A thick, trifolded parchment. The exterior has been decorated with a colorful sketch of humans doing battle with a muscular demon holding a wickedly curved sword. The interior is scrawled with baffling tables and calculations. At the center of the parchment’s interior are the words “Reject what occurs. Defy the cosmos. Cry out. “That doesn’t happen!””
At any time, the players may use this phrase (“That doesn’t happen!”) to reject the most recent ruling of their referee. When they do this, the paper bursts into flame, and the character holding it must save v. breath or take 2d6 damage.
The referee is now obligated to change the call to which their players objected. They must, in good faith, change their ruling to one that is more favorable to the players. But the referee is under no compulsion to respond in any specific way that the player’s desire.
The trifold parchment cannot overturn the results of a die roll, even if the players did not see the roll. Only deliberate decisions made by the referee can be affected. So the players cannot, for example, reject which monster appears after the referee rolls on the encounter table.
Attempts to use the parchment incorrectly don’t destroy it, but they do occur in game.
The above art was provided by +Moreven Brushwood. She is available for commissions at surprisingly low rates given the quality of her work. You should hire her for your tabletop project, or other project that requires art for some reason.
-The Doll that Loves Every Child-
A ragged toy, so worn that it’s little more than a human-shaped bit of padded cloth. As long as a character possesses it, any children that character sees are marked by the doll. This can include anything from the character’s own children, to a child the character caught a glimpse of in a large crowd.
When the doll is thrown, one of the marked children randomly falls ill. Their bodies absorb all of the heat around them. They become too hot to touch, and their skin blackens and flakes. Meanwhile, everything around them becomes cold enough to frost over. During their illness, the children aren’t aware of their surroundings. They only mutter constantly. They repeat a physical description of the doll’s owner. Or, if they know it, the doll owner’s name. They blame the character for their illness, saying things like “The peg legged woman did it. Why is she hurting me?” This condition lasts for a full day, after which the child dies.
Wherever the doll lands, a child identical to the dying one will appear. The PC should recognize the child as one they’ve seen before, even if they don’t recall where. The duplicates have a child’s understanding and physical ability, but no personality or will of their own. They will perform any single task they are given, then fall down dead. The body is, in every discernible sense, identical to the body of the other child. Save for its lack of mutilation from illness.
Each child the character has a personal relationship with has a 1% chance to appear when the doll is thrown. If none of these children appear, assume the victim was only glanced in passing during the character’s travels. If a hireling sees the child appear after the doll is thrown, they have a cumulative 1-in-12 chance of remembering seeing the child themselves. They will interpret this as magical kidnapping, and their loyalty should be checked.
The referee should keep track of how frequently this item is used. When the player returns to a place they have visited before, the referee should check to see if anyone in town recognizes the player from the description muttered by a dying child. If they do, a lynch mob will form quickly.
The above art was provided by +Moreven Brushwood. She is available for commissions at surprisingly low rates given the quality of her work. You should hire her for your tabletop project, or other project that requires art for some reason.
-The Arm of Saint Lawrence-
While not actually the arm of the third century saint, this artifact was once used by a cult devoted to him. The church purged the heretical cult long ago, but this artifact escaped destruction. The arm is covered in the dark red splotches of a burn victim. The skin is well preserved, and held rigid by its original bones. It is filled with a viscous, smelly fluid which makes it appear bloated. The arm is mounted on the end of a four foot iron staff. It is extremely heavy, and if used as a weapon suffers a -2 to hit.
The wielder of the arm can touch people with the hand, and invoke a blessing to the saint. Those who experience this feel a vague, but pleasant, sense of serenity and connection to the divine. With this power, it would not take much effort to begin the cult anew, though the church would frown on such activity.
The staff’s wielder is immune to feelings of pain. They are aware of pain, and can interpret its severity, but they are not inhabilitated by it. They can act normally while their hit points are between 0 and -3. (Though, like any character, once they have reached -3 they will die in 1d10 minutes).
If the staff’s wielder falls below 1 hit point, any damage they take after that is divided evenly between themselves, and everyone they have blessed within the last 24 hours. The effect can occur even mid-damage roll. So, if the staff wielder has 2 hit points, and takes 4 damage, they take the first two damage normally, and are reduced to 0. The remaining two hit points are divided between them and the blessed.
If the damage does not divide evenly between the character and the blessed, determine randomly who takes damage. But keep track. No character should take a 2nd point of damage until every other has taken a 1st point.
When the staff’s wielder dies, they and each character they have blessed become powerful revenants with burning hands, which subsist on human ashes.
A 4-sided, 2′ long wheststone, shaped to serve as a scepter. It is capped with bronze at each end. A large ring at the top contains a lens, and standing atop the ring is a curly horned ram. At the base are four faces carved into the stone. They are plain, with hollow mouths and eyes, and no distinguishing features. The metalwork is detailed, but rough. Clearly this was crafted with much less advanced techniques than are used today.
Blades sharpened on the stone turn a slightly darker color. Anyone touching the blade feels a sharp pain, and wounds caused by the weapon are more painful than normal. This effect has no mechanical benefit. The primary target of the whetstone’s magic is the wielder of a sharpened weapon.
When someone picks up a sharpened weapon, one of the four faces on the whetstone will close its eyes and mouth. As long as they hold the weapon, they will be possessed by one of the four spirits within the whetstone. A scabrous mask will grow over their face, with the same hollow features that are carved in the stone. The character becomes a mute servant to whomever currently holds the whetstone. They retain all of their normal abilities, or gain the abilities of a 2nd level fighter, whichever is better.
Characters may sharpen as many blades as they want, but there are only four spirits. The spirits will automatically choose the strongest four people available to them. Characters who who have been vacated by the spirits recall only that they were possessed, but not what they were forced to do, or how long they were possessed for. The person who sharpened the blades is not immune to this possession. Only the person who currently has the whetstone in hand is able to hold a sharpened weapon without being possessed.
When a possessed character makes the killing blow against an intelligent creature, blood flies from their victim’s wounds, and into the mouth of the scabrous mask. The process of draining their victim of blood requires a full combat round, during which they will ignore any commands they are given. If the spirits perceive that they are intentionally being kept away from tasks that would allow them to kill intelligent creatures, they will return to the stone.
When a player finds the whetstone, the spirits are 2d12 kills away from their goal. If a character looks through the lens at the top of the stone, they will see the number of kills remaining scratched into every surface they look at. Once the possessed characters have killed enough, the whetstone will crumble to dust. Thing No Thing, a spirit of non existence, has been released from its imprisonment within the stone. It is invisible, but will gather the remains of the destroyed whetstone to create a similar mask for itself. The activity of intelligent minds is a maddening cacophony to Thing No Thing, which it seeks to end by the most expedient means available. Thing No Thing is able to create new servants for himself by making a successful attack. Save v. devices to resist.
Recently James Raggi held an open call for magic items for the upcoming LotFP Referee Book. I submitted 13 different items to him. Two of those were accepted. One of the others was based on a completely useless premise. Raggi was right to reject it. I’ve thrown it out. Another one is essentially a perfect fit for a module I’m writing. So I’m going to keep that one in my pocket.
That leaves me with 9 of Raggi’s Rejects that I’m happy to share here. I’ll break them up into 9 posts over the next few weeks. I hope you enjoy.
The Bonebarrow
A wooden wheelbarrow, like those commonly used by workers digging a foundation. The sides have been crudely etched with images of skeletons. The scrawls represent only the most basic artistic talent.
If at least one full human skeleton worth of bones is placed in the wheelbarrow, then wherever those bones are dumped, they will animate. The skeletons will begin digging using the wheelbarrow, and any other available tools. They work at the same rate as a human man, as described under “Excavations” on page 33 of the Rules & Magic book. Their hole will be roughly circular, with a diameter of 1′ for every 3′ deep.
Any bodies uncovered by this process will animate and join in the work. Anything other than a body (such as underground structures, buried treasures, or veins of precious metal) will be destroyed by the digging. The skeletons work without stopping. However, each night (or other time when they are least likely to be observed) some of them will take the wheelbarrow to the nearest graveyard to gather more workers. If no graveyard is available, the skeletons will instead harvest fresh bones from nearby settlements. The number of workers will increase by 15-25% each day, with a minimum increase of 1 new worker.
The skeletons will not harm whomever first created them. And they don’t wish to be caught expanding their numbers, so it is often (though, not always) more convenient for them not to harvest their creator’s companions.
The skeletons have 1 hit die, +1 additional hit die for every day since the digging began. The skeletons will dig ever deeper until they are destroyed. Any attempt to stop their project will be met with lethal force. If their creator attempts to destroy them, the skeletons will capture, and imprison that person. If a hole goes deep enough, the referee must decide: do they break through to the core of the earth, or do they open the way to an inner-earth world?
The Skull Censer was crafted in mockery of the sacred incense censers used by goodly faiths throughout the world. Built by the hands of devil worshipers, and consecrated with the blood of an unbaptized child, it was used during Black Sabbaths to “bless” the faithful.
The chains used for handling the censer are affixed to a human skull–rumors disagree on who precisely the skull belonged to, but it was undoubtedly a man consecrated to the priesthood of a lawful god. Long gold bands mounted within the upper jaw support the incense dish. Oddly, regardless of the incense placed in it, the smoke which rises from it is always brilliantly green, luminescent, and smells of delicious cooking meats.
Though pleasant, this smoke has a predictably nefarious purpose. Those subjected to it for prolonged periods will slowly be drained of their vital essence. It will leave them frail, and they are more likely to succumb to disease or minor injury. Whilst the user of the device grows ever stronger, feeding on their essences before abandoning their congregation to find a new one.
In game terms, anyone who breathes the smoke from this censer for 20 minutes or more will lose 1 permanent hit point, which is transferred permanently to the on wielding the censer. This effect stacks, but cannot affect the same victim more than once per two week period. So an evil priest could use this in a ceremony with 5 other people, and at the end of that ceremony each of those 5 would have 1 fewer hit points, whilst the priest would have 5 more hit points than she had before.
The victims of this censer are entitled to a save v. magic after each encounter, with a bonus to their roll equal to the total number of hit points they’ve lost. If they succeed, they notice that they have grown steadily weaker ever since they’ve been around this censer. (Though it will not grant them specific knowledge of the cause. If they started eating more grains around the same time they started being afflicted, they could easily attribute their weakness to the change in diet).
Of late, I’ve been trying to work on creative tricks and traps which don’t rely quite so much on magic. Which isn’t to say I don’t like magic. A look back through previous deadly dungeons posts will show just how much I love the idea of insane wizards making fucked up nonsense because they don’t have anything better to do with their immense power. But I feel as though I’ve relied too heavily on magic as a crutch in my game design, so I’m trying to push myself to create interesting challenges which could be crafted by thieves, or primitive peoples.
This door will probably make the most sense if it is in a windswept, possibly sandy location. Somewhere that wood would be stripped without being damaged to the point of being structurally unsound.
This is a wooden double door. It is clearly dilapidated, the wood has deep grooves in it and splinters easily, but is still quite sturdy. Each of the two doors has horizontal metal handles. On each door, above the handles, are two vertical strips which are clearly discolored from the rest of the door. It’s obvious something was once there but is not any longer.
A cursory examination of the handles will reveal that there is blue paint on the parts of it which are protected from the weather. Closely examining the discolored vertical lines on the door will also reveal small flecks of blue paint there. They are small enough that a person would need good light to see them, and cannot be rushed.
If pulled, the handles do not open the door. In fact, they are not even connected to the door. They are instead fitted to small panels in the wood. These panels are well crafted enough that only a successful search roll will find them. Once removed, the panels release small gas canisters which instantly blast anyone standing within 5ft of the door, requiring them to make a save versus poison. Fortunately, this gas is very old and should have been replaced long ago. On a failed poison save, roll 1d6 to determine the effect:
Death.
A permanent 1d6 reduction of a random stat (roll 1d6).
A permanent reduction of 1 to a random stat (roll 1d6).
The character becomes violently ill, and becomes completely incapacitated for 2 weeks. After this time, no ill effects are suffered.
The character spends 10 minutes being violently ill. The noise, and the smell, attract a nearby monster.
The victim’s body actually reacts well to the aged poison, and they heal 1d6 damage.
If the characters instead turn the handles before pulling them–so that the horizontal handle is instead vertical, the panels will lock in place. This will allow characters to open the doors safely. The fact that the handles can turn is not immediately obvious, as the pivoting point has become jammed with debris. But once the characters decide to make an effort to turn the handle, it can be done with only minor difficulty.
If it isn’t clear, this is a vertical map. Also it is not to scale.
The first thing the players are liable to notice in this room is the crank. It’s large, with a bit of rope wrapped around it. The end of the rope disappears into a hole in the floor. If the players choose to look around, they’ll discover a fairly obvious trap door. It’s much too small for a human, or even a halfling, to fit through, and there is no easy means of opening it. (Though a bit of prying will yield results).
If the players are able to screw up their courage to fiddle with the mysterious crank, and turn it, it will pull more rope out of the ground. Simultaneously, a ladder will begin to rise from beneath the trap door. The ladder is made of wood, and wobbles a little, but will not break unless put through undue stress.
The crank can be turned until the top rung of the ladder reaches a height of 200 ft–just high enough for it to be equal with a small alcove high on the wall which leads to other areas of the dungeon.
Unfortunately, while this alcove is normally open, turning the crank below causes a heavy sliding door to descend from the ceiling. This door has no handholds, and is flush with the walls around it. Players on the top rung of the ladder will find no purchase for a grappling hook. And lifting the 300lb door while standing on the top rung of the ladder would be a feat of exceptional difficulty.
The door and the ladder move relative to one another, so that the door is not completely open until the ladder is all of the way down, and it is not all the way closed until the ladder is extended to it’s maximum height. The door, however, is only 6ft tall. So when the ladder is at half-height (100ft), the door will only be open 3ft; when the ladder is at three-quarters height (150ft), the door will only be open 1.5ft; etc.
I’m curious to experiment with this room. It clearly works best as a low level challenge, since high level characters will have access to spells and ability which will make overcoming this room child’s play. However, I honestly can’t think of a good way for 1st or 2nd level characters to overcome this challenge.
There are two entrances to this room, but the players are extremely unlikely to find the alternate entrance. It is usually obscured from view and out-of-the-way, intended to be found only by those it ensnares. It is much more likely that players will find the entrance to the termination chamber–a place this room’s designers enjoyed frequenting themselves to drink beer and laugh at the undead who fell into their trap.
In the center of the main room is a large pillar of green gelatin, with several dead bodies deteriorating within it. The stench of it fills the room with an acrid smell, like burning plastic. This pillar is completely and infallibly fatal to all undead creatures. Even a creature who can normally escape mundane destruction cannot escape the doom of the pillar. For example, if a lich were destroyed here, their phylactery (wherever it might be) would burst into flames.
Spaced around the pillar are four magically animated ropes, ending in lassos. They are attracted to movement, and will pounce like coiled snakes on anything which moves within the room. Those who are targeted must make a save v. palatalization, or be tangled by the lasso. Once tangled, the character must make a strength check each round to avoid being drawn 10′ closer to the pillar. The ropes have 15hp, are magically hardened, and self-repairing. They can only be damaged by slashing or cutting weapons (piercing or bludgeoning weapons are ineffective). The ropes ignore 2 points of damage from any attack, and heal 1d4 hp each round–even if completely severed. It is unlikely to come up, but the ropes are also partially ethereal, allowing them to tangle incorporeal creatures.
To the side of the room, a ramp leads down to a small secondary chamber with railings along the walls perpendicular to the ramp. (On my map, these are the north and south walls). Embedded in one wall is a skull carved from a massive ruby, with a strange black liquid flowing over its surface in defiance of gravity. Living creatures who stand in the presence of this object immediately become ill, and must make a saving throw versus poison or vomit on the spot. It is a powerful talisman of negative energy, and provides an irresistible draw to any undead creature which passes within 100 miles. Opposite this talisman is an iron door, standing open, leading out into a cave.
The floor of this room is a very sensitive pressure plate. Whenever it detects any weight, the iron door will close automatically, and seal itself until the room no longer detects weight. Once closed, the wall opposite the ramp will begin to move, forcing whatever is in the room to move out onto the ramp, and within range of the lassos.
The various devices and traps in these rooms are likely to give players a clear impression that the pillar of gelatin is deadly. However, this is only true if you’re an undead creature! For the living, the pillar produces mostly positive (if unpredictable) effects. Roll 2d6 for any living player who ends up inside the pillar:
2. The next time your character would die, they are instead returned to full health, with any of their ailments removed.
3. You, and every ally within 100ft of you, gain a +2 bonus to saving throws.
4. The next time you would be level drained by an undead creature, you instead gain one level. This only works once.
5. Undead of 5 HD or less will always cower before you.
6. Your maximum hit points is permanently increased by 10 + your current level.
7. Any undead creature you touch (with your flesh, not your weapons) takes 1d8 damage. This damage is applied if undead deal damage to you with their hands / mouths / other body parts.
8. You become entirely immune to disease.
9. 8 hours of sleep will always be enough to completely restore your HP. It will not heal other ailments.
10. By giving an undead creature a hard stare, you force it to make a save versus magic at a -4 penalty, or cower before you.
11. You begin to age in reverse. You will regress back to 15 years of age (one year at a time), then switch back to normal aging again. There are no negative physical or mental effects of the age regression.
12. Undead creatures who touch you must make a save versus magic or be destroyed. You still take damage as normal, but suffer no ill effects from the creature’s powers or abilities. Note that there is no effect if you touch the undead. They must touch you of their own volition.
An unfortunate side effect of the gelatin is that it produces cancerous tumors in living subjects. Fortunately, these tumors grow very slowly, and will take 100 years to kill someone. Each subsequent use of the pillar after the first, however, divides the number of years by 4. (25 on second use, 6.25 years on third use, 1.5 years for the third use, and so on). It is left to the GM’s imagination what toll the cancer should take on the player.
When worn, this ring immediately causes a funny tingling sensation in the wearer’s finger, and the purple gem begins to pulse with a smokey light. Slowly, this smoke begins to extend from the ring, forming around the wearer’s body. Over the course of an hour, the smoke spreads to cover the wearer’s body entirely in a shifting purple cloud.
Once it is fully active, the cloud functions as a suit of plate armor which is not encumbering, and does not impede movement in the slightest. Wearing it feels no different than wearing loose clothing made of lightweight cloth, and as such, does not impede spellcasting at all. Note that its protective effect begins only after the ring has been worn for 1 full hour, to allow the smoke to spread fully over the body. Note also that the ring does not grant any armor bonus in addition to armors which are already worn. A character wearing plate armor and this ring only receives the protective benefits of one.
Unfortunately, after an hour has passed and the armor is active, the wearer’s every movement makes a cacophony of noise. A simple motion of the hands is as loud as clashing swords, and every step sounds like a cascade of copper pots being banged together all at once. Because of this, while the armor is active, random encounters will be rolled 3 times more frequently than normal. This can be simulated either by rolling more frequently, or simply by rolling 3 dice every time you would normally roll a single check.
