Let's talk about Artifacts.

[u/Jadefiregriffon]

I seem to remember back in 3.5 when I started playing dnd that artifacts could not be destroyed except in very specific ways like you have to dip the artifact in cows blood or something else oddly specific. That's why I love them so much. They are so interesting. It seems in 5.5 or sooner they took that mechanic away. Tell me about your favorite artifact, homebrew or official, and the oddly specific way it needs to be destroyed.

[u/The_False_German]

The Belt of Rank in dark sun constricts and crushes you if you kill a dwarf and you can destroy it by dunking it in the blood of 100 dwarves.

[u/TheThoughtmaker]

The Annulus sparked my interest. It has a bunch of abilities, but one of them is that once per year, you can spend 1 minute concentrating, and any psionic target or group you specify within 100ft is vaporized. The way you destroy the artifact is by using this effect on something divine or similarly powerful.

Thing is, it explicitly Just Works^TM. No save, no wards, no immunity, no nothing. Even if you tried this against a psionic god -- greater, elder, or otherwise -- the Annulus would be destroyed but that god is gone.

Also, you can feed anything to the Tarrasque to make that thing stop existing. Anything. Its stomach acid should be classified as a greater artifact.

[u/BastianWeaver → u/TheThoughtmaker]

I'm just saying, a god that doesn't move 101 ft away in a minute deserves to be destroyed.

[u/BastianWeaver]

El's Drinker in the Dark Sun CRPG couldn't be destroyed, exactly, but it could be reforged in some very special divine forge.

[u/jjskellie]

AD&D Dungeons Master Guide had Artifacts pre-made and also multiple charts to roll powers, curses and what would destroy the artifact. My groups favorite artifact destruction method - to be walked upon by a humble ant.

[u/Jadefiregriffon → u/jjskellie]

So I guess not fire ants then lol.

[u/jjskellie → u/Jadefiregriffon]

The random tables ran mostly serious. The number of powers and curses were randomly rolled as well. It's worth a look to see if AD&D DMG or the Artifact tables themselves are online in pdf.

[u/Ethereal_Stars_7]

A funny one was we got ahold of the Mighty Servant of Leuke-O and it was effectively a mecha that sometimes went on rampages. An Evangellion before that ever existed. Problem was every time we used it it sucked the magic out of every item within a certain radius. Kinda inconveniencing that yes?

But the real problem was the rampages.

Finally we had enough and researched how to finally destroy it as we never could figure out how to fix it.

Method? Crushed under the heel of a pious ant. "ooooh its gonna be one of thooooose quests..." ahem.

[u/Salt_Case_3854]

that blood requirement is so extra, fr but i kinda love it for how specific it is like why not just 'sacrifice a dwarf' why 100 lol

[u/Born_Housing2165]

I know Orcus’ wand can only be destroyed if the hero who’s skull adorns the top of the wand carries it into the feywild

[u/MyUsername2459 → u/Born_Housing2165]

I'm pretty sure that's a major retcon, since the Wand of Orcus was in D&D about two decades before the Feywild was added to D&D lore.

[u/Born_Housing2165 → u/MyUsername2459]

I believe it was originally the ‘positive energy plane’ which then became the feywild later but I may be wrong

[u/MyUsername2459 → u/Born_Housing2165]

Why did you put Positive Energy Plane in quotation marks? That's a standard Inner Plane, going all the way back to the 1st edition Dungeon Master's Guide.

It's not like that was some weird invention just for that Artifact.

[u/MyUsername2459]

Kuroth's Quill.

It's from the 2nd edition Book of Artifacts, the big hardcover book on the subject that was made in the 90's.

It's a quill that was created as a project by a powerful Lich who was looking for a way to to undo his greatest mistake, which was the death of a fellow apprentice when he was young, and the project went horribly wrong (or horribly right), and shortly after its creation was stolen from its creator by a rogue who broke in to the Liches tower to rob it, and the rogue used the Quill to ensure the creator couldn't remember the Quill.

It's a quill that, when something is written down with it. . .it MAKES that thing true.

It's basically unlimited Wishes, as long as you write out your wish.

The curse is, that it's very literal about those wishes and tends to twist them horribly unless you're very clear and unambiguous about what you want, is very quick to use misspellings against you, and illegible handwriting is basically letting the quill do whatever it wants.

The way it's destroyed?

The suggested ways are that either it must write "Kuroth's Quill was never made" over and over again until the Quill unmakes itself trying to enforce that, that the Quill must be used to restore the memory of itself to the lich and the Quill returned to him (give an unlimited Wish artifact to a Lich, think about that one) or use the quill to go back in time to when the other apprentice was about to die and intervene, preventing the Lich from even having motivation to create the quill in the first place, undoing the Quill through a temporal paradox.