I'm designing a magic item that is tied into my character's backstory and I thought it might be fun to see if any of you have any ideas to add. It is a rather complex item ( technically set of items ) and between trying to think about balancing and coming up with enough ideas to fill out the table of possible backfire effects there is a good amount of work here. While I could make this campaign specific to solve certain problems, I thought that it would be fun to try and make it something that could be exported into anyone else's campaign.
The Gist
My level 3 Arcane Trickster / level 2 Wizard is named Sebastian. His grandfather is a Divination wizard named Orion who works for an arcane political espionage guild that works to overthrow an oligarchical government. Long story short, oligarchy feints and the guild is slaughtered. Sebastian's parents, despite trying to shelter Sebastian and stay away from the dangers of the guild life, are caught in the crossfire and killed. A message from Orion's familiar tells the remaining guild members that he is trapped on another plane. Sebastian sets out to track down his grandfather. So long story short, Sebastian is feverishly studying magic to figure out how cross into another plane. The magical object is the answer. His 'character-quest item' if you will.
'The Pauper' is the guild artificer. They are renowned for their ability to modify enchantments, rendering them cheaper yet... unstable. The Hellstone is a diamond enchanted to mimic the Plane Shift spell. It stores two charges at a time, one to go somewhere and one to come back. It can be recharged with an as of yet undecided amount of spell slot and downtime sacrifice. The catch is, the spell saves on cost by sacrificing stability and astral accuracy. The result is a diamond which, when used, almost certainly destroys you, unless you have Arcana Expertise and roll a natural 20.
However...
Orion's Gift is the second half of this set. When the gem is slotted into this cane the caster now only has to roll decently to not be eviscerated. When the party travels together the caster compares their arcana check with a table which determines if they make it to the correct location and plane, as well as whether or not they arrive sick or puddles of goo and whether or not they attracted the attention of mind flayers on the journey. I'm including the portion that I have done below. If anyone has feedback I would be delighted to hear it. Thanks!
Sebastian: Do you have it?
Tim : The stone? Lad, you don’ know what your messin’ --
Sebastian:-- I know exactly what I’m messing with Tiny Tim. You call this the Hellstone. It’s the cheapest way to fly to Celestia. Problem is you’ve got to make a pit stop in hell.
Tim: Aye and ye never know what demons ‘ill follow ya ou’
Sebastian: Except you are wrong Tim. The Hellstone does not take you to hell. It is a known spell of the conjuration school, an Artificer known as The Pauper enchanted this crystal with a powerful plane shifting spell. And, as foreshadowed by their title, The Pauper was working with limited materials. Their solution required some additional modifications to the spell which render it… painful. Agonizing. Hell-Like. Whereas a normal Plane Shift spell would deconstruct and reconstruct your astral form instantaneously, this stone elongates the structure of the spell as to channel a lower energetic amplitude and render a more efficient casting. A much more efficient casting, the technique is brilliant and The Pauper should be gifted the Crown at once. However, the subject remains conscious throughout the process and the only way their mind can rationalize the experience is to imagine devils flaying their souls and burning them in fire. So that's where you get this hell myth.
Tim: Good story. Tell that ta Joe Wiggum. He’s haunted to the this day. I’m tellin ye’ they followed him ou’
Sebastian: He’s a barkeep. He’s a barkeep who had his mind ripped apart and put back together in the Astral plane where he counted his fingers and toes in an endless loop to make sure that math didn’t evaporate. He’s ******* insane Tim.
Tim: Aye. I hope you know what yer doin kid.
THE HELLSTONE
The Hellstone is an enchanted diamond which can hold two charges of Plane Shift and is recharged manually through significant effort by a spellcaster. When dislodged from the staff known as Orion’s Gift it is just as likely to shred a human consciousness as to transport them to their target destination.
The caster must roll 1d20, add their Arcana modifier, and compare the role with the Astral Tunneling table. Each traveler targeted by the spell suffers those triggered effects as a group. Additionally, each traveler must preserve their astral form through the duration of the transition. A traveler can sustain themselves through Will, Comprehension, or Favor. Each Target must roll 1d20 and add either their Charisma, Intelligence, or Wisdom modifier to that roll. They suffer effects individually from the Egoic Preservation Table.
Psychic Lubricant
It is said that Intoxication with certain substances loosens one’s preconceptions and makes the unraveling of the ego easier, or increase's one's lucidity navigating the Astral Plane
Astral Tunneling
RESULT
EFFECT
> 30
Travelers arrive at their destination with a mild stomach ache. Congratulations, this is the best possible thing that could be happening right now.
< 29
Travelers arrive at their destination with the distinct sense that something noticed them.
< 25
You arrive at a random location on the destination plane
< 20
You arrive on a random plane. Any remaining charge in the staff is depleted.
< 15
You arrive at your destination with Astral Tunneling Sickness. You suffer -5 on all rolls until you complete a long rest.
< 10
Turns out the spell’s uncanny efficiency is due to a sub-frequency which leeches ambient energy from the mind-flayer psychic network. Normally this is concealed from them by the spell but they…. uuh.. found you.
< 5
The spell fails midway through. Astral momentum is lost to friction with the ether and the souls are unable to reach another plane. The target is left conscious of whatever half-dissassembled mind they have left until the spell ends. Their psychic energy dissipates over the span of 2,000 d20 x 100 years during which the subject is left suspended in the state of transition.
Egoic Preservation.
This is the table I need the most help with. The concept here is that each traveler, presumeably each member of the part, must make a saving throw to determine whether or not their mind is scrambled, their astral form disintegrates, or some other horror befalls them. The highest success results, however, reward the player with a boon related to the type of saving throw used. Each player should be limited to one of those boons at a time and no more than three boons should be allowed to apply to the same casting. The hope is the create a situation where the traveling party can provide support to both the overall spell and / or traveler's Egoic Preservation. These are my first thoughts but im open to completely changing the nature of the way this one works.
RESULT
FAVOR
WILL
COMPREHENSION
> 30
You befriend an entity which agrees to bless your future travels. You may have this entity assist in the casting of the spell for all future castings by ensuring that the Astral Tunneling roll is always at least 10. They also grant +5 to each travelers Egoic Preservation roll and +5 to the Astral Tunneling roll.
Astral beings tore at your flesh as you scraped against the shards of star and ether bare, raw, vulnerable and unchanged. Your resolve has been tested and you will never doubt yourself again. Your Egoic Preservation roll may never be lower than 20 and you anchor the Astral Tunneling roll providing a +5 to the casting.
You understand now. There is no You to Destroy. If you are the caster of this spell your Astral Tunnelling check gets +10. Otherwise the spell gets +5. Furthermore, you inspire such confidence that yourself and all fellow travelers gain a +5 to their Egoic Preservation roll and you may swap the Astral Tunnelling and Egoic Preservation roll of a single Traveler.
< 29
-----------
-----------
-----------
< 25
< 20
< 15
< 10
< 5
Your mind is overtaken by a demon who tortures you by slaughtering your loved ones
Your body is ripped into pieces. You are dead.
You are rendered permanently insane
Gift of Orion
At first glance this appears to be a fashionable walking cane. Beneath the silver handle is a blackened shaft of ironwood with subtle ebony and silver inlays which form a mural of a sweeping starry galaxy. If the wielder casts Shadow Blade the cane activates innate illusion magic. The caster holds the staff within their left hand and places their right over the silver handle. Within the mural stars begin to twinkle and swirl around the inky blackness of space. The cosmic darkness is drawn like ink towards the caster's hand. After a brief moment the wielder pulls a blade of shadow from the cane.
Cosmic Wheel: A small socket can be found within the inlays that fits The Hellstone. When the hellstone is used while socketed here, the Astral Tunnelling role gets +5.
Shadow Memory : While holding the cane in the left hand, the wielder has advantage on concentration checks made to maintain specifically the Shadow Blade spell.
The Watcher Within : At ( milestone X ) an Eye appears on the silver handle. The staff now reacts to enemy movement by storing readied arcane energy and allowing Sebastian to cast a spell as an opportunity attack as worded in the War Caster feat. ( oh how sexy to Hold Person as someone tries to slip by me )
This is a little confusing to me, you mention astral travel and plane shift which to my mind are two different things.
Planeshift is a near instantaneous travel to another plane of existance where you physical form is transported and a form of teleportation.
Astral Travel would be via the Astral Projection spell which is where the physical body goes into medidtation/hibernation in a safe location (hoefully) and the "soul" floats free through the astral plane connected to their body by a siver cord.
So if it is Planeshift you liekly won't have the chance ot encounter any one or thing until you arrive on the desired plane.
Now, although I loath the idea and mentioning this makes my stomach churn, you could burrow the idea of lightspeed skipping from the last film set in a galaxy not far enough away....the Planeshift teleports the caster and companions to d4 different planes, each stay on a plane is for 1 turn (6 seconds) befoer they get whisked off tot eh next. This way you can have them bounce into envirnmental hazards (one turn in the elemental plane of water would be traumatic, one turn in the negative pane would be alsost lethal!) and this could then garner the interest of interplanar beings such as fiends or celestials who start investigating what this wild magical teleporting mortals are doing.
The only randomising you need to do then is the planes of existence they travel through or have a small chance that a powerful entity, such as a demon lord or archfey, pulls them out of and forcbily ends their travel to interrogate them about their actions and potential damage or reasons for interloping through their domain. Thn any boon or future ill will for travelling is purely down tot eh players ability to roleplay it.
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Thank you for the response, I could definitely flesh out the magical lore more.
The premise of this spell is that it is unable to teleport the individual in the same way that Planeshift typically would. Instead, it disassembles you into the astral plane and transports your essence. Think of it has a hybrid, and the nature of the hybridization causes instability.
I've been having a think about it and I think you really need to scale this down, its a lot of technical things which could be simplified.
Orions Gift/Walking Cane:
Basically ok, I'd have it double as a club for melee or dual weilding with a shadow blade and have it as an item that needs to be attuned to in order to gain the benefits. The Watcher Within needs a clarification on how many times it can be used, easy option is at "level x: the cane grants the benefits of the Warcaster feat whilst they hold the cane in one or both hands" this then acts as a natural progression from the base ability of advantage on concetration checks for using a shadowblade. Cosmic Wheel: Might just be easier to have as a +5 bonus to Arcana checks.
Astral Tunnelling:
roll 30+: Bear in mind that a DC30 is supposed to be almost impossible. so having that as a successful travel is a bit steep. Also might need to be a slight headache instead of stomach ache as Astral Plane linked to Psychic damage (and you also mention Mindflayers in the lower rolls)
roll 16 to 25: you appear on random plane and staff loses all remaing charges or appear at random location on desired plane.....these could be sooooo bad for the players. As i mentioned in my previous post you have enviromental hazards (such as seas of Lava on the plane of fire, bottomless water and crushing pressure on the plane of water, insanity in the Abyss etc).....this is effectively a death sentence unless you as a DM fudge things to enable the party to get a long rest to recharge the staff or give them some other mcguffin to get out of it.
roll 11-15: a flat -5 on all rolls is harsh if the party are low levels but gets increasingly irrelevant as they get higher level. A change to disadvantage on all rolls might be a bit more impactful at all levels.
roll 6-10: They get found by Mindflayers...so does this mean Mindflayers start to planeshift in to the party location and mind blast them all and take them away somewhere? This alone would be incentive enough for most players not to use the magical item until they get level 10+, idividual mindflayers may be easy for lower levels to take out if they out number it but if its one per party memeber then it could be a very big challenge.
roll 5 or less: Tough luck you are floating in the astral sea for d20x100 years..so thats the camapign over then?
Overall this might be easier just to amend the familiarity table from the teleportation spell that way you reward any research they do before hand by making it easier to hit the plane they want to go to, so if they reasearch and roll an arcana check 5 or less they view the plane they travel to as a False Destination on the table, roll 6-10 its a Description, 11-15 its a Viewed Once, 16-20 its a Viewed Casually, 21-25 its a very familiar. You then roll % dice and if you are on target you go to the plane and place you want, off target you are on the right plane but miles form where you need to be, Similar Area you end up in place that looks like the correct plane but is somewhere else (such in a art gallery or museum infront of a paiting or depiction of the plane) and Mishap means you go somewhere random and taking force or psychic damage.
Egoic Preservation:
Change the saving throw names to be more in line with D&D: Charisma for Favor, Wisdom for Will and Intelligence for Comprehension. However, having said that, the lowest rolls end up in death of yourself, death of your loved ones or you going insane, so I say just lose it. I don't think this table is going to add anything and effectively saying "oh if you roll a 5 or less you die", given tthe purpose of the item is to travel to other planes to advance the story of the campaign this means you have a chance, no matter how small it is, that one or more party members dies on transit, which means they then have to create new characters which just so happen to in the location they were travelling to or they have to sit out one or more sessions until the party get back to a settlement where a new character can be introduced.
If you want the party to be invovled with the potential success of the travel then you could make it more of a ritual spell that is required to activate the Hellstone, each traveller has to perform some aspect to help martial the magical energies repersented by their saving throw, say DC15, failure results in one point of Force damage and one point of Psychic damage for each point they roll under the DC as the magical energies disintergrate their physical form and erode some of their mental faculties. Succeeding on the saving throw gives the main person performing the planeshift a +1 bonus to their Astral Tunnelling roll for each point above 15. This way you get benefits for success but the chance of instant death is vastly reduced, even rolling a natural 1 would only mean 28 damage.
For Example: Seb is in charge of the planeshift and is travelling with Tim, Tim decides to roll a Charisma Saving throw and rolls a 17 so succeeds, Seb then rolls his Astral Tunnelling check and adds +2 to his roll. Or Tim rolls 10 on his saving throw and fails and takes 5 points of force damage and 5 points or psychic damage but Sebs roll is otherwise unaffected.
I've been having a think about it and I think you really need to scale this down, its a lot of technical things which could be simplified.
Orions Gift/Walking Cane:
Basically ok, I'd have it double as a club for melee or dual weilding with a shadow blade and have it as an item that needs to be attuned to in order to gain the benefits. The Watcher Within needs a clarification on how many times it can be used, easy option is at "level x: the cane grants the benefits of the Warcaster feat whilst they hold the cane in one or both hands" this then acts as a natural progression from the base ability of advantage on concetration checks for using a shadowblade. Cosmic Wheel: Might just be easier to have as a +5 bonus to Arcana checks.
It is not a club and I would find it thematically very odd to be used as such. Also, does this really justify Attunement? It's not even the full WarCaster feat, it is only the warcaster feat for one specific spell. Im not sure why it is unclear how many times it can be used, as with the feat, as many as you want. This staff simply gives you warcaster but you only get advantage on con checks for the one spell. A +5 bonus to Arcana checks is extreme, would make this way overpowered, and totally justify the attunement that I do not want it to have.
Astral Tunnelling:
roll 30+: Bear in mind that a DC30 is supposed to be almost impossible. so having that as a successful travel is a bit steep. Also might need to be a slight headache instead of stomach ache as Astral Plane linked to Psychic damage (and you also mention Mindflayers in the lower rolls)
I agree that headache makes more sense. Yes 30 is supposed to be impossible. This was addressed in the lore. This stone does not work without the staff unless you have some serious mojo happening. Once you have the staff this becomes a 25 which is much more doable ( Sebastian has +5 to arcana, he portents a 20 and knows he can go anywhere ).
roll 16 to 25: you appear on random plane and staff loses all remaing charges or appear at random location on desired plane.....these could be sooooo bad for the players. As i mentioned in my previous post you have enviromental hazards (such as seas of Lava on the plane of fire, bottomless water and crushing pressure on the plane of water, insanity in the Abyss etc).....this is effectively a death sentence unless you as a DM fudge things to enable the party to get a long rest to recharge the staff or give them some other mcguffin to get out of it.
This should be very bad for the players, though I might be underestimating how dangerous the planes are on average.
roll 11-15: a flat -5 on all rolls is harsh if the party are low levels but gets increasingly irrelevant as they get higher level. A change to disadvantage on all rolls might be a bit more impactful at all levels.
Totally agree, disadvantage is better here.
roll 6-10: They get found by Mindflayers...so does this mean Mindflayers start to planeshift in to the party location and mind blast them all and take them away somewhere? This alone would be incentive enough for most players not to use the magical item until they get level 10+, idividual mindflayers may be easy for lower levels to take out if they out number it but if its one per party memeber then it could be a very big challenge.
Yes. This is the worst case scenario for a party using the staff.
roll 5 or less: Tough luck you are floating in the astral sea for d20x100 years..so thats the camapign over then?
Overall this might be easier just to amend the familiarity table from the teleportation spell that way you reward any research they do before hand by making it easier to hit the plane they want to go to, so if they reasearch and roll an arcana check 5 or less they view the plane they travel to as a False Destination on the table, roll 6-10 its a Description, 11-15 its a Viewed Once, 16-20 its a Viewed Casually, 21-25 its a very familiar. You then roll % dice and if you are on target you go to the plane and place you want, off target you are on the right plane but miles form where you need to be, Similar Area you end up in place that looks like the correct plane but is somewhere else (such in a art gallery or museum infront of a paiting or depiction of the plane) and Mishap means you go somewhere random and taking force or psychic damage.
You are forgetting that the staff gives +5. This can only happen to someone dumb enough to use the stone without the staff.
Egoic Preservation:
Change the saving throw names to be more in line with D&D: Charisma for Favor, Wisdom for Will and Intelligence for Comprehension. However, having said that, the lowest rolls end up in death of yourself, death of your loved ones or you going insane, so I say just lose it. I don't think this table is going to add anything and effectively saying "oh if you roll a 5 or less you die", given tthe purpose of the item is to travel to other planes to advance the story of the campaign this means you have a chance, no matter how small it is, that one or more party members dies on transit, which means they then have to create new characters which just so happen to in the location they were travelling to or they have to sit out one or more sessions until the party get back to a settlement where a new character can be introduced.
So I agree this is the least fleshed out portion, however, as with the astral tunneling rolls the worst case scenario can be mitigated. If these are saving throws the bard can give everyone bardic inspiration dice. The point is that preparation.
If you want the party to be invovled with the potential success of the travel then you could make it more of a ritual spell that is required to activate the Hellstone, each traveller has to perform some aspect to help martial the magical energies repersented by their saving throw, say DC15, failure results in one point of Force damage and one point of Psychic damage for each point they roll under the DC as the magical energies disintergrate their physical form and erode some of their mental faculties. Succeeding on the saving throw gives the main person performing the planeshift a +1 bonus to their Astral Tunnelling roll for each point above 15. This way you get benefits for success but the chance of instant death is vastly reduced, even rolling a natural 1 would only mean 28 damage.
The middle part of the table that I have not finished was intended to include boons that allow the party to save one another from these effects.
For Example: Seb is in charge of the planeshift and is travelling with Tim, Tim decides to roll a Charisma Saving throw and rolls a 17 so succeeds, Seb then rolls his Astral Tunnelling check and adds +2 to his roll. Or Tim rolls 10 on his saving throw and fails and takes 5 points of force damage and 5 points or psychic damage but Sebs roll is otherwise unaffected.
In general it seems that you are far less comfortable with the risk of death than I am. Thematically the point of this item is that it is a coin flip. But when you give it to a divination wizard who can portent it becomes useful. I'm actually attracted to the complexity of the item and I think I might be straddling this line awkwardly. It is also possible that I just enjoy things most dont. I want this staff to provide opportunities to risk one's life for the sake of the story. Also the "Egoic Preservation" table is hinting at a thematic element I don't think I made obvious enough. These characters are going on an epic and dangerous psychedelic trip. By carefully preparing and assisting one another ( managing set and setting lol ) they can each have enlightenment experiences that render travel safer. This mechanic is meant to make the item scale up as they grow in power. The high DCs are there to account for the various boons that can be acquired. I might need to just move on and chalk this up to an idea I had that's too uniquely suited to my tastes.
some things to bear in mind (and apologise in advance for sounding like an *expleitive deleted*) :
if your DM signs off on it then ok, however to me as a DM, adding beneficial or harmful effects onto a magic item brings it close to artifact level magic items and given its an unstable enchantment it doesn;t seem appropriate. You could take a look at the artifacts in the DMG and take some of their detremental effect (pg220 of the DMG) as inspiration if you really want to fill out that table.
I would also say that having a magical item with drawbacks which your party is capable of circumventing means you have an item with no drawbacks.
If you want the Dr Strange-esque psychedelic plane/dimension hopping this can easily be donw with some flavour and cosmetic amendments to the standard spell and a item capable of casting it twice per long rest with minor effects such as taking damage from casting the spell through the item and the travel itself. Depending on how long your campaign is going to go on for your item will sooner or later become largely irrelevant as Clerics, Druids, Warlocks, Sorcerer and Wizards all get Planeshift as a spell they can learn or prepare from level 13+ and bards can get it via magical secrets from level 14+.
and as a complete aside...re the walking stick being a club, that was based on the info you gave about its coinstruction and if casting the shadow blade spell you draw it out....sort of like a victorian sword cane, in which case the you could use the stick in your off hand to parry or strike with.
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Here is a question, the plane shift spell requires an attuned rod. If this artifact could bypass that suddenly we have something useful to even a level 20 adventurer. Would this be canonically absurd and/or would this break too many high-level campaigns? Im also wondering what sorts of information would need to be gathered by players to break into an imprisonment demi-plane with this.
I don't think it would be absurd or break a campaign but what you then have is a "broken" magical item that is the cosmic key and can access all planes of exisistence so i would say no to it. Using it in that fashion would save you 250gp per Plane and I would view obtaining those attunement rods as a mini quest in itself (unless I got lazy and have a major wizard emporium with a series of rods that can be created on demand).
As for info needed to break into a imprisonment demi plane then this depends on what created it, the lvl 8 spell Demi Plane or the lvl 9 spell Imprisonment?
Demiplane would just need some way to become aware of the demiplanes exsistence such as a spell book or tome which outlines the construction and dimensions of the space the caster made using the Demiplane spell BUT it would also depend on whether your DM would view the Demiplane as some where you could travel to with a Planeshift spell, it not techincally one of the planes so if they dont then you'd need to be able to cast the lvl 8 Demiplane spell to open the doorway.
Imprisonemnt become a bit harder as it would be immune to divination magic so you'd need to either track down and extract the info required from the person that cast the Imprisonment spell or use a Wish spell. Note though that the demiplanes created by the Imprisonment spell are specifically warded against planar travel (planeshifting) and the only ways to standardly end Imprisonemnt is to cast a lvl9 Dispel Magic or meet the conditions specified whent he spell was cast, which would be a DM call on how eleaborate/convoluted/dangerous they are. If it was to be a major plot point then, given the magic item we've been discussing, I'd have a condition along the lines of "travel to each Plane and kill a specific type of creature", so go the Plane of Fire and kill a Efreet Djinn, go the 3rd layer of Hell and kill a Chain Devil etc. The creature are effectively a sort of mystical combination lock and when all conditons are met the imprisonment spell comes to an end.
I'm designing a magic item that is tied into my character's backstory and I thought it might be fun to see if any of you have any ideas to add. It is a rather complex item ( technically set of items ) and between trying to think about balancing and coming up with enough ideas to fill out the table of possible backfire effects there is a good amount of work here. While I could make this campaign specific to solve certain problems, I thought that it would be fun to try and make it something that could be exported into anyone else's campaign.
The Gist
My level 3 Arcane Trickster / level 2 Wizard is named Sebastian. His grandfather is a Divination wizard named Orion who works for an arcane political espionage guild that works to overthrow an oligarchical government. Long story short, oligarchy feints and the guild is slaughtered. Sebastian's parents, despite trying to shelter Sebastian and stay away from the dangers of the guild life, are caught in the crossfire and killed. A message from Orion's familiar tells the remaining guild members that he is trapped on another plane. Sebastian sets out to track down his grandfather. So long story short, Sebastian is feverishly studying magic to figure out how cross into another plane. The magical object is the answer. His 'character-quest item' if you will.
'The Pauper' is the guild artificer. They are renowned for their ability to modify enchantments, rendering them cheaper yet... unstable. The Hellstone is a diamond enchanted to mimic the Plane Shift spell. It stores two charges at a time, one to go somewhere and one to come back. It can be recharged with an as of yet undecided amount of spell slot and downtime sacrifice. The catch is, the spell saves on cost by sacrificing stability and astral accuracy. The result is a diamond which, when used, almost certainly destroys you, unless you have Arcana Expertise and roll a natural 20.
However...
Orion's Gift is the second half of this set. When the gem is slotted into this cane the caster now only has to roll decently to not be eviscerated. When the party travels together the caster compares their arcana check with a table which determines if they make it to the correct location and plane, as well as whether or not they arrive sick or puddles of goo and whether or not they attracted the attention of mind flayers on the journey. I'm including the portion that I have done below. If anyone has feedback I would be delighted to hear it. Thanks!
This is a little confusing to me, you mention astral travel and plane shift which to my mind are two different things.
Planeshift is a near instantaneous travel to another plane of existance where you physical form is transported and a form of teleportation.
Astral Travel would be via the Astral Projection spell which is where the physical body goes into medidtation/hibernation in a safe location (hoefully) and the "soul" floats free through the astral plane connected to their body by a siver cord.
So if it is Planeshift you liekly won't have the chance ot encounter any one or thing until you arrive on the desired plane.
Now, although I loath the idea and mentioning this makes my stomach churn, you could burrow the idea of lightspeed skipping from the last film set in a galaxy not far enough away....the Planeshift teleports the caster and companions to d4 different planes, each stay on a plane is for 1 turn (6 seconds) befoer they get whisked off tot eh next. This way you can have them bounce into envirnmental hazards (one turn in the elemental plane of water would be traumatic, one turn in the negative pane would be alsost lethal!) and this could then garner the interest of interplanar beings such as fiends or celestials who start investigating what this wild magical teleporting mortals are doing.
The only randomising you need to do then is the planes of existence they travel through or have a small chance that a powerful entity, such as a demon lord or archfey, pulls them out of and forcbily ends their travel to interrogate them about their actions and potential damage or reasons for interloping through their domain. Thn any boon or future ill will for travelling is purely down tot eh players ability to roleplay it.
Thank you for the response, I could definitely flesh out the magical lore more.
The premise of this spell is that it is unable to teleport the individual in the same way that Planeshift typically would. Instead, it disassembles you into the astral plane and transports your essence. Think of it has a hybrid, and the nature of the hybridization causes instability.
I've been having a think about it and I think you really need to scale this down, its a lot of technical things which could be simplified.
Orions Gift/Walking Cane:
Basically ok, I'd have it double as a club for melee or dual weilding with a shadow blade and have it as an item that needs to be attuned to in order to gain the benefits. The Watcher Within needs a clarification on how many times it can be used, easy option is at "level x: the cane grants the benefits of the Warcaster feat whilst they hold the cane in one or both hands" this then acts as a natural progression from the base ability of advantage on concetration checks for using a shadowblade. Cosmic Wheel: Might just be easier to have as a +5 bonus to Arcana checks.
Astral Tunnelling:
roll 30+: Bear in mind that a DC30 is supposed to be almost impossible. so having that as a successful travel is a bit steep. Also might need to be a slight headache instead of stomach ache as Astral Plane linked to Psychic damage (and you also mention Mindflayers in the lower rolls)
roll 16 to 25: you appear on random plane and staff loses all remaing charges or appear at random location on desired plane.....these could be sooooo bad for the players. As i mentioned in my previous post you have enviromental hazards (such as seas of Lava on the plane of fire, bottomless water and crushing pressure on the plane of water, insanity in the Abyss etc).....this is effectively a death sentence unless you as a DM fudge things to enable the party to get a long rest to recharge the staff or give them some other mcguffin to get out of it.
roll 11-15: a flat -5 on all rolls is harsh if the party are low levels but gets increasingly irrelevant as they get higher level. A change to disadvantage on all rolls might be a bit more impactful at all levels.
roll 6-10: They get found by Mindflayers...so does this mean Mindflayers start to planeshift in to the party location and mind blast them all and take them away somewhere? This alone would be incentive enough for most players not to use the magical item until they get level 10+, idividual mindflayers may be easy for lower levels to take out if they out number it but if its one per party memeber then it could be a very big challenge.
roll 5 or less: Tough luck you are floating in the astral sea for d20x100 years..so thats the camapign over then?
Overall this might be easier just to amend the familiarity table from the teleportation spell that way you reward any research they do before hand by making it easier to hit the plane they want to go to, so if they reasearch and roll an arcana check 5 or less they view the plane they travel to as a False Destination on the table, roll 6-10 its a Description, 11-15 its a Viewed Once, 16-20 its a Viewed Casually, 21-25 its a very familiar. You then roll % dice and if you are on target you go to the plane and place you want, off target you are on the right plane but miles form where you need to be, Similar Area you end up in place that looks like the correct plane but is somewhere else (such in a art gallery or museum infront of a paiting or depiction of the plane) and Mishap means you go somewhere random and taking force or psychic damage.
Egoic Preservation:
Change the saving throw names to be more in line with D&D: Charisma for Favor, Wisdom for Will and Intelligence for Comprehension. However, having said that, the lowest rolls end up in death of yourself, death of your loved ones or you going insane, so I say just lose it. I don't think this table is going to add anything and effectively saying "oh if you roll a 5 or less you die", given tthe purpose of the item is to travel to other planes to advance the story of the campaign this means you have a chance, no matter how small it is, that one or more party members dies on transit, which means they then have to create new characters which just so happen to in the location they were travelling to or they have to sit out one or more sessions until the party get back to a settlement where a new character can be introduced.
If you want the party to be invovled with the potential success of the travel then you could make it more of a ritual spell that is required to activate the Hellstone, each traveller has to perform some aspect to help martial the magical energies repersented by their saving throw, say DC15, failure results in one point of Force damage and one point of Psychic damage for each point they roll under the DC as the magical energies disintergrate their physical form and erode some of their mental faculties. Succeeding on the saving throw gives the main person performing the planeshift a +1 bonus to their Astral Tunnelling roll for each point above 15. This way you get benefits for success but the chance of instant death is vastly reduced, even rolling a natural 1 would only mean 28 damage.
For Example: Seb is in charge of the planeshift and is travelling with Tim, Tim decides to roll a Charisma Saving throw and rolls a 17 so succeeds, Seb then rolls his Astral Tunnelling check and adds +2 to his roll. Or Tim rolls 10 on his saving throw and fails and takes 5 points of force damage and 5 points or psychic damage but Sebs roll is otherwise unaffected.
It is not a club and I would find it thematically very odd to be used as such. Also, does this really justify Attunement? It's not even the full WarCaster feat, it is only the warcaster feat for one specific spell. Im not sure why it is unclear how many times it can be used, as with the feat, as many as you want. This staff simply gives you warcaster but you only get advantage on con checks for the one spell. A +5 bonus to Arcana checks is extreme, would make this way overpowered, and totally justify the attunement that I do not want it to have.
I agree that headache makes more sense. Yes 30 is supposed to be impossible. This was addressed in the lore. This stone does not work without the staff unless you have some serious mojo happening. Once you have the staff this becomes a 25 which is much more doable ( Sebastian has +5 to arcana, he portents a 20 and knows he can go anywhere ).
This should be very bad for the players, though I might be underestimating how dangerous the planes are on average.
Totally agree, disadvantage is better here.
Yes. This is the worst case scenario for a party using the staff.
You are forgetting that the staff gives +5. This can only happen to someone dumb enough to use the stone without the staff.
So I agree this is the least fleshed out portion, however, as with the astral tunneling rolls the worst case scenario can be mitigated. If these are saving throws the bard can give everyone bardic inspiration dice. The point is that preparation.
The middle part of the table that I have not finished was intended to include boons that allow the party to save one another from these effects.
In general it seems that you are far less comfortable with the risk of death than I am. Thematically the point of this item is that it is a coin flip. But when you give it to a divination wizard who can portent it becomes useful. I'm actually attracted to the complexity of the item and I think I might be straddling this line awkwardly. It is also possible that I just enjoy things most dont. I want this staff to provide opportunities to risk one's life for the sake of the story. Also the "Egoic Preservation" table is hinting at a thematic element I don't think I made obvious enough. These characters are going on an epic and dangerous psychedelic trip. By carefully preparing and assisting one another ( managing set and setting lol ) they can each have enlightenment experiences that render travel safer. This mechanic is meant to make the item scale up as they grow in power. The high DCs are there to account for the various boons that can be acquired. I might need to just move on and chalk this up to an idea I had that's too uniquely suited to my tastes.
some things to bear in mind (and apologise in advance for sounding like an *expleitive deleted*) :
if your DM signs off on it then ok, however to me as a DM, adding beneficial or harmful effects onto a magic item brings it close to artifact level magic items and given its an unstable enchantment it doesn;t seem appropriate. You could take a look at the artifacts in the DMG and take some of their detremental effect (pg220 of the DMG) as inspiration if you really want to fill out that table.
I would also say that having a magical item with drawbacks which your party is capable of circumventing means you have an item with no drawbacks.
If you want the Dr Strange-esque psychedelic plane/dimension hopping this can easily be donw with some flavour and cosmetic amendments to the standard spell and a item capable of casting it twice per long rest with minor effects such as taking damage from casting the spell through the item and the travel itself. Depending on how long your campaign is going to go on for your item will sooner or later become largely irrelevant as Clerics, Druids, Warlocks, Sorcerer and Wizards all get Planeshift as a spell they can learn or prepare from level 13+ and bards can get it via magical secrets from level 14+.
and as a complete aside...re the walking stick being a club, that was based on the info you gave about its coinstruction and if casting the shadow blade spell you draw it out....sort of like a victorian sword cane, in which case the you could use the stick in your off hand to parry or strike with.
I don't think you are being an *expletive deleted*
Ah, yes the parry stick thing makes sense, just not for what I had in mind ;)
I hear you about it becoming largely irrelevant once the actual spell is acquired. This is probably the most catastrophic thing I agree with you on.
Here is a question, the plane shift spell requires an attuned rod. If this artifact could bypass that suddenly we have something useful to even a level 20 adventurer. Would this be canonically absurd and/or would this break too many high-level campaigns? Im also wondering what sorts of information would need to be gathered by players to break into an imprisonment demi-plane with this.
I don't think it would be absurd or break a campaign but what you then have is a "broken" magical item that is the cosmic key and can access all planes of exisistence so i would say no to it. Using it in that fashion would save you 250gp per Plane and I would view obtaining those attunement rods as a mini quest in itself (unless I got lazy and have a major wizard emporium with a series of rods that can be created on demand).
As for info needed to break into a imprisonment demi plane then this depends on what created it, the lvl 8 spell Demi Plane or the lvl 9 spell Imprisonment?
Demiplane would just need some way to become aware of the demiplanes exsistence such as a spell book or tome which outlines the construction and dimensions of the space the caster made using the Demiplane spell BUT it would also depend on whether your DM would view the Demiplane as some where you could travel to with a Planeshift spell, it not techincally one of the planes so if they dont then you'd need to be able to cast the lvl 8 Demiplane spell to open the doorway.
Imprisonemnt become a bit harder as it would be immune to divination magic so you'd need to either track down and extract the info required from the person that cast the Imprisonment spell or use a Wish spell. Note though that the demiplanes created by the Imprisonment spell are specifically warded against planar travel (planeshifting) and the only ways to standardly end Imprisonemnt is to cast a lvl9 Dispel Magic or meet the conditions specified whent he spell was cast, which would be a DM call on how eleaborate/convoluted/dangerous they are. If it was to be a major plot point then, given the magic item we've been discussing, I'd have a condition along the lines of "travel to each Plane and kill a specific type of creature", so go the Plane of Fire and kill a Efreet Djinn, go the 3rd layer of Hell and kill a Chain Devil etc. The creature are effectively a sort of mystical combination lock and when all conditons are met the imprisonment spell comes to an end.