Thursday, September 2, 2021

20 Magic Beards

Method of Application

  1. Hooks around the ears. Removable. Usually.
  2. Pill or potion that grows the beard overnight.
  3. Salve or oil that is rubbed into an existing beard, granting the effects immediately.
  4. Enchanted mirror - gazing within reflects you with a magnificent beard, then shatters.
  5. Attached to a mask that slightly limits perception.
  6. Manual that prescribes esoteric diet and exercise. Growing the beard takes a month, but you know what you're getting into.

The Beards

  1. Axed Beard - Long and oily, creeping up the face. Smells like yelling. Spend an action staring, screaming, and flexing, and a full on battle axe comes flying out like you'd thrown it wildly with two hands. After ricocheting around a bit it can be picked up and used like a normal battle axe but dissolves after an hour into fingernails, snail slime, and moans.
  2. Beer Beard - Wispy about the mouth but long and full under the chin. Smells like hops. Once per day can be wrung out into d4 nourishing and highly intoxicating rations, which the wearer is as immune to as they'd like.
  3. Bear Beard - Short and full and moustached. Smells like pine. The bearer of the bear beard is blessed in bouts of bare-knuckle brawling.
  4. Deer Beard - Dozens of short antlers and prongs growing down from the chin and face. Smells like velvet. The wearer gets a short-sword like unarmed melee attack. Ungulates and many forest deities will see them as a threat to their virility.
  5. Drear Beard - Insubstantial but heavy, climbs the face, and pulls the head down in idle moments. Smells like old wood. The wearer's personality becomes more dour, and they have advantage on saving throws to be frightened or charmed. They also have to pass a saving throw to enter states of heightened emotion like rage or heroism
  6. Eerie Beard - Thin, wispy, and moves on its own - affects the eyebrows. Smells like your grandmother's shed. While the wearer holds their breath and shoves the beard into their mouth with both hands, they can see invisible and ethereal things.
  7. Feared Beard - So black it's blue. Smells like cannon smoke. The wearer can become terribly present and intimidating in these scenarios, but they must do so in each before they can in another again: an intimate conversation; a battlefield; a council.
  8. Geared Beard - Wires, sauter, steel wool, gears, and cogs - atwitch and clicking. Smells like machine oil. Works as a tinkerer's kit and can hold several small items within its coils. 
  9. Missile Bristles - Literally a beard made of arrows and bolts, with arrowheads forming the moustache. Smells like flint. Bearer finds it hard to run out of ammunition. Once per day, shake them bristles to make an arrow attack against everything in swinging distance.
  10. Queered Beard - Looks like whatever the bearer chooses each day. Smells like stardrops. The bearer is assured of who they are and has advantage on saving throws to be charmed or dominated.
  11. Rubble Stubble - Rock climbs the bearer's face. Smells like dust. In addition to supplying nigh-infinite sling stones, this beard lets the bearer ruminate rocks as rations.
  12. Seared Beard - Cinders and chars, extends to the head and body. Smells like burnt hair and flesh. The bearer cannot catch on fire but can easily choose to cause any held combustible to catch. Wild carnivores are more likely to follow their scent.
  13. Sheared Beard (cursed) - SMOOTH. Smells like baby powder. This replaces any existing magic beards and prevents the bearer from either bearing a new one or growing a natural one. Some may not view this as a curse. It can only be removed by an experienced hirstutiomancer.
  14. Smeared Beard - ?? Is that?? Are you? Smell? The face of the bearer (who?) becomes rough and forgettable in the minds of everyone who.. who... what?
  15. Sphered Beard - Mathematically precise orb that follows the bearer's face on a short delay. Smells like pie. Once per day the bearer can turn the effect of a spell they cast into a sphere. Doing so destroys the beard, but it regrows while they sleep.
  16. THE BEARD OF WORMS (cursed)  - Worms. Smells like worms. Is worms. This rare curse can only be bestowed by the Albatross Golem. Earthworms grow from the victim's face - they must be fed and tended like real earthworms, which usually means keeping your face buried in a bowl of dirt most of the day. If any die, they start to rot and stink and spread such infections to their host. Plucking them out is as about as pleasant as plucking out a fingernail, and they grow back much faster.
  17. Thistle Bristles - A gnarl of weeds and thorns that clambers over the shoulders. Smells like late summer. The bearer is unappetizing and certainly unpleasant to grapple. They have extreme difficulty donning pullovers, however.
  18. Weird Beard - Asymmetrical, but only after you've looked for a moment. Smells like apple leaf mold and leather and eggs. The bearer begins to favor outcasts and such more. Once per day, they may use an action while glaring at a target within close range and stroking the beard poignantly with one hand to (roll a d6):
    1. Conjure a placebo flamingo into the target's space. This is an angry pink bird that will bluster around trying to fly away. If, however, it's caught and rubbed against someone who can by whatever means be convinced they're drinking a healing potion rather than being assaulted by an ornery bird, it will heal as a healing potion.
    2. A fuzzy kitten appears in the target's space. They can't move past it, but they can move around it.
    3. A sparrow of slaying builds a nest in the beard. If you don't shave or wash much for a month, it will lay an egg. Smear that egg over a missile weapon to make it a slaying weapon versus the stared creature's type. Or raise it up and see what happens!
    4. The hairs of the beard weave themselves into 3 mawths. Each has the stats of a raven with moth wings and a rough, hairy approximation of the targeted creature's face and voice and a huge mouth. They hate you but they hate the targeted creature slightly more.
    5. The hairs of the beard weave themselves into a convincing mask of the observed. It's permanent until you shave.
    6. All the target's gold becomes hairy and heavy and woven together and awkward. It'll burn off in a fire, but it's basically impossible to pickpocket them.
  19. Whistle Bristles - Like a bamboo wind chime dangling from your chin. Smells fresh and green. The bearer can accompany themselves on wind instruments, and always has a moment's worth of fresh air stored within their singing beard. They can spend their turn to make a saving throw to turn wind magic back on its caster. None of this works if they're prone or underwater.
  20. Zyrd's Beard - A slab of dark wood carved in the shape of a luxurious beard. Smells like citrus and grain alcohol. Last remnant of a dwarven wizard gourmand, this inflexible beard readily floats to obscure any workings of the jaw (including speech). At will it will produce a small, sharply scented napkin from its mouth which can be used to clean the hands, lips, or whatever, to great efficacy.