AD&D Rule Spotlight: Command Words for Magic Items

Today I talk about command words for rods, staves, and wands. AD&D makes you earn the activation. You have to learn the word. I cover the rules, a fast table process to run discovery, a story where a player tried to game it, and quick hooks.

#adnd #osr #tsr #forgottenrealms #greyhawk

Episode Transcript

(00:18):
Hey, welcome back to the podcastEvil Dungeon Master AD and D
Universe Podcast. I'm your host, Vince.
Hopefully you're doing well out there.
Today is another day. We're going to talk about
Advanced Dungeons and Dragons today.
First, the evil dm.com is my website. [e-mail]
is my e-mail address. You can support me by going to

(00:39):
patreon.com/the Evil DM where the last couple of days we've
had some really good articles up.
I've been writing up some write ups for what we're currently
playing Basic Fantasy right now,but I threw up the idea of the
Wraith Apocalypse that I talked about that ideas up there Coming
out today is hirelings and care rules for basic Fantasy and OSR,

(01:02):
and then tomorrow we're going tobe doing diseases and basic
Fantasy and OSR as various goodies for those with a $2.00
level and higher. Anyway, on to today's topic.
I was looking through the book and what things to look at today
and today the command words for magical items came to mind.

(01:26):
Now, it's not something that I normally remember, to be honest,
and I thought it was an idea that I need to start doing
again. Like I think I've gotten into a
pattern of people find magical items and it just kind of works.
Whether it's a wand or a rod or whatever staff, it just kind of

(01:47):
works. I forgot about the whole command
word thing and how that actuallyworks.
I mean, it's simple system, but I just kind of blew it by maybe
because I'm so used to playing other editions of fantasy that
I'd ever thought about the wholecommand words.
Because later editions of D&D, they kind of ditched it for
attunement, which I've always thought was lame and didn't

(02:10):
actually, you know, didn't feel like fantasy to me.
Sit there and meditate over the item and you get them to be able
to use it because you were tunedto it.
It's flavor and whatever, it's harmony.
I just thought that was dumb. I like the idea of the Rods
Defer 1. You have to know the proper
command word. So in order to use a Rods def
one and you're going to want to go to the DMG on page PDF 119.

(02:37):
It's right there. Under use of magic items, it is
usually necessary to know the proper command word.
There are several possible ways to acquire this knowledge with.
If the item is was in the possession of an opponent, it
may be possible to learn the appropriate word or phrase
directly by either noting what he or she says when using the

(03:02):
item, or by causing the possessor to divulge the
information through force or trickery.
It is common for spell users to keep such information recorded
among their hidden scrolls and spellbooks in case their
memories should somehow become impaired or simply prove
insufficient and the words be forgotten.

(03:25):
Pretty simple. If none of these sources should
fit the situation and the item was not found with the
accompanying scroll explaining its use in history, it may be
necessary to resort to informational spells such as
Contact on the Plane, Legend Lore, or Speak with Dead.

(03:45):
So you know when you do this what you could do for different
ways. Many magical items have these
these words involved with it. And while sometimes I know in
the past some DMS have had it where it's written directly on

(04:06):
the item, like if it's a wand orsomething, the name would be
some type of name or or word is written on and that usually is
the trigger word. And that was kind of a cheap,
easy way to move forward with the story and not have to worry
about the magical item. I personally never liked that.
I mean, as a player, of course Iloved it.
But as Adm point of view, I never liked it.

(04:27):
I thought that was just kind of cheap and easy to blow by.
I mean these magical items, especially if it's going to be
like a wand or fireball or something or whatever, frost
something that's really cool. You don't want them to just
easily have the ability to know that word.
And also another thing is they don't know charges.

(04:49):
They're never going to know charges.
Even with an identifier, they'renever going to know exactly all
the charges. I've never given the amount of
charges. I've given an estimate of
charges. So some ways Adm can actually
give their players the ability to get this magical word.
The core command word to say is maybe you pepper it throughout

(05:09):
the dungeon somehow they find anold journal with some words in
it. Or they find, you know, a piece
of paper which is one word in it.
They don't know what it is. Maybe they keep it.
Maybe they throw it out. Who knows?
I know if you are in a campaign and I know if I'm playing, first
of all. And Adm says, yeah, you're

(05:30):
working around and you search, you know, search the desk and
you find some scrolls and there's some, you know, there's
a journal about this guy talkingabout his life.
And then you find a piece of paper that says booga, booga.
I personally, myself would writethat down and say my character
takes that. Why?
Because who knows what that wordbooga booga actually means and

(05:52):
what it is. And if it comes later on to the
game, I'm not going to remember it.
And especially if you're playing, you know, once a month
or every other week or whatever time frame your group plays,
you're not going to remember booga, booga.
Yeah, I mean, you might rememberif you have a really good
memory, but your character is not going to remember it too

(06:15):
because your character is prettymuch you.
So you write it down, you keep it.
And you never know in your notes.
That's why it's always importantto keep notes when you're a
player. Yeah, I'm sure it's fun to sit
there but and play the game and just be like, meh, I like
playing the game, but it's always good to keep little
notes. And this is one of the
situations you want to keep notes.

(06:38):
Now you want to want to do you know other ways I could have
suggested speak with dead, speakwith the dead owner, research.
What I used to do with research when I were remembered to use
this was that I would give a magic user a chance to go into a
library and do some magical research in a, you know, a
magical library. And if they had some notes from

(07:01):
the previous owner, I would havethem each day roll A1D6 and I
would have kind of like a pie chart.
And there's I have 4 little little sections of the pie that
I would check off. And each day that they would
roll the 1D6. If they rolled A1, I would check

(07:24):
off a little piece of the pie. Now it doesn't mean they have to
roll A1 every day because every time they get a check mark, it
becomes slightly easier with research, especially if you have
notes to figure out what this command word is.
So the next day they would have to get A1 and A2, then a three
and a four and then A41234 for the final day to finally get

(07:47):
that. So there's still a chance of
them doing research and coming up with nothing, but their
chances of finding out what the word is or name is becomes
greater than the days they spendin there.
Now, it's not one of those things that you say as far as Oh
my God goes and researches, let's do all the roles now.
No, it doesn't work that way. In game.

(08:08):
Your character will go to the library or whatever while the
rest of the group does their thing.
And yes, if the day wants to endquickly because all the players
agree with the DM, then yes. But chances are the DM might
have a little surprise to interrupt your quick day.
Now, there was another thing that some people had talked

(08:29):
about and I was looking around for this too, is each time that
you use the wand, and I've done this before, it does use a waste
of charge. But there's a certain chance,
again, A1 and A6, that it will waste a charge every time you do
it on a miss called a misfire. The wand is listening for the

(08:53):
keyword. And if you're trying to use it
while pointing it or you know, the staff or the wand rod,
whatever, that's going to be a, you know, one in six chance that
it's going to fizzle. It's going to listen for the
word use up a charge. Is that fair?
Probably I don't know. Really depends on how you want
to handle it. So you tell me in the comments

(09:14):
how you would handle that. I know one time a player grabbed
the wand from a defeated magic user and he wanted to spam
nonsense words until like for like 10 minutes until he, it
fired. Now what we did was I was just
like, all right, you can do that.
But you know, I, I said up front, you know how it works
here, we may, may waste the charge and everything.

(09:37):
And he argued it should not costcharges until he was right.
I ruled that, you know, every attempt is going to be a 1D6
roll and I'll let you roll it asthe player.
And if you roll that one, that means the charge is wasted.
And he did not care that he wanted to do that.
So he also said that he wasn't going to, as far as a player is

(10:02):
concerned, just start spouting out words.
He wanted his character to do random words.
So I said, all right, well, the chances of you actually getting
that is a very slim chance. I gave him a chance.
I told him to roll 100 percentile, and if you get
either A1 or A-100, I'll let himpick which one he wants.
You can't have both. You guess the word in the 10

(10:27):
minute frame that your charactertime frame that your character
spends on the word. He rolled and he got it.
He pointed 100. I said fine, and he got to 100
and I said, you know what? Deal's the deal.
I told him the word and he knew the word because that's when it
triggered the actual wand and itwas a wand of fireballs and what

(10:49):
it did was blast the wall and start burning up the wall.
But he knew the word. So kind of interesting
situation. It happens, you know, So
different ways you could probably use this in your
adventures. You can pepper the word around
for players to find out what it is.
Like I said, you find it in the desk drawer as a note or

(11:09):
something weird like that. Or, you know, maybe you put
little phrases in the dungeon onthe wall somewhere, like as if
someone is trying to figure something out, like a formula on
the wall. Like, you know how sometimes
when you're figuring out formulas and physics or

(11:30):
something you would actually write on a whiteboard?
Well, say The Cave wall or the dungeon wall is now a whiteboard
and there's someone trying to frantically figure out something
and you get little pieces of words.
And then maybe later on the dungeon you see another wall
with crazy writing on it with different words and everything,
with some of the words you remember from the last one if

(11:50):
you had written something down. And you can have little things
peppered throughout the dungeon that way.
I thought that was always interesting.
You could do the old traditionalyou find it on a pedestal and
then there's three syllables written around it.
Now your job as the players, they figure out how those

(12:10):
syllables work and what order ofthe syllables are in and what
word it makes to trigger the rodto work different ways you can
use it. Tell me what you think in the
comments, how you'd handle it, and how you want to do that with
your campaign. I'm always interested to hear
what other DMS do, no matter what the addition is.
I don't really care if you do this in later editions, keeping

(12:33):
tradition alive. I'd love to hear all about it,
even if it's in the 5th edition.I don't care and you're a 5th
edition player. I want to hear what you're doing
with your campaign. If you're using this style in
five EI want to know because that'd be kind of cool.
All right well that's going to wrap up today's podcast.
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(12:53):
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(13:16):
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