30 Magic Treasures Revised

I planned to do a quick follow up to my last post with a list of 30 consumable magic treasures, but I only came up with about 15 that I considered high enough quality.  So instead I'll give a few revisions for that last list.

Curses
First of all, I realized that the burdensome blade is, in fact, only detrimental- a cursed item.  So I revised it to be:

Burdensome Blade – Each day the blade draws no blood it becomes heavier to bear but more likely to land a blow.

That means a player getting that will have to make a choice of having the sword around, managing its blood needs or just tossing it.  It did make me think about why I didn't want anything cursed.  I suppose at the most basic, I'm trying to think of things that would be fun to find and that players would want to seek out and feel happy to find.

I don't really see the place for bags of devouring and such that just make the players hesitate to experiment with items.  If I were to use cursed items I think I would try to make sure they were a bit amusing.  As an example, my Torc of Trammel (which almost made the list) was fun for a player to roleplay the time it came up in my campaign.

Treasures for All
Some other observations.  I really like the idea of the Parchment Sash but didn't include it because I'm trying to make these treasures usable by almost any character.  Although the shields and swords are pretty fighter-centric now that I think of it.  I guess that is the difficulty of class restrictions and magical rewards.  I suppose I could have things like the Burdensome Blade be so magical that they morph into the favored weapon type of the holder.  Staff, dagger, or sword, if it is gaining weight everyday, you'll still need to make a choice.

3 Substitutions
I removed Godith's Gauge because it seems to vague, and the two I mentioned as being great to put in a dungeon - Branwalather's bridge and Clement's Docent - for that very reason, because they feel more like dungeon tricks or features than a personal item a character would want to carry around.

I added these instead:

Marvelous Folding Coracle – Saying the magical word will cause this small packet of willow bark to unfold into a circular vessel large enough for one person.

Ranulph’s Veil – A cage locked over the character's head with a muzzle built in. Wearing it makes them invisible and undetectable but mute and they must have someone unlock them to get the veil off.

Wolf Pelt – When a player drapes this over their shoulders they become a wolf.

I think the first and last are pretty evidently going to be useful at times and give players tools to use.  The middle one, like Anan's Veil, also on the list is just a ring of invisibility with big restrictions.

I'm going to try and make the chart with these revisions a pdf in the future.

30 Magic Treasures

I've gone through my whole blog and created a list of the best treasures I've invented.  If anything seemed too powerful I left it out for a separate artifact chart.  If anything could be used up, I left that for a separate consumable chart.  These are all meant to be interesting for players to try and figure out and to provide more choices and options in their on-going adventures. While many of the items are mixed blessings (thus the choices required) I tried to leave out anything that would be considered a purely cursed item.  Five rings, four shields, three swords, and a bunch of miscellaneous magic.  I hope you find this useful.

30 Magic Treasures

1. Amethyst Band – Prevents poisoning but contracts in doing so, amputating a finger.
2. Anan’s Veil – A chunk of cloudy-grey crystal that obscures the presence of the holder but also obscures the world to the holder in a swirling grey mist. You are invisible but blind.
3. Beautiful Cap – The wearer of this colorful cap will catch the eye of all creatures in viewing distance, pique their curiosity, and draw their gaze. Creatures that fail a save will follow along, watching the wearer.
4. Bone Stylus – Write the name of your antagonist in your flesh and he will leave you be. Works similar to sanctuary against the named individual. Causes one hit point of damage for every letter inscribed in the bearer's flesh. Lasts until the damage is healed.
5. Branwalather's Bridge – Actually a pair of heavy, lignum vitae chests. Carried, even one of these is heavy enough to slow and tire two strong men. Opened they appear mundane. If a person is shut up inside one, they exit the other.
6. Bulwark – This large shield gains +1 to AC and 50 lbs each round of combat.
7. Burdensome Blade – Each day the blade draws no blood it becomes heavier to bear.
8. Clement’s Docent – This pair of crude, high, wooden clogs is sometimes known as the Beneficent Path. Uncomfortable and clattering loudly, they are remarkable in that they will lead the wearer's feet, gently pulling with each step. The path they take is the last journey made while worn.
9. Friendsward – Useless in battle unless next to a fast friend, in which case it will block every blow that tries to harm them.
10. Godith’s Gauge – Floating this ornately carved spoon on liquid will cause it to spin and point toward that which poses the greatest threat to its owner.
11. Hat of Climbing – These hats, found in male and female forms, are long and ungainly, consisting of at least two yards of fabric. When the proper magic phrase is uttered they slowly stiffen to the strength and rigidity of steel. They can be climbed, used as a lever, pole, or even vault and will remain rigid until the magic phrase is uttered again.
12. Iron Hammer – A hammer that will give you a bonus to hit equal to the penalty you take to your armor class. Want to hit your foe, let him hit you.
13. Ivory Aegis – This shield is so slight it's actually a detriment in combat (-1 to AC) but will help guard the bearer against any charming magics (+4 to save).
14. Knot Book – Corliss Loop –This book explains how to make a knot that will let a weight slowly and evenly down a vertical rope. Allows a person to descend without climbing or being lowered, and thus remain alert and ready. Good for invalids. (1d4 sessions to learn -1 for exceptional Int).
15. Knot Book – Hour Hitch – This book explains how to make a knot that will cause this to release in one hour, also a half hour variant. (1d4 sessions to learn -1 for exceptional Int).
16. Knot Book – Songbird – This book explains how to make a knot that will release at a particular whistle note. (1d4 sessions to learn -1 for exceptional Int).
17. Lover’s Charm – Two pieces: crude ceramic heart the size of an apple and a barbed, silver arrow as long as a thumb. As long as the arrow is stuck in living flesh, the heart will give off enough heat to make it uncomfortable to hold.
18. Needle – This rapier never misses its mark but only leaves the tiniest mark (always hits, 1 hp dmg).
19. Obsidian Blade – By cutting yourself with this razor-sharp rock you can heal someone as many points as you decide to bleed out. You will recover your hit points normally. You can bleed yourself as often as your health allows.
20. Ranulph’s Runcible – A spoon ornately carved from a single piece of maple. When used to spoon liquid from a container, it will turn black if the liquid would be harmful to the imbiber. This black color will fade away in a day.
21. Ring of Extrication – Taken off, it transports you to the place you put it on, but the ring stays behind.
22. Ring of Redolence – Emits a constant air of fragrance. Each ring's scent will be unique to it, mint or lavender, for instance. The atmosphere around the wearer will be safe from noxious fumes such as the reek of ghasts or the stink of wizard clouds. But the fragrance will carry far, especially in enclosed spaces, and none who wear it come unannounced.
23. Rings of the Joined – These bands only work in multiples. All wearers can share aspects of themselves among themselves. If, for example, 8 give up 1 foot of height, a ninth will become 8 feet taller.
24. The Silent Horn – Blowing into it makes no noise. But every person told its magic phrase will hear it sound, deep and clear. Its signal has been used to win battles and in the assassination of seven sultans.
25. Sister Sacks – Two grimy sacks woven of hair, one red, one black. Just large enough to hold a loaf of bread, put something in one and it appears in the other.
26. St Colvin’s Key – St Colvin was a humble miner trapped in a cave in. He dug a hole in the ground in the shape of a cross. This cross slowly filled with water as from a spring and on lying in it Colvin was transported to safety. A hole of a specific shape dug with this spade will fill with water. A second hole dug in the same shape will fill with water and form a gate to the first.
27. St's Buckler – Crude and wooden, this small shield offers no bonus to AC but a foe's critical hits are reflected back on them.
28. Testudunculum – This bronze shield will block three successful missile hits on anyone in 20' every round.
29. Thrall’s Torc – In combat you are much harder to hurt (+3 to AC), but the torc constricts each round you're engaged in violent activity. Half your constitution is the number of rounds you can fight before passing out completely.
30. Wealward – A ring. One malady will but darken it, any more rebound on all in sight.

 

7 Treasures

These treasures are aimed at parties of people moving through dangerous places.

1. Golden Thread - A tiny ball of fine, golden thread.  If someone takes a piece and ties it around your finger, you will see a ghostly thread leading toward that person, wherever they may be.  Enough thread in the ball for d20 pieces
2. Lover's Charm - This is two pieces: crude ceramic heart the size of an apple and a barbed, silver arrow as long as a thumb.  If the arrow is jabbed into living flesh, the heart will give off enough heat that it is uncomfortable to hold.
3. King's Bread - Flat bread that is broken and eaten by parties for luck.  Lasts as long as everyone in the party is alive, or one day, whichever ends first.  All who ate receive bonuses to any luck rolls or saving throws.
4. Sister Sacks - Two grimy burlap sacks just large enough to hold a loaf of bread.  Put something in one and it appears in the other.
5. Five Simple Straws - A rag with five pieces of straw of five different sizes and a note that says: "Walk in the order of the straws you drew and no spiritual harm will come to you." (protects against magic that would take over a person on a failed save: siren songs, possession, etc.)
6. Widow's Pebbles - A bag of seven tiny pebbles that glimmer will quartz and fool's gold.  Anyone who places a pebble in the toe of their boot can hear, distinctly, the footsteps of anyone else that has done the same.  These clicking footsteps are heard by no one else.
7. Spider Twine - This silky soft cord is only long enough to wrap around the waists of five people shuffling along front- to-back.  But if this is done, all will be as quiet as the quietest among them.

The Great Firework Barge Auction

This happened quite a while back but I finally have a chance to record it and I wanted to share this as an example of a type of city event.

First, some backstory.  I made a bunch of fireworks (here and here) and I have a tradition of giving players a freebie on their actual birthday.  One of my players chose some fireworks for his gift.  Then, his character Gino managed to successfully use those to survive a cave full of stirges.  So, the first city he came to he wanted to buy more fireworks.  Thinking this might be an opportunity for some sort of eventual hijinks, I had an npc tell him "why buy individual fireworks when they're auctioning off whole barges?"  So, Gino got a merchant's license and then a few weeks later (in real life) showed up for the auction. 

I did have a quick bit at the end of a previous session where fireworks from each barge were sampled and it was determined how much water damage they had.  It turned out there were three barges: one with 10% water damage, one with 50%, and one undamaged.

The Interested parties
Gino knew how much money he had and what he wanted but what to do with the other players?  I had them take on the roles of the other interested parties.   So first, I had each of them roll up their npc on my Hireling trait chart.  They're familiar with this chart and so are pretty comfortable using it and find interpreting the traits that come up amusing.

We also rolled on the Court Fad of the Day chart (from Vaults of Nagoh, but I can't find it there now) which turned out to be people carrying poles around, the longer the more fashionable.  So I had players roll how long their poles were.  It was ridiculous and we were all laughing, the characters lugging around their 13ft fashion statements.

The Goals
One of the things that makes D&D unique is that it's one of the few types of collaborative play I know of.  Because of this it's always important to me when trying to devise mini-games that they not pit player versus player.  Seriously, every night we hang out that we don't play D&D we play a game that's PVP, so there is no lack of that in our lives.

So, if the other players were going to be Gino's competition, how did they provide that campetition without just trying to outbid him.  And because the amount of money these npcs have is determined by me (or random roll, but still I'd be setting the parameters) how could any kind of bidding auction be fair for Gino's player?  My solution was the multiple barges of varying quality and giving the npcs differing, but not mutually exclusive goals.  Basically, players could work together to get portions of a barge if they wanted and still succeed.  The four goals were:

• You're under great pressure to win one of these barges with your own money but you don't want to.  Make it look like you tried to buy one but fail.  10,000 sp
• You need some fireworks for an upcoming festival but you're low on funds.  Get some fireworks.  1000 sp
• It would be amusing to have some fireworks.  But buying the damaged barges would be beneath your station.  Aquire some fireworks from the non-damaged barges.  10,000 sp
• You think you can sell the water damaged fireworks to an alchemist.  Acquire one of the barges with damaged fireworks.  3,000 sp

I had the hardest time throughout all of this trying to put a monetary value on these fireworks and thus on these whole barges and on how much money each bidder would be bringing to bear.  But after pulling out a bunch of hair I settled on the values above.

I didn't really know what Gino would do.  So I wanted it possible for him, at the very least, to acquire a portion of fireworks or maybe the most damaged barge.  In other words, this all started from him wanting fireworks.  I didn't want this elaborate mini-game to end up making that impossible.

To facilitate deal-making between the interested parties I gave players ~15 minutes before the auction started to talk to each other in-character.

I also offered 100xp to any player that made their goal.  I know this is bizarre for D&D, to give a character xp for something some random npc did.  In this case, I just wanted something toget them interested and engaged and it worked.

The Auction
I can't remember all the details now.  I started out with very small bids and later, at the suggestion of players made the bid jumps higher to speed things up.  From my notes, it looks like the barges went for 3,500 sp, 2,025 sp,  and 5,700 sp (I'm sorry, I don't remember which barges were which).  I do remember the player with goal one unintentionally won the bid on the first barge and then was a spoiler, bidding wildly in the subsequent 2 exchanges.  I think she won the second barge and only lost the last one after bidding it up.  (yes that looks right, if she'd spent 5025 of her 10,000, that last barge would have been just out of her reach).

I think Gino ended up cutting a deal with the player with goal 3 who had a lot of cash and the easiest goal to make.  Neither of the remaining two players made their goals either.

The Aftermath
The players wanted to find out who was forcing the woman to buy a barge she didn't want and punish them somehow.  I had no idea who it was and felt weird about the whole thing because their characters should have no idea that this woman that just bought two barges didn't want them.  That is something in the back of my brain now though, maybe it will come together with other threads in the future.

Now Gino has hundreds of fireworks, what's going to become of them?  Well, he has a group of lepers building a barge for an upcoming religious regatta, and he just hired someone to fit it with a bunch of tubes, so stay tuned.

The Bustling City

These aren't "encounters" so much as the groups of people characters moving through a city might encounter.  They may be just passing examples of the bustling, populous nature of the city.  If players want to interact with them, or somehow get swept up in the thing these groups are doing, more might come of it.

I'll probably have players roll on this (and then help them interpret the results) every time them move from one place to another in the city.

Roll 3d10 and fill in one of the three possible "sentences" with the results:

I've mashed social class and wealth together because, as an American, I'm less aware of class distinctions that aren't tied to cash.  You could make two columns if you want.

Entry #6 for Types of People is trying to get away from thinking that the default will be men.  In my world they will be a mix of genders.  So this result will signify that it is only men, only women, or maybe something different like a group of Hijra.

The second "sentence" is based on the idea that the Types of People categories are not  mutually exclusive.  In other words you might have a group of old soldiers or a group of foreign bureaucrats.

Let's try some for the first "sentence":

6, 2, 10
We could say it is a group of male peasants celebrating a sporting victory, carrying the best players on their shoulders.

5,7,3 
Ooh, this is odd.  A group of wealthier children are protesting something.  Maybe pelting their tutor with vegetables?

9,6,5

A group is pouring from a church after someone noticed a child went missing.

Seems to work okay.  Any of those might turn into an adventure; the players find out about some sport they can try in a minigame, or at least bet on-- they might meet this put-upon tutor and befriend him/her-- the missing child might be an abduction by something dire.