Armament Quests in Dungeons and Dragons
Give Away: Loresmyth: Modular Dungeon Tiles - Arcania
The Arcania digital tile set lets you make dark, shadowy dungeon maps, rich with the fumes of arcane secrets.
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Main Topic: Armament Quests
Crit Academy discusses Armament Quests. While finding magical items and loot in treasure chests, dropped by defeated foes, or even gifted as a reward for great deeds. Nothing is as exciting as venturing out to gather unique materials and perform supernatural rituals to create magical weapons and armor. These special quests give the player characters the opportunity to undergo a unique trial to allow them to attempt to imbue a mundane object with magical properties. In this episode, we give a few examples of some fun quest lines you can extend to your player characters to help them forge their own armaments.
Weapon +1
The characters locate a scroll with arcane runes written in Primordial (Ignan). A character who can read the text learns the scroll contains instructions and a ritual on how to imbue a mundane weapon with elementary magical properties. Additionally, a character who can read the scroll must succeed on a DC 13 Intelligence Arcana check to interpret the details of the ritual to forge the magical item.
In order to imbue a nonmagical weapon with magical power the blade must be under the effects of the heat metal spell from a magma mephit for 1 minute. During this process, the weapon must be forged with Electrum metal worth 250 gp with a successful DC 15 Smith’s or Tinker’s tools. On a failure, the mundane item is damaged beyond repair and is unusable.
Adamantine Armor
The characters learn from an elderly hermit known as Raodin (NG, commoner) a well-known master armorsmith the secrets to his success. He forged his armors with small bits of ore from fallen stars. Over the years his age has made it so that he cannot forge anymore. Not only is his strength fading, but he has run out of the ore stardust that he coated his armor with. He shares that a nearby forest is the location of the fallen stars. With some success, they may discover some that he may have missed. When the characters arrive in the forest, they must succeed 3 DC 15 checks using any combination of Investigation/Survival/Nature checks before acquiring 2 failures. Additionally, any other concepts the characters come up with, such as using speak with animal can be used to grant advantage on these checks or even auto success. They locate the dark metal deep at the roots of a massive sleeping treant. Retrieving the starmetal from its roots via digging will hurt the treant, waking it up and causing it to attack. The characters can wake the treant and persuade it to give up the starmetal with a successful DC 16 Persuasion/Deception checks.
Once discovered the characters can return to the elderly armorsmith. While he is unable to forge completely new armor due to his age and weakness, he can guide another through the process. The character reforging the armor must succeed on a DC 15 Smith/Tinker’s tools check. On a failure, the materials and mundane items are damaged beyond repair and are unusable.
Dagger of Venom
The characters discover an old poisoner’s kit. Inside is a journal containing details of the previous owner's daily life and results and techniques for utilizing the kit. A character that can read thieves’ cant identifies a code hidden within the pages that describes a special dagger design that can apply poison and recover it over time. The character must seek out a crafter to create a hollowed-out dagger hilt with carved runes or A character with a successful DC 15 Woodcarver/Cobbler’s tools can create one and combine it with a mundane dagger.
The character then must extract a venom sack from a living carrion crawler. This can be done with a successful DC 15 Nature/Medicine/Poisoner’s kit check to remove the sack and place it into the hilt of the blade. On a failure, the dagger has 1d3 charges. After all charges are expended the item reverts to a normal dagger
Cloak of Displacement
During their travels through an endless forest, the characters encounter a small village full of tribal warriors. While the warriors themselves aren’t particularly strong, they overwhelm their prey with numbers and illusion magic. After the characters inquire about the nature of the magic, they learn that it comes from the cloaks they crafted. Each warrior who slays a Dirlagraun turns its flesh into a tool of war. A character who speaks sylvan recognizes the name of the displacer beast.
The characters are encouraged to take on the challenge. The hunt for the Dirlagraun is a difficult one. It requires 3 successful DC 18 Nature/Survival checks to track and locate the beast. Once slain, a character must a successful DC 18 Nature/Leatherworker’s tools check to remove the hide without damaging the small pockets of infused arcane power.
When the characters return, the tribe cheers, hollers, and shares the ritual to maintain the hide's arcane power. The ritual requires a spellcaster of 3rd-level or higher and leatherworker’s tools. Following the ritual, each character must succeed on a DC 15 Arcana and Leatherworker’s tool check. On a failure, the cloak’s power is limited. Once the property is suppressed or ceases functioning, its power can’t be used again until the next dawn.
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Character Concept:
Need a pain-in-the-ass NPC? Look no farther than The Coin Collector. From Patron The Beverage Tea
This antiquities merchant attaches himself to any adventurer group that wafts into town. He absolutely LOVES collecting coins of every sort. He can tell you when, where, why, how, and who minted any coin of any era on sight. But he absolutely loathes to part with a single mud-encrusted copper. While he prefers to charm, intimidate and manipulate party members, especially playing one against another, The Coin Collector is not beyond using poison or other low-down, dirty, rotten, scoundrelicious means to kill anyone that would render his collection of coins incomplete.
Monster Variant:
Abyssal Ghoul
Origin: Gnoll Fang of Yeenaghu
New Feature:
Stench. Any creature that starts its turn within 10 feet of the ghoul must succeed on a d DC 13 Constitution saving throw or be poisoned until the start of its next turn. On a successful saving throw, the creature is immune to the ghoul’s Stench for 24 hours.
Claw. Melee Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 6 (1d6 + 3) slashing damage. If the target is a creature other than an undead, it must succeed on a DC 13 Constitution saving throw or be paralyzed for 1 minute. The target can repeat the saving throw at the end of each of its turns, ending the effect on itself on a success.
REACTION
Retchling. When a creature deals bludgeoning damage to the ghoul, it can use its reaction to vomit contents of its stomach, creating a retchling (crawling claw, MM) in a space 5 feet away from the ghoul.
Encounter:
Dwarven Kind
While exploring deep in an underground cavern the characters stumble upon a dwarf named Fornan Runearmour (LG, veteran). Fornan has lost his mind and suffers from madness. His entire clan was slaughtered by Drow. The Drow poisoned his clan's water source and it drove them mad. Fornan was the only one with enough constitution to fight off most of the effects. Despite the dwarves' hearty resistance, they were nearly helpless. Fornan was barely able to escape. His shame has led him to shave his head and beard and he is plagued by survivor's guilt.
A calm emotions spell can suppress the effects of madness, while a lesser restoration spell can rid a character of short-term or long-term madness. If the characters are able to reach through his madness, he explains what happened and that he is seeking revenge for what they did. If they accept he joins them on their way.
Fornan is mortally wounded during the battle even if the characters are successful. During his death, he speaks in dwarvish telling the characters how they have helped him reclaim his honor, and as such, he wishes to offer a gift. One that all dwarves will recognize the great deed they have done for dwarvenkind.
He draws a sharp dagger and uses it to cut his hand and pulls a belt from his waist. Describing to the characters a complex sigil and ritual to imbue the belt with magical power from his bloodline. Unfortunately, he dies before finishing the ritual. A character with a successful DC 14 Intelligence (Arcana) check is able to identify the ritual and complete it. Coating the blood of the dwarf onto the belt and speaking the words of power imbues the belt with magic from the dwarf's royal bloodline creating a Belt of Dwarvenkind.
Magic Item:
Ricochet Sling
When you fire ammunition that doesn’t break on impact from this sling, it bounces off the target and weak magic guides it toward another target.
Sling, Uncommon
When you make an attack with this weapon and hit a creature, choose another creature that is within 5 feet of the target. If the original attack roll can hit it and it is within range of your weapon, the target takes half the attack's damage rounded up.
Dungeon Master Tip:
The Three Paths - The Lazy Dungeon Master
“Once you have our game’s beginning seed written down on the top of your 3x5 card, write underneath it the three paths your game might take. Sometimes these paths might be linear – the three scenes that will occur as the party navigates a relatively linear dungeon. Other times, they might represent the three main choices the group might make to decide where they’re headed next.
Professional improvisation actor and Dungeons and Dragons freelancer Steve Townshend refers to this idea as his “three things”. He begins planning his adventure by deciding first where the PCs will end up, then decides where they begin, and then what they might find in the middle.”
The versatility here is that your three paths don’t have to be strict locations, but events as well. While they should be simple, don’t leave them too vague, otherwise, you don’t have enough detail to drive you forward.
Here are some options with enough details to guide you at the table:
The party chases the evil priest Ralthor to the nearby corrupt town of Nyn.
The party travels to the nearby ruins where gnolls have set up their slave camp.
Through either subtlety or direct force, the party enters the thieves’ den below the sewers of Ashton.
Player Tip: Don’t be a Dick
Levitate is an often overlooked spell. All it really does is raise a target into the air up to 20 feet and move around a bit. On its own, this isn’t a real big deal. Lets the characters lift and raise things up to higher elevations, or even float down without taking any damage. But what makes it a useful battle spell is that the target can’t move unless they have a solid object within their reach or the caster moves them. So this is a great spell to lock an enemy in place for up to 10 minutes. If the enemy has no ranged attacks, this can keep them out of the entirety of most battles.
Where it really shines is when combined with spells such as moonbeam that deal damage over time in a location. The target is locked into the position and can’t move, thus is forced to take the ongoing damage from the spell every round.
Give Away: Jeff Stevens Games: Scourge of the Nightingale: Part 1 A Song of Love
A masked menace terrifies the region. The adventurers stumble into her scheme: the kidnapping of a famous performer known as Devon Artis. Their mission is to deliver a ransom and collect Devon.
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Give Away: Jeff Stevens Games: Scourge of the Nightingale: Part 1 A Song of Love
A masked menace terrifies the region. The adventurers stumble into her scheme: the kidnapping of a famous performer known as Devon Artis. Their mission is to deliver a ransom and collect Devon.
Winner:
Didn’t win? Np, head to www.critacademy.com/jeffstevens for more phat lootz.
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