Artifact , II

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That post was too brief , here is more MORE

The Heartworm

A thing mostly like an arrow. Hold gently in your hand , say someone's name (the first name their mother gave them) , and it will fly away, faster than a thought and as unstoppable and traceless as a rumour. It will arrive in the heart of the named.

The Egg

If passed through the pelvis of a creature (regardless if it's alive, dead, skeletal, ash, or fossil) it will quicken and hatch in 2 nights as that creature. An exceptional sculpture can also work, even if it represents nothing that has lived before.

The 7th descendent of this creature will lay The Egg back into the world.


The Hammer

When held breaks anything it hits. After breaking something it begins to vibrate , and after 3 rounds will release a destructive pulse for a kilometre around, pulverizing anything as strong or weaker than what it just broke. It will continue to vibrate and release pulverisation waves until it makes contact with something harder than what it broke to trigger it.


DISTINCT POWER SOURCES FOR ARTIFACTS:

Low Hanging Fruit:
Radically Out of Genre, Anachronistic , Alive and Fleshy and Toothsome, Hyperreal (like at the end of Promethea or the Lego movie mcguffin) , Something physically in the room as the players, Origins in mythology otherwise not used in setting like having Excalibur or The Holy Grail

Remaining Fruit:
Jack Kirby style magic technology

Artifact-shaped Nothing , like a hole in space that your eye slides across but sword shaped or something

New Impossible Colours. Grudgingly , "Sunless Sea" was cool with the Neathbow if you want some inspiration

Everytime Artifact Is Used a Star Goes Out

Messages To Players Written On Artifact

Still Living Body Parts From Creator or Prometheus Type

Superdense Material that means artifact ways 100 times more than it should and causes time distortions around

Reshaped Intelligent Beings otherwise not in setting like Draculas , The Middle Class , or Whales

Impossible Machines Of Rutting Cog

Protruding Sex Organ of Extra Spatial being .  Appearance gives no doubt of this.

Miniature Cities Frozen at the moment of horrible disasters 

Out of Scale objects ; like a urticating hair  2 metres long, or a solar system held in the palm of your hand

Artifact

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"Pick an artifact from the old DMG 1e Gygax thing.  Rewrite it - make it good."

Artifacts are almost an "artifact" themselves by now, i.e something that's still there because it was there at the start.

The nature of the label of them suggests a categorization and standardisation somehow of magical items that is annoying.

The original dungeon master guide had this bizarreness with each artifact having its entry listing it's powers as 1 of I , 3 of II 10 of III.
Each letter referred to a list of powers , and then the d.m would make their selection and write it in the space provided in their entry.

This was so players couldn't ever know what the artifact exactly did , without stealing the d.m's copy of the dmg.

It meant that none of the artifacts had much in the way of themed powers and was overall pretty goofy.

Am I going to rewrite one? No, I don't like any of them enough.

For artifact to be a useful categorical distinction from magic items then we need to think about how magic items work first.

If magical items are common , then the world needs to super weird to make that interesting, and the magical items more weird. Like everyone have rings of flying is bad, but everyone have pig-balloons is good and inflatable pig technology being part of the setting.

So what would make an artifact in that setting? It would need to be powered by something super rare and the rarity be part of the setting. The last works of the gods, alien leakage, the unravelling of the space itself etc.

If magical items are rare , then they would benefit greatly from having the lore of the artifacts anyway, This is the Sword of the Great Betrayer, These are Teeth of The Moon Eater etc.
So  would artifacts risk just being the upper scale of magic items, which is fine, but artifact then is a looser term?

I'm losing my point here .

New point:

Make artifacts do one thing that seems like a complete cheat, the rules of the game are broken or atleast warped greatly. 

Examples:

THE LENS 

it's apparently a retina from some kind of early beings, of great size. It's used by replacing the top of your skull with it , it's about that size . 

Once this is done the possesser can cast anyone elses spells, depleting them from their reserves. Anyone they can see or are otherwise reasonably sure of their position can be used in this way.

Unfortunately the possesser can no longer undertake any task which would require a roll to succeed. They must use magic or automatically fail it.

OTHER MECHANICS SUITABLE

THE HAND

You assign all targets of attacks (within normal range of the attacks) . However any attacks that are directed at you (and not assigned else where) automatically hit .

THE COIN

At the start of a round,  estimate how many rolls will be needed, then roll those dice at the start of a round and assign them . If you overestimate you lose this ability next round.

However must always accept a fair wager

THE SKIN

no longer suffer damage, don't have hitpoints anymore.

but can't change at all. Always the same mood, can't get exp or lose levels, don't get more or less hungry or thirsty, no long term memory. 

THE DOVE

don’t roll to hit anymore , just hit them , but must keep fighting until all participants in a combat  are slain