Our party is lvl 3 and our DM decides to let us draw from the deck of many things. One player loses 10,000 xp which the DM rules that it puts him to 0. He then later gains 10,000 xp which turns it into a net gain. Then I draw 4 cards, get the one that lets me avoid any situation once, get +2 inherent bonus to wisdom (I'm a cloistered cleric), gain a small keep, and a medium wondrous item and 50,000 xp. I'm taking 2 levels in church inquisitor, 2 divine oracle, 1 prestige paladin, and 2 divine disciple. He plans to offset the level issues by placing an enemy in each encounter that is higher to my CR. I have almost no magical gear. Will this be an issue? Should I plead for WBL of a 10th level character? If he grants that plea, what should be top priority? I'm playing a DMM Persist cleric. Lawful good, Changeling, domains are Tranformation and War (for greatsword proficiency and focus). DM gave us broken God-like stats from the beginning as the system for generating them was 4d6, reroll all 1's and 2's, take an automatic 18 if you don't roll one, and then you can adjust stats by subtracting 2 from one stat to increase another by 1. The highest a stat can be before racial adjustments was 18 though. So my stats are as follows at lvl 10:
18 str, 11 dex, 16 con, 16 int, 22 wiz, 18 cha
I normally don't build like this because it's nuts but whatever. Do you think I'll be fine without any gear against CR 10s or will I need a few things?
And this is why the deck of many things is dumb.
That artifact eats campaigns. The effects are more pronounced the earlier it shows up - a level 3 character gaining 50,000 xp basically means instant retirement, while having to fight off a CR 11 Dread Wraith is a death sentence. Basically, if a DM introduces it, the DM is having the campaign commit assisted suicide.
This case is no exception. A party of level 3 characters will be collateral damage if he includes a CR 10ish entity in each encounter just to challenge you (when elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers). That 50k xp draw didn't just force you to retire (for being inestimably stronger than your allies), but also sentences them to death. Hell, if you DO stay to fight, as your DM expects, he apparently doesn't realize that CR 10 means "a challenging fight for a party of four level 10 characters" - the level 3s are more or less irrelevant to a CR 10, so you'll be fighting them alone, which more or less means just one per day unless you're really, really good.
The only solution here is to have your character act as a resource rather than a party member. Create a new character (say, your changeling's apprentice or son or something) at level 3 and don't rely on a DM novice enough to include a Deck to be the one to balance things out.
Edit: If, for some reason, you persist with this character, to answer your equipment question, you should look into CL boosters (it's expensive, but the Karma bead from the Necklace of Prayer Beads is a good baseline for Divine Persisters, particularly if you're not Good and can cast the Consumptive Field spells; the Ankh of Ascension got errata'd but is still useful in some cases), Nightsticks, and generally anything that augments your spellcasting (i.e. metamagic rods). You won't need things like weapons or armor, particularly if you're casting Greater Magic Weapon and similar spells at ridiculous CLs.
Edit-2: I just remembered an earlier time I was discussing this very problem. (Took a while to find that; there are a LOT of threads complaining about the Deck, and the problem is as often as not the Sun card and the resulting interparty imbalance.) Turns out, there's a failsafe in the XP rules that I keep forgetting about, since largely it only shows up in response to the Sun card (the standard XP/CR system auto-balances: you don't get XP for encounters more than 8 CRs above your party's level). Basically, if you somehow get enough XP to gain more than one level, you actually forfeit the excess. Instead, you end up 1 xp short of your second level. (This means you should not be level 10, but instead level 4, 1xp shy of hitting level 5.) This is much more manageable for both the DM and the players - again, the XP/CR system auto-balances to a point*, meaning that the lower-level characters will quickly catch up to higher-level ones when the gap is that small. If you're attached to your character and your party's dynamic, remember this rule - you're actually level 4. Hell, this approach gives you quite a lot of extra XP to use as a buffer - if your next adventure would award 1000xp, for instance, nothing stops you from spending 999 of that on item creation and still gaining a level, or all 1000 of that and then some and still winding up at the same level as the rest of your companions.
Interestingly, while this rule exists for gaining a lot of XP, and there are limits on spending XP, there is no corresponding rule for losing such XP. So the Sun card looks like it gives you 50,000 XP, it realistically gives you much less - the most it will ever actually give you pre-epic is 38,999 xp, advancing from level 19 to level 20, with 1xp needed to hit level 21; you need to be level 25 before it actually gives you the full 50,000 - but the Fool card always costs you 10,000 XP. This means it will always send characters who are below level 6 all the way back to level 1, and that's assuming things don't just disappear at negative XP values.
In the linked thread above, I describe a "Gygaxian bargain" as a gamble offered to a player that is designed to appeal to greed, but is in fact quite stacked against the player, unless the player is able to restrain their greed and cautiously outsmart the gamble. Notable in that it's the player that's on the hot seat, not the chararacter - the character is just the wager. Observe as well that lower-level characters are more likely to gamble under this mentality, since the loss of investment on a bad card is minor ("just roll a new one" - early editions in particular viewed weaker or lower-level characters as expendable). However, these are also the same characters who will see the greatest imbalance from a good card (i.e. the Sun card, without an XP failsafe, means you've basically destroyed the party for the next few adventures at least), often meaning enforced retirement or greater resentment on the parts of the other players. ANY draw is therefore disruptive to low-level games. Compare to higher-level characters, to whom many payoffs are minor (i.e. "I risked the Deck and all I got was this box of jewelry; let me throw that on the massive pile of gold I've already got") but the risks are great (losing months or years of gameplay invested in a beloved character). The only "winning" move (that is, the only strategy in which you can expect to come out on top) is not to play, unless you have a spectacularly cunning way** of outsmarting the DM (and I do say the DM, since any DM intending to include this sort of gamble is clearly being adversarial to the players. Such a ploy is basically the DM being insufferable, trying to trick the players into admitting that he's smarter or in control or similar, as opposed to cooperating with everyone at the table to tell a better story.).
The use of "Gygaxian" here is NOT intended as a perjorative, merely as a description. His most infamous dungeon designs, such as the Tomb of Horrors, certainly fit this description. Hasty, greedy, or lower-levelled parties are likely to be wiped out as soon as they agree to enter, while more cautious and cunning players (and I do mean players) can outsmart the entire dungeon - in some cases without even setting foot in it. Unless you can devise and implement such a plan, the only "winning" move is not to play. Observe that this strategy is actually offensive to the DM, as it forces him to throw out all his prep, while agreeing to play is accepting a stacked bet (tacitly approving of the DM actually including the bet!). The mere existence of Gygaxian bargains promotes adversity across the DM screen. And the Deck of Many Things is a classic example of such a bargain.
I agree entirely. I was against the inclusion from the start but then as players would draw stuff and get good stuff and then bad stuff happened I was like "well I better draw a couple just to be able to keep up with what the others got" so I said 4 and got all the best stuff. Rediculous.
I thought that that rule was only for xp gained from encounters. But yeah, the DM originally said that I could only have 10,000 of it but then later changed his mind. Cause the only other card he modified was the dread wraith which he changed to a regular wraith.
daedhaed wrote:
For some rediculous reason he wants to shoot the party to lvl 10 really quickly.
daedhaed wrote:
To answer the questions presented in the original post the answer is all "it depends on what crazy things your DM decides to do next." Honestly, I think this started out broken and then got hit by a massive disentigration ray..
If the DM want the party at 10th level then JUST MAKE THE PARTY 10th LEVEL! The DMG even has rules for how much "wealth" a 10th-level character should have although in your party I'd expect at least 10 times that based on the god stats. I know Tempest mentioned "story awards" for XP and considering that those often come right before "down time" which is normally taken off camera there should be no issue just levelling everyone to 10th-level during the intermission. Admittedly, DnD has some things with XP costs but in a game like StarWars SAGA Edition which also uses XP to track level I have no issue throwing out XP entirely and just levelling the PCs when appropriate. In many ways I'd consider the insane XP boost from the DoMT to be a story award.
Tempest_Stormwind wrote:
NineInchNall wrote:
Moral of the story: if you don't want chaotic changes to your game or character don't use the Deck of Many Things. It exists to throw dangerous curve balls into play.
Not that it doesn't add some fun, but I'm still kind of disappointed that the bottled soul the party accidentally recovered during their unplanned trip to Hell wasn't reunited with the body under the high temple's care before it became collateral damage for a Locate City Bomb. 
Tempest_Stormwind wrote:
NineInchNall wrote:
... or the Cheat spell in BoVD ; specifically references the Deck.
(very evil grin)
My brother tried that Augury trick once when finding a Deck. I made a face, rolled dice, and said "Weal, Weal, woe" as I picked up the cards and looked at them.
"I draw two!" he cried out trimphantly.
I shuffled the deck and held it out for him to draw two cards. His expression was priceless when the first card he used was the Donjon...
Note to diviners: Don't think you can predict the actions of an artifact of chaos...
==Aelryinth
awaken_D_M_golem wrote:
Decided to try to stick it out with him at lvl 10. DM allowed me to have a Karma Bead, Ankh of Ascension and 4 nightsticks. He also allowed me to add all the Paladin spells to my spell list with my 1 level dip in Prestige Paladin. Any noteworthy spells I should be aware of? He is also ruling that Touch range spells can be Persisted without any need for Reach Spell. How does Battle Blessing work with Prestige Paladin?
Tempest_Stormwind wrote:
daedhaed wrote:
It does. And it tells people that there is something new on it. Actually pretty sweet.