you learn more about the universe, and you get more stuff to do, etc.). so when the deck is introduced, around level 13, it doesn't change much, aside from the fact that, of course, I drew void on the first card.

The thing about the Vizier card is that the description says you have to answer truthfully but not specifically, though I could be wrong on this, and that could technically mean you can just give very basic answers like "the villain wants to hurt you" or "the sword is somewhere you wouldn't think to look" or something like that. I guess it would depend on how specific the question was asked?