Wednesday, September 20, 2023

Some Magical Items

Potion of Shirt-On-Backwards

The imbiber of this cursed potion cannot put their shirt on the right way. Normally this is just embarrassing and can be hidden under a cloak or shawl. Unfortunately the effect extends to armor, and affected's armor class is always treated as a class lower. Also may mess with some high-necked sorcerer robes.

Teleportato

Eat this whole tuber raw and you'll be warped back to where it was grown. The crops are a little weaker and meandering each year. Cooked into a meal it invokes strong yearning for that place instead and grants everyone who partakes advantage on checks to navigate there for a month.

Knobgoblin

A leering, verdigrised codpiece that bestows all the advantages of a ring of protection if worn proudly and obviously. Its facial expression shifts slightly to match the wearer's subconscious when not observed. Once per week it can be used to cast magic missile with a suitably obscene set of somatic gestures.

Pom de Terror

Planted in a garden, this root will flourish with almost no care. In fact, it will grow luxuriously when other plants near it flounder, and produce far too many offshoots. Within a year, it becomes the basis of farming within the hex it was planted in. And then it withdraws its nourishment -- the roots become bitter and underwhelming, providing just enough to keep people and livestock moving but not nourished. Soon they advance to their neighbor's farms, sickles sharpened, hungry grins waiting. The Pom de Terror is upon them.

Glaive of Mutilation

On a critical hit, this outlandish polearm deals an outlandish amount of extra damage (6d, maximum x 3, +3, whatever comes up to the borders of the system without being vorpal).

You Tuber

A wriggling 5-pronged root. Cut yourself, dribble some blood on it while you whisper, and plant it somewhere dank. Come back in a year, and unearth a simulacrum fascinated with your whispers and gaining approval, though not necessarily yours. It's a crappy copy of you with expertise in one of your skills, no loyalty, and an intense desire for fame. Good luck.

The Book of Making Ready the Way

This spellbook would look at home on any academic's shelf. A leather-bound, tastefully-gilt vellum volume. The internals are fairly common observations on the night sky and weather patterns, with a lot of internal references. Like, a lot. Holding certain pages that reference each other forces one's fingers into the correct patterns, and there lie the book's spells of abjuration and, with practice, hidden names.

If the Book of Making Ready the Way is used as a material component in any ritual that requires tracing a geometry, that ritual is a level more effective due to the precise placement of angles and points the book engenders.

Bolus Bolas

Rank and stinking bolas with a wet mass bound on each end. They deal escalating acid damage to a creature bound up in them for a few rounds until they burn themselves out.

Given a pair of rations, they can recover or even reproduce themselves.

Trickledown

This magical saber is forged of pure reaganite. On a hit, compare the wielder's lifestyle to the target's (luxury > wealthy > modest > poor > squalid): Trickledown deals additional damage for each step the wielder is above the target (a d6, or a +1, or bump the weapon die, depending on the system).

Additionally, the wielder has advantage on any Deception-style checks to convince someone a plan is in their best interest, or to stoke fears of a nebulous "they", so long as the notion is mostly lacking in details.

Trickledown is a mildly intelligent weapon with a weak and mumbly ego wrapped around a blistering Neutral Evil core dedicated to the golden rule: He who has the gold makes the rules. It will nudge its bearer to acquire wealth at any cost, but preferably at someone else's cost.

The saber's goat-skin scabbard, Throat, is also mildly enchanted. Once per month, it can be used to cast commune, but it can just say no. It's said that on lonely nights, some adventurers have put the scabbard to unusual uses with remarkable success, but this is likely merely a rumor.




Sunday, September 10, 2023

Books Completed August 2023

I'm reading a lot of books right now, but I didn't finish many in August.

 
The Monster Overhaul, by Skerples - A birthday gift from my brother, and right up my alley. It's a Kickstartered tabletop RPG book billed as "a practical bestiary" with a focus of usability at the table and a minimum of cruft. The monsters are grouped by theme, which is generally quite nice and useful, except for the kind of abstract groups by season, but the indexes are so complete it still works okay. Art is lovely throughout, with lots of well-known contemporary artists who were paid out of the crowdfunding campaign, no filler or public domain art. I didn't read every line of every table (and there are hundreds of tables) but I can see how this would replace my other monster manuals in my bag if I ever were to play in person again.
 
Project Hail Mary, by Andy Weir - The last of the pile of Christmas gifts from my wife. I was surprised how much I liked this - I think it came right up to the edge of how hard I can take my sci-fi. Even then it had two different flavors of unobtainium to make things work, but still a compelling story told through a narrative flashback framework that's real easy to do wrong. Maybe I will have to check out The Martian after all.
 
Cat and Girl Vol I & II, by Dorothy Gambrell - I saw a comment on this long-running comic's RSS feed that the author was clearing out a storage unit or something, so picked up five volumes. I've been reading this online forever it seems like, but actually it started in 1999. The author also added some sketches and dedicated the volumes, which was a cool surprise. The comics themselves mostly hold up well! I remember some of them, but some come hit me broadside with absurdity and insight and despair and she knows the medium so well.
 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/catgirl-cleaner_1571.gif
 
The Emerald City of Oz, by L. Frank Baum -  Found this in a little free library and realized I hadn't read it. Apparently this was supposed to be the last Oz book, and it certainly ends on that note, but "financial troubles" saw Baum writing like seven more. Whoops. The story is kind of all over the place. Baum makes up horrible monster and tosses cruelty around casually in a way children of all ages are sure to love despite what grown-ups might think ("Please take General Crinkle to the torture chamber. There you will kindly slice him into thin slices. Afterward you may feed him to the seven-headed dogs."). Dorothy and friends Gulliver's Travel around Oz visiting various planet-of-hats style towns. Ozma and Glinda omnipotent away all threats, and then the series ostensibly ends. But it doesn't. Weird one.