D&D 5e with Cyphers

Since joining my first game of Numenera I have become a big fan of Cyphers and was thinking about adding them to my home 5e game. Then I came across a random cypher generator for 5e. Thought I'd share with the class.

Neat!

Great idea! If you run this game I'd totally join. :-)

I love the one time use and the 'not necessarily what it was designed for' aspect of the cyphers in the system. Would you limit the number a character can hold? Make them readily available so that people would actually use them (as opposed to holding for just the 'right moment'). Big fan of Numenera - even have a little adventure that I'm toying with running on here at some point.

I would probably limit the number of Cyphers a person could have. Basically they'd be the result of pockets of wild magic, and so wouldn't be able to be kept in great numbers.

Cyphers could be a fun addition to D&D, and that generator seems to be pretty well written, I only saw one or two problematic devices, a vorpal shard that instantly decapitates on a successful hit(bad for story bosses but not random encounters) and teleportation shard to go to any known place(if travel is important to the story) but there are ways to work around those kind of items (like don't give them to the players). Definitely keep the limits like Numenera/Cypher...hoarded cyphers could prove problematic.

...or say that, beyond a certain threshold, cyphers in close proximity have a chance of reacting to one another. So stockpiling them comes with an increasing risk of something unpredictable (and probably undesirable) happening.

There is actually a 'Cypher Danger' table in Numenera. The last entry (and the worse, but most hilarious) is that a tiny singularity is created which consumes that character and all of their equipment.

Yeah, I was going to do basically that, drawing inspiration from the Cypher danger tables in Numenera.

Might take a while, but I'm totally going to run this game on here. Any suggestions for what you would want to see in a campaign? Open to any suggestions!

A few rambling thoughts:

So in Numenera cyphers are leftover 'gadgets' from previous civilizations. What would they be in this setting?

Perhaps they're a recent discovery and the PCs are trying to determine their origin. Maybe they've been placed by some organization for a hidden nefarious purpose.



Maybe they've been around as long as anyone can remember and are part of the 'economy' (PCs could all be cypher hunters on a mission to gather some rare ones).

Naatkinson mentioned they could be artifacts of wild magic. Though storywise, makes more sense.

Any or all of those options could be interesting. If they are laying around everywhere, they could be artifacts of a bygone era or products of wild magic. Modern craftsmen are beginning to learn the process of making them on their own, but need more examples to refine the process. So adventurers go out and find them. Some may get used in the field, but those brought back to civilization basically become a form of currency as people trade them around as their uses become known. All in all a very interesting concept.

Yeah, I'm open to any explanation. The more feedback I get the better!