Review: D&D 5E Dungeon Master's Guide

[ishy]

Hey D&D peeps, think we could replace most of the DMG with this presentation? http://imgur.com/gallery/Cvrey

[Kaelik]

Since the very second slide makes me want to commit homicide, it does not appear to be very good. Still probably better than the 5e DMG though.

[Grek]

I return from my 3 day trip out of town. Expect updates Saturday. Ish.

[MGuy]

Hey D&D peeps, think we could replace most of the DMG with this presentation? http://imgur.com/gallery/Cvrey

This is an excellent example of the kind of game I'd eject myself from.

[Grek]

And we're back with...

Chapter 5: Adventure Environments

This chapter is about how to do tactical scale maps. It doesn't explain it in those terms, but this is the part of the book to read if you want 5E's advice on how to draw up a dungeon. The chapter is divided into four major parts (Dungeons, Wilderness, Settlements and Water) with the Traps information tacked on at the end. It features lots and lots of random tables and so as with before, I'm going to roll up some results as examples of what the DMG outputs.

Our first dungeon is located 18. underneath a castle built by 9. elves and/or drow who are 3. Neutral Good in alignment and were mostly 19. Warlocks. The dungeon was built as 20. treasure vault of some sort. The original creators (the Good Elven Warlocks) are still in control of the dungeon.

Our second dungeon is located 67. either beneath or on top of a mesa (the chart doesn't specify) and was built by 19. some chaotic evil 19. Yuan-ti 2. bards. It was originally intended to be 14. a stronghold, but was 3. abandoned by its creators for reasons not explained by the chart.

Our third and final dungeon is located 99. in an exotic location. Specifically, it is 6. currently buried in volcanic ash. The original creators were 1. lawful good 6. dwarven 12. rogues who constructed the place as a temple and/or shrine to their gods. It was 11. destroyed by something discovered within the site. Probably the volcano.

This section also asks us to think about what factions are currently present in the dungeon and what it is these dungeon factions do ecologically. Thankfully, they don't give random charts to decide these questions. Instead, we get a terse but minimally satisfactory reminders that if you have intelligent creatures in the dungeon, they probably need food, water, shelter, lighting and basic security arrangements on site rather than just squatting in a dank and inhospitable cave. Furthermore, if you have predators living in the dungeon, they need to be able to get in and out to seek prey, or else they'll starve. Don't put live carrion crawlers in locked broom closets, or your players will start wondering what it is they were eating in there.

The mapping advice is to to bust out grid paper and draw up 10x10 squares to plot the dungeon on. It then goes on to point out that since the combat system for 5e is based on 5 foot squares you might prefer that scale, which makes me wonder why they suggested 10 foot squares in the first place. I can only guess it's some sort of AD&D/grognard thing.

From there it gives a bullet point list of tips, including such gems as:

• Make parts of the dungeon 3D, with stairs, ramps, balconies and so forth. Also, multiple entrances and exits. Players love choices like that.
• Consider what parts of your dungeon were built in what order, and have them feature wear and tear appropriate to their age. It makes the place seem more realistic.
• If you players like secrets, put secrets in your dungeon for them to find. They will like that.

Before punting the question of "How do I arrange the the walls and doors and such?" to Appendix A. You may recall that Chapter 3 punted the same question to this chapter. I can only imagine what awaits us in Appendix A.

Despite not telling you where to put the doors, it does give rules for them here. And by rooms for them, I mean it lists what sorts of checks you'd need to make to kick down or pick a lock while telling you to look at Chapter 8 to find what the DCs should be. I'll give you a hint: Chapter 8 doesn't have DCs. It tells you to make up your own. We also get the standard Brown Mold, Green Slime, Yellow Mold entries that have been with us since at least AD&D.

Next up, "Wilderness" which explains how to do setpieces for wilderness maps. Whoever wrote Chapter 1 was clearly involved in this chapter, as we're back to talking about hexes. The basic advice is to put special locations on the map at a rate of roughly 12 per 50 hexes. An astute readers will remember that the hex maps come in three different sizes, and that this means that the density of interesting locations on your trip is inversely proportional to how far you're going. People traveling short distances run into the same number of "interesting" locations as people trekking across the continent. While unrealistic, I honestly think that's a fine way of handling travel. You don't want to interrupt an ocean voyage 50 times before you get where you're going. You want at most like 3 stops before you advance the main plot of the adventure.

Its suggested that you have, in each region:

• 1 lair containing an "Apex Predator" such as a dragon.
• 5 more monster lairs with lesser threats.
• Between 0 and 12 settlements, depending on how civilized the area is. At least half should be villages. Some may be ruined.
• A number of strongholds proportionate to how much the local military cares about this region and is able to defend it.
• At least 12 features in total; roll on the Ancient Monument or Weird Locale tables to fill out any hex that doesn't have enough already.

and honestly, I don't disagree. My main gripe here is how non-integrated this part of the game is with the PHB. It would be great if a Ranger had an ability to get a list of monster lairs in the region so that they could be sought out/avoided as appropriate, or for Fighters to be able to plop a stronghold down on the map.

The Wilderness section is rounded out by the inclusion of the rules for such wilderness hazards as quicksand, razorvines and thin ice, as well as what may be the only set of specific DCs given in the book so far. There's DCs for finding food and water in the wilderness, as we as for avoiding getting lost. Notably, foraging creatures of Large size need a positive Wis score in order to not starve to death even in areas of plenty, and Huge or Gargantuan creatures literally can't forage fast enough to not die. Presumably elephants in D&Dland are actually predators who hunt Plant-type monsters for sustenance.

The final major section is "Settlements" and comes back to random charts. Oh Boy!

Settlement #1 features 9. racial harmony being disrupted by the fact the 16. ruler is on his or her deathbed with numerous claimants competing for power. When not involved in dynastic disputes, the area is notable for its 3. grand temple and 13. godlessness. There is currently a flood.

Settlement #2 features racial harmony under a 15. doltish lout of a leader. It is notable for 1. having canals instead of streets and for 12. being rife with gambling. There is currently 2. a new cult seeking converts.

Settlement #3 features 17. a racial minority ruling despite the 1. open fighting in the street to overthrow them. The city is notable for its incredibly 9. wealthy population and 1. delicious cuisine. In addition to the ongoing civil war, there are 13. undead stirring in the cemeteries.

(No, I have no idea why the racial makeup is the first roll on the list.)

We also get random buildings such as:
Building #1 is an 2. & 2. abandoned squat.
Building #2 is an 10. & 14 abandoned shrine.
Building #3 is an 19. & tailor's shop.

which somehow manage to take up an entire page of charts to generate. Colour me unimpressed. On the same page is the Urban Random Encounters table, which rolls d12+d8 and produces such results as:
18. Shady Transaction: "The characters witness a shady transaction between two cloaked figures."
14. Pickpocket: "A thief (use the spy statistics in the Monster Manual) tries to steal from a random character. Characters whose passive Wisdom (Perception) scores are equal to or greater than the thief's Dexterity (Sleight
of Hand) check total catch the theft in progress."
17. Runaway cart: "A team of horses pulling a wagon races through the city streets. The adventurers must avoid the horses. If they stop the wagon, the owner (who is running behind the cart) is grateful."

Then we get into the Water section, which is actually just two random d12+d8 tables, one for underwater:
13. You find an empty undersea cave.
4. You find a bed of giant oysters. Each has a 1% chance of having a giant pearl inside worth 5000gp
11. You run into a patrol of either hostile merrow (coastal waters) or hostile sahugin (deep waters).

and one for aboard ships:
5. Merfolk Traders.
12. A Killer Whale attacks.
11. Another Killer Whale attacks.

and a table of ships your players could own if you let them. Notably, airships are only 20k and go 8mph, while a warship can carry 500 tons of cargo and ignores attacks that deal less than 20 damage.

Finally, we get into Traps. Traps in 5E are apparently organized into three types, "Setback", "Dangerous" and "Deadly". Dangerous traps are roughly equal to a level appropriate monster attack, Setback traps are less than that and Deadly traps can possibly kill a PC outright. But I don't give a damn because the sample traps don't correspond to this nomenclature, I'm very tired from driving for hours and hours and the art for this section is stupid:


What is this trap even supposed to do? Why would he reach into it with his hand when he's holding a staff? What is he even reaching for? Why does this trap exist?

[Maxus]

I guess it's supposed to iris shut or something. But yeah, that's pretty dumb-looking.

[Username17]

and honestly, I don't disagree. My main gripe here is how non-integrated this part of the game is with the PHB. It would be great if a Ranger had an ability to get a list of monster lairs in the region so that they could be sought out/avoided as appropriate, or for Fighters to be able to plop a stronghold down on the map.

This is something you run into over and over with 5e. You'll see a description of what's supposed to happen, but then you don't see any real mechanics to get there. Some of the descriptions of how the outputs are supposed to look are pretty reasonable, and some are stupid, but in any case there needed to be some kind of procedures to generate the described outputs from the game's inputs and those just aren't there.

It's like with the Hiding trainwreck we talked about earlier. You hide to avoid detection, but if you then knock over a vase the enemy detects you. That's a perfectly good description of how hiding works, and if you were just telling someone how to write a novel or a screen play, that's not a bad place to start. But in the game, you need to know what it means to be detected or undetected and you need to know what circumstances or rolls would cause you to knock over a vase or not.

Same with the wilderness stuff. We get some perfectly reasonable narrative advice of how many geographical features we should encounter, but the rules for actually interacting with those features or doing anything about them pretty much don't exist.

5e isn't a set of rules. It's a set of design goals for someone to use when writing an edition of Dungeons & Dragons. I don't disagree with all of the design goals presented, but I'm legitimately offended that they released it when it was still this underdesigned. And the fact that they explicitly never intend to patch it to functionality is simply insulting.

-Username17

[Judging__Eagle]

[ugh, posted something in the wrong thread]

[CapnTthePirateG]

I don't disagree with all of the design goals presented

I'm curious, what design goals are these? Aside from bounded accuracy, I don't actually remember Mearls and co listing any design goals than a vague injunction to "feel" like D&D.

[Username17]

I don't disagree with all of the design goals presented

I'm curious, what design goals are these? Aside from bounded accuracy, I don't actually remember Mearls and co listing any design goals than a vague injunction to "feel" like D&D.

Let's go back to the Hiding example because I've already picked it apart. Consider this bit:

You can't hide from a creature that can see you, and if you make noise (such as shouting a warning or knocking over a vase), you give away your position.

That's completely reasonable as a set of objectives. If people are watching you, the default is that you cannot hide (you'd need a distraction or a special ability). If you're hidden, you can still have your position given away if you make a noise. That's a completely reasonable set of goals for what the hiding rules should output when used. But... that's it. Those aren't rules, because determining whether people see you or not is extremely important to situations where I might want to hide and it's not fucking discussed. There are no rules for when my character makes involuntary noises, and what effects having your position given away might have are likewise undefined.

That statement in the PHB is not a rule. It's a description of what the rule is supposed to do once someone gets around to writing it. But no one ever did.

And the books are basically all like that. The pages tell you what the rules are supposed to do, but the rules don't exist and how you might go about doing those things is left to your imagination. The hiding part is the most egregious, which is why we keep bringing it up. But the wilderness exploration stuff is almost as bad. There are like hexes and features and shit, and you have wilderness themed character classes like the Druid and the Ranger, and... that's it. That is all you get.There's supposed to be some kind of overland hex crawl going on, but it isn't there. There's just some directives of how it's supposed to play out.

The entirety of 5e reads like someone who doesn't know the rules describing D&D to someone who doesn't care about the rules. And there is room for that kind of thing. But not in the fucking core rulebooks.

-Username17

[Insomniac]

5e isn't a set of rules. It's a set of design goals for someone to use when writing an edition of Dungeons & Dragons. I don't disagree with all of the design goals presented, but I'm legitimately offended that they released it when it was still this underdesigned. And the fact that they explicitly never intend to patch it to functionality is simply insulting.

-Username17

I have the core books and Hoard of the Dragon Queen. I wanted to learn it and run it, but what is there to learn? Dungeons and Dragons designers bragged about how the game was in an alpha state for a year and a half and had thousands of players providing feedback and where is the fruit of all that labor? Stuff as crucial as stealth and skills and magic item creation and how to build and modify and add levels and equipment to monsters, it really isn't there. Its just a big fat friggin' nothingburger. I dropped something like 100 dollars on this and it doesn't even seem half-baked in a lot of ways.

[CapnTthePirateG]

That statement in the PHB is not a rule. It's a description of what the rule is supposed to do once someone gets around to writing it. But no one ever did.

Fair enough. But even for things with actual rules (combat), it's hard to see what the hell output the designers were intending. Mearls is on record as stating one of the big problems of 4e was hp bloat...and the CR 5 air elemental has 90 hp. (For reference, a fighter and barbarian at level 20 have about 70-80 damage per round per http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsing ... ostcount=4) If I'm understanding you correctly, you're pointing out that there are actions they want to support but there are no rules for them.

What I'm trying to get at is that there are no unified mechanical design goals - sure, they might want hiding, but there's no concept of level appropriateness or unified concept for what characters should be doing. The new mastermind rogue archetype gets immunity to mind-reading at 17th(!) level...while the Cthulhu warlock gets it at 10. The wizard, meanwhile, can dumpster dive through the monster manual and grab any monster power he wants as his 17th level ability, and we all know that's a shit ton more useful than anything mastermind brings to the table.

Basically, if we attempt to compile a list like

http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=50071& ... sc&start=0

We don't really seem to get anywhere because this shit is all over the place.

[malak]

While we're at it: this kickstarter nicely shows the interest that 5e generates:


https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/35 ... th-edition


I do feel sorry for the kobolds, they made some very nice stuff.

[virgil]

Fair enough. But even for things with actual rules (combat), it's hard to see what the hell output the designers were intending. Mearls is on record as stating one of the big problems of 4e was hp bloat...and the CR 5 air elemental has 90 hp. (For reference, a fighter and barbarian at level 20 have about 70-80 damage per round per http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsing ... ostcount=4)

I decided to do some additional research. In case you thought maybe the whole bounded accuracy thing would also apply to DPS and low level PCs are churning 60-70 per round, you'd be wrong. Level 1 damage kings are doing 7-9dpr, level 6 is doing 23-30, etc. A roper is CR 5 in 5E, and has 14 more HP than 3E's roper (who's CR 12); and CR 1 monsters are in the mid-20s on HP. This latest edition is HP bloat all around.

[RobbyPants]

What's with the d8+d12 tables? Were they trying to do a d100 table, but came up four entries short?

In all seriousness, all I can figure is you get a flat distribution in the center. Are all the "center" entries similar, to make one or a few entries much more common?

[Username17]

The d8+d12 roll gives an equal 1/12 chance of rolling five different numbers. It's possible that someone's mind was blown by that difference from rolling 2d10 that they started scribbling it all over everything. I'm guessing it's more likely that someone decided that they should pimp polyhedral dice more and decided to come up with arbitrary shit they could call for d4s, d8s, and d12s for.

-Username17

[Blicero]

The d8+d12 roll gives an equal 1/12 chance of rolling five different numbers. It's possible that someone's mind was blown by that difference from rolling 2d10 that they started scribbling it all over everything. I'm guessing it's more likely that someone decided that they should pimp polyhedral dice more and decided to come up with arbitrary shit they could call for d4s, d8s, and d12s for.

-Username17

Google suggests that 1d8 + 1d12 for encounter tables was a TSR thing that was doubtlessly reintroduced into 5E to give grognards stiffies.

[Grek]

Google suggests that 1d8 + 1d12 for encounter tables was a TSR thing that was doubtlessly reintroduced into 5E to give grognards stiffies.

Basically this.

---

Chapter 6: Between Adventures

This chapter is mostly about downtime, but the first section talks about how to link adventures together. This is arguably a more important topic, so I'm glad it gets covered first. A lot of players need a narrative in order to get into the game properly and both recurring characters and brick jokes from earlier sessions. Unfortunately, it doesn't talk about that very much at all. What it does do is give the dungeon master a bunch of cliche plots to use as campaign scaffolding. Their first example, the "Quest of Many Parts" talks about having a villain who can't be defeated until you run through nine mini-dungeons first to level up. It says that players will like the "tight focus" of the campaign, but my players would honestly throw pretzels at me if I tried to run that for them. Or they would, if I didn't use Roll20. What I'm getting at is, turning that into a workable adventure premise would require a very rare set of circumstances, and most DMs who need this advice are not going to be able to make it work without more help than this book is willing or able to offer.

The entire section is like this, honestly. It's an unexamined toolbox of cliche (or just terrible; there's one in whichh a puppet show in the market fortells war between two noble houses) plot hooks with no explanation of why you'd pick one over the other, or what good foreshadowing looks like. The closest it gets is "hint at upcoming events without making it obvious to the players that you're telling them what the future holds" which it contradicts two examples later by using "have a crazy old lady point to the adventurers on the street and start spouting an ancient prophesy at them" as an example of subtle foreshadowing. That is not subtle at all.

From there, the chapter launches directly into downtime costs and downtime activities. We've given a chart listing the costs and hirelings associated with various kinds of strongholds, but it's an incomplete list if you wanted (as I have in the past) wanted to use 5E as a bassis for a Logistics and Dragons heavy campaign. I mean, since Bounded Accuracy and the decoupling of wealth to power make it so that individual hirelings can come together and create meaningful contributions to the world, you'd think 5E would be a good fit here. But when you get down to the actual mechanics, big gaping holes start appearing. Let's take a Farm as a basic example.

We want our PCs to take control of a farming village that they were given the noble title to as a quest reward. They've all been made minor nobility and it's time for them to start collecting taxes and supporting the kingdom. How much does a farm output? Well, we consult the "Running a Business" table and see that you make a 1d100+Days Spent Working roll on the Running a Business chart. Outcomes include either "You must pay the maintenance costs (times some multiplier) for your business" or "Your business coves its own maintenance costs and you make 1d6x5/2d8x5/3d10x5 gold in profit."

I'm sure you all see the problem here. Costs scale to the size of the business, but profits don't. Small businesses make money, while large businesses will, on average, lose it. Why would you ever want a castle then? Maybe something to do with hirelings?

Well, a Large Castle costs 400gp a day in maintenance and requires 200 skilled hirelings and 100 untrained hirelings to run. Their wages are included in the maintenance cost (which is good, as you're saving 20gp a day that way) and you have the potential to have them pay for themselves if you roll well on the Business Roll for the castle. But the entire thing is strictly fungible. You can get the same benefits as you get from a Large Castle cheaper by having 50 Farms (total cost: 25gp) and 75 Small Temples (total cost: 75gp). Or you could anyways, if Farms and Small Temples were included on the "building a stronghold" chart. One can only assume the designers noticed this issue and, rather than fix the rules that cause it to be a problem, decided to just make it less profitable by making the very cheapest buildings unavailable for construction.

We also have rules for Carousing (roll on a table!), Gaining Renown (using the Renown rules from Chapter 1), Performing Sacred Rites (you gain Inspiration (aka advantage on one roll a day) for 2d6 days!), Sowing Rumors (DC 15 Deception check) and of course crafting/selling magic items.

Pictured above: a 5E magic item.

Although the rules for magic item creation are technically in this chapter, I'll be covering them next time, in "Treasure" as treasure here means mostly just magic items.

[Blicero]

How does the carousing table compare to this one?
http://jrients.blogspot.com/2008/12/par ... s-999.html

[Grek]

Much less extreme in the effects. The biggest negative results are "you lose 3d4x10gp" and "You make an enemy. The DM decides who, you decide how." rather than "You gamble away all your magic items. Make a new character, dumbass."

[Wiseman]

That table is pretty dumb.

10) Beaten and robbed. Lose all your personal effects and reduced to half hit points.

Can't even play out the fight?

11) Gambling binge. Lose all your gold, gems, jewelry. Roll Wisdom check for each magic item in your possession. Failure indicates it’s gone.

Complete ass.

15) Invest all your spare cash (50% chance all gems and jewelry, too) in some smooth-tongued merchant’s scheme. 1-4 it’s bogus 5 it’s bogus and Johnny Law thinks you’re in on it 6 actual money making opportunity returns d% profits in 3d4 months.

Also completely dumb.

17) Major misunderstanding with local authorities. Imprisoned until fines and bribes totaling d6 x 1,000gp paid. All weapons, armor, and magic items confiscated.

Do i even need to say it?

[erik]

How does the carousing table compare to this one?
http://jrients.blogspot.com/2008/12/par ... s-999.html

Holy crap! This must be the inspiration for the carousing rules my MC came up with for LotFP. He expanded on it a lot but it definitely shares some DNA.

LotFP is retro stupid so it is consistent for that.

[Grek]

Chapter 7: Treasure

In a lot of ways, this chapter is prototypical of rest of the book: Full of random tables, interesting thematic suggestions and occasionally even good ideas, but ruined by the fact that it was written for 5E and therefore has to work around several incredibly stupid design choices. The failings of this chapter can almost entirely be blamed on 5E's paradigm of "Magic Items are Optional and Can Never be Bought."

Magic items are divided up into Common, Uncommon, Rare, Very Rare, Legendary and Artifact. According to the downtime rules in Chapter 6, items up to Legendary can be crafted and items up to Very Rare can be sold with the price for 100, 500, 5000, 50k, 500k and No as the respective prices. There's no gradations within these categories, so a single +3 Arrow (Very Rare, loses its magic after one shot) is the same value as an Arrow of Slaying (+6d10 damage to select enemies, save for half) is the same value as Frost Brand (magic sword that does +1d6 damage, gives resist fire, glows in the dark and lets you snuff out flames by pointing it at them) is the same value as a +3 Wand of the War Mage (4E style implement, gives +3 to all spell attack rolls and lets you ignore cover while casting spells) is the same value as a Wand of Polymorph (7 charges, expend 1 to cast Polymorph, regains 1d6+1 charges per day). That is obviously stupid, and Chapter 7 walks that particular statement back by claiming that A] Magic items are actually worth a range of values (going from Common: 50-100 gp, all the way up to Very Rare: 5001gp to 50,000gp). The difference between 5k and 50k is so stupidly huge I don't even know why they bothered to give a price there.

As an aside, the whole "Has X charges, regains 1dY+Z charges per day" mechanic is really common in 5E for some reason. There is an optional rule of 3E "50 charges and its gone" wands, but I don't see why anyone would ever use that.

Oddly enough, 5E's other major design choice for magic items, "You Only Get To Use Three Interesting Magic Items at Once" manages not to cause too many problems. Cynical number-granting items don't require attunement (AKA selecting them as one of your three items) to function. You can just pick up a +1 rapier and start stabbing. Likewise, 5E's deep and abiding love of randomly generated flavour text actually outputs some interesting results. There's four different "Special Properties" tables to roll on if you want to give a random bit of dungeon loot some backstory ex nihlo. Maybe that's not the best use of 2 pages, but I can certainly think of worse.

Lets roll up some random treasure hoards as examples:

Challenge 0-4: (31, 10, 5, 88, 1, 67, 7)
You find ten citrines worth 50gp each, and an adamantine chain shirt woven by the drow. It weighs half the normal weight, and the chains themselves are woven to resemble spider webs. It might function poorly, or even disintegrate if exposed to sunlight for more than one minute. While worn, you take no extra damage from critical hits.

Challenge 5-10: (18, 5, 9, 71, 2)
You find ten spinels worth 50gp each, a potion of mind reading and a periapt of health. This particular formula of potion has historically been used in religious ceremonies, and the stopper for the potion is a holy symbol to Baccob. The periapt, meanwhile, is infused with an mystic ancient song. Faint notes can be heard each time it protects you from a disease which form a distinct melody if recorded and played in the proper order. It is sought after by bards of a historical bent.


Did I mention yet that this chapter has particularly good art?

Challenge 11-16: (85, 8, 10, 92, 10, 8)
You find a set of eight enormous golden bird cages with electrum filigree worth a total of 2000 gold. Beside them is a hammer of the thunderbolts which has been covered in what appears to be blood and parrot feathers. By itself, the hammer counts as a +1 Maul. If combined with a belt of giant strength (any kind) or gauntlets of ogre power, your strength increases by 4 (to a maximum of 30) and all of your attacks force giants to save vs death when struck. It also has 5 charges, which can be expended to make a ranged attack with the hammer which produces an audible thunderclap out to 300 feet. Any creature within 30 feet of the strike must save vs being stunned. The hammer regains 1d4+1 charges each dawn. The hammer murmurs faint insinuations about the untrustworthy nature of avian-kind to all that wield it.


Imagine this, except with more giant parrot feathers sticking to it.

Challenge 17+: (1, 80, 29, 1, 75, 78, 8, 17, 15, 14, 17, 15, 20, 19, 11, 3, 16)
You find no gold or gems, just four magical objects:

• a Rod of Alertness. It is warm to the touch and crafted of seemingly unbreakable black iron. A trio of demonic faces stand vigil atop the head of the scepter.
• a +3 maul said to have been passed down the family line since before the fall of Atlantis as proof of the noble lineage of its bearers. It floats in water despite having been crafted of solid steel.
• a Horn of Valhalla forged by the finest elven silversmiths with exquisite silver leaves. It bears several enchantments and is said to counsel the bearer against wickedness and war and, having failed in preventing conflict, to carry the voice of the barer for a hundred yards with perfect clarity. When blown, 2d4+2 elven berserkers appear and serve the owner for one hour. It may be used in this manner at most once every seven days.
• and an Ioun Stone of Agility given to the kingdom by the gnomes. Rather than float as Ioun stones normally do, this crimson sphere has been bound to a clockwork ornery and set into a golden crown. It is said that it flares brightly whenever kobolds approach within 120 feet.

Together they form the royal regalia of an ancient kingdom. The descendants will likely desire it and if all were used together, someone might mistake the wearer as a legitimate inheritor to the throne.


Also pictured: the Bands of Bilarro, which are literally a pokeball.

[Shady314]

When blown, 2d4+2 elven berserkers appear and sever the owner for one hour.

That's fucked up.

Elven Berserkers as they sever you: What did we say about war! You want war motherfucker! We'll give you war. Is this what you wanted?

Actually that'd be an awesome cursed item.

[Grek]

Well, that's a typo.