From time to time, characters will stumble into curses in D&D (and other RPGs, as well).

Common curses might cause weakness, or take away health, or make a character less effective in combat. A cruel (good) DM can make these much more interesting, however.

Share some cool curses that you've seen in games!

I once cursed a thief with "May you never know peace". After that, every trap he checked, he set off. Every monster attacked him first. When he slept at night, wandering monsters attacked hourly. When he was on watch, he heard so many noises and saw shadows that he was constantly on edge. Every town had an outstanding warrant for his arrest and a bounty hunters convention going on. He paid for the cleric to remove curse after a day of that.

Later, I cursed the same thief with Sadim touch. Anything gold that he touched, turned to lead. He didn't know about the curse until he trying to pay a bartender for a round.

Then there is my favourite. A stone, with a sword in it, with a sign on the stone reading "Don't touch this sword, it is cursed". Anyone touches the sword, turns into a stone with a sword in it, with a sign on the stone reading "Don't Touch this sword it is cursed". I have wiped out entire parties with that one. They gotta touch the sword ....

ROFL @ stone/sword curse. Though that's more of a trap, for my money...

First, a cursed belt that changes your gender permanently.

Second, a pair of gloves I dreamt up that give you +2 strength bonus, they also happen to have the rusting grasp ability (passively activated) so the fighter rusted his own sword to nothing.

EDIT: These may just be plan mean, but I think they are very funny.

Deck of Many Things can always spice up a game.

My husband got an alignment change once that made him the dreaded Lawful Good.

Which all in all was not too terrible except it turns out my husband -cannot- play a Lawful Good character. Killing all evil things arbitrarily and letting fellow adventurers's get away with cutting off body parts of a prisoner to get them to talk just doesn't cut it. He tried though...

In the end the DM just gave up and found a way to give him a Wish Scroll so he could go back to his normal alignment... Chaotic Neutral.



M.

The only one I could remember was one of my characters being cursed with "Animal Magnetism" which literally caused me to cling to any animal I touched (and draw small animals towards me at an alarming rate). I shall not recount the day my bard because attached to the underside of a warhorse or the time he walked through a forest full of squirrels.

I had one character who recieved a helluva curse from tampering with statue that shouldnt have been touched.

The statue was a statue of the 4 horsemen of the apocolypse. Well my character being a thief (AD&D 2nd ed), couldn't resist all of the gemstones adorning the statue. By prying them out of the statue he awakened the curse.

Everytime that he looked behind him he could see one of the 4 horsemen closing in. Each time he looked they got a little closer. As each one reached him he had to fight it in single combat (similar to the skull card in the deck of many things AD&D 2nd ed, but without the XP benefit.)

Each creature that he killed took on the semblance of the "attack" of the horsemen following him. As an example when Famine was following him and killed something, the creature he killed immediately took on the look of something that had starved to death.

Also anytime that my character killed something he could hear the horsemen whispering thanks to him. (The DM hinted that each death my character caused made the horsemen stronger, but never actually gave specifics).

You have NO idea how hard it is to go through life without EVER looking behind you.

Every play around with inverse aging? Trigger the trap, now your a size category smaller, your stats are f***ed up, and in the words of the female PC that triggered this one...

"What happened to my tits!?!?!?!?"

On the floor laughing my ass off...

I had my group once encounter a cursed broadsword that changes any male into a female if they would touch it. We had a big, manly male minotaur and a female kender. Naturally, the kender wanted to touch the sword. Naturally, the minotaur didn't want her to. The minotaur's manliness kinda ended that very moment

...be self-reversable, by exposing yourself to it a second time?

...as specific as "changes a male to a female"... Once a male touches the sword *POOF* he's a girl, right? However, with the nature of the curse, that once-guy-now-girl could touch the sword again and not be affected because; "Dude! Yer already a chick!"

Welcome to the Inn, by the way. *facelick*

Every time the cursed fighter hit something with his weapon, there was a 5% chance of letting it fly or 5% chance getting it lodged inside the baddie.

Of course, this was automatic on a critical hit

Heard about this nasty 3-part curse somewhere... I think it might actually be in another thread buried here at the inn.

Big huge ugly statue at the far side of an otherwise empty room. Runes carved into stone of the statue. Wizard says it's emanating magic. Rogue confirms that there is definitely some kind of magical trap about this thing. It's the only thing in the room. The party can't not touch it.

The first person to physically touch the statue (probably the mage or the thief) gets bonus +4 STR enhancement.

2nd person to touch the statue gets -4 CON (probably the fighter, after seeing what happened to the last person to touch it)

3rd person to touch the statue (probably the fighter again, trying to undo the con penalty) gets hit with disintegrate and the statue resets to +4 str next.

Nastier version adds +4dex, -4wis, and Insanity after disintegrate before resetting.


PS
I guess this is more of a trap. The curse is on the actual players, "You will kill your characters trying to derive benefit from this statue."

I can honestly say that when I clicked on this thread, I did not immediately think that we were actually discussing magical curses. Rather, I thought it was swears haha.