The Knight card from the Deck of Many Things

[Water Bob]

Gawds, I would give anything to draw this card in @Water Bob 's Conan campaign.

If it happened at all, it would definitely be the center of attention!

 

[BriarMonkey]

In a nutshell, it sounds like your Druids want to make up for some lost stackable levels with regards to their animal companions. Personally, I see no problem with this and I'd allow it - especially since it doesn't affect any of their other druidic abilities. After all, at a certain point those animal companions will become a liability, not an asset - and no player likes that (at which point they'd be better off getting rid of them).

 

[Ahnehnois]

I've played the knight as a bizarre sort of artificial creature of some unknown make.

In my conception, he is always responsive to orders, and his stats never change.

I wouldn't use Leadership or cohort rules, and even if I did, I would consider the knight outside of them. I like the DoMT to be really unique and bizarre.

 

[akbearfoot]

In all my years playing D&D (almost 20 years), I've seen 7 or 8 'Decks' show up in various games. Every time except one the result was the same. Everyone, or almost everyone drew the max number of cards. Half of the party always ends up destroyed/imprisoned/dead and the other half jumped off the 'reasonably manageable' cliff with the good draws. The Deck is the easiest way for a DM who gets tired of DMing to end a game.

The one exception we had was the most memorable story. We found it and once we discovered what it was. So we had an open discussion and everyone said they were enjoying themselves and didn't want to quit the campaign. In this particular world, the Deck was essentially a God-level artifact that could not be influenced by mortal magic. We ended up basically becoming the guardians of the Deck, and had a lot of fun fighting the various cults and evil-doers who wanted to take the artifact and use it.

 

[Empath Negative]

What about "weird plothooks"?

If the two knights are of differing genders.. Suppose they procreate? In doing so they produce some kind of construct living hybrid... The child of a dim and distant prophecy the characters are otherwise unaware of. An infant child that stares back with human like but somehow alien eyes.

I say weird plothook because the likelyhood of two characters pulling the same card on the deck of many things would seem uncanny. Play it up as influenced by the terrible horrors of the Far Realm.

 

[Greenfield]

We were playing in one of our "take turns being the DM" campaigns, in what was supposed to be a limited magic world. One player didn't like that, preferring to power game, and when he became DM he introduced a Deck of Many Things in a dream scene.

Each player was taken away from the table and had their dream experience explained to them. When it came to be my turn he showed me the deck and asked how many cards I wanted to take. I said, "None, thank you."

The Dm wouldn't let me go for zero, said I *had* to pick at least one. I did and ended up with "a small keep". One other player started making his new character, and another woke up with no gear of any kind, and a third was upset that he now had to play a radically different alignment, essentially destroying the personality of the character he'd been enjoying so much.

Afterward, the DM said that it was all free will, that nobody was forced to pick from the deck. I called Dispel BS on that.

The gifts are occasionally unbalancing, but over all the penalties tend to be far more severe. I never take cards if I have a choice, unless I'm really tired of the PC.

Oddly, that player quit the game soon after. He'd padded his PC's resume a quite a bit, and realized that most of the neat stuff he'd awarded himself (like enough Exp to be three levels higher than anyone else) was going to get stripped from him.

We ended up re-starting the campaign from scratch because that DM, and the DOMT, had scrambled things so badly.

 

[Endur]

It says nothing about how they advance, if at all. Are they a cohort? Do they remain a 4th level fighter forever?

The Deck of Many Things is artifact level magic, more powerful than wishes and miracles. I treat the 4th level fighter as a loyal recruit of the PC. If adventuring with the party, the fighter would be treated like a cohort without needing the leadership feat.

[*]One of the druids has taken levels in the Master of Many Forms PrC from Complete Adventurer. This Prc does not stack with levels of Druid for purposes of Animal Companions. The player is likely to take it all the way to level 10.
[*]The other druid is a multiclass druid 4/wizard 3/arcane heriophant 1. Her animal companion will always be 4 levels behind a normal druid.
[/LIST]I asked the players what they want from this. The MMF suggested an Awakened animal. Now I know those can't serve as Animal Companions, but what if this 4HD fighter was combined with her Animal Companion and treated like a Cohort? Permanantly giving up her animal companion eliminates one extra NPC, and making the new creature a Cohort means it can advance with her and gain levels. Is this unbalanced?

The other just wants it to be the equivalent of increasing her druid level by 4 (for purposes of her Animal Companion only) instead of giving her a 4th level fighter, sort of like "Practiced Animal Companion" (a play-on-words from the feat "Practiced Spellcaster").

One Druid is asking for the animal compaion to become an awakened companion fighter (without the leadership feat), the other is asking to raise the druid level by 4 for animal companion only.

I would ask each druid if they could live with the other PCs request. If so, I'd pick one interpretation that would apply to both.

Complications for the +4 druid level: could be problematic over the course of the druid's career if it applied to successive animal companions. I might limit this Buff to the current animal companion (i.e. current animal gets more powerful, but if the current animal dies, the new animal is back at the normal level).

Complications for Awakened Animal Companion: Will they have both the awakened animal compaion and a regular animal compaion? Will this awakened animal companion have both the 2 awakened hit dice and 4 fighter hit dice in addition to regular hit dice? I'd be willing to give them awakened animal companions (as awakened animal companions are very cool), but I'd say no to the four fighter levels and no to having both the awakened animal companion and the regular animal companion unless they also take the leadership feat.

You have to be careful with either request, as both requests could end up being more powerful than gaining a 4th level fighter depending on how you interpret them. That said, a free 4th level fighter cohort can also be very useful in some campaigns.

 

[Li Shenron]

The Deck of Many Things is artifact level magic, more powerful than wishes and miracles.

Ok, but that doesn't mean you are entitled to improve its effects.

Of course in a way the DM is entitled to always do what she wants, and that's also valid for non-artifact magic items, but what I mean is that it sounds to me that the players were disappointed that they got effectively a minor benefit, while they were expecting something more useful from the deck.

As it is designed, the deck can grant both minor and major benefits as well as both minor and major penalties. Had they drawn the "permanent -1 to all saving throws" (a fastidious penalty but far from game-breaking), would you have house-ruled some bigger effects because it's an artifact? Personally I think the whole point of the Deck is that it is a joke against the characters: you can win the biggest fortunes or lose your life and soul... but also not much.

Then again, the DM can do what she wants to improve the campaign... All I'm saying is that this sounds a bit like players trying to get undue advantage, and a lot like metagaming. Since when can they "ask" the Deck for something? It's not Santa Claus If they want those character changes, I'd talk with them about getting them in another way.