I had iconic D&D magic items in mind, but it can include any iconic magic item from any system.

I must be an odd duck because I genuinely like hearing game session stories, hearing about character exploits, and seeing other people's character sheets.  So, please, regale us with your stories of iconic magic items whether they be funny or tragic.

Specifically, I would like to hear any stories about the Deck of Many Things.  It's one of my favorite magic items from TSR-D&D.  

I once wrote about an experience I had with the Deck from the DM's side of the screen.

I once had my thief card flip an entire deck of illusions at an oncoming githyanki.

We also had a wizards soul trapped inside a dragon skull we had to drag 100 miles over a desert. Luckily the other PC I was with was a barbarian who couldn't play cards. Hey it was tough sittign on that dragon skull all day being dragged along.....

Ooh, the Deck of Illusions was cool too!

Quote from: Drohem;539545Ooh, the Deck of Illusions was cool too!

it was using the whole deck at once that made the event though:)

Quote from: jibbajibba;539551it was using the whole deck at once that made the event though:)

Which card finally took the Githyanki down?

Quote from: Drohem;539553Which card finally took the Githyanki down?

Fuck knows I was running away really fast

I ran a cleric assasin for an age who once had to chop up another pc into 13 bits so I could fit him into a belt of many pouches so I could find someone to res him later. Never could get the smell out

We ran a series of vancian mage games each running a 20the level wizards.
Alberard the Autocratic had the following unique iterms

Potions of clensing - drinking one was equivalent to a 30 minute warm bath and a laundry service - also acted as a universal solvent

I-ching balls of spell manipulation. These small metal balls can alter existing magical effects. Change area of effect or shapes of force objects, alter durations etc et

A Practical robe - this robe is impossible to cut and never wears out. It also never needs washing and always remains bright white. It halves damage from edged weapons.
 
Staff of Wandering - a handy walking staff that also averaged out extremes of climate. You could ignore cold weather, warm weather, rain, snow etc. Enables you to walk across snowdrifts (like an elf in LotR). Side effect was to reduce elemental damage by 2 points per dice

Book of holding - a take on ther standard bag of holing. Each double page was effectivly a carpet bag sized container. It had a carpentry kit, a medical kit, a cooking kit etc. It also contained a campfire, fully lit and a pool of water, and a well stocked picnic basket

Quote from: jibbajibba;539564Fuck knows I was running away really fast

LOL!

OK..
 
Decks of Many Things:
 
Years ago in 2E the GM ran a one-off game where we made up L30 characters, with randomly determined magical items. I actually made just a L1 half-elf who was the reincarnation of a 30th level barbarian, thus scamming an obscene number of hit points (I was hoping to make up the level difference fairly quickly, but the game didn't last long at all). I do remember the strongest PC, a 30th level minotaur barbarian, played with a Deck of Many Things and got Voided.
 
More recently in a Pathfinder/3.5 game (at about 5th level) the party found the deck; one PC (the wizard) didn't draw anything; the fighter fought a Death and survived; my halfling scout got noticeably Int drained by the Idiot card (from a 13 to 9), but then got the Vizier card, and then the druid got sucked to another plane (Donjon card ?) - into slavery on the plane of fire, as it happened. The GM let me use the vizier power to locate the nearest portal to there though, and after some trekking, going through a fortress in the City of Brass and (IIRC) fighting some salamanders etc we managed to get her back, though she was minus equipment (and the extensive collection of dodgy lethal plant seeds she'd been accumulating during the campaign to start a Garden of Death).
 
The Boots of Dancing Incident:
 
Running through Return to temple of Temple of Elemental Evil the fighter
found and put some magical boots on, thinking they were boots of speed. The next encounter we had, the party was attacked by a vampire who charmed the PC and ordered them to attack the rest of the party - except this triggered the boots and the fighter just started dancing instead...
 
The Ring of Spell Turning incident:
 
The GM decided to run a Dungeon adventure A Rose for Talakara; a one-off using 12th level PCs. The party made its way through the dungeon. One PC is permanently sterilized very early in the adventure (ouch), another gets run off or killed (I forget) after trying to kill another PC using an efreeti bottle (the other PC had their own djinn in something), and everyone is very low in spells by the time we get to the BBEG of the adventure, Talacara, a 25th level wizard on her way to achieving divine ascension, armed with various artifacts (including a Staff of Power) and who had had uses wishes to boost her ability scores to superhuman levels.
Her opening move on seeing the party is to give everyone a mass charm that they drop their weapons and go lock themselves up in her dungeon; 20% of the spell gets turned by someones' Ring of Spell Turning. She rolls a 1 on her save, says "You know, that sounds like a great idea!", drops some artifacts and goes to lock herself up (In the real world, its 3 a.m. at this point so everyone is pretty happy about this).
 
 
The Staff of Curing Incident:
 
The GM (same guy as the spell turning incident) is running a Talislanta game, except with some mixing in of other things...including Rolemaster critical hits and various D&D magic items. My PC - one of my favourite PCs
and also an imported D&D character, insulted the wife of an innkeeper, who threw a bottle at him which criticalled, resulting in him being blinded permanently in both eyes. The rest of the party drag him around as more or less dead weight for a couple of sessions (being a psionicist among other things, he starts desperately trying to learn/train up some dodgy psionic powers to compensate). Anyway, after a couple of sessions of this, the player running the cleric (an aamanian I think) notices that the Staff of Curing he's had since the start of the campaign can cast Regenerate.

Aswome stuff!  

The Boots of Dancing Incident must have been freaking hilarious!

LOL!  Obviously, the Aamanian priest didn't think you were worthy of Aa's blessed light since you were clearly a heathen.  Man, that's classic stuff right there.  It's happened many times at our table too where someone forgets that they have the magic item or spell needed to make a simple fix.

It was pretty funny. For us players there was an initial moment of "bwah?" since we hadn't known they were boots of dancing either, of course, but the GM cackled.
 
Also- poke poke! C'mon everyone, someone else must have found a magical item at some time during their careers.

The Ring of Contrariness Incident:

We had a guy in the group who did not develop character details at all, and each and every character was an evil version of himself.  The character was merely an interface to kill shit and take their stuff.  He was a good friend, young, a quadriplegic, and angry with the world and life so all his non-character development was lightly brushed aside.  Besides, he was funny as shit sometimes as well.  We forced him to name his characters, and some memorable ones were Armageddon, Sturdy Breed, and Medicine Man.  All warriors, all the time.  Also, all his characters had an alignment written on his sheet, but they always were invariably Chaotic Todd in alignment.  He was a stubborn coot and sometime he just refused to do stuff the party would want to do.  I don't remember exactly which character of his got the Ring of Contrariness, but we bilked that cursed magic item to the fullest and made it work for us in controlling his character when he was being uncooperative.  Good times.

Best/worst way to deal with a Beholder: hold up a Mirror of Life Trapping. How in the hell is it NOT going to see its reflection, with eyes pointing every which way? (As the DM, I gave it a saving throw with a -4 penalty... and then the PCs had their very own trapped beholder.)