I’ve played a lot of Dungeons & Dragons over the years. Every so often, the players do something extremely awesome and unexpected.

There was once a time in my game where the characters had spent a session negotiating with the Sea Princes of the World of Greyhawk setting and they were now on their way home.

Because just getting home would be boring, their ship was soon attacked by a Dragon Turtle. In the ensuing combat, one of the player characters was grabbed by the turtle and was soon in a very poor state, trapped in its jaws and unconscious.

We were using the 3^rd Edition of D&D and ranged healing spells were something of a rarity; no-one in the group knew any. However, they had picked up a quiver of arrows of healing. Instead of inflicting real damage, they healed whatever they hit! The archer of the group decided that shooting them at the PC stuck in the dragon turtle’s jaws was that character’s only chance of surviving.

Not that it was a good chance. Lots of penalties to the attack roll loomed.

It was at this point that the player of the entrapped PC reminded me that he’d picked up a cursed item – a shield of missile attraction. I hasten to point out that the shield didn’t attract missiles to itself – instead it attracted them to the bearer and meant that any arrows would automatically hit him. Being cursed, the character in question couldn’t discard it. Normally this would be a big problem.

In this case, it was an advantage: the archer fired healing arrow after healing arrow at the trapped PC, and thanks to the cursed shield, they all found their mark and healed the character enough that the party were able to slay the dragon turtle and rescue him.

See, there are times that cursed items can save you!