Curse

A curse was a powerful, negative magical effect placed upon a person, place, or object.

Effects
Curses could have a wide variety effects, but often involved weakening, injuring, or thwarting the intentions of an afflicted individual or destabilizing an afflicted item.

In general, a curse was hard to remove. Only a handful of specialized spells&mdash;such as remove curse&mdash;could hope to remove even a weak curse. A more powerful curse needed great power to remove, if it was possible to remove at all. The fancy stone tremair, when worn next to the skin, was believed to grant immunity from all magical curses.

Types of Curses

 * Spell Curses:The most fundamental curse was the one created by the spell bestow curse. Other common spell curses were bestow greater curse, curse water, geas/quest, hex, Laeral's crowning touch, and lesser geas.
 * Item Curses:Any mundane or magical item could become a cursed item, and pass that curse onto individuals who possessed the item. Often, this type of item was created as a trap by an individual, an accident, or the decay of time.
 * Family Curses:This type of curse often started as one of the other types, but changed over time to affect the whole family of a cursed individual. In some rare cases, a powerful curse could be put on a whole family.
 * Divine Curses:This type of curse was inflicted on a person, place or thing in accord with a god's ethos. They were always powerful and often spectacular. A primary example was the Curse of Mystra, which afflicted any individual who willfully copied the sigil of a mage with the intent to impersonate that mage.
 * Undeath:The existence of undead was sometimes considered a curse on life.
 * Warlock's Curses:Some warlocks had the ability to bestow minor curses onto their foes in battle, which made the afflicted targets more vulnerable to the warlock's attacks and magics.