Casket of Suffering

If the holder of this tiny, sandalwood box is harmed, it will hold the pain of one blow, even though it be mortal, so that the holder does not feel it.  If someone opens the casket unsuspecting, the blow it holds will fall on them.  Sought after by assassins.

 (I'm still out here, folks. Hope you are well.)

The Traveling Shrine

The Traveling Shrine of Anyavati - A teak box as long as a tall man that is a shrine to a forgotten saint.  The front has several horn windows through which a small body can be seen.  It is difficult to see through the yellowish windows whether the body is that of a child or a tiny woman.  Both corners on the back of the box has a tumpline of braided black hair attached.  If two holy men carry the box using these tumplines anyone touching the shrine will be unharmed be demons, foul spirits, or undead.

Brass Sash

Brass Sash

A sash of heavy linen with thin sheets of brass sewn into the front and back.  Inscribe that brass with the names of friends and hirelings who have perished in your sight to have a better chance of escaping their fate (+1 hit points for each name).

NPCs as Treasure

Rescuing someone in a dungeon may lead to them offering you a reward.  It may lead to players having a local contact for information and interactions in the future.  But what if the person rescued was so talented the reward they offered was like a magic item?

The Royal Jeweler - I can make a brass automaton that mimics the movement of a real creature so truly it can pass as that creature!  Come to me in the future and I will make one for you.  Whatever creature you wish as long as it is no bigger than a small dog. 

The Wise Woman - Take me to some dread place you will enter and I will ask my ancestors about it.  Then I will give you a walnut that will roll toward treasure, an acorn that will roll toward lost friends, and a maple samara that will flutter back to the exit.

The Mad Hermit - I have gathered foul herbs enough to slather three of you so you will appear dead to the dead and beast to the beasts and foul impertinent to gentlefolk and scholars.

That's the idea anyway.  I want it to be a kind of one time service, not something the players would go back to again and again.  So it needs to be unique and powerful enough that the NPC can only afford it once.  But also want it to function as another tool in the Player's adventuring toolbox.  Something they will keep in mind for future heists or schemes.  So it can't be a straight up reward, like if the wise woman gave the three seed to them and they would work in the next dungeon with no further help from her.

Six Magic Treasures for the Roguish

 

Six Magic Treasures for the Roguish

1d6 magic items for rogues:

1. Demurest Cap – When seen by someone who knows the wearer by name, they appear to be wearing a coarse, lace veil. Anyone else will see the random face of another person.

2. Aromatic Sash – This sash emits a strong smell of perfume when worn. Turned inside out, emits a strong smell of burning smoke.

3. Rogue’s Wardrobe – A simple, hooded robe. Inside are four small pockets and one small brass ring sewn to a cord. If the ring is placed in these pockets, the wearer’s clothes under the robe will be changed, depending on the pocket, to those typical of a pilgrim, cleric, merchant, or lesser noble.

4. Quick Slippers – The wearer of these simple slippers can move through crowds unimpeded, walking or running, the crowd will part as if not there.

5. Portly Vest – The wearer appears jollily fat. If thin enough, they can use the fake belly to hide a pack or carried goods.

6. Barber’s Bag – A linen bag of small, white ribbons. When tied in the hair, each will result in a different length and look of the hair.

6 Treasures that Change at Sunset

I went to buy groceries in my N95 mask.  Had to wipe ash off the windshield of my truck.  The sun was just a red circle in a grey sky.  Felt like I was on Tatooine.  Here are some more magic items.  The fourth is more a novelty, that might serve as a hard to find but valuable treasure item.  The rest might be good for schemes.

    6 Treasures that Change at Sunset

1. Mukade – A boxwood comb rubbed with camellia oil. At night it turns to razor-edged obsidian.

2. Humbling Leaf – Ornate comb of solid gold, at night it turns to simple boxwood.

3. Pilgrim’s Comfort – A simple gourd canteen. Water filled in the day becomes wine at night.

4. Royal Harem Candles – Fat candles infused with perfumes, invisible by day.

5. Nightsman’s Box – A simple pine box with leather-hinged lid. Opening after sunset reveals it’s nighttime contents, after dawn, its daytime contents

6. Telecanter’s Frugal Reader – A heavy, burlap-bound book. Each night its contents will change to a copy of another book nearby.

Reclusive Coffer

Reclusive Coffer - A small strongbox carved from a single oak burl that has a brass badge inscribed Plant me here, Harvest me there.  If buried, anywhere the burier digs they will find the coffer.  Each day it is left buried it is more likely to start whispering "Do you have need of me?" to each passerby. 

The Baker's Quittance

The Baker's Quittance - A lead coin the size of an open palm.  If it is baked in a loaf with a name whispered over it, the person named will forever see the coin as solid gold.

Phoenix Breviary

Phoenix Breviary - A hand-size book bound in what appears to be black ostrich hide.  Its pages are empty.  Placed in a fire, the book will be unharmed and reveal the canonical hours of a banned cult for as long as it is surrounded by flame.  Anything written in it will disappear until revealed similarly.  Plenty of room in the margins or endpapers to add notes and maps.

The Iron Poem and the Green Song

 The Iron Poem 

A silk vest in sea green and yellow made loose and light to be worn over armor.  When it gets wet it becomes as hard as a chain shirt while staying just as light as silk.

The Green Song

A long chain shirt masterly crafted with a pattern of large shell-shaped rings and smaller connecting circles.  When wet it becomes a white silk shirt with a silver pattern embroidered exactly like the pattern of the rings.

Known in stories as the Twins, these were meant to be worn together.  Once worn by a great pirate captain, they have been long separated and lost.

Concubine Wind Puppet

Concubine Wind Puppet

An especially ornate sari with a small ivory peg sewn to one end.  The peg is meant to be pressed into soft earth to anchor it.  If caught in the wind, this cloth billows into a lifelike person able to gesture and converse.  It is likely to know about the history and geography of the location it was found in.  Stories say they can be found in male, female, and ambiguous representations, though all beautiful and exquisitely ornamented.

Treasure in the Dungeon

I've spent the last three days fighting LibreOffice and my printer trying to assemble all my treasure tables into something organized that I might share.  Haven't succeeded, but in the process I think I have a simple treasure system hammered out now.  Here is my attempt to organize the chaos of my many treasure item charts:

How Much Treasure?
The amount of magic treasure you give out will be too much or not enough based on how many players you have and how often you play.   But for me, with 4-6 people playing 1-4 times a month, I think this system will work okay.   My goal is to get magic into their hands so they can have interesting choices to make and cool plans to come up with using these items.  So, 1-4 consumable magic items scattered in every dungeon. I also want treasure to seem cool, more than just money, so at least 1 player valued treasure per dungeon. And a 1 in 6 chance for non-consumable magic items.

Class-Specific Treasures
I think a simple way to make sure all classes present in your campaign get stuff to use is to rotate which class a class-based treasure belongs to.  Yes, knowing this might break the sense of realism a bit for a player, but class-based treasures are only one of four things that can be rolled, so they might occur so infrequently players don't notice the rotating pattern.  And even if they do, I'm betting it is worth a little gameyness to not randomly end up with magical swords over and over again in treasures found by a party of clerics and magic users.

Birthday Treasures
One curve ball in my treasure allocation process, is that my group and I have a tradition of letting players pick a magic item on their birthday.  I think some of the most awesome items my players have, have come from this route.  It takes away from the excitement of finding things in the mysterious underworld a bit.  But, they only have birthdays once a year, and in our circumstances where our campaign play would sometimes be stopped for long stretches by life it was a way to get some magic items in play.  And they love it.   So, not sure I would recommend it as a general practice, but it is an option that seems to be working out okay for us.

Work to Do
So, I have most of the charts needed for my system.  I still need some class-based consumables for clerics and fighters.  I put my idea of what could work for those in my chart-- weapon/armor oils for fighters and candles/incense for clerics seem to fit well.  I also need to work on more permanent class-based magic items.  A place to start might be One-Page type charts that gather the most iconic magic swords into one place, same for shields.  Or just invent more.  And yes, still haven't finished the player valued treasure tables.  I will try to share these as I finish them.

Player-Valued Treasure

In trying to follow up my last post and give more explicit rules for treasure placement, I ran into something I thought about a while ago: there aren't really a lot of treasure types.  Most treasure, especially with unintelligent monsters, will be incidental, whatever was dropped by their previous victims.  So it will be coins or "dungeon tools" like scrolls, potions, and wands.

But coins are boring to me as DM, I've always wanted something more-- art objects and trade goods like bales of silk and such.  But I was thinking again lately that anything of that type is just something that players need to convert to gold, kind of like annoying treasure, treasure with an extra step.  There's nothing wrong with making some treasure more of a challenge-- something big and difficult to move but really worth it if you get it out.  But I always wanted something more, something that when found, players would be hesitant to give up because they considered it cool and valuable in it's own right, you know, like treasure. What would that be?  Here are some ideas:

Adornment
Clothing and jewelry they might like and want to adorn their character with.  Sashes, cloaks, belts.  These things will need to be detailed enough so they aren't just abstract treasure, but might be the players favorite color or style.  So specific gemstones and materials, not so we can calculate the value of the ring better if we know it is ruby versus moonstone, but because the player might really dig moonstone.

I like the idea of embroidery or leatherwork that tells stories or has scenes.  Maybe they depict a quality the player might want to convey, Bravery, Determination, Cruelty.

They might be in a particular style, that of their home land, or their home village, a kind of embroidery like their mother used to make, say.

Cloak clasps, hair pins, scarves it all depends on your players I suppose.

As a player, I always liked to personalize my gear, carve my staff for example. Maybe let your players find wood carving knives, leather tooling kits, a roll of leather belt "blanks" or various lengths and widths.  It's not like players can't carve their staves if they asked, or buy supplies to do these things, but they might not think of doing so (especially if they are new players) until the option is presented.  These items turn the abstract idea players hadn't thought of-- hey, I can make my character dress like a crazy pirate!- into the treasure.

Class-Based Gear
Players may be more interested in items they can use: decorative scroll cases or lock pick sets, well-made water proof sacks, light but strong caskets.  Interesting Holy symbols of their own deities.  Belts with pouches, gloves made of interesting materials like basilisk scales.  Armor of normal defense but with geometric patterns or a bright color, or all black.  Scabbards, quivers, tabbards.

Character Image Items
Some players (especially experienced roleplayers) might have a conception of their character they want to portray: the drunk, the fop, the scholar.  If you get the sense that they are going for that you can personalize treasure with stuff they can use fulfill that role, whatever it is.  Tobacco, casks of particular types of drink, musical instruments, books about certain subjects, hobby/craft tools like fishing or hunting gear.  Hats, fancy boots.

I suppose much of this could overlap with adornment, but not consumables that have no in-game effect like tobacco and alcohols.  And not the interest-based items.  Collection display cases, stationary, muzzles and falconry gear.

3 Types of Treasures
So now I'm realizing that what I'm ending up with is that there are probably ~3 types of treasure similar to the way I propose there are three types of monster in my last post:  1) There is raw treasure, coins (a subset would be awkward treasure that needs to be converted to coins and is a bit difficult to do so). 2) there are dungeon tools-- usually consumable magic items (magic items like scrolls or potions, poisons, fire works) that help players survive, and 3) discretionary treasure that you place to try and please your players based on what you know about them.

So, what next?  Raw treasure is easy, I just plop down coins equivalent to three times the experience point value of all the monsters in the dungeon.  Dungeon tools I feel like I have been working on for years, you can see some of these tables on my DM aids page.

For discretionary treasure, though, we won't always know what characters want until they grab it.  So, I guess variety is important and making sure some of each type above is available.  The good thing is that most of the clothes and tools won't be worth too much in monetary value, so it won't hurt to make a little available in each hoard or dungeon.  Maybe I can make a treasure table for each category above: Adornment, Class Gear, and Image Items.  Then I could roll once on each, or roll once on one of the three each time I determine a treasure.

Yet More Magical Treasures

More things that might make braving the dungeon worth it:

1. Brass Saddle - No mount can fall while you ride in this intricate, decorative saddle.  Neither gaping wounds nor small scrapes will have any effect on your steed until you dismount.
2. Skull Rattle - Shake this and all your enemies must change the target of their attacks.
3. Meddler's Coffer - Say a name, open this small coffer, and you will be able to rummage through that person's things.  Anything in chests, purses, cupboards, or baskets can be seen and picked through.  Nothing can be taken through the coffer, but one might awkwardly read letters, study a map, or inventory items.
4. Selfish Chisel - Use as you normally would a chisel, but arrows, inscriptions, or beautiful decorations made are only seen by you.
5. Bone Comb - Use this simple comb to clean gore from your hair and reflect on your actions immediately after a battle and you will learn twice as fast (2x xp for that battle).
6. Spider Brooch - When you are still (not moving, not fighting) this stylized copper spider comes to life and, with bites and webs, sees to your wounds (2hp per turn healed). 

So,  4 would have been good for the solo magic item list and I'm worried that 5 and 6 are too powerful.  The spider brooch is basically a limited ring of regeneration.  You might limit the bone comb similarly by requiring the grooming take 3 turns or an hour, the rest of the party might be less willing to wait around that long.

6 Roguish Magical Treasures

Magical treasures for more roguish types of play:

1. Tabard of Shifting - Goes over armor and shows enemies the heraldic symbols of whoever they least want to fight- be they family, ally, or powerful enemies.  Enemies that understand such symbols will lose the first round of initiative and have -1 to hit thereafter. The tabard can shift even within combats.
2. Quill of Stealing - Quill that allows you to forge, by stealing the real signature off of one document and placing it on another.  Only holds one signature at a time.
3. Coins of Return - 7 gold coins with different ancient emperors depicted, each known for despicable acts.  Pay someone with all of these at once and the coins return to you at midnight.
4. Fidelis Fibulae - Give one of these beautiful cloak pins to a trusted hireling.  As their loyalty diminishes, so does their hair- falling out little by little (the bald will grow hair).
5. My Last Mistake - A colorful porcelain knot the size of a coin.  Break it and the last hour can be done over.
6. The Golden Bones - Crude, carved from bone, as long as these dice are rolled anyone within earshot will gather round and watch the results.

6 Magical Book Treasures

I wanted to give you these for Christmas, but books were harder for me to come up with cool items for play. They seem to be more dry reference materials than items players would be carrying around everywhere. Anyway, here is what I came up with:

1. Book of Holding - This very heavy tome appears to be a collection of works by various hands from various times but resting a mundane book on top of it will cause that  book to be added to its pages.  It never changes size and appears to have infinite room for more new works..  Titled Praecepta ad Filium by Simplicius Porphyrogenitus.
2. Book of Many Compartments -  It has 600 pages and 100 hidden cut outs.  You must remember the pages that small items may be hidden on, otherwise it appears a normal work of natural history.  Titled Memorabilia by Diodorus the Elder
3. Dandolo's Fechtbuch - Studying a section will grant a benefit to any combats the next day, but you can choose only one section to study: Offense: +1, Defense: +1, Caution: reduced fumbles, Boldness: extended critical range.
4. Book of Translating - Appears to be a dry record of commercial deals and political agreements made by different pairs of speakers.  But if two people touch the book while talking it will record that conversation in the book.  Conversations appear to be in whatever language the reader understands best.  Titled Accords of the Caravan Princes by Harun al-Hafiz.
5. Book of Rehearsing - Appears to be small philosphical dialogues in which a person entreats another in different ways to different results.  Say the name of a person and then say something to them.  These will appear in the book along with that persons probable responses (a way to rehearse important npc interactions). Titled The Dialectics by Proclus of Tatos.
6. Book of Snakes - Contains hundreds of swatches of reptile skin.  Poorly labelled but experience will show it contains rattlesnake, spitting cobra, python, flying snakes and even a basilisk.  Once a day, touching a swatch will cause the book to turn into that reptile and the toucher will be able to communicate with that snake.

I also really wanted to make two other ideas work but they take a lot of effort on your part as DM to fit them in your world.  first, the Friendly Book which is a sentient book that offers up answers, recipes, songs, and bits of lore, especially for new and younger players. (Kind of a bard as book I'm now realizing ;).

The other idea was to have a set of volumes that improve effectiveness as you find more of them.  I think one way to do this is have 4 books for making a poison or potion that break down like this 1) finding and harvesting ingredients 2) preparing ingredients 3) cooking and processing ingredients together 4) storing and applying. 

Players might sell any of them for gold, but if you set it up right they might have better and better chances of successfully completing the poison/potion.  Could be a mini-game or just abstract bonuses.  I was thinking a Chinese lich could have written 10,000 of these and the series is titled After Drinking a Golden Potion.

6 Solo Magical Treasures

These are aimed at the poor fool in the underworld alone:

1. Choker of Isolde - Constricts slightly when someone is searching for you, eases again when they stop.
2. Twine of Seeking - 30 feet of rough twine, hold one end, whisper a word, and it will slowly snake out and retrieve that thing- be it key, phylactery, or purse.
3. Shadow Window - A rough piece of amber-tinted glass the size of a book.  Press it against a door and a shadow play of anything moving on the other side of the door will appear.
4. White Mites - Pour out this sack of thousands of rice-sized, white mites and they will flee into the cracks of any lose stones nearby- trap, trigger, or secret door.
5. Careful Boots - Click the heals and they leave no tracks, click them again and they leave tracks headed the way you came.
6. Holy Chimes - Tiny, pewter, pilgrim badges dangling from string, they make no noise unless the undead are near.

6 More Magical Treasures

I guess I've got these on my mind, so have a few more magical treasures:

1. Belt of Swallowing - The wearer of this thick belt can eat anything - poison, acid, broken glass- and be unharmed.  They can also suck up creatures of less than 1HD on a successful hit.  This hurts, though, and they take 1hp dmg each time. 
2. Silk of Reciprocating - If a person whispers a name into this length of silk and then binds themselves with it, that person named will be bound similarly- gagged, blindfolded, hands or feet tied magically together.
3. Silver Razor - Shaving a person with this silver razor will cause them to love you until their hair grows back.
4. Whale Breakers - Two pieces of whale tooth scrimshawed with scenes of Inuit bear hunts.  If they are held firmly in both hands for at least an hour (no shield, no rope use, no opening doors) they begin feeling colder and heavier and will allow the holder to strike foes with the force of two flails, breaking bones on critical hits.
5.  White Fronds - Anything wrapped in these fuzzy grey, foot-wide fronds emits no smell.
6. Telecanter's Bookmark - A strip of very worn human skin with a tattoo on it:  Find this name's enduring fame. If a proper name is spoken and the strip of skin is placed in a book, it will move through the book stopping at the first place that name is mentioned.  If the book is opened, and closed it will continue.  If that book is placed on a shelf of books, it will move from book to book finding references in a whole library.

6 Consumable Magic Treasures

I mentioned I didn't have enough cool consumable magic treasures so I've been trying to come up with some more.  These magic items are used up through use:

1. Flowing Battle Ribbon - Grows 1 inch for each round of combat you are in but not hit, when you are finally hit it blocks that many points of damage and falls to tatters.
2. Wax Wings of Flight - Small wings made completely of wax attached to a white silk harness.  There is a wick.  Lighting the wick will allow the wearer to fly beautifully, but cause the wings to melt irreparably in the time it takes for one combat or 1/2 mile of travel.
3. Smouldering Robe - Continuously smouldering as if about to catch fire, this robe protects its wearer from any fire or heat for one combat or one turn before being consumed. 
4. Bottle of Fog - Stoppered glass bottle filled with swirling grey mists.  Pulling the stopper will cause fog to slowly stream out for a day, filling a huge space.  Breaking the bottle will cause a 10' cube to fill instantly.
5. Candle of Past Shadows - When lit, no normal shadows are made, instead a shadow play is cast of the last living things in this area.  Letting the candle burn down will cause older and older scenes to be shown.  Has 1d10 uses.
6. Porcelain Gong - "Let this gong be sound when enemies surround" Striking will break the gong and cause the striker and all allies to fight one battle with great focus, committing no fumbles and much more likely to make critical hits (critical range is increased to 17-20).

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.