Add Mystery to Magic Items – Brandes Stoddard

This post comes from a conversation with Avantris Entertainment’s Lead Designer, Dan Dillon, the other day. He observed that 3.x and earlier editions of D&D had more secrets and surprises built into its magic items, such as items that initially appeared to be much more common versions, so that the truth was only revealed over the course of play.

Identify

To get this off the ground, add this to your Identify spell text. “Some properties may be hidden, and Identify never works an artifacts. If an item has hidden properties, the spell tells you that they exist but not what they are.” I like handing out information with both hands as much as the next DM, but not every question gets answered in a single ritual, you know? After all, there are some secrets that only fire can tell.

I also handle Identify differently in my campaign. Taking a page from a spell in Wildlands South LARP, the Identify spell summons a Tiny Celestial, Elemental, Fey, Fiend, or Undead that gives you information about the item or items you’re studying. This has the benefit of turning a very dry reading of the item’s features into a character moment and interaction, and the caster can usually get a bit of extra information out of the spirit. Pretty much whatever is immediately useful to me for them to know.

Magic Item Secrets

In a D&D Next playtest packet dated 08/02/13, the following text appears:

Secrets

Some items have secrets. An item might be secretly cursed or possessed by a fiend, or it might have a hidden property that is revealed only when the item is worn by an elf or wielded by a lawful good creature.

A secret should be a surprise to the item’s user, whether pleasant or unpleasant—if it comes to light at all. Each item with a secret specifies whether and how the information is revealed to the item’s owner. The various methods of identifying items typically do not reveal any secrets of the item, although lore might hint at those secrets.

There aren’t a ton of secrets in the rest of that document; the old Bag of Holding in a Portable Hole thing is a notable one, and that’s widely-memed D&D lore at this point. The next packet, dated 09/19/13, has several more secrets attached to its magic items, most of them pretty interesting—though some of them are more work for the DM to remember than others.

The whole idea of the DMG having secret content that is unknown to the players wound up being a non-starter, I think. Not that players need to know everything in the DMG to enjoy the game, but that they can know anything in the DMG without breaking the game. There’s probably also a lot of tyranny of the limited page-count at work here, as the example secrets in the 09/19/13 packet usually increase the column-inches of each item by 50-100%.

Even if that weren’t enough, magic item secrets would have been an unbelievable pain in the ass for presentation in D&D Beyond, because players do need some way to look up their items and attach them to their character sheets. In pen-and-paper play, a player can have vagueness and confusion in their notes; in D&D Beyond, that’s a lot more difficult to manage unless you’re going to build partial-text versions of each of their magic items.

The DMG is here to turn first-time DMs into competent beginners, and to be a reference for DMs of all experience levels. That’s a complicated enough job that it doesn’t try to create intermediate or expert DMs. What this means for me is that blogs can explore the techniques and ideas that the DMG doesn’t have space to cover.

Mysteries and Strange Ideas: The Collectible Cup Set

There are several items of this type in the world (Rings of Protection, perhaps). Useful in their own right, when brought together with four more like them, the puzzle of their design becomes solvable as they are joined together into one item. There are several possible configurations, and you can reconfigure them as part of a Long Rest. (Ring of Spell Turning and Ring of the God’s Eye, on which more in a moment.)

(P.S., this is the moment that I learned that the 5.5e Ring of Spell Turning is completely bonkers powerful, even for a Legendary.)

This opens up a deeper story of the rings’ forging and previous owners. The first Ring of the God’s Eye was a ward against evil, given by a god to their mortal champion, and the god opened a new eye in the opal set into the ring. When the mortal champion died, the ring was split between her five companions; none believed they were worthy to wear it in its true form, but the mortal champion would have been proud to continue protecting each of them.

If you’re like me, you probably let players roll an Intelligence (Investigation) check each time they acquire one of the Rings of Protection, and on a success they get clues about joining the rings together. The target DC starts at 30 and drops a bit for each ring they possess past the first.

Ring of the God’s Eye

Ring, Legendary (Requires Attunement)

This steel ring is set with five tiny shields, one of which is an eye-shaped opal. While you wear this ring, you gain a +1 bonus to AC and saving throws, and the following additional properties.

Divine Sanction. When a creature deals damage to you, you can take a Reaction to force it to roll a DC 19 Wisdom saving throw. A creature that fails this save takes 6d8 Radiant damage immediately, and again when it deals damage on its turn, up to once per turn. On a success, it takes 6d8 Radiant damage immediately, and no further effect. At the end of any turn that the creature doesn’t deal damage, it can make a new saving throw, ending the Divine Sanction on a success. You can’t take this Reaction again until the next dawn.

The Weaver’s Map

Any open surface can hold text or images. Any wall can be lore-bearing, and any old rug could be an infohazard.

Now, one Carpet of Flying was also an intelligent Construct, and that guy was great. But what if the complex pattern of a Persian rug were on your Carpet of Flying, and it contained a deeper secret: an encoded map, an image only comprehensible from 10,000 feet up? What if you need the rug not just to get to the adventure, but to know where the adventure takes place?

Why did the weaver care enough to make it so? Was the weaver a Cloud Giant that could see the world from on high, or maybe the son of a notorious sky pirate whose lost treasure has never been found? Or might there be some dire answer? Are you followed by the Weaver-Goddess’s arachnid spies even now?

The real trouble of ever figuring out this map is that no other map in the world is drawn this way, since most cartographers can’t fly and draw maps at the same time. It takes a DC 30 Intelligence (Investigation) or Wisdom (Survival) check to figure it out, decreasing the DC by 5 for each week of searching from the skies—and you’re probably dealing with rolls on an Aerial Encounters table along the way.

The Missing Gem

This is included for completeness. Everyone and their brother has the idea of upgrading the fighter’s +1 Longsword by finding the gemstones that are meant to go in its empty sockets. And frankly, yeah, that’s always going to be popular, the basic Materia concept is incredibly useful.

The real question is how to do something more with that. It helps if you need to know how and why it lost its gem(s):

Were they stripped out of it by a dread emperor, an eon ago?
Were they chipped out by your grandfather in his desperation to make money, when he couldn’t continue mercenary work any longer?
Are the gems still present, their light dimmed when the Stars of Vailuhan were snuffed out by the hunger of the star spawn and the heralds of Hadar?
Does the Burning Heart of Ashardalon hold the power needed to reawaken the blade Cathinvalha?

Cathinvalha

Greatsword, Legendary (Requires Attunement)

This sword’s blade reveals its intricate runes and patterning only while you are Bloodied. You gain a +3 bonus to attack and damage rolls made with this weapon. It also grants the following properties.

Ancient Wrath. You have Destructive Wave prepared. Your spellcasting ability is the highest of your Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma, with a minimum spell save DC of 18. Fiends have Disadvantage on saving throws against this spell. You can cast it once without expending a spell slot, and regain the ability to cast it this way each day at dawn.

Pierce Deceits. You have Advantage on Wisdom (Insight) checks to detect falsehoods and comprehend hidden motives. If the d20 result is a 18, 19, or 20 you can detect all Illusion and Transmutation effects within 60 feet, and you can end one of them immediately.

Red Star. While you are Bloodied it sheds Bright Light in a 20-foot radius and Dim Light for an additional 20 feet, and it deals an additional 1d10 Slashing damage.

Sever Possession. When you hit a possessed or Dominated creature with this weapon, you can force the creature controlling it to make a DC 18 Constitution saving throw. On a failure, the effect ends and you learn the name of the controlling creature.

Secret: True Knight of the Blood War. This property is hidden, and is revealed only when you go to one of the Lower Planes with the weapon in your possession. The sword remembers the time before the breaking of oaths. As long as you break no oath while attuned to the sword, you speak Infernal and Abyssal, and you can’t fail a saving throw to resist corruption caused by the Lower Planes.

Extraneous Identification

What if you had an Identify that revealed too much, or said things that weren’t yet true? Supplying information that has obvious problems is a great spark to a mystery. Let’s take the humble Circlet of Blasting: a nice item for some extra firepower, but its non-scaling spell attack bonus means you reach a point where it’s not even a good use of your turn anymore.

You discovered this circlet on one of your earliest adventures, taken off the body of the Bandit Prince Rothving when you thwarted his delusions of grandeur. The Identify spell reveals:

“This is a Circlet of Blasting. It is one of the crown jewels of the Outlaw Barony. You will wear it when you bring low the Royal Thief-taker, and you will wear it when they hang you. Its jewel is a guttering candle now, though once it was something greater. You can cast Scorching Ray with it once, rekindled by the passing of the dawn.”

The Outlaw Barony may not exist (as far as anyone knows right now), and there may be no Royal Thief-taker. But if you were to achieve these things, it would gain additional daily charges of Scorching Ray, an improved spell attack bonus, and finally become the Crown of Phoenix Flame.

Crown of Phoenix Flame

Wondrous Item, Very Rare (Requires Attunement)

This crown appears to be made entirely of flame, and only one who is attuned to it can don and doff it without taking 1d6 Fire damage. While you wear it, it grants the following properties.

Fear Not the Flame. You have Resistance to Fire damage, and when you take Fire damage, you have Advantage on attacks that would deal Fire damage until the end of your next turn.

Fiery Wrath. You can cast Hellish Rebuke and Scorching Ray. Your spellcasting ability is your choice of Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma (minimum spell attack +8, minimum spell save DC 16). You can cast each spell once without expending a spell slot, and regain the ability to cast them this way each day at dawn.

Unbowed. When you fall to 0 Hit Points but aren’t killed instantly, you regain 25 Hit Points, and you gain a Fly speed of 90 feet for 1 minute. You regain the use of this property each day at dawn.

Conclusion

I hope you’ve enjoyed these examples of how to add more surprise and story to well-known DMG magic items. This is my 600^th post in Harbinger of Doom, and whether you’re a first-time reader or you’ve been around since the beginning in 2010, I’m glad you’re here and I hope you find something interesting. I’d love to hear your ideas too!