Wondrous Item, legendary (requires attunement)
This leatherbound diary is embossed with an image of a finger pressed over pursed lips.
Once per day, you can use an action to write the name of a specific creature in the diary. When you do so, the diary brings to your mind a random secret about that creature. It can be a heartfelt memory, a description of a person they secretly admire or love, or something else (at the DM’s discretion).
Curse. Whenever you use the diary to learn a secret about a creature, you must succeed on a DC 19 Charisma saving throw or suffer from an insecurity for 1 hour. Roll on the table below to determine the insecurity and its effects.
| d4 | Insecurity |
| 1 | Despair. The information gleaned from the diary leads you to an existential crisis. You have disadvantage on attack rolls and ability checks. |
| 2 | Envy. Consumed with jealousy for the subject of your prying, you lash out verbally at any mention of the creature, and have difficulty concealing your contempt. You have disadvantage on Charisma (Deception) checks to conceal this behavior. |
| 3 | Guilt. Racked with guilt for having pried so deeply, you have trouble relaxing. You are unable to benefit from a short or long rest, and are unable to gain hit points while suffering from this insecurity. |
| 4 | Paranoia. Extreme worry consumes you, with fear that the subject of your prying will know what you have done. You become frightened of the creature for the duration. |
Notes: Cursed
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Posted Feb 12, 2022This sounds fun! Lots of mischief to be done with these secrets...
-Raazak'ur the Rogue
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Posted Feb 14, 2022Seems unnecessary to say that Guilt prevents long rests, since you can only benefit from a long rest after 8 hours anyway.
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Posted Feb 14, 2022I took it as saying you cannot start your long rest during that period, like you are being kept awake with guilt.
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Posted Feb 14, 2022I love it. It could be used for a death-notesque plot hook: the players find a torn page of the book with a name written on it they don't know, and as they touch it they witness first-person from the killer perspective the murder of one of their acquaintances... Soon after they discover that person to be dead.
Damn now I've got to write down this thing.
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Posted Feb 14, 2022I think this is to prevent someone from using it directly before a long-rest as it may interrupt the rest. Gives the DM a way to punish the user but not the whole party.
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Posted Feb 14, 2022I've never felt severe guilt that went away so quickly! I think 1 hour is too short, I think I'll change it to 8 hours
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Posted Feb 16, 2022Just as a note to incautious DMs: This can be a pretty campaign-destroyingly powerful item, with extremely mild downsides. The effect is in principle more powerful than any divination spell in the game, so you need to think very carefully about what kind of "secrets" you give out. If a group starts writing the name of the BBEG every day, you'll soon be hard pressed not to give up even the most world-rending secrets.
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Posted Feb 16, 2022Ehh, I think a DM can come up with enough harmless stuff that it won't break a campaign. It's not necessarily worse than getting surface thoughts from detect thoughts or learning about the BBEG from legend lore. There's also lots of things you could do to temper it, as a DM: requiring a save on the target's part, increasing the duration of the curse effects, requiring that the target be on the same plane and not protected from divination magic, or limiting it to one secret per target for a certain period of time.
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Posted Feb 19, 2022Agreed... I tried it once on our patron and my DM gave me a memory of that guy eating a sandwich, AND I got cursed.
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Posted Feb 15, 2024Laana the rogue will probably be learning all the party's secrets via this