Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Ten Things that Might Be in a Goblin's, Gnoll's, Orc's or Troll's Pocket

1: bag containing 16 meaty sticks fried in tallow. Each contains three small bones and a hard bit at the end. Can be eaten in place of a day's rations.

2: Phosphorescent, foul-smelling green sludge packed into a small tin. The being carrying it has some smeared over a partially-healed wound. Will clog bleeding wounds immediately, and speed natural healing 50%. However, the wound will scar terrifically and a Fortitude check must be made for every point healed. If a check fails, the scar tissue grows deep enough to be a source of constant distracting pain (1 point permanent Charisma loss). After a save is failed, no more checks are required and there is no further Charisma loss for the duration of that application. There's only enough salve left for three applications.

3: A red, a blue and a purple mushroom. The red mushroom is the only antitoxin the the poisonous blue mushroom (no save, immediately begin "drowning" as throat constricts). Eating the purple mushroom grants the ability to tell the effects of all fungi at a glance for 1d4 rounds, but renders you colorblind for the same amount of time so that the mushrooms are the exact same shade of grey - the player can specify "the poison mushroom" or "the antitoxin mushroom" but isn't told which is blue or red. The blue and red mushrooms are exactly the same in all ways except color, and each are big enough for four doses, but the purple mushroom is very small and it only works once.

4: A torch that has been soaked in something improper. A spot check DC 20 will show a funny tinge to the tar. A wisdom check DC 17 means the PC notices a strong chemical smell. An attempted alchemy check DC 15 will reveal the substance contains several dangerously explosive ingredients. If a small bit of the tar is "tested," see below.

Whoever tries to light it must make a Reflex save or take 1d6 damage, with a 25% of catching fire (hair, a shirt, something). Regardless, anything that can ignite will if the torch lands on it. The torch burns hot enough to melt iron, but will exhaust itself in 10 seconds leaving nothing behind (besides any fires it inevitably started).

5: An ugly black stone with a frowning face carved into it. Every 12 hours there's a 35% chance anything flammable and in contact with it will catch fire. If held or worn when the roll is made, it will do 1d6 points of fire damage.

6: A thick white liquid in a vial. It's a healing potion, restoring 6 HP but also dropping your WIS, INT and DEX scores to 3 each, or 6 on a Fortitude save, as you collapse into a heroine-like high.

7: A screw-top jar with a spider in it. Every so often the spider simply vanishes, then reappears in the jar. It's actually a baby phase spider - the jar has an equal presence on the ethereal plane because a suicide once drank poison from it.

8: A fine blond wig, some lipstick, various colors of eye shadow and a charcoal pencil like the kind fashionable ladies and fops use to line their eyes. The wig is remarkably well-kept. All together the set is worth about 50gp. Also, a comb carved from a humanoid pelvic bone and a highly-polished silver plate. The plate's worth 25sp.

9: A rabbit pelt sewn back together to make a crud hand puppet, with a little wooden dagger tied to its paws and thick leather stitching for eyes.

10: A living, Tiny chunk of ocher jelly in a bottle. Can be thrown as a grenade-like - will break on contact and do an ocher jelly's acid damage in a splash-pattern. That will dissipate the jelly enough to kill it, though.

2 comments:

  1. Cool stuff - My favorites are 3, 7, and 10. There's something very compelling about little monsters carrying littler monsters in jars!

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  2. I'm particularly proud of those mushrooms. I may cheat and just stick them on something, rather than roll, because I'm really curious how it'll play out. I think I'll say that, with the proper check for your edition (I tend to forget I'm playing 3e and not everything works for the OSR crowd or the 4e crowd), the PC knows one is poison and one is an antitoxin for that poison, but doesn't recall which is which. Otherwise my wife would just toss them in a ditch - she knows me too well.

    Anyway, I just like things that require thought. "Quick, you hold this one, it's the antitoxin to the other!" "Ack! I eat the purple... no, the red! Wait, let me flip a coin..."

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