10 Weird Effects - Table-Top Tips

10 Weird Effects

Weirdly Dangerous Potion or Magic Effects For Stumped Game Masters

Are you struggling to fill out that potion table or magic effect table? Want something that might just randomly kill your players and add a new level of suspense? Are you finding it hard to throw in some role-play fluff or fear for your players? Do you want your players to have a good laugh as well as experience a serious moment of terror?

Below are 10 Weird Effects I have tested as a game master, and experienced as a player, which have ended in strange or bizarrely epic role-playing moments.

 I am a fan of your players being near death frequently, giving their powerful characters a healthy reminder that they are mortals in a chaotic world of monsters.

1. You grow a beard rapidly. This beard whispers to you, it tells you secrets, it wants you to take over the world. If you attempt to shave this beard off you will take 1d6 damage

2. One of your eyes starts to leak maggots from the tear ducts. You are in incredible pain. Slowly, a swarm of maggots pushes the eye from its socket and spill out over your face. The maggots stop pouring after a few seconds but you cannot heal the gaping hole where your eye had once been.

3. No matter your gender, you are suddenly 1d4 months pregnant. What you are giving birth too is entirely at the GM's discretion. 

4. For 1d6 days, every time you hear someone say a colour you get woozy. If you fail a save vs. magic/Will, you faint. 

5. An alien parasite is growing in your chest. The only way to transfer this beast is to successfully seduce someone and transfer it with a kiss. If you do not do this within two days, the parasite will claw its way out of your chest and attack the nearest player. You, of course, will be dead and no one will hear you scream.

6.  You are not satisfied with normal food or water which turns to ash in your mouth. From now on, you are only able to sustain yourself by consuming rotting animal meats or fresh human flesh.

7. You are absolutely convinced that you have experienced a traumatic childhood which was shared with another party member (GM's Choice) although they do not recall it (as it never happened). This traumatic experience has given you a phobia and if a similar situation arises you will be frozen in fear Save VS. Paralyze/Will.

8. Save VS. Poison or you will explode in a radius of 5ft resulting in 1d4 damage to anyone nearby. Death.

9. You cannot see anything in mirrors or the surface of water. Instead, you yourself standing in a twisted realm of gore and darkness, surrounded by the horrors of another dimension. Phobia of reflective surfaces. 

10. You collapse to your knees and vomit out your own heart. It is still beating. As long as you keep your heart safe upon your person (perhaps in a jar of dirt?) you will continue to exist and any direct hits to your chest will be softened. If your heart is lost or destroyed, you will die.

  I hope you enjoy these odd encounters, whether they be from a magic mushroom, a putrid potion or a suspicious spell.

 

A Waffly Poem - Alice

 Alice

“Well, Well, Well”, thrice the cat chimed,

you stumbled down that tunnel, blind,

Upon sliding down the muddy path,

you contemplate the aftermath,

There is no way to scramble back,

you must trek on into the black,

you thought a magic mystic land,

would greet you when you hit the sand,

That is the folly of the weak,

who in their wonder often seek,

the hidden worlds of fantasy,

and end up lost to insanity,

“Do not fear”, laughed the cat,

who on a twisting branch, he sat,

“There are ways on through the dark,

but every way will leave a mark”,

You seem confused by its meaning,

suddenly on a sign you’re leaning,

Pointing up, right, left and round,

even pointing at the ground,

The cat is gone now from the tree,

A frozen smile is all you see,

You stare in wonder at the sign,

And take the path you think less time,

In the pitch you fall and scramble,

Surrounded by mean branch and bramble,

shivering in the cold night air,

with dirt on face and leaves in hair,

You struggle on and fight the dangers,

Meeting all the strangest strangers,

from talking hares to singing flowers,

and cruel queens with cosmic powers,

Until you fall upon a door,

floating just above the floor,

The cat smiles and gestures with his tail,

To the door of wood and nail,

“Off you go back to your home,

Where you will be all alone,

or stay with us and our madness,

escaping from your crushing sadness,

Whatever choice young one you take,

It will be the last you ever make,

Live here in all this ecstasy,

or go back to your sanity.”