Temporary Magic Items

I have long been a fan of temporary magic items. They are a great way to provide small rewards to the players during what can be a long time between leveling. They also work well as possible solutions to problems as long as other solutions are evident as there is a good chance players will not think to "weaponize" that bronze spoon of rapid stirring you so carefully crafted. On the flip-side, they cannot be so painfully obvious that they become a "railroad" to problem solving. Yeah, things like that playful flying key that buzzes around the players looking for attention whenever an unreachable keyhole is present you were so proud of.

The limited nature of these items helps to keep one character from becoming overpowered, but can also offset the sense of uselessness a player might feel if they continually miss in combat, or feel like a "one-trick pony" that can do little more than swing a sword at a monster.

It is not much fun when you are playing a fighter that can't hit the goblin standing directly in front of you while the wizard in the party entangles, immolates, or electrifies the remainder of the goblin horde en masse.

Temporary magic items can have all sorts of negative consequences for use that will not haunt the players forever, and serve to offer a strategic decision about their use. These negative consequences can often be used to the players' advantage by finding some unintended use for the object or weapon as well.

I have cooked up all sorts of temporary magic items over the years, ranging from the "rail-roady rod of rail-roadiness" to objects and weapons that I would consider, well, much better than that I suppose.

I have been working on an idea that is slowly becoming a mega-dungeon concept for a while now, and I am going to share some of my temporary magic items from it with you now.

These are three "magic weapons" with limited uses that the players may acquire (well, they will most likely acquire them, but they may not discover the combat simulator "mini-dungeon" that trains them on their proper use)

Taakese (Blaster Rifle) Crossbow

Taakese Crossbow
The Taak, essentially "orcs in space", have a wide variety of weapons designed to exploit the weaknesses of their most common foes.

At its core, the crossbow is simply a re-skinned wand of lightning bolts. It is found with 10+1d10 charges.

The weapon has two firing modes and a "lock out" switch which helps preserve the remaining charges and prevent accidental discharge.

The "single shot" mode is a lightning bolt spell from whatever system you like to use.

The "burst" fire mode uses two charges and is the equivalent of your favorite "chain lightning" spell. You can scale the "caster level" for these effects to match your game.

All of the Taakese weapons have a peculiar side effect. Once equipped or carried on a person they negate all magcial effects within 1d4 rounds. This side effect is nullified when the weapon is "locked out" in safety mode, or once the weapon has expended all charges. Similarly, damage inflicted by these weapons cannot be healed through magical means until 1d4 rounds have passed. 

Taakese (Blaster Pistol) Wand

Taakese Wand
The preferred sidarm of Taak officers, the "wand" fires homing shots that seldom miss their mark. 

This one is a simple re-skin of a wand of magic missiles. It is found with 4+1d6 charges remaining. The weapon features a lock out switch like the "crossbow" and fires one shot per round.

The "wand" has the same anti-magic side effects listed above, and the caster level for purpose of determining the spell-like effect can be scaled to fit the campaign.

Wyvern (Power sword) Jaw

Wyvern Jaw
This two handed "chain saw sword" is designed to hack through rock-like carapaces and dense armor plating of enemies.

The Jaw is found with 4+1d4 charges remaining. A charge is expended each round the weapon is in use. The Jaw does 2d10 damage and simply ignores any non-magical bonuses to defense or damage reduction provided by armor.

The Jaw can be used against structures as well, and does a straight 20 pts of damage per round, ignoring the damage reduction or hardness rating of most materials.

The Jaw is an unwieldy weapon, and requires a minimum strength value of 16 or greater in order to use effectivley.

The Jaw has a lock out switch, and has the same anti-magic side effects as the other weapons.

These weapons can be scaled down (reducing damage or available charges) or up by adjusting caster level or providing additional power sources (clips).

These items also encourage players to get creative in their application. Sure they work well against overpowered opponents, but what if the players tried to detonate a power source to work as an explosive or to create an anti-magic pulse. Crafty players may sneak a weapon onto an opponent with the safety off to cancel their magical defenses or negate spell casting. The Wyvern Jaw could be disassembled once it loses power to harvest the near-indestructible bladed chains.


I made these images by rendering them in Sketchup. I created all the component pieces and turned them into objects, and then simple assembled my weapons. I have not had much luck with high quality jpeg exports from Sketchup, so I bring the images into Photoshop to clean them up. The black and white image for each weapon was made by loading the image into Illustrator, and simply performing a "livetrace". I fiddled with the tolerances until I had an "inked" looking image that I was happy with.