#magic artifact

[stonegearstudios]

Creating A MegaDungeon Part 8

Small thing today because I've only been working on small stuff (in between procrastinating) One day, a thought came across me, as thoughts often do. It said "You should start thinking up some special magic items for the dungeon" and then "wouldn't it be cool if there was a artifact that was relevant and important through the entire dungeon?" So I started thinking

Something relevant through a wide variety of environments, could be something like a sword or armour, but that didn't seem very interesting to me.

Eventually, I settled on a key, a key you could manipulate.

The Peculiar Prism (better name pending) is roughly 6 inchs tall and 6 inches wide. It is made up of a core, and 9 rotating layers, each made of a kind of semi-precious stone. You can rotate each layer clockwise or counter-clockwise, settling into 8 notches each way.

It radiates a faint aura of magic but otherwise gives few clues, other than the fact that there are niches that would seem to fit.

It's a key, but you can't just turn it in a lock, you need to know it's codes. I've already been thinking of ways to encode information in reasonable puzzles for the players. Not sure if the Prism would be required to proceed past certain parts, or just make it easier by opening up more direct paths and locked rooms.

I want to make the players excited whenever they see a place they can use it, once they uncover the puzzle code.

Now I need to keep working on level layouts so I can find places to put it.

[thesorceresstemple]

[transcendragon]

The Golden Leaf - this is art of a magical object in the romance fantasy novel I’m currently writing, "To Claim a Prince". I really like how this one turned out, I could imagine it on the back cover of a fantasy novel right under the blurb.

My original art made in Procreate, image description in alt text

[gavamont]

Gavamont! I have come into possession of some finely aged blagwort but it's going to go bad soon and I don't know what to use it in! Do you have any suggestions?

Ooh! Love me some finely aged blagwort, but it’s uses are so limited. My top suggestion is mortaring it until it’s a paste, add a little Infernal Salt for preservation, and then get a new stick for a wand, Yew is recommended, but you could use any wood that is harder than maple. Once you’ve carved the wand, hollow it out the from the handle end, NOT the casting tip as that will grow weak and leak quickly, and pour the blagwort paste into the hole and seal it.

Every spell cast with that wand will also summon a minor image of the target’s fourth most intense fear, which is pretty good for duels. BUT REMEMBER to label it, nothing is more jarring than casting a healing spell that also shows an image of being mauled by a pack of were lions.

[characcoon]

UGH I've been meaning to finish this for a while.

Ref sheet of The Swapper, the artifact used in Change of Perspective. I've been making a bunch of magic artifacts lately and why not show them huh?

Transcription of the settings it can have:

- Main setting: swaps one thing for another one thing, living being or not, independent of size.

- "make it fair": swaps one thing for another one thing, living being or not, of the same mass.

- "make it more": swaps (x) things for another (x) things, living being or not, independent of size, randomly.

- mind swap: swaps one mind for another one mind, only on living beings.

- body swap: swaps one body part for another body part, only on living being. The original function of the body part is not lost.

[oldschoolfrp]

In 1976 Tim Kask worried that D&D had grown stale after two years, not because they hadn’t released enough new rules but because adding more official rules had made the D&D world more well-defined with less room for creativity.  (From the foreword to D&D Supplement III: Eldritch Wizardry by Gygax and Blume, TSR, 1976)

The “new trend” primarily refers to the introduction of artifacts and relics, legendary items that all players might learn about and want to find, but with powers determined by the DMs so their true nature would be unique in each campaign.  These included the Wand of Orcus, the Eye and Hand of Vecna, and the Sword of Kas:

[quarkmaster]

Frostheart Omnilith

Klaher Baklaher

[stonegearstudios]

Horrible rpg weapon idea: A unicorn horn spear. Unicorn horns are known for purifying water (side thought, I wonder if this is actually an ancient legend, or more of a modern addition like a lot of werewolf stuff?) But how they purify it is if a horn contacts a fluid that has any amount of H2O in it, it obliterates anything that's not water in the solution.

So if you get stabbed by this spear and it makes contact with your blood (or any other fluid in you really) oops that's not blood anymore, it's water. A scratch could transmute all the blood in several square inches of skin, a piecing wound anywhere from a quarter to a half of your body. Even beyond the massive blood loss, the fact that it's not gone, but now something's in your veins that's not supposed to be? Horrible.

Thankfully unicorn horns are beyond rare. If you see one of the nigh mythical Unicorn Knights on the battlefield, you run