This clockwork beetle starts curled up in a little ball the size of a walnut. It can be thrown as a ranged attack and when it hits a target, will spring to life, flying into the face of its target while making a loud buzzing noise, distracting the target.
Category: Items
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Deck of Wonders
It was no ordinary wolf. It was the size of a small horse. Kai kept their steely gaze on the creature while they slowly reached into their jacket, pulling out 5 cards: 5 diamonds! The cards streaked from Kais’ hands, leaving a trail of blue energy as they slammed into the wolf. The wolf shuddered and was no more.
I’ve been playing around with an idea for a kind of mini-card game within D&D. I want to use normal playing cards with poker hands to generate magical effects; the better the hand, the better the effect.
I played around with various ways of generating a score from a poker hand that could be applied to the game. This turned out to be harder than I imagined, but in the end, I think I settled on something simple enough to use in play that generates suitable values for hands. The effect is different depending on the suit being played. Spades (Swords if using a Tarot deck) deal slashing damage. Clubs (Wands or Staves if using a tarot deck) deal bludgeoning damage. Hearts (Cups if using a tarot deck) heals people. Diamonds (Coins in a tarot deck) create a defensive barrier.
The poker hand system can do anything from 1 point of damage, all the way up to 199 damage (or healing, or defence) for a King high straight flush. The straight flush is a pretty rare hand though so I don’t expect to see it get played much, if ever.
I also wanted some way to do this using a tarot deck mainly because the artwork on tarot decks is so much cooler than normal playing cards. Now the basic poker hand thing still works with normal tarot cards, although they have one extra card per suit (common card decks have 13 cards per suit while tarot decks have 14 cards per suit). But Tarot also have the Major Arcana which are in addition to the other cards.
For the Major Arcana, I adapted D&D’s existing Deck of Many Things by modifying some existing effects. Others I rewrote entirely, and some I kept as is. Some inspiration came from this Reddit thread.
I’ve published the final result on my GM Binder site as the Deck of Wonders.
A note on copyright: the card image I’m using here is old enough that it’s out of copyright and free to use.
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spear of kree
The dreaded Spear of Kree!
In the forest lies the ruins of an Orc temple once sacred to Gruumsh.
The three teachings of Gruumsh are:- Gather and breed, and your numbers shall flourish.
- Rise up in hordes and seize that which is rightfully yours.
- Raid. Kill. Conquer.
The sect of Gruumsh followers at the temple called themselves the “Kree” and devoted themselves to just one aspect of Gruumsh’s teaching:
“Raid. Kill. Conquer.”
Why this temple was abandoned is now forgotten. Perhaps the Kree fell victim to somebody else’s attempt to conquer. Perhaps in overlooking the “Gather and breed” teaching, they simply dwindled in numbers and were lost to time.
The Kree had a sacred spear, forged by the war shamans of Gruumsh. The spears current whereabouts are unknown.
The spears full stats can be found on my GM Binder site.
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faithful chest
This one is inspired by The Luggage from Diskworld and is part Mimic and part Bag of Holding.
It’s a small chest, 12 inches long by 7 inches wide and 5 inches high (not including the lid). When open, the inside is an extra dimensional space which can hold a lot more than the exterior dimensions would suggest.
Detailed stats can be found on my GM Binder site.
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a knife in the dark
One use I have for this site is to post/host images so I can use them on the GM Binder site. If you need an image for that site, it has to be hosted somewhere publicly available on the net, so I’m posting them here.
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