Homebrew Items and Abilities - Dolmenwood Campaign
The main campaign that I have been running with my weekly group uses the Dolmenwood setting and materials. That campaign has been on hiatus for several months after a big tournament event put on by Baron Hogwarsh just outside the city of High Hankle (in the meantime we’re running some other games).
Over the course of the campaign I’ve developed a few homebrew magic items and a few character abilities. I’m not a fan of items that are simply +X equipment with no other features, so whenever a module I’ve dropped into the campaign has items like that as treasure I have made additions to make them more flavorful and fun to use. The two items below were obtained from an NPC in The Hole in the Oak, so the base descriptions may sound familiar if you’ve played or read that module.
Regarding new abilities, downtime can be used to train new abilities assuming the character has obtained the requisite special knowledge/mentor/ancient manual/what have you (hooray, diagetic advancement!). We use Downtime in Zyan for downtime activity procedures, typically utilizing “Learning a Skill” to practice a new ability and “Gathering Intelligence” to find out about some source of learning if one is not already known (several of the classed NPCs the party has met would make suitable mentors should they just ask!).
I’ve included the items/abilities themselves, as well as notes regarding how they have worked in practice and background information where appropriate. Many of these have taken inspiration from a variety of sources, including d4 Caltrops, GLoG classes, and various OSR and OSR-adjacent systems.
Shadow Mail
+1 magic chainmail, the links black as night.
1/week, the wearer may order their shadow to detach from themselves and take the place of a shadow of another being of a similar size for 1d4+1 days. When the wearer’s shadow returns from its reconnaissance, they are privy to what their shadow saw while attached to the target. For one week after the use of this ability, the wearer casts no shadow.
Notes: This has only been used once so far in the game while the party planned the heist of a noble (which took place during the aforementioned tournament). They obtained some useful information about the location of a hidden treasure vault in the noble’s manor. I’m still not decided on the appropriateness of the length of time the shadow follows the target, but it seems like an ok starting point until I’ve seen it used more.
Ratmaw Shield
+1 magic shield, festooned with giant rat teeth.
1/day the shield can either:
Clamp down and bite a foe that misses an attack against the bearer, automatically dealing 1d8 damage. On a roll of 8 damage, the shield tears off and swallows whatever will fit in the mouth. Anything swallowed in this manner will be regurgitated 1d4 hours later.
Swallow an inanimate object of appropriate size. Will be regurgitated 1d4 hours later.
Notes: This one hasn’t been used to the fullest extent yet - only to deal less than max damage to a foe. I imagine this one may require some adjustment down the line as I see what the effects are, and it obviously requires some adjudication based on what kind of attack is blocked, i.e. a non-magical spear will likely have a foot or two chomped off of it, while a wolf biting at the bearer may very well lose part of its jaw.
Centaur’s Bane (Ability)
The character is able to throw large, two handed weapons 30 feet.
Once per combat, the character may throw such a weapon with immense force and accuracy. The weapon can be thrown up to 60 feet, as a missile weapon with an additional +1 to hit. Upon a hit, the target takes normal weapon damage plus an extra d8 damage. Targets which are human sized or smaller are knocked back 10 feet and prone.
Notes: An axe-wielding fighter in my game (Utrid) wanted to learn how to do something cool with his weapon of choice. We had some discussion about what kind of thing he would be interested in learning and I came up with this in the end. We use Downtime in Zyan for downtime activities, so I had the player do a Gathering Intelligence check to see if he could find a mentor to teach him some axe fighting moves. Unfortunately he rolled very poorly which is a result of “No Intel.”
Rather than providing an interesting rumor about something unrelated (as suggested by the procedure), I decided that learning the ability would require some adventuring instead. The character heard a rumor about a monstrous centaur who attacked a merchant caravan. The sole survivor described a massive axe suddenly whistling through the trees to nearly cleave one of the guards in two. Surely if Utrid could witness such a ferocious throw, he could pick up on how it’s done…
Without getting into a full recap of the session, the group found the Bestial Centaur and Utrid baited it into throwing its axe at him (which thankfully missed). Afterwards he trained for a few more days and was able to learn how to replicate the throw to some degree.
It’s a high-risk, high-reward ability - doubling damage and allowing for the ability to knock someone into a hazard. This ability was initially 1/day, but it seemed really shitty to have a cool ability that requires a to-hit roll and throws your weapon away be limited to once a day. For now, we’ve settled on once per combat (though I don’t really love the somewhat arbitrary limiters like this - maybe it’s borderline supernatural and it’s too heavy a strain on his muscles to do it more than once a fight?). I expect to play around a bit more with this one too and will adjust as needed. I could see upping the to-hit bonus a bit more. Another tweak I initially considered was leaving it at 1/day and having it auto-hit.
Chivalric Command (Ability)
The character bellows an order of 4 words or less, and 2d6 HD of ordinary soldiers/townsfolk in hearing range will understand you regardless of language and are compelled to obey the command. They will not follow suicidal commands and may save vs spells to resist commands that are in opposition to their nature. They obey until the order is considered complete or for 1 round + 1 round per character level.
Notes: This ability is for a knight in the campaign and is the result of a boon for winning a dueling tournament. The player wanted to learn a new trick that would give them some utility and we worked this one out. The host of the tournament, the Baron, allowed the Knight access to a secret manual of martial techniques and noble command in order to learn this. The character has not yet actually learned the ability.
This has not been tested in game yet, so I don’t know how it will shake out. I used the hypnotism spell to inform some of it and will likely place some sort of usage limiter on it, though I haven’t determined what that is yet. Possibilities include 1/day or a given NPC can only be subject to it a limited number of times.
Quickblade (Ability)
The character can draw a dagger and surprise an opponent who isn’t expecting it on 3 in 6. They may also use a dagger to strike (in melee or thrown) a vital point and prevent a creature’s movement. Upon a successful attack the target must save versus paralysis to avoid the loss of movement. After one round of being unable to move, the creature may move at half speed until the wound is treated.
Notes: This is another one that hasn’t been battle-tested yet. Being taught how to do this was a boon granted to the party thief by the head of the thieves guild in High Hankle, Bagsley Corundum, as partial payment for the heist mentioned above (Bagsley hired the party to obtain proof that a potential marriage match for the Baron was not actually of noble birth).
No limiters placed on this one as of now. It requires the thief to either waste a dagger or be in close, which is dangerous for a thief. If anything, I may require this to be done in melee, but the thief being close enough to toss a dagger is already pretty risky as it means loss of initiative the next round potentially puts them in a very bad spot.