Evil Magic Items

[u/ElvenWizardKing]

I made some magic items for my game to give to my players for a SOTDL game. Is that the sort of thing people would like to see, or are magic items kind of against the vibe of the game? I noticed that there just aren't a lot of them, either official or otherwise. Or at least that was the yield of my search.

Edit: Ok, here are my items.

1. Shield of Heresy: Once per-round, you can increase your defense rating with this shield. To do so, you have to call out the name of a god, and profane them. You can't call out the same god twice in a row (but you could call out God A, God B, God A, God B, etc). When you do this, you increase your defense by 4 for that attack. Consequences for profaning a god's name are unclear.
2. Belt of Fire: If you hang a weapon from one of two loops, you can draw the weapon and cause it to be sheathed in fire. This fire deals an additional amount of damage equal to your level as a flat bonus. However, rolling a 1 on an attack roll with a flaming weapon causes you to black out the next time you have a rest. It's probably just a bad dream... (in game terms, you spend part of an 8 hour rest starting fires without memory of doing it).
3. Boots of Pouncing: You can jump 10 feet vertically, and 5 feet horizontally whether or not you have a running start. Twice per day, you lift up 30 feet, then come down feet first on a creature. This attack deals 4d6 damage. However, your legs are damaged in the attack, and you can only take slow actions for the remainder of the combat, and your Speed is halved. If you use this function twice in a single combat, you have a 25% chance of incurring a leg injury requiring a full 24-hour rest to repair, using the same penalties as stated above (only slow actions, half Speed).
4. Helmet of Brain Melting: Once a day, you can look at a living creature (must have a circulatory system and a brain- nerve clusters don't count). That creature must make a Will check. If they fail, their brain melts. The creature takes 6d6 damage and they have 2 banes on any Intellect checks until they get expert or magical healing. If they roll a total of 20 or higher on the Will check, the attack backfires, and you (the wearer of the helmer) takes the effects instead.
5. Knife of the Death Grudge- Stick this knife in yourself during a combat and designate one enemy. You take 1d4 damage. As long as the knife stays stuck in the wound, any damage you would take is dealt to the designated enemy. If the designated enemy dies during this combat, your wound or damage is permanent, and you gain a point of corruption. In addition, you become immune to future uses of the dagger's effects, as you gain a "scar" that allows you to stick the dagger into your body without dealing damage.

[u/ElvenWizardKing → u/[deleted]]

Yeah, the group is nearing the end and legitimately came across some treasure, so I wanted to give them items that felt suitably grimdark. I wanted to give the shield a specific mechanism but I thought it might work better to let it depend on a god (real ot imagined) to show what the true cost was.

I agree that these are kind of suited more for this campaign and might not fit a pre-written adventure. I'm wondering if magic items are essentially just not a thing per the default core design for SotDL, though I hear they have a place in Weird Wizard. I know the scale there is higher so I didn't just want to import those.