So my party has tangled with some wizards who have just opened a permanent portal to the abyss in the capital city. To close this I plan for them to find the Crook of Rao (Tasha's cauldron of everything) that they already found out about thanks to a nat 20 history check from the party wizard. For those unfamiliar the crook has the ability to banish fiends and close portals, but it is damaged and cursed.
What I'm looking for advice on is a fun and interesting idea for where the party will find the crook. Is it lost in a forgotten ruin, or in the possession of a powerful creature? One Idea I have had is for it to be sealed in a temple of Rao that was abandoned long ago and so no one knows how to disable the complex defences designed to protect this artifact.
A natural 20 on a skill check makes no difference at all. It only matters in specific spots. Making hit rolls most notably. It is also used when a player character is making death checks. It is probable that there are other times, but nothing else comes to mind. You are obviously talking about an exceedingly high level game. You get to set the difficulty and if the player is taking actions that might merit a check, you can tell them to do so. They don't get to ask you first, that's naughty.
Difficulty Class
It’s your job to establish the Difficulty Class for an ability check or a saving throw when a rule or an adventure doesn’t give you one. Sometimes you’ll even want to change such established DCs. When you do so, think of how difficult a task is and then pick the associated DC from the Typical DCs table.
Typical DCs
Task
DC
Task
DC
Very easy
5
Hard
20
Easy
10
Very hard
25
Moderate
15
Nearly impossible
30
The numbers associated with these categories of difficulty are meant to be easy to keep in your head, so that you don’t have to refer to these rules every time you decide on a DC. Here are some tips for using DC categories at the gaming table.
If you’ve decided that an ability check is called for, then most likely the task at hand isn’t a very easy one. Most people can accomplish a DC 5 task with little chance of failure. Unless circumstances are unusual, let characters succeed at such a task without making a check.
Then ask yourself, “Is this task’s difficulty easy, moderate, or hard?” If the only DCs you ever use are 10, 15, and 20, your game will run just fine. Keep in mind that a character with a 10 in the associated ability and no proficiency will succeed at an easy task around 50 percent of the time. A moderate task requires a higher score or proficiency for success, whereas a hard task typically requires both. A big dose of luck with the d20 also doesn’t hurt.
If you find yourself thinking, “This task is especially hard,” you can use a higher DC, but do so with caution and consider the level of the characters. A DC 25 task is very hard for low-level characters to accomplish, but it becomes more reasonable after 10th level or so. A DC 30 check is nearly impossible for most low-level characters. A 20th-level character with proficiency and a relevant ability score of 20 still needs a 19 or 20 on the die roll to succeed at a task of this difficulty.
That's taken out of the DMG.
The Crook of Rao might be found anywhere. It could have been lost at sea, and taken by merfolk into one of their homes or temples, requiring social interaction alone, or it could have been takin by something more hostile like the Sahuagin, and it is likely to require a fight to obtain it. It could have been taking into the skies and stored by Cloud Giants in the remains of what was once a temple. It could have been taken deep beneath the earth, into the Underdark, fought over by the denizens and changing hands constantly.
Your own idea is perfectly fine, and I wish you luck.
If it’s damaged and cursed, to me that says it doesn’t work. Maybe some random shepard in the middle of nowhere is just using it to heard their sheep in a very nonmagical way. Hiding in plain sight kind of thing. But it’s his lucky crook, and he won’t part with it, no matter what PCs come around with some obviously made up story of how this crook that he’s been using for years will save the world. Who put you up to this? Was it Clarence? He’s such a jokester.
If the crooks job is to close portals and banish fiends then perhaps whoever last used it did so from the other side of a portal, trapping themselves in a different plane. Cue the rescue mission, just to get the crook, which might offend the person you're rescuing if they are still alive!
Also love the idea of it just being used by some shephard. Maybe make the shephard's land above a dungeon so they assume it's in the dungeon and ignore the shephard!
I do homebrew campaigns and don't do premade campaigns, but I think a forest is stereotypical for these things, so make the placing weird and unexpected.
PCs expect artifact to be in the forest.
WRONG! It's in an underground cave with an oasis and crazy creatures jumping out everywhere
A powerful former adventurer's maximum security vault. There are security enchantments like Glyph of Warding and locks and guards, and you have no chance against the former adventurer if you encounter him, so stealth is your best bet.
So my party has tangled with some wizards who have just opened a permanent portal to the abyss in the capital city. To close this I plan for them to find the Crook of Rao (Tasha's cauldron of everything) that they already found out about thanks to a nat 20 history check from the party wizard. For those unfamiliar the crook has the ability to banish fiends and close portals, but it is damaged and cursed.
What I'm looking for advice on is a fun and interesting idea for where the party will find the crook. Is it lost in a forgotten ruin, or in the possession of a powerful creature? One Idea I have had is for it to be sealed in a temple of Rao that was abandoned long ago and so no one knows how to disable the complex defences designed to protect this artifact.
Any ideas or advice would be really appreciated.
A natural 20 on a skill check makes no difference at all. It only matters in specific spots. Making hit rolls most notably. It is also used when a player character is making death checks. It is probable that there are other times, but nothing else comes to mind. You are obviously talking about an exceedingly high level game. You get to set the difficulty and if the player is taking actions that might merit a check, you can tell them to do so. They don't get to ask you first, that's naughty.
That's taken out of the DMG.
The Crook of Rao might be found anywhere. It could have been lost at sea, and taken by merfolk into one of their homes or temples, requiring social interaction alone, or it could have been takin by something more hostile like the Sahuagin, and it is likely to require a fight to obtain it. It could have been taking into the skies and stored by Cloud Giants in the remains of what was once a temple. It could have been taken deep beneath the earth, into the Underdark, fought over by the denizens and changing hands constantly.
Your own idea is perfectly fine, and I wish you luck.
<Insert clever signature here>
If it’s damaged and cursed, to me that says it doesn’t work. Maybe some random shepard in the middle of nowhere is just using it to heard their sheep in a very nonmagical way. Hiding in plain sight kind of thing.
But it’s his lucky crook, and he won’t part with it, no matter what PCs come around with some obviously made up story of how this crook that he’s been using for years will save the world. Who put you up to this? Was it Clarence? He’s such a jokester.
If the crooks job is to close portals and banish fiends then perhaps whoever last used it did so from the other side of a portal, trapping themselves in a different plane. Cue the rescue mission, just to get the crook, which might offend the person you're rescuing if they are still alive!
Also love the idea of it just being used by some shephard. Maybe make the shephard's land above a dungeon so they assume it's in the dungeon and ignore the shephard!
Make your Artificer work with any other class with 174 Multiclassing Feats for your Artificer Multiclass Character!
DM's Guild Releases on This Thread Or check them all out on DMs Guild!
DrivethruRPG Releases on This Thread - latest release: My Character is a Werewolf: balanced rules for Lycanthropy!
I have started discussing/reviewing 3rd party D&D content on Substack - stay tuned for semi-regular posts!
I do homebrew campaigns and don't do premade campaigns, but I think a forest is stereotypical for these things, so make the placing weird and unexpected.
PCs expect artifact to be in the forest.
WRONG! It's in an underground cave with an oasis and crazy creatures jumping out everywhere
"Hero of the Heavens" (Title by Drummer)
A powerful former adventurer's maximum security vault. There are security enchantments like Glyph of Warding and locks and guards, and you have no chance against the former adventurer if you encounter him, so stealth is your best bet.
Pick a piece of loot that they have been carrying around since the beginning of the campaign. Do NOT tell them it is the thing.
Tell them they have to go to someplace hundreds of feet underground and activate a vault with sunlight. Rumor says the power is in the vault.
There is a depression shaped exactly like the doohicky in the vault. Put the thing in to charge it up.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale