My party has ended up with the book of vile darkness. In the DMG it states on the sidebar that it could contain rituals to become a lich or death knight, true names of fiends, and dark magic. How have other people handled giving out information from the book of vile darkness? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Not that exact book, but a similar one in a campaign I ran.
When anyone opened the book, and started looking through the pages, they could feel darkness crowding over their mind and gradually as if something was trying to take their conscious thought from them. This made the PCs very wary of it quickly.
When they wanted to look for a specific piece of information, I had them make three rolls: an investigation roll to find the right section, an arcana roll to understand the information there and a wisdom saving throw.
I kept track of any failed saving throws and these were relevant later, but that was specific plot.
I found this meant they treated the book with respect rather than just, "Tell us all the stuff that's in there"
Not that exact book, but a similar one in a campaign I ran.
When anyone opened the book, and started looking through the pages, they could feel darkness crowding over their mind and gradually as if something was trying to take their conscious thought from them. This made the PCs very wary of it quickly.
When they wanted to look for a specific piece of information, I had them make three rolls: an investigation roll to find the right section, an arcana roll to understand the information there and a wisdom saving throw.
I kept track of any failed saving throws and these were relevant later, but that was specific plot.
I found this meant they treated the book with respect rather than just, "Tell us all the stuff that's in there"
That sounds pretty great to me. Maybe add some irrelevant but powerful information if they fail a save and say the darkness pushed them to read further. If a character fails repeatedly maybe they have to be physically stopped from reading the book.
I think I'm going to make them take some psychic damage every time I feel they read too much, I can see that as a way of limiting the amount of valuable information they can extract from the book from simple dice rolls. Thanks for the reply.
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My party has ended up with the book of vile darkness. In the DMG it states on the sidebar that it could contain rituals to become a lich or death knight, true names of fiends, and dark magic. How have other people handled giving out information from the book of vile darkness? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
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D&D Beyond FoundersNot that exact book, but a similar one in a campaign I ran.
When anyone opened the book, and started looking through the pages, they could feel darkness crowding over their mind and gradually as if something was trying to take their conscious thought from them. This made the PCs very wary of it quickly.
When they wanted to look for a specific piece of information, I had them make three rolls: an investigation roll to find the right section, an arcana roll to understand the information there and a wisdom saving throw.
I kept track of any failed saving throws and these were relevant later, but that was specific plot.
I found this meant they treated the book with respect rather than just, "Tell us all the stuff that's in there"
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I think I'm going to make them take some psychic damage every time I feel they read too much, I can see that as a way of limiting the amount of valuable information they can extract from the book from simple dice rolls. Thanks for the reply.